Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 25 September 1913, Page 21

Current Topics

The League and Its Methods There is ever-gathering evidence that' the unscrupulous and deplorable methods adopted by the Bible in State Schools League organiser in this country,. and either directly or indirectly condoned by the League Executive, are beginning to recoil upon the party using them. In the Otago Daily Times of September 12 Mr. J. J. Ramsay, ex-chairman of the Otago Education Board, gives vent to the indignation felt by large numbers of fair-minded citizens in the following vigorous fashion: ‘ To misrepresent a man and put statements in his mouth that he never uttered seem to be inseparable from the Bible-in-schools policy. That and labelling men “atheists,” “secularists,” and “Catholics” are favorite methods of the so-called ethical leaders. Thank goodness, ordinary people have a soul above that kind of warfare. It would not even be tolerated in a prize ring.’ And Mr. A. R. Atkinson, who has been insultingly and shamefully -treated by Canon Garland, Dr. Gibb, and others of the League, thus sums up, in the Wellington Post of September 10, the effect of the League’s methods in his own case: ‘ That the action of the secretary of the Bible in State Schools League has done me no harm in the place where I am best known, but has on the contrary seriously damaged his own reputation and his own propaganda, is fortunately beyond doubt. An organisation which stands by while its principal officer conducts himself in this fashion cannot possibly escape the moral responsibility for tactics which it has abstained from disavowing. The injustice, the intolerance, the vindictiveness, the entire disregard of the ordinary courtesies and decencies of honorable controversy with which I have been treated have made a profound impression upon the public mind.’ The * Ulster * Business The Dublin Leader puts the position in regard to the Orange attitude towards Home Rule pithily and admirably in the course of a brief comment on an utterance made by the Irish Unionist paper, the Irish Times. In a leading article the Irish Times had said: Viscount Morley was reduced to pitiable embarrassment by the question : If Ulster resists Home Rule to the extremity of civil war, will her loyal citizens be shot down by British troops.’ On which the Leader remarks: ‘Waiving the nonsense of supposing that a province, a majority of, whose Parliamentary representatives are in favor of Home Rule, will fight against it, it is absurd to ask if loyal citizens will be shot down by British troops. Of course, they won’t. The loyal citizens will , be on the side of the troops. Arnott’s paper should ask what will be done to disloyal citizens taking up arms—wooden or otherwise as they may be—against his most gracious Majesty, the King?’ * In the meantime it is satisfactory to note that Irishmen who are in a good position to judge are strongly of opinion that the occasion for asking and answering the question will never arise. Orangemen, said Mr. John Dillon significantly in a recent speech at Birkenhead, may be brave but they are not lunatics. Mr. John McCormack, the famous tenor, who from his position as a sort of professional wanderer may be regarded as being capable of taking a fairly detached attitude on the question, in a press interview at Adelaide the other day declared enthusiastically, We will get Home Rule,’ and as vehemently waived aside all suggestion of trouble from Ulster. ‘ The first people to come along and say let’s sink our differences will be the Ulstermen,’ he avowed. ‘ I know the North of Ireland people, and I am satisfied their hearts are in the right place. I am a Catholic, but the Protestants are just as proud of my success as though I had been a Protestant.’ According to the Irish Press Agency, the most reliable information from well-informed Unionist sources in Belfast is to the same effect—that there will be no civil war and no Provisional Government, that

