Some Napier Critics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 14, Issue 24, 14 June 1906, Page 1

Some Napier Critics

The kind of honesty that -won't rob a hen-roost is common enough. But the kind is rarer that makes a man hesitate about launching grave accusations until possessed of compelling or at least sufficient evidence. Yet, without so much as a scrap of any kind of evidence, the Napier ' Daily Telegraph ' has directly or by necessary implication flung against the Almighty the charge of ha\ing ' commanded ' the unjust slaying (that is, the muider) of people in war, and the perpetration of ' sexual brutalities ' upen women captives. This is ore of sundry secondary issues to the main question on which we have already challenged our Napier contemporary. And we have taken especial care that our challenge should reach its destination. The biblical accusations—which ha\e been repeated in the 'Telegraph' in coarser terms by an a/icnymous writer—will crop up in ■due course. In the meantime, we refer our Napier readers to chapters VIII., X., XI., XII., and XIII. of Lambert's famous ' Notes en lngersoll ' (procurable from any Catholic bookseller) as about the best popular exposure of the crude calumnies that have appeared in the ' Daily Telegraph.'

Dr. Jchtson deemed abuse dangerous only when it was marked with wit or iklicacy. But there is neither wit nor delicacy in the abuse of the Almighty that blis-

4ercd the columns of two issues of the Napier ' Daily Telegraph.' One of the issues emphasises the danger of hasty and general conclusions and of neglect of verification of references. The other furnishes a warning example of the perils of ano.iymous writing. ' Anonymity,' said Dr. Parker some years ago, 'is not modesty, though it may easily be either impudence or cowardice.' Few men can resist the temptation of saying things with a mask upon their faces that they would not dare to say with their features open to the glare of day. In the case under consideration, the masked man displays the noisiness, the bumptious assertiveness, the disregard for the religious sentiments of others, and the ignorance of his subject, which characterise so many of the communications of the worst class of the anonymous and uneducated know-all in the open columns of the secular press. lie reminds us of an apt saying of an author whose name at the moment eludes our memory : ' It» is with narrow-sou led people as with narrow-necked bottles —the less they have in them the more noise they make in roaring it out.'

Rousseau, Ilio ijrh an iii/klcl, was a( least a man of biains. And he had little ] atience \\ ilh those shallow pseudo-philosophers who were ' proud, positive, and dogmatising, even in their pretended scepticism, knowing everything, proving nothing.' Here is how, in part, he ' sizes them up ' :— ' Un-ler pretence of being themselves the only neoDle enlightened, they imperiously subject us to their rnaeisienal decisions, and would fain pa>m upon us for the true causes of things the unntelligible systems they have erected in their own heads , whilst they overturn destroy and trample under foot all that man Und reveres snatch from th«j afflicted Ihe ottly comfort left them in their misery, from the rich and ihe great the only curb that can restrain their passions ; tear from the heart all remorse of vice, all hope of Urtue ; they still boast themselves benefactors of man md. " Truth " they say ''is never hurtful to man." I believe that 'as well as they And the same, in mv opinion, is proof that what they teach is not the truth.' One can respect the intellectual limitations that are modest. But cne of the chief sublunary abominations is the ignorant man who, uhen he puts a mask upon his face, fancies lie coul-d deep mysteries unriddle As easily a s trread a needle,' and who thinks himself licensed to play the Ingersollian buffoon on the deepest and most solemn questions in the heavens abose and upon the earth beneath.