NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLVIII, Issue 35, 1 September 1921, Page 26

NOTES

“Esto Vir”

On the cover of one of Mr. Gladstone’s diaries John Morley found the following words:

“He strives like an athlete all his life long, and then when he comes to the end of his striving, he has what is meet.” (Plutarch.) “Things of a day! What is man? What, when he is not? A dream of shadow is mankind. Yet when there comes down glory imparted from God, radiant light shines among men and genial days.” “Die since we must, wherefore should a man sit idle and nurse in the gloom days of long life without aim, without name?” (Pindar.) With these was a stanza from Dante’s Inferno:

Considerate le rostra semenza:

Fatti von foste a. river come hrutti, Ma, per ser/yir virtute e cotwscenza.

That is; You were not made to live like brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.

Effort

“These meditations on the human lot,” says Mr. Morley, “on the mingling of our great hopes with the implacable realities, made the vital air in which through his whole life he drew deep breath. Adjusted to his ever vivid religious creed, amid all the turbid business of the worldly elements, they were the sedative and the restorer. Yet here and always the last word was Effort. The moods that in less strenuous natures ended in melancholy, philosophic, or poetic, were to him fresh incentives to redeem the time.” Gladstone and Goethe were the greatest preachers of the parable of the talents, although they saw £he lesson from different angles. With Goethe the impulse to Effort was the striving after as great self-perfection as was possible for every individual, and its rationale was purely pagan; in Gladstone’s case the explanation is found in the Biblical words with which John Morley ends his sentence; “to redeem the time.” Hence his severe toil, his concentration, his exactness, his constant study, which left him no time for idleness and

useless brooding. Goethe’s Psalm of Life: Huelfreich sei der Mensch, taught the same doctrine, b\jt the motive was different: with Gladstone it was spiritual, with the great German it was at best but the outcome of altruistic human philosophy. In both cases they came to the same conclusion: that man’s life on earth ought to be a life of labor, and that he was not made for ease and indolence. But how much more powerful was Gladstone’s stimulus to work! To redeem the time! That clarion-call to action reaches every man and it is never too late to hearken to it. There is no man who has not time to redeem; no man who cannot find upon self-examination that he is prone to sloth; that he fails in his duty; that he finds it easier to know what were good to be done than to do the good; that too often softness and laziness come between him and the ripht performance of his duties. We all bury our talents, some more, some less and we shall all be called to account for them. Knowing what a strict account that shall be Christians ought all be as concerned as Gladstone was about redeeming the time before the night cometh when no man pursueth.

The Irish Peasant

Arthur Balfour, no partial witness, testified that he never found anywhere such genuine Christian courtesy as among the poor Irish peasants. England robbed them of all that could make this life sweet. So-called laws burned their schools and banned their teachers, while British gentlemen who edited papers like Punch proceeded to mock at the people whom they had persecuted. That is not the least of England’s crimes against humanity and it is certain that she shall expiate it one day as surely as did they that mocked at Him who was and is all in all to the Irish Catholic people. The Irish are the one truly Christian people in the world now, and it is surely because of that that the Jews and the atheists and the Freemasons and the Orangemen unite in attacking men and women who shame them by being true where others are so false, pure where the others are so impure, honest where the others are dishonest. Look around to-day and see if you can find in this country one of those editors and politicians who drove men to be killed for small nations ready now to take the part of the one small nation ground' down by brute force and tyranny. The fact that Ireland stands alone is as creditable to her as the fact that they are all against her is discreditable to them. British journalism has become the trade of the pander and the forger. British politics has become the refuge of the unprincipled. Ireland need never regret the fact that in her hour of agony she had few friends among those that lived by such shameful methods. While so many enemies and so many hireling calumny-mongers surround her it is refreshing to read the following tribute from a writer in an American exchange: In an experience of over half a century in Irish politics, I have seen, or been a participant in, many exciting scenes and have witnessed many strange situations. I have seen the Irish peasant at his best and at his worst. I have seen him in many moods, now buoyant with hope, now on the verge of something like despair. I have seen him in good times and in bad, when a bountiful harvest came as a benediction on the land, or when his potato crop — hope of his household and the sheet-anchor that held him to his “holding”was withered in a single night. I have seen him merry at a wake and sad at a wedding, and sing when he should have wept and weep when he should have sung. I have witnessed the depth and sincerity of his hospitality, the strength and endurance of his friendship, the constancy of his love and the bitterness of his hatred. In sad mood or gay, in prosperity or in adversity, I saw him unchanged and unchangeable in one thing alone and that was in his pure and wholehearted devotion to the religion of his fathers and to the land of his birth. Unstable in many things, perhaps, and in many things as changeable as the weather vane, he was as steadfast in these as the r Rock of Gibraltar and persecution of one, or of both, only strengthened and intensified his love. : : v A-