For the New Year

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1, 7 January 1909, Page 9

For the New Year

In Bailey's Festus there are some lines which may be appropriately quoted at this early dawn of the new year : 'We live in deeds, not years : in thoughts, not breaths j , In feelings, not in" -figures on a dial. " We should count timo-hy heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.' The sequel of this thought is found in the famous hymn of Bernard/ the twelfth-century French Benedictine monk of Cluny : ' Brief life is hero our portion, Brief sorrow, short-lived care; The life that knows no ending, The tearless life, is there. 0 happy retribution, — SHort toil, eternal rest ! ■ For mortals and for sinnors A mansion with the blest!' If! It would be both churlish and unfair to question" the goodness of motive of those among our separated brethren who are casting about for schemes to bring into the schoollives of our State-trained children the fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, and the love of Him" which is its end. Unfortunately, the shy bud of pious wishes has not, thus far, grown into blossom or put forth fruit. Where so vast a field for good work exists, it is doubly unfortunate that our fellow-citizens of other faiths should fall into an inoperative habit of mind, and -allow a chasm to separate their wishes, and their powers,- in a matter in which " Catholics have given such an inspiring lead. ' Shingle Short ' reproves as follows this habit of divorcing aspiration from activity, where a great good is waiting to be accomplished : — ' While, as for work an' sueh — Look here ! 1 guess the one success you do Is thinking you're a-goin' to. Oh, all's right then : looks good and sound, An' plump, and regular all round — . Puff-ballish! Prove it, an' it's broke, For all that good fat shape was — Smoke!' 'If Protestant Churches,' says Dr. Lorimer (a New York Baptist preacher), ' were as interested in the education of their children as the Catholic Church is/ there would be no religious problem in our country.' We (N.Z. Tablet) have been for years urging that if even one large Protestant denomination in. New Zealand did, for the Christian education of their children, the half of what Catholics have been doing for a generation, the ' school difficulty ' in this Dominion would soon solve itself. If ! But what a mighty if ! We have been humming tliis old melody in season and out of season. But it is a good old song, and deserves the ' encores ' that it gets. The strains of 'Die Wacht am Rhein ' ('The Watch on the Rhine') steel the heart of the German recruit and make his pulse beat high with love of the Fatherland. If we could only induce the leaders of our separated brethren to take lip the note of our little unmetrical ditty, it might, perchance, move them at last to throw aside the torpor that holds ( them in its spell, to realise more fully their responsibilities to the rising generation, and to enter upon ' the strenuous life ' for the Christian education of the little ones whom the Saviour has committed to their care.