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sort of blur in the luminous sky towards the West, and I heard something too-a soft noise like a motor."

They both looked up. There was nothing in the serene sky but the afterglow of the moon.

"A

bird-vulture-bat-goose--mon

goose?" suggested the other.

I'll turn in.

Good

full of quinine.
night." He turned in, but not to sleep,
for the intermittent screeches of a cir-
cular saw some distance away seemed
to him the cries of a Banshee-an omen
of evil.

The plumber went on his way whist-
ling, he was of a sunny nature, and
at last the end seemed in sight.
As
he neared the low-level bridge, the
sound of the pile-driver greeted his
ears again-that cheering sound of
progress. Little did he guess that it
was her swan-song she was singing
down there in the mist.
(To be concluded.)

"It was much too big for a bird." "Look here, my man, get to bed and rest; you're jumpy from worry and want of sleep. Go to bed-your trucks can't run away."

"Perhaps you're right, I am chockBlackwood's Magazine.

FRENCH CHRISTIANITY AT BAY.

The Epiphany Encyclical of Pius X. is an impressive vindication of the stand that French Christianity is making against the principle of "atheism by establishment" (to quote Burke's immortal words) embodied in the French Separation Law. The effect is perceptible in the Chamber of Deputies, where legislators seem in hot haste to begin the journey to Canossa by pulling down one at least of the legal barriers by which they have sought to bar the path of loyal Catholics to the sanctuaries of the faith. It is visible also in the columns of the "Times" newspaper, which on Monday rendered a tardy justice to the "lofty principles and unshaken faith" that inspire the Pope's protest against the attack on the existence of organized Christianity in France. This recognition of the beauty of righteousness is well. Unfortunately the "Times" goes on to argue that on grounds of expediency the Pope and the French Church should submit to the inevitable; in other words, should sacrifice what they deem the divine constitution of the Church to gain a few years' respite from spoliation and persecution. That more than

a respite could be purchased by such a surrender no one can believe who understands French Jacobinism and remembers the fate of those of the religious Orders that were spared by M. Waldeck-Rousseau to be dissolved by M. Combes. And if the "Times" has forgotten the fate of the Orders, the Pope, as Mr. Ward, in his brilliant article in the current "Nineteenth Century," reminds us, remembers it. The truth is that if there is to be peace, the French Republic must restore the Concordat or give to French Catholicism liberties similar to those that all nonconforming Churches enjoy in this country. Until one or other of these steps is taken, any concession by the Church would only subject her more hopelessly than ever to a State governed by the apostolic successors of the Jacobins of 1793, who as Burke clearly divined even in the early days of the French Revolution would never tolerate any religious establishment, except one that was "intended only to be temporary and preparatory to the abolition of all forms of the Christian religion." M. Clemenceau and his colleagues are animated by a fierce anti-Christian fa

naticism. Before such an enthusiasm for the Faith as the Pope's appeal has evoked in the hearts of French Catholics they may draw back. Our flabby compromisers then will triumph.

Why-for the last thirty years the French Church has followed those counsels of expediency which the "Times" and "Le Temps" still preach to her. And the fruits that she has reaped have been spoliation and persecution. Our regret is that the inevitable struggle between Christianity and atheism was not fought to a finish in the days of Gambetta. We recognize however that even from a religious standpoint strong arguments might formerly be urged for a policy of compromise, when no vital issues were involved, and we feel further that the Church had no right to jeopardize lightly her revenues, which, as the Pope observes in one of the most pathetic passages in the Encyclical, are "partly the patrimony of the poor, and partly the patrimony, more sacred still, of the dead." Still the fact remains, that when a further surrender was impossible without a sacrifice of the Faith, and the Pope and the French Church opposed to the intolerable demands of an atheistic State the non-possumus of the purest ages of Christianity, almost a miraculous change has been effected. For the first time in the annals of the Gallican Church has the whole body of her clergy, from the Cardinal Archbishop to the student in the seminary, rallied to the Papal side in a controversy between the Curia and the French State; and never since the day on which the Scotch Free Kirkers under Chalmers forsook homes and income for what they deemed the "crown rights of Christ" has Europe witnessed so impressive a spectacle of the abandonment of all earthly goods for the sake of the Faith as she has seen in the acceptance by the French bishops

and priests of expulsion from their palaces and presbyteries.

If we admitted, which we do not for a moment, that Pius X. and the French Church should base their policy on considerations of expediency, the remarkable success that has already attended the stand for principle would seem to show that in this case at least the path of honor is also the path of safety. And as to the complaint that the Encyclical contains no detailed scheme of action for the bishops and clergy to follow, he must be a fool himself who imagines that the Pope, face to face with a malignant enemy, would be such a fool as to go into details in a message urbi et orbi. Is he likely to show his plans to the "Times" correspondent in Paris, for instance? The bishops will know what to do, but they will not tell their enemies either in France or in England.

