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to follow France in her unworthy outbursts of passion, in which as in individuals the lower nature rises into power and clouds reason herself, then, alas, there may be still further repression of every Catholic attempt. Well may the devoted Bishop who now governs the Church here have said that this is "the great anxiety of his ministry." Here as everywhere, the well-being of religion in the next generation depends greatly on the education of the young in this; and here, in addition, on their education will greatly depend the conversion of surrounding heathen to the Church of Jesus Christ. The Governor of the island has lately forwarded his statement on this vexata questio to the Colonial Secretary in England, and asked for a final settlement. Perhaps the more recent change of government will again bring delay, but Catholics will not fail both to work and to pray.

The truth is that education without religion is not an advantage even for the heathen. A system of Indian vernacular schools has been commenced on some estates, which Government is to support by grant: the teaching is to have carefully excluded from it all religion, but it is hoped that this mere information will be a boon to the Indian youth, and help to the gradual elevation of the Indian race. But elevation to what? We need not repeat here what has often enough been urged with regard to the action on India of mere school-teaching, divested of all Christianity that England has taught the Indian to laugh at the religion of his fathers, and left him without any religion in its place to respect. This, however, is the legitimate, and the direct result in its measure, of all undenominational education. It is one thing to destroy Hindus, it is quite another to make Christians. Speaking of the education given to the Indians in India by England, Prof. Monier Williams, says:

I fear the work effected is rather information than education; rather informing the mind than forming the character and raising its tone. This sort of education is, in some cases, better than nothing, but too often it inflates young men with conceit, unhinges their faith in their own religion without giving them any other, leads them to despise the calling of their fathers, and to look upon knowledge as a mere stepping-stone to Government situations which they cannot all obtain.*

This is literally pertinent to the education of Indians and Indian Creoles here, and in a great measure that of the poorer classes. Whether the fears of the late Governor that Indian parents would at once withdraw their children from

"Modern India and the Indians," by Monier Williams, D.C.L. London, 1878, p. 109.

schools where religion was not carefully excluded be correct or not, at least we know that many parents send their children to our schools. The truth really is, Indians are very fond of Government places and money; but Protestantism, as a religion, cannot inspire an Indian with respect. If anything is to be done for the Christianizing of the Indian races, it must be done by the Catholic Church. There are on this island more than two hundred thousand Indians and Indian Creoles, so that the Christian population is encircled by a pagan population twice as numerous. The Indians are settling down too, and threaten to become the element in the colony.* One influence must prevail, either of Paganism or of Christianity. The Indians respect Catholicity-its church, its convent, its priest: they recognize the supernatural. An Indian on the road greets a priest, "Salam Padre," or "Salam Sahib;" even women of the lowest classes generally mark his approach by assuming a reverent demeanour; and these people have great respect for a Catholic Church, and are more graceful than many Christians'; frequently saluting it as they pass the door. Nay, they often come to settle their quarrels before the altar! They are a very litigious people, and for mere trifles give the magistrates serious trouble. The Court settlement is often unsatisfactory to both sides in the dispute; then they agree to an appeal to the bon Dié in a Catholic Church, and they buy candles and proceed thither-excited men, women, and children. Lighting the candles before the altar-rails they plead aloud, plaintiff and defendant each for himself! Doubtless they suppose that the actual presence there which they recognize of the Supreme Being (the bon Dié as they say), is judged to be the last available resource for bringing excited litigants to a statement of the mere truth. They are a very superstitious people, especially the Hindus, and their superstition and practices are many of them very degraded and disgusting. Witchcraft, evil-eye, spells, and the like, are firmly believed in, and sometimes individual Indians have asked a priest to bless their houses against the charms, and incantations of their enemies. Their festivals in honour of the goddess Durga and others, are marked by self-torture, and other atrocities, not to say immoralities. The ten days of the Mohammadan festival of the Yamseh,i are days of revelry, intoxication, and license. When

See Article in our January No., page 13.

A description of the Yamseh or Moharrum, as observed by the Persian Mohammadans is given in a letter from Constantinople in The Times of January 16 of this year, headed "A Religious Ceremony." It shows that these go more earnestly and thoroughly into the work of self-cutting VOL. XXXV.—NO. 1. [Third Series.]

these are the religious celebrations of a people, we need no description of their private lives. Mr. Pike quotes with approbation the words of an educated Hindu: "The cruel practices (at these festivals) are not worthy of man, and especially of the Mauritian Christian Government, which seems to countenance them, although such monstrous festivals have been nearly put down, even in the superstitious land of India."* But mere repression is negative, and no means of elevating a people: you must at the same time show them a higher channel into which their life and enthusiasm may run, and how they are to make a good use of the powers which are now misdirected. You must give them a noble, spiritual and enticing motive for restraining passions and lawless desires. In a word, you must allow that Church which has before now converted and elevated pagan nations passionately addicted to the superstitious diablery of their festival days-allow her, the Catholic Church, to work unopposedly for the conversion and elevation of these same Indians. It is a work which the zealous bishop and the devoted priests here, especially the brethren of St. Francis Xavier, have greatly at heart: for the success of which many fervent nuns here daily offer their sacrifices of prayer and labour on the success of which depends much of the future happiness of the colony.

