WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 181, 15 September 1876, Page 15

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

+♦ Som* modern philosophers have asserted that the Christian religion makes its believers sad, gloomy and dejected. If they could have witnessed a scene that occurred lately in a sewing, school of nearly two-hundred children, they -would leave Catholic's out -when they make this assertion. It was the custom of the teacher, after work was begun, to ask some questions from the catechism, not following the "book exactly, but varying the questions to see if -the children understood -what they had been taught. To the question, " When will Christ come again ?" they replied, "At the last day, to judge all men." To the second question, "What are the things he will judge?" they answered, "All our thoughts, words, -works, and omissions." "Do you think," asked the teacher, "that you will be afraid when that great judgment day comes?" "No," they replied with one voice. With some little surprise at the promptness of the answer, the teacher asked, " Are you all agreed in this ? All -who think they will not "be afraid, raise the right hand." Apparently every right hand was raised. "Those who think differently — who think they toill be afraid, raise their hand." Not a hand was seen. With a pleasant smile the teacher looked over the school-room, and then added, as if thinking aloud — "Oh, happy children of the Church! It is through her teaching, that you are full of faith, confidence and love. Ido not wonder that our L»rd has said, ' Unless you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven/ " The recent death of a New York millionaire suggests some curious reflections. He was worth from twenty to fifty millions of dollars, and yet every day of his life saw him seated at his desk down town making more. Had he nothing better to do? We grant that he was a very worthy and estimable person, and that he enriched the civic institutions by many generous gifts ; but a man -with such vast wealth might, we think, have done more. Pietro de Medici was nothing like as rich, nor was his great son Lorenzo, and yet how they embellished the capital of the Florentine Republic. To their liberality the human race owes a debt of the profoundest gratitude. To them, under God, we owe Michael Angelo, Ghirlandajo, Fra Bartolomeo, Politiani, Pica della Mirandola, and a host of men of genius in every branch of art. These citizens of the great Catholic Republic used their wealth for the benefit of their beloved city, and their reward has been a most conspicuous niche in the temple of fame. Under their careful but patriotic administration of wealth, Florence saw her superb cathedral encrusted -with marble, and a thousand immortal works achieved -which, make her the wonder of the earth to this day. It was not to the government which paid for those noble temples those gorgeous chapels, rich with gems of art, covered with frescoes by the most illustrious artists, those endless galleries which. are filled with countless lovely statues and paintings, those inestimable collection of paintings, that honor belongs, but to the influence which the Catholic Church has on humanity, elevating man to a realisation of the emptiness and hollowness of the earthly estate unless devoted to the -welfare of the less fortunate. Dr. Hackett remarks, -writes the • National Baptist ': "The

apostles and early Christians acted on the principle that human governments forfeit their claims to obedience when they require what God has plainly forbidden, or forbid wha.t he has required. They claimed the right of judging~for themselves what was right and what was wrong in reference to their religious and their political duties, and they regulated their conduct by that decision. ... In applying this principle, it will be found that the apostles in every instance abstained from all forcible resistence to the public authorities ; they refused utterly to obey the mandate which required them to violate their consciences, but they endured the penalties which the executors of the law enforced against them." It is true, the apostles offered no resistence to despotism. But this fact does not cast any reproach on those who have resisted. Whether the oppression is so grievous, and whether the hope of successful resistance is so bright as to justify appeal to force, and whether all other hope of relief is exhausted, these are points which must be left to the judgment. Self-preservation is a law written in nature ; a law which does not need the sanction of revelation, and certainly finds no opposition in revelation. Both Dr. Hackett, whoever he is, and the 'National Baptist' are right. But will they do us the favor of saying whether the conduct of the Catholics of Germany, under the persecutions to which they are subjected, does not carry out these principles to the letter ! " Bishop De la Croix had more undertakings than his means allowed him to complete ; and notwithstanding his willingness, it was impossible for him to aid the sisters. They had no furniture. Mattress 3s borrowed from the seminary, and laid on the floor, served them for beds, and the trunks answered the purpose af chairs. In these trying circumstances Mother St. Joseph endeavored to maintain cheerfulness in the sisters, but her efforts ■were not always successful. Sister St. Wilfrid, who was unaccustomed to these privations, felt their condition very sensibly, and to relieve her mind and cheer her spirits, Mother St. Joseph would oblige her to get into a trunk, and then had her drawn round the room, telling her that few persons were so favored as to have a carriage drawn by religious. The sister had to laugh at the apparent nonsense of the act which satisfied the Mother." The 'Notre Dame Scholastic' has the following remarks: — "Another thing strikes us as strange; it is that so many young men are entirely ignorant of Christendom. We have heard young men talk of Howard the Philanthrophist who seemed never to have heard of Vincent de Paul, the Saint. How little is known of the lives of Ignatius, Polycarp, Sebastian, Vincent, Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome, Francis of Sales, and others equally renowned in the annals of Christianity, the mere category of whose names would fill pages. It may "be said that reading of the lives of such men is ' rather too pious ' for young men and women who by no means aspire to be saints, but on the contrary think it ' quite the thing ' to boast of being sinners. Yet any one who knows anything about the matter knows full well that there is a great deal of good in these sinners, that much of the affectation of being sinners, and of ' not being pious,' is a very great piece of hypocrisy, and that down deep in their hearts there is a deep veneration for all that is really good and beautiful ; now, if the same care were taken to place the lives and deeds of real men and women in an interesting form before them, they would have a greater relish for them than they now have for namby-pamby tales and sensational novels. Thos. Hearne, in his diary, writes : " 1720-21, January 2: I have been told that in the last great plague at London, none that kept tobacconists 9 shops had the plague. It is certain that Bmoking was looked upon as a most excellent preservative, insomuch that even children were obliged to smoke. And I remember that I heard formerly Tom Rogers, who was yeoman-beadle, say that when he was, that year when the plague raged, a schoolboy at Eton, all the boys of that school were obliged to smoke in the school every morning, and that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking." — ' Appleton's Journal.' The oldest pieces of iron (wrought-iron) now known are probably the sickle blade found by Belzoni under the base of a sphinx in Karnac, near Thebes ; the blade found by Colonel Vyse embedded in the masonry of the great pyramid, the portion of a cross cut saw exhumed at Nimrood by Mr. Layard, all of which are now in the British Museum. A wrought bar of Damascus steel was presented by King Porus to Alexander the Great, and the razor steel of China for many centuries has surpassed all European eteel in temper and durability of edge. The Hindoos appear to have made wrought iron directly from the oie, without passing it through the furnace, from time immemorial, and elaborately wrought masses of iron are still found in India, which date from the early centuries of the Christian era. Iron ore has been found in the Hazarebaugh district, in India, which is said to contain eighty per cent, of pure metal, together with a slight admixture of manganese. There are said to be 500 square miles of this ore in the Diamoda coal fields. — ' Antiquarian Magazine.'