In the Encyclical the Pope explains why he was unable to sanction the Associations cultuelles. They were, he tells us, organized in such a way as to run counter to the whole basis on which the constitution of the Catholic Hierarchy rests. We believe that any ecclesiastical lawyer or theologian, Roman or Anglican, who understands the question would endorse the Pope's view. Unless the Pope was prepared to accept as theologically correct the proposition that the rulers of the Church by divine law are lay taxpayers and householders, that the bishops and priests are their subordinates, and that the State is the supreme judge of heresy. he could not have recognized a Church based on Associations cultuelles. This self-evident truth has lately been admitted even by M. Combes. Yet Eng

lish newspapers continue to assert that the majority of the French episcopate would, but for Papal interference, have willingly enrolled the faithful in the semi-Presbyterian, semi-Voltairean established Church of the Separation

Law. The truth is that the Bishops at the meeting on 31 May condemned the insulting and ridiculous suggestion with practical unanimity. We may

add that it is inaccurate to state that the majority of the episcopate favored the modification rather than the rejection of this insulting proposal. What happened was this. Some bishops at the council and some newspaper canonists outside did believe that legal dexterity might devise some kind of associations, of which the constitution should not be repugnant to Catholic principles, and whose form could be one which was technically legal under the Separation Law. By a majority the council decided not that such Associations should be formed, but that the question whether their formation was possible should be submitted to the Pope. It may be added that many of the Bishops who voted for this proposal had no hope or belief that such a solution of the difficulty was possible. They merely desired to have the Pope's view. And every Englishman who recalls the recent fate of a Scotch Nonconformist body in the House of Lords must admit that the Pope only acted as any prudent lawyer would have done in dissuading the French episcopate from any such attempt to juggle away the plain meaning of the Republic's law. M. Briand's circular of 1 September showed conclusively that the attempt would have failed. At the best the device of a smart attorney would have been a poor defence for the Christian Faith. We have dwelt at some length on the dead issue, because it is necessary to show that between the Pope and the Episcopate there has never been any real difference on matters of principle. The attitude of the Bishops at their meeting this week is a further proof that the French prelate who desires to accept this Republic's law is the brother of the Jesuit of fiction.

The Encyclical repudiates the charge that the Pope has wilfully courted war and persecution, or that he desires to combat the French Government on its civil side. No one who knows the modern history of the Papacy could credit an accusation so silly. Though our newspapers talk with weary reiteration of the hostility of the Papacy to the Republic, the charge so far as the history of the last century goes is absolutely void of foundation. Tories and Churchmen indeed may hold that in times past the principle of authority throughout Europe has been seriously weakened by the disinclination of the Papacy to interfere in the internal affairs of France, a disinclination by the way which England has not always shown.

At every critical stage of French history, from the date of the Concordat to the present time, the Holy See has invariably struggled to keep the French clergy in obedience to their de facto rulers. True it may not have always succeeded, and English Churchmen who cherish the tradition of the Non-jurors can hardly blame in some French priests a lingering attachment to the "impossible loyalties" of the past. That the bulk of the French clergy to-day are if anything too naïve in their trustful submission in all things lawful to their rulers is proved by the remarkable speech of the Abbé Lemire this week in the Chamber. It is well for the French Republic that it has not had to face a Swift or an Atterbury.

Are English Christians going to persist in callous indifference to the persecution of Christianity in France at the hands of politicians who talk of "their noble father Satan," or brag of their desire to make an end of the idea of Christianity? If on this matter they condemn Pius X. they pass judgment also on Baxter and Chalmers. To genuine Churchmen however a stronger ap

Gallican

peal may be made. The Church has been the one portion of the Papal communion where from the days of Bull to the days of Lightfoot Anglican theology has been respected. There are therefore sentimental grounds for sympathy. Apart however from sentiment the one principle which has obliged Anglicans to resist the Erastian tyranny of the Privy Council demands that they should protest against the infinitely more shameThe Saturday Review.

less Erastianism of the French Separation Law. Here is a field upon which the reunion of Christendom may be practically advanced. The old Tractarians would have rejoiced for such an oportunity to prove their Catholicism. Can it be that their successors out of anti-Papal prejudice are ready to pass by without a word of sympathy the Church of S. Louis and Bossuet, when she is suffering for the Faith?

THE DISASTER IN JAMAICA.