Sir Edward Carson is not taken seriously by the majority of Unionists who count for anything in position or influence, that the ‘ Ulster ’ agitation has about worked itself out, and that Home Rule, when it comes, will be accepted and worked by Ulster for all it is worth. A Remarkable Confession > We print the following remarkable confession, not because it is a slap in the face to the notorious Menace -which has received more notice than it really deserves —but because it takes the public behind the scenes, and gives them an inside view of the spirit which animates the whole anti-Catholic propaganda in America, and of the sordid and despicable means by which that propaganda is carried out. And it is a fair presumption that the application of the striking statements which are made as to the principles and methods adopted in the campaigns of bigotry against the Catholic Church is not confined to America. The declarant borrow a legal term—is one who was a leader and standard-bearer in the forces of aggressive Protestantism— who was for twenty-two,years the head of the Baptist missions and propaganda in Mexico. He is ex-minister Mr. William H. Sloan. Mr. Sloan is now a Catholic, and the editor of a Catholic paper published at Las Cruces, Hew Mexico. ‘ His statement,’ says the Ave Maria, ‘was prompted by the receipt of copies of a widely-circulated anti-Catholic sheet, of which he writes as no one that we know of could write. In returning a corrected proof of this open confession which we had submitted to him, Mr. Sloan says: ‘ I am quite willing you should republish the enclosed, I am sorry I am too busy just now to polish it and to add to it; but I may before long send you something more satisfactory/ * Here is the confession, as supplied direct by Mr. Sloan to the Ave Maria : ‘We ourselves were engaged in writing and preaching such stuff probably before the editor of the Menace was —for his articles show that he is yet in the “puppy” age as well as of the “puppy” character,and we know all about the origin and source of the lies and calumnies that he gives the public every week. We ourselves have waded through all the disgusting mire of slanderous attacks on the priests and the nuns; we have anathematized the bishops who wanted to take public funds from the treasury for the support of Catholic institutions; we have cried to Heaven to defend our public schools against the insidious attacks of Rome; we have accused the Pope of lying awake at night to devise some way by which he might surreptitiously win over the United States to the Romanist” cause; we have painted the ignorance of Mexico and South America in most lurid colors; and we have reason to believe that much of the bigoted drivel now going the rounds of the Guardians of Liberty press, and heard in bigoted Protestant pulpits, had its origin in our sophomoric declamations years ago, when we travelled through the States in search of funds with which to carry on our work of Protestant propaganda, and inveighed in most bitter terms against “superstition, immorality, ignorance, and vice ” as found among the Roman Catholic people where ,we labored. We were not entirely to blame: we were paid for doing it (as is the editor of the Menace), and we were easily persuaded it was all true. We learned the truth after a while. A compassionate ' God took hold upon us, lifted our feet out of the mire, and placed them upon the Rock.’ * It is certainly to be hoped that Mr. Sloan will find time to carry out his intention of elaborating on the facts here so vigorously expressed. Theosophy and the Theosophists We publish in another columnpurely as a matter of courtesy, and certainly not on account of its intrinsic meritsa letter from the general secretary of the N.Z. Section of the Theosophical Society in which the writer professes to correct one or two ‘ misstate-

ments ’- in our leader of .September 4. In not a single case does our correspondent give any authority for the counter-statements he makes, nor a tittle of evidence in support of them, his alleged corrections amounting to nothing more than statements that he ‘ believes ’ this, or has ‘no reason to disbelieve’ the other thing. If the general secretary of the-N. Z. Section of the Theosophical Society has no better defence or vindication to offer than this, he would have been well advised to hold his peace. The main contention of our article that Mrs.-'Besant’s apology for Leadbeater was an outrageous and utterly baseless calumny on the Catholic priesthood —he makes no attempt to controvert or deny and from the fact that in quoting Leadbeater he limits that individual’s utterance to ‘ a certain Order of the Anglican Church’ he may be taken as admitting that the Tablet position was correct. The alleged corrections are for the most part concerned with purely incidental or subsidiary points; and with these we deal briefly seriatim. * (1) The general secretary writes; ‘The “Order of the Star of the East’’ did not replace an older Society which was suppressed in India; the “Order of the Rising Sun’’ is still, I believe, in existence under the Yedantists.’ We are not in the least interested in what our correspondent believes ; what we want is the facts, and authorities substantiating the facts. Our . authority for the statement made is Miss E. R. McNeile, who was for a while a personal colleague of Mrs. Besant’s and an enthusiast in the Theosophist cause, who studied the cult at its fountain head in India. Wo quote the lady in full: ‘ln January, 1911, a society was formed among the students of the Central Hindu College, the College founded v by Mrs. Besant at Benares, under the title of the Order of the- Rising Sun, to promote preparation for this coming. The boy Krishnamurti was made prominent in the Order, and it was the practice of the members to prostrate themselves before him and touch his feet, an act of homage well understood to imply an act of worship. The principal of ' the College, Mr. George Arundale, was the founder of this Order and the high priest of the cult, and to such an extent did it tend to encroach upon the time and attention of the students that remonstrances were made by alarmed parents, and the Order was suppressed. “It was, however, speedily replaced by the Order of the Star in the East, of which Krishnamurti is head and Mrs. Besant Protector. The object of this Order is so to prepare the way for this Coming One that, when he comes, he may be recognised and **received.’ The point is not one of any special importance; but so far as the evidence goes r we prefer' the. personal testimony of a lady who has resided for years in India and who writes from first-hand and intimate knowledge, to the statement of a resident of Auckland, even though he happens to be the general ‘ secretary of a distant Section of the Society. ' * / (2) Our correspondent says;. ‘ Miss McNeile’s statement that “Theosophy explicitly denies the Incarnation, the Atonement, the death of Christ, the claim of Christ to be the only "way to the Father, : and if a Christian would be also a Theosophist, he must leave all this out of his Christianity, is entirely unfounded.’ On the contrary, we affirm that the statement is literally and absolutely true. Miss McNeile is, of course, speaking of the accepted Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, Atonement, etc. If our correspondent asserts that Theosophy does not deny the doctrines of the -Incarnation, vicarious Atonement, etc., of the historical Christas these are held and taught in orthodox Christianity- is stating the thing that is not, and is ignorant either of the Christian doctrines or of : Theosophical teaching on the subject. For Theosophy denies that Jesus of Nazareth was Christ at all. Let ns hear Mrs. Besant on the subject They (i.e. “wellinstructed Theosophists ”) recognise in the Christ of Christendom the Supreme Teacher of the world, but they do not admit that He will come only once to the world; they reverence and honor Him now as still the

