The ' Malta Episode '

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 13, 1 April 1909, Page 490

The ' Malta Episode '

The author of The Recreation of a Country Parson lays down a well-known fact of daily experience when he says : ' Many people cannot resist the -temptation to deepen the colors, and strengthen the lines, of any narration, in order to make it more telling. Unluckily,' adds he, ' things usually occur in life in such a manner as just to v miss what would give them a point and make a good story of them; and the temptation is strong to make them, by the deflection of a hairs-breadth, what they ought to have been.'

We were reminded of this happy passage of the Country Parson as we. perused the report of a speech by the Rev. Missionary John McNeill in a recent number of the Christian Herald and Signs of the' Times. The missionary — then, we presume, on a financial quest — told in London a story of his evangelistic tour in Malta. And, like the folk of the Country Parson's book, he did not resist the temptation to deepen the colors, and strengthen the lines, of his narration. This he did by the simple, if rather tricksome, expedient of 'leaving out of his story everything that would tell in favor of ' the other side.' The story, of his evangelising tour in Malta in 1906 has been told full many a time and oft— how the Archbishop (' a kindly .old man in himself,' says Mr. McNeill) protested to the Governor against the Rev. M.r. McNeill ' rubbing it in ' to his hearers in the theatre, Yaletta (the capital), • how the Governor ' said the meetings were to continue ' ; and so on. There were a few things which the Rev. Mr. McNeill failed to mention — and their exclusion from his narrative served to 'give it a point' and 'make a good story' of it — for the audience and the purpose that he had in view. Here are some of the suppressed facts: Malta is an entirely and intensely Catholic country — practically the only Protestants in it being connected with the garrison and the - Government. When the island was taken over by the British in 1800, the status of the Catholic religion was fixed in such a way that (among other things) anything in the nature of an active propaganda of other creeds among the Catholic population was forbidden. The free exercise of the worship of other faiths was permitted, a number of churches were erected for "their use, but their worship was not to be obtruded upon the Catholic population. For the purposes of his propaganda in Malta, Mr. McNeill secured the use of the theatre — which, be it noted, was public property; he covered the island with flaring posters announcing his crusade, and inviting all and sundry to attend; and, in a word, carried on an active propaganda, thereby infringing the letter of the treaty and a long-established constitutional custom. From first to last the action of the Catholic authorities was based on treaty rights and constitutional grounds, and against the use of one of their own public buildings as a vantage-ground for attacks upon their faith. We are here merely stating, without comment, the facts which Mr. McNeill did not deem it well to add to his narrative. Some people's stories are, so to speak, very selective. And your missionary orator on tour — the judge

and recorder of his own achievements and often the raiser of his own funds— can hardly be always expected to obtrude the tacts wlich .would deprive his story of a persuasive point. There's a good deal of human nature in mankindand whole-truth' and the perfervid oratory of denunciation seldom play in the same yard or swing on the same gate.