Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 9, 5 March 1908, Page 21

Notes

• Fashion-plate Theology * ' Fashion-plate theology.' 'is the ap* title- whteh 1 ' the New York 'Freeman's Journal' gives, to- the-- sMltinfe fancies and weathercock theories of the modernist* atid the ' new theology ' schools. Catholics Deserve it In a, recent sermon (reported in the - Napier^ ' Daily Telegraph '>) Canon Mayne (Anglican) expressed** the* wish that the Protestant denominations in" New' Zealand? 'had done the same as the Roman Catholics, and "had' their own schools '. 'All credit '„ added he, ' was- due to the Catholics for what they had^ done, andy he,- for* one-; would be glad if. they received' aid lm-wha-t thfcyv were doing, because they deserved it.' Well, if ; ' our : Protestant friends would, even now, take heart' of <{ grace,' and follow the lead of their Catholic neighbors,, who- a-re relatively poor in the world's wealth but rich»iat>' faith and earnestness and the spirit of, < sacrifice, .the*: education difficulty would soon settle- itself ."- We havesaidsthis-'be*-fora. But such- a 'mot d'ordre' ; or battie-tsry"- loSBs neither its truth nor its inspiration by repetition.* ' A Roster of Converts Jusit tMrty years ago (in 1878) Mr: W. Gordon Gorman published , first • in -the ' Whitehall < I^eview^' (London) and afterwards- in- book form,- a- lengthy- list of prominent ' Converts, to Rome- during ' the"Ninetfettl*Ji -Century. This catalogue of ' Rome's- Recruits' I was divided up into converts from the' nobilfty, the" public [ service, the arts and - sciences, the army'' and na^vy* ,the

The Bomb in the East In the anarchist sense, the Persian® are rising to higher things— and they are marking their new. elevation by m effort to ' lift ' their Shah to a still higher plane (ad astra) w'lth the favorite weapon of the Western terrorist, a picrine bomib. This latest invasion of 'Western notions' has shaken the streets of sleepy Te-' heran, pounded into dead meat a number of unoffending people, and (as at Madrid) left scatheless the one of all the others who was sought by the assassins bomb. Persian rule has long been ' a desi:otasm tempered by assassination '. But evene v cn in ' the unchanging East ', methods of ' removing ' rulers to a worse or better world may change, and the traditional knife, the. curved scimitar, and the poison-cup give way to the more potent and promiscuous picrine or dynamite of the modern anarchist, well, 'the world do move', though at times its movements are the incoordinate jerks and spasms of the epileptic or of the victim of St. Vitus's dance. That % bombshell in Teheran brings many a league nearer the once remote possibility, an Eastern Republic. The deepthinking Oriental has become pretty receptive since the battle of Tsushima. And his star may indeed be destined to nLse while that of the decadent, self-suicide white races is setting. And then Father Benson's vivid dream of Armageddon may be something more than the vision of a sleeper.