San Francisco; Valparaiso; Kingston. For a generation at least these will remain names of evil omen, recalling to mind three great successive victories of the brute forces of the unknown underworld. Mankind has this one consolation: the succession of catastrophes is in the nature of a diminuendo of disaster. Fewer were blindly slain in the overthrow of Valparaiso than in that of San Francisco; fewer still in the ruin of Kingston, the beautiful capital of the West Indies. It is therefore permissible to hope that the gigantic Enceladus whose bulk underlies the whole of the double Continent is ceasing to struggle and will soon fall asleep for another century. Other consolation there is none, nor is there any moral lesson to be learnt from this barbaric trilogy of fortuitous horrors. The "Nature" of the modern poets is at best an artist in Tò μapóv; in all the range of the world's literature there is no greater euphemism than to praise her works.

As yet full details are lacking of the Kingston calamity. But we know now that its scope was exaggerated in the first accounts received. None of the western portion of Jamaica has been injured, and the fact that Antoniothe chief town in the north, not more

than forty miles from Jamaica-did not even feel the shock of the seismic disturbance, proves that its effect was restricted to a comparatively small area. One of the deadliest sequels of a coastwise earthquake fortunately did not occur. There was no tidal wave to wreck the shipping, for the most part coasting vessels of small tonnage and not always seaworthy, with which Kingston harbor and the Port Royal roadsteads are generally thronged. Nor have the chief crops, the loss of which must have brought famine on the easy-going colored folk of the interior, been destroyed by a visitation which did not involve a volcanic duststorm such as has often laid waste the garden-isles in open parts of the Caribbean. But after all allowance has been made for these unhoped-for mercies, we still find that the city has been wholly destroyed by the earthquake and the fire which followed it, that hundreds have been killed in the city and its environs, and a very large number injured. Among those who were unhappily killed is Sir James Fergusson, who had gone there to take part in an agricultural conference and give others the benefit of his great knowledge of West Indian industries. No man living has ever served the

State more wisely or more variously, and the sum-total of those services, so modestly rendered during a long lifetime divided between the Army, the House of Commons, and the governance of the King's possessions beyond the seas, was of far more value to the Empire than those of not a few whose pushfulness and talking-power have enabled them to obtain a more prominent position in the "great game" of party politics. His was a strenuous life of honest realities. He was a kind landlord, a thorough sportsman in the oldest and best sense of the term, and a soldier who was the friend of all under his command. He served with distinction in the Crimea, and while serving was elected Member of Parliament. In the House of Commons he earned and kept the respect of his opponents as well as of his political friends, and in time he came to enjoy that very definite, though indefinable, authority which is sometimes given to one who has had long experience of the ways of that assembly, is intimate with its genius loci, and has borne the burden of official responsibility. His sound knowledge of men and matters and unusual measure of adaptability-the most valuable of the Scottish virtuesmade him an admirable Under-Secretary in three different departments, and as Postmaster-General for a short time in 1891-92 he also did excellent work of the kind which does not advertise itself. In South Australia, New Zealand, and Bombay he proved himself an adept in that art of being a governor which is really more difficult than the art of governing directly. Men of both parties regretted his downfall in the debacle of the last General Election, and will feel sorrow at the tragic ending of a long career of unassuming usefulness. None of the other distinguished visitors to Jamaica, now established as the Riviera of the West thanks to the efforts of Sir Al

fred Jones, is among the victims. The thousands who are now homeless and in want of the necessities of life will

suffer many hardships. But their dry season has now set in, and there should be no suffering from exposure to the weather. There has been looting by negroes, but the troops and police now have the situation in hand. Though provisions of all kinds are at present lacking, there should be no great difficulty in obtaining supplies by way of the sea. Arrangements for the prompt despatch of supplies are being pressed on in all the American sea-ports-the whole Empire will be grateful for this practical display of sympathy-and also in the neighboring islands. So that the misery which is the outcome of what seemed to the superstitious Jamaican negro the very day of judgment, and led to a wild outburst of religious frenzy, will be presently alleviated, and the amazing recuperative power of the whole community must do the rest.

Two points in the many accounts of the disaster strike us as peculiarly significant. The one is for the consideration of scientific experts. The earthquake occurred at half-past three on Monday afternoon, at a time when it was new moon and the resultant of the attractive forces on the earth of sun and moon was nearly a maximum. Those who believe that earthquakes are the effect of high tides set up by the combined action of the two bodies in the wholly or partially liquid interior of the earth would score a point for their theory if they could show that sun and moon were in the same position when San Francisco and Valparaiso were wrecked, or when, to take a more appropriate instance, Port Royal was destroyed in 1692 by an earthquake with the loss of three thousand lives. Speaking as laymen in such matters. we yet commend this question to the consideration of those among our read

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