Supreme World-Teacher,, but they do not identify Him with the great disciple who took the Jewish name as Jesus. . . There is the point where the difference would come in’ The Changing World, pp. 309-10). Christianity holds and emphasises that Jesus—and He alone—was the Christ, and this is, indeed, the central feature and most important element in the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Atonement, etc. The Christian, therefore, .who aspires to be a ‘ well* instructed Theosophist ’ must necessarily ‘leave all this out of his Christianity.’ In regard to the Atonement, Mrs. Besant is elsewhere still more explicit. In her work on Esoteric Christianity, after reviewing at length the Christian doctrine of vicarious Atonement,-she describes it (p. 199) as ‘.a doctrine so destructive of all true ideas as to the relations between God and man.’ - Nor are these the only doctrines that must be abandoned by the Christian who is prepared to give in his adherence to the tenets of Theosophy. The very fundamental doctrine of Christianity doctrine of a personal God —must also go. In her little book entitled Why I Became a Theosophist, Mrs. Annie Besant says (p. 19): “The next matter impressed on the student of theosophy is the denial of a personal God. In theology, theosophy is pantheistic God is all, and all is God. In spite of its attempt to masquerade in Christian ethical phraseology, .and of its affected respect for the Christian tradition. Theosophy is nothing but a miserable mixture of sham, philosophy, charlatanism (as exposed in the earlier history of the cult), and false mysticism ; and its tenets are, we repeat, wholly inconsistent with the teachings of historical Christianity. - . - * (3) Our quotation from the Bombay Guardian' s report of the judgment of the Madras High Court the effect that the judge ‘held that from the evidence he had given Leadbeater was .certainly an immoral person and was highly, unfit to be in charge of-the boys ’ —was correctly given ; and so- far we have not seen in the New Zealand press any withdrawal by the Press Agency of the Guardian’s version of the matter. Our correspondent states that the reference to Leadbeater as ‘ an immoral person’ was afterwards withdrawn by the Press Agency who ‘apologised for the error.’ As we have said, we have seen no such withdrawal; but we accept our correspondent’s statement on the point, merely reminding him that his statement would have been materially strengthened if he had mentioned when and where, in what papers and in what terms, the withdrawal and apology were made. (4) Our correspondent asserts that the judge’s opinion that the plaintiff— father of the —had stipulated with Mrs. Besant that they should not have anything to do with Leadbeater ‘ was given in opposition to the evidence of Mrs. Besant herself, and of Sir . Subramaniah Iyer, late Chief Justice, and of three other gentlemen, all present at the interview.’ The obvious reply is that the judge had all this evidence before him; and if, nevertheless, he went out of his way to express himself as satisfied that such a stipulation had been made, it raises a strong presumption that the evidence against- Mrs. Besant’s recollection or version of the interview was overwhelming. The only other alternative is to suppose that the judge was either deliberately corrupt or a hopeless imbecile. (5) Our correspondent’s suggestion that the statements as to Leadbeater’s infamous teaching had reference only to ‘three boys. in America, many years ago’ is either mere pretence or an exhibition of ignorance on his part. As indicated in', our article, the advice was given, as admitted in Mrs .Besant’s letter, to at least some twenty other boys; and it was doubtless the evidence on this point, which led the judge to declare that 'Leadbeater was ‘ highly unfit to be in charge of the boys.’ The subject is not one which we can allow to be even distantly discussed in our columns. We can only express our surprise and disgust that any resident of New Zealand can be found to condone and apparently approve of teaching which even Mrs. Besant ‘has strongly and vehemently condemned.: