DR. VAUGHAN, R.C. ON EDUCATION.*

. . .the new Roman Catholic coadjutor to Archbishop Polding has lost no time in announcing the chief object of his mission to the Southern world.

Dr. Vaughan was reminded that he came here to continue the struggle against infidelity, which he had seen so developed in the old country—to defend the faith and morals of the people against the inroads of iniquity, and to protect the education of the rising generation from the blighting influences of anti-Christian secularism. In his reply Dr. Vaughan intimated that the development of Christian education would be one of their great tasks. . . .

To those who have vigilantly observed the course of the struggle for popular education in the old country during the past seven years, this piece of information will wear no gloss of novelty. Dr.Vaughan's position in reference to that struggle has been clearly avowed throughout. He is the champion of the Roman Catholic party, and of the extremest views of that party, as touching this great question. He is "an Israelite of the Israelites ;" or, in other words, an Ultramontanist of the most pronounced type. The motto inscribed on the spiritual banner under which he fights is, "No compromise, and no quarter!"

The battle which he was not strong enough to gain in England Dr. Vaughan has undertaken to renew in Australia. There is no question that his arrival marks a fresh epoch in both the religious and political history of these southern dependencies of the British Crown.

The views and principles which he is now placed in a position to enforce with authority are set forth with unmistakeable clearness and with sweeping force in the third section of the pamphlet. What he means by the phrase "the secular current" is plainly conveyed in a fine rhetorical figure:

" At present the secularist school is a gulf stream through the nation, rather than a deluge submerging it. They who have crossed the Atlantic know the character of the gulf-stream. It has a colour, a density, and a temperature differing from the waters through which it passes. . . . Even so we look upon it, that the Secularist party, formed of Radical and Rationalist elements, and the scoffers at Revelation and obedience, are but as a gulf-stream through the length of the nation."

What does Secularism imply and include ? is a question that Dr. Vaughan asks and answers. It includes, he tells us in so many words, Paganism in its lowest and most sensual forms, Atheism avowed as a principle and acted on, a fixed hatred of Christianity and its teachings, an implacable enmity to religion in every form, systematic sensuality of a refined kind in the upper classes, and grovelling brutality of morals in the classes below them. And those hideous characteristics of a depraved and decaying nation, Dr. Vaughan finds clearly impressed on the entire fabric of Protestant English society at the present time. Juvenal himself did not depict the Rome of Tiberius and Nero in darker moral colours than Dr. Vaughan uses to portray the England of Queen Victoria's reign. Here are his very words :—

"This picture of a large mass of our population is sad enough : but let us be truthful. This material, practical, animal paganism is not confined to the working classes. Mythology has passed away as a fable. The names of Woden, Frea, and Thor are confined to the days of our week ; but the generic ideal of material and earthly satisfaction, which they represented, is the only one which commands the hearts of thousands and thousands of our middle and higher classes. What is the one ideal of bliss before the minds of thousands, nay, millions in this country? Commercial wealth and prosperity ; material ease, comfort, convenience ; eating, drinking, sensual enjoyment; the domestic circle of vigorous sons and beautiful daughters ; successful conquest of Nature through scientific research ; and, with a certain number whose paganism rises to a higher level, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, and the love of artistic beauty. These are the sensible, tangible, and material idols of their worship. But of God, of Heaven and Hell, of Grace and the Incarnation, of the Church and her teachings, they know nothing. Their faith is in the present, and the present has absorbed them."

The foregoing extract might be extended and corroborated by other passages from the pamphlet. But it will amply suffice to exhibit the writer's ideas of his Protestant fellow-countrymen's general moral and spiritual state as it appears to him. Of course the picture does not represent the condition of society within the Roman Catholic Church. Quite the contrary, indeed. The pale of the church, as Dr. Vaughan everywhere implies, includes only a Divine purity of life, angelic beneficence, and a Christlike charity of sentiment. For the church is the visible representative of heaven on earth. All beyond its sacred circle are outcasts, doomed and lost—even though they should be men of the stamp of those enumerated in the following paragraph :—

"We have no desire to introduce well known names for the purpose of branding them with materialism, intellectual paganism, positive disbelief in Christianity, in the Trinity, and even in the distinct nature of God. But we cannot omit the names of some of those persons whom this school at present looks up to with benevolence, and with the trust of friendship. Such are Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Lowe, Earl Russell, Lord Amberley, Mr. John Bright, Mr. Jacob Bright, Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Adderley, Sir John Pakington, Mr. Maurice, Mr. Forster, Mr. Jowett, Mr. Baines, Mr. Bruce, Earl Granville, Mr. Miall, Mr. Potter, Mr. Baker, Colonel Chambers, Mr. Ernest Jones, &c, &c."

This list might almost seem to be a leaf taken from the Roman Index Expurgatorius, or from those catalogues of proscribed citizens which the first Triumvirate concocted between them, what time they held close session in the historical little island in the Tiber. The really serious view of such a paragraph as that just quoted, however, is the effect it no doubt produced on the minds of the mass of its Roman Catholic readers. Let it be remembered that the Dublin Review, in which it first appeared, is the authoritatively sanctioned organ of the church. It is issued expressly permissu superiorum, A review of a more liberal cast of thought was some years ago set on foot by Sir John Acton and other leading English Catholics ; but it was summarily suppressed by an episcopal mandate from the pen of Cardinal Wiseman.

Dr. Vaughan is equally candid and outspoken in expressing his views of all secular systems of national education, such as those which both ourselves and our neighbours in New South Wales are now enjoying. He roundly asserts that:—

"Deism, Pantheism, Rationalism, Materialism, and practical Atheism, are now taking such hold of the people of England as never before. These doctrines penetrate every class. Their votaries are to be found not alone among the open scoffers at religion, but among the educated and refined, among men the least obtrusive of their own opinions, in polite circles, amongst students and silent thinkers, as well as with the downright radical and League men."

And then follows the list of eminent living statesmen, divines, philosophers, and journalists already quoted, of whom Dr. Vaughan specifically asserts that, although they may not individually be avowed adherents of the secularist and atheistical party already described, yet are they all secretly in league with it, are all doing its work, and are all linked in with the general conspiracy against Christianity. His remarks on this point irresistibly suggest to the reader's mind Old Æsop's fable of the "Cranes and the Geese.". . . .

* " Popular Education in England : The Conscience Clause, the Rating Clause, and the Secular Current." By Herbert Vaughan D.D., Superior of St.Joseph's Missionary College, London: Longmans and Co., 1868.

 The Argus 30 December 1873,