"THE REVOLUTION."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 19, 6 September 1873, Page 12

"THE REVOLUTION."

Thb following remarkable paragraph is taken from the 'Revue #68 Deui Mondes' : — " The revolution has not kept one of its promises, and will never keep them. It announces impossibilities, and has smitten the' world with a delirious fever, a contagious one which afflicts its viptim with a longing, for the unrealizable, and, at the same time, a secret conviction that this conviction can never, be gratified. 'Xhis revolution is like^a gigantic lamp, against whose flame thousands of men, moth-like, beat their wings and perish." How true, remarks the Catholic Review, this is. The socialistic revolutionarists of Europe and South America are constantly exciting men to revolt promising them TJtopias, and forever showing them that these promises are as utterly false and dangerous as the flicker of a lamp s light, which is so easily puffed out and leaves them in utter darkness. The destruction of all revealed religion must also annihilate' all belief m an absolute standard of morality : and once a man is convinced that he is responsible for his action* to no one— to no God— his only occupation js to gratify his passions and hide his crimes from the detection of the police. Bye and bye human laws are overthrown. The magistrate who condemns is called the criminal, and the criminal the victim. Murder is an hallucination, and property a theft— as Prudhomme said, "la prqpriete c'e# le vol." In the last century, in 93, this awful harpy, the socialistic revolution, was triumphant. What, a lesson she taught ? yet hbw little has the world profited by it. Enthroned in the guise of a prostitute on God's altar, she deluged France and Europe with blood, and scorched it with fire! JN ever since, the establishment of Christianity has there been eee'n a jike era of terror. Never a longer, more terrible, or a darker sight. Mni war and war of extermination went breathing death overthe surface qf the earth. Every bad passion was loosened, every moral idea overthrown. Man deprived of the light of faith groped about in the darkness, untU maddened by his vain search for the impossible, he beoame like a wild beast. Then followed #ie Backing of cWches * r^, n i- ff ° £&} > hf! 7s, and the wholesale massacres of men, women and children. Fortunes were lost, great names perished. The rich were made beggars, and the beggars are starved. Utter confusion reigned everywhere, until at last Napoleon I. invoked to his aid religion, and she alone calmed pie troubled waters. Since '93, the fearful fury has been partly chained down but not killed. Four times has she burst her fitters in France, and gone up and down the land sowing discord and anarchy. Of late, under the sembjanee of a « liberal and constitutional government," she has fixed her seat in Italy. Her mask js yell fixed upon her face ; her tongue is glib j her attire seemingly modest— like that of the Black Qvook damsels who are » simply-attired in skirt and vest, which justj ust withhold the secrets they suggest." Little by little, however, this shrewd fiend has dropped off her disguise and who knows that ere long, before, perhaps another year is past, she will stand completely undisguised, the whole of her horrible and deathgiving Medusa countenance visible, a fire brand in one hand, and holding by the other, ready to loose them, her dogs on whose collars are written the words— irreligion, immodesty, theft,' violence, iniustice, anarchy. And when she has laid in ashes the glorious monuments of the past, shed. the. blood of the innocent, and devastated the land whom will the- very people who now adore this monster, call to their aid but religion ? Then once more will humanity learn the lesson so oiten taught, that socialism is disorder, anarchy and death -and religion peace, justice and life. But will humanity remember the lesson long ? time alone will show.