THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1908. THE WASTED YEARS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10, 12 March 1908, Page 21

THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1908. THE WASTED YEARS

fN Artemus Ward's ' Interview -with the Prince Napoleon ', the serious and the comic run lik-e the streaks ot-white and the streaks of soft pink in a N well-cured flitch. The laughing philosopher knew the tear as well as the smile ; and he touches one of the serious things" of life when he said, in the '-Interview ', that it matters little for a .man to be cunning, long-headed, deep, and great. ' Onless he is good ', added the Showman, ' he'll come down with a crash '. Alid in the sequel he touches— as did the elder Coquelin in a happy set ©f verses— upon some of v the evils that, in the domestic and social order, follow like a shadow the neglect of the duties of religion. ' Show me', says he to the Prince, ' a place where there" isn't any Meetin Houses, and where preachers is never seen, and I'll show you a place where old hats are stuffed

into broken winders, where the children are dirty and ragged, where gates- have no hinges, where the wimin are. slipshod, and where maps of the devil's " wild,, land " are painted upon men's shirt-bosums with tobaccojooce t That's what I'll show you '. *

-In like manner, it ■ helps , but little to make the young farmer, or the young artisan, or -the young lawyer, as well as the young Prince, merely cunning and long-headed and .deep. Fagin, the adroit thief-trainer, in ' Oliver Twist ', did as much for the young delinquents that flocked to his den. Something more' than this is needed for the high-toned domestic life that constitutes the best ' bulwark and the proudest glory of a nation. And the battered windows and the ragged backs and the slipshod feet and the ' devil's maps '. are among' the least of the evils that flow from a neglect of the one /thing that is needful— nanrely, religion— for a young nation in its days of training. The strength of Catholic conviction on this matter needs no emphasising here. Its evidence is scattered over all the land 'on a scale that no one can ignojre or fail to see. And out pf poverty it has enriched the State with an achievement and an example to which others might, with vast benefit to the country, 'extend the flattery of imitation. The clergy of the separated Churches in the Dominion have, no doub_t, some notion of the tremendous perils and possibilities of child life. We fear, however, that they do not realise these things in even a moderate measure. Did they do so, in any adequate degree, thirty years of action would have taken the place of thirty years of mere oratory and playing at permutations and combinations with schemes and plans to force State officials to don the white ' choker ' and assume one -of the chief functions of the Christian ministry.

A generation of playing at cap and bells .with the tremendous issue of religious education has left them where they began— but With all the wasted years to their account. A generation of strenuous idleness, and only the jester's guerdon at its close — 1 Bubbles we've earned with a whole soul's tasking '.

Once, Sir Dominic Corrigan was called to an impatient patient, whom he found writhing and twisting under the pressure of an internal pain. 'Is there any position, wailed the patient, ' in, which I can get relief ? ' 'If there is ', renlied the great surgeon," ' you're very likely to find it.' In thirty years, the Bible-in-sohools organisations have tried scores of schemes and plans in their efforts to find rest for their troubled consciences, and relief from the hard secularism of the Education Act. They have tried every position except one — the one that Catholics have long been advocating, and which would, we believe, solve a vexed question, as it is solved mi Canada and elsewhere, on Mnes that would -be just to both 'believers and non-believers. mis, however, ' is a way to surcease of the education difficulty whioh the JBible-in-schools organisations one and all decline -to consider. In this respect their action is like that of the. member of Cruttimles' troupe, who, when playing Hamlet, struck {with his sword at every part of the

arras except where the legs of his ' adversary ■ • were plainly visible through its threadbare -texture;.: " Time and circumstance may, however, bring- a -kindlier frame of mind towards the Church which has so 'long' and faithfully held alofff the banneiTof . religious education. In the meantime, the reading and study of the Sacred Scriptures are, unfortunately, fast declining among. --the Reformed Churches-; there is a tendency aniong many s of their clergy to whittle down the Sacred Volume _to a collection of social texts, with litue or ho 'dogmatic reference ; and, unless a change comes over the spirit of the dream of the separated creeds, Catholics in- 'tliese countries may in time be the sole champions' of the Written Word as well as of Christian education. • ... — ,«\. «•. - - -- -•-•_