THE LATE ARCHBISHOP POLDING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 209, 6 April 1877, Page 3

THE LATE ARCHBISHOP POLDING.

*HAfter a fortnight's suffering, the venerable and much beloved Archbishop of Sydney expired peacefully on the morning of Friday, March 16th last. The course of His Grace's illness was watched with interest and anxiety by all classes of the community, and the assemblage at his funeral is said to have been the largest ever seen in the metropolis of New South Wales. We take the following from the Sydney Freeman's Journal : — John Bede Polding was born at Liverpool on November 13, 1794. It seems that the original name was not Polding but Polten, which is an ancient and respectable German name. Of German extraction on his father's side, he was of purely English extraction on his mother's. While yet an infant he was left an orphan, and his maternal uncle, Dr. Brewer, president of the English Benedictines, took charge of his education. Early in life he seems to have felt within him a call for the Church, for at eleven years of age he was sent to St. Gregory's College, Downside, and two years later, in the year ISO", he was removed to Acton Barnal, the seat of Sir Edward Smyth, where the scattered members of the celebrated English Benedictine College of Douay had found an asylum. Here his studies were prosecuted with success. On the 16th July, 1810, he received the habit of the Benedictine Order, and on the 18th July in the following year he made his religious profession. He studied his course of theology under Dr. Elvey, the eminent professor at the Sorbonne. Priest's orders were conferred upon him by Bishop Poynter on the 4th March, 1819, and on the 21st of the same month he celebrated his first mass.

It appears that now the time had arrived when Father Polding's pre-eminent fitness for higher spiritual work could no longer be concealed. At the early age of 30, in the year 1824, he was appointed to superintend the studies and to frame the minds and characters of the younger members of the order. With what patience, watchfulness, and tenderness this was done, was borne testimony to by his old pupils after a space of fifty years. It is scarcely three years since Dr. TJllathorne, Fathers Davis, Kendall, and Dowding met to bear testimony to the loving care he bestowed upon them fifty years ago. They met on the Feast of St. Gregory, 1874, to celebrate the fiftieth year in the religious habit, and they subscribed a loving testimonial to their oldmaster. " Thebestof our teaching was the spiritual unction that flowed from your heart to ours. . . . How accurately did the outward Master interpret to us the light of the inward Master, until in some measure we learnt to comprehend that inward language ourselves." We can now understand, now that death has brought home to us all the great loss we have sustained, what it was that drew the hearts of those four jubilants to their old master. They loved a Father in God, as we do. While he was with us we saw the man j now he is gone to his rest we remember the saint. They could have been no common services that demanded such a recollection after a space of fifty years. Judging by what we know of his labours in this colony, we can picture to ourselves how faithfully he strove to mould the souls entrusted to his care for the work of the ministry. For nine years he prosecuted zealously this important work. In 1833 he received a great shock to his peace, having the Bulls presented to him by

Bishop Bramston, on the part of the Holy See, fof the Bishopric of Madras. In his humility he was doubtful of his own powers. Fearful of the difficulties ensuing from the schismatical state of the Indian Church, and shrinking' from the responsiblity of the episcopal charge, he entreated permission to remain at what to him was a more congenial and less ambitious life. But the Holy See could not afford to dispense with the services of such a man. There is no man so fit to be made lord in many things, as he who has been careful over a few things. The Catholic Church in Australia had hitherto been dependent on the Bishop of Mauritius, and the time had now arrived to separate it from his diocese. Again Father Polding was nominated, and fortunately for Christianity in these colonies, he was consecrated "by the Right Rev. Dr. Bramston on the 29th of June, 1834.