There is then in this crowded island-a British possessiona vast field for the Catholic missionary: a large Catholic fold to be cared for, in which many nations have blended into one religious family, and outside that fold a multitude, more than twice as many in point of numbers, who lie, spiritually, deep in the shadow of death, yet not beyond the reach of light and grace. For one religion only outside themselves have they respect and awe-for the Catholic Church with her priesthood and sacraments. May not this good disposition be cultivated and brought at last to be a means of true conversion? At present, the fields show the promise of an abundant harvest, but the labourers are few.

and wounding than do the Mauritian Indians, but with the latter it yearly changes more and more from a religious ceremony into a mere holiday and season of turbulent and wild revelry.

** "Sub-Tropical Rambles," p. 231, note.

ART. V.-DR. WARD'S DOCTRINAL ESSAYS.

Essays on the Church's Doctrinal Authority. By WILLIAM GEORGE WARD, Ph.D. London, Burns & Oates, 1880.

THE

HE eminent man, who was for sixteen years Editor of this REVIEW, has followed up the publication of one volume* of his collected articles by that of a second; and our readers will justly expect that we should give some account of a collection which contains some of the most remarkable papers contributed by their author to one or two of the most exciting controversies of a time now happily gone by. The dozen Essays here reprinted, with some slight additions or curtailments, are concerned chiefly with three subjects-the extent of ecclesiastical infallibility, the historical argument for the Church, and the authority of the scholastic philosophy. The bare enumeration of these titles will suggest to the reader one of the principal points of interest in the book. It is not too much to say that the controversy in each of them—or at least that phase of the controversy with which these Essays deal-is now practically closed. Fifteen years ago we were threatened with a school of English Catholics whose profession it was to be to criticize the Church's utterances, and to protest, openly or silently, against all they could not prove from history and their own reason. Fifteen years ago some people still believed that Anglicanism had its roots in antiquity. And still more recently, the philosophy of St. Thomas of Aquin has been fought over by opposing schools within the Church herself. Now English-speaking Catholics, more widely instructed, and more deeply learned, universally understand that whatever the Church, or the Pope, teaches them must be simply accepted, held, and acted upon. Now, the respectable Patristic argument againt Rome has given place to the art of the polemical chiffonnier, who collects refuse or creates it, and parades it as the older controversialists used to parade Scripture and the Fathers. And lastly, the question of the scholastics is now practically settled. Towards the conclusion of a period of doubt, and even of danger, and towards the settlement of questions whose settlement is sure to mark the beginning of a great era in Catholicism, it is the glory and the consolation of Dr. Ward to have materially contributed.

* "Essays, Devotional and Scriptural." Burns & Oates.

The volume opens with an interesting "Preliminary Essay," not before published. It is an Apologia-by no means apologetic, however-for the rest of the book, and for Dr. Ward's editorship of the DUBLIN REVIEW. To some readers this Essay will seem a little too profuse in its explanations. These explanations are professedly made in the interest of certain "excellent persons" not named, who have taken "grave exception" to several of the Essays here reprinted. Nevertheless, both as a contribution to the history of English Catholicism, and as containing one or two interesting personal details, this Essay will be welcomed. This is what Dr. Ward says of his feelings during the early part of his contest with the Home and Foreign Review:

I had an extremely strong impression on my controversial inferiority to my opponents. . . . I was indubitably their inferior to quite an indefinite extent in literary accomplishments, in general knowledge, in acquaintance with politics and secular history. Even with ecclesiastical history my acquaintance was mainly second-hand. And meanwhile notoriously my style was dull and heavy to an unusual degree. (I do not mean that my style is unsuited for purely scientific discussion, whether theological or philosophical. But where poetry or rhetoric is called for, I am alas! nowhere. Yet even for the due exhibition of speculative truth, poetry and rhetoric are quite indispensable). On reflection, I now think that I greatly overrated the ability of those opponents; very able men though they undoubtedly were. Still more, I under-estimated the intrinsic force possessed by a merely logical exposition of truth, when one is addressing a Catholic audience. Nevertheless at the time I was greatly cowed by the brilliancy and acquirements of those whom I had especially to confront. Moreover, my position was a very invidious one. A Catholic writer has far greater hope of attaining the approval of his co-religionists if he makes it his main work to defend and glorify their then existing position, than if he dwell prominently on what he may consider the doctrinal shortcomings more or less prevalent amongst them. And certainly as a matter of fact (if I may speak colloquially) I received, in the earlier part of my editorship, very many more kicks than halfpence. Both publicly and privately I was visited with a great mass of adverse criticism; while, if there was any considerable number of Catholics who approved the line I took, I had not the good fortune of knowing their existence. The heaviest trial of all was, that persons, whom I profoundly respected, censured my course precisely on the ground of its being injurious to souls. Now there is certainly no limit to selfignorance: but I am myself hardly aware of any motive which ever prompted me to write a single line, except my desire of forwarding God's cause in the world. It may well be imagined, therefore, how I winced under this particular criticism. After the best attention indeed I could give it it was quite clear to me (1) that (cæteris paribus) God's interests are best promoted by a writer, in proportion as he shall

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