The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-11-23 00:00:00

THE STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER.

DR. McOA.VE AT BILSTON .

The forty-first annual tea party connected with
Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, Bilston, was
held in the Schoolroom, Oxford Street, on Tuesday
night, on which occasion there was as usual a very
large attendance of members of the congregation
and frisnds. The Rev. Dr. McCave, of Stourbridge,
formerly pastor of the church, was in the chair,
the other clergy who attended being the Revs. A. M.
Power, Bilston; J. Sherlock, Birmingham; W.
Hall, Wolverhampton; L Terry. Newcastle; B.
Holden, Walsall ; Donworth, Walsall ; S.
McGuire, Birmingham; T. Whelan, Birmingham,
and E. Hanley, Wolverhampton.
Dr. McCave, wno was very warmly received, re-
marked that one of the old saws of old sages in-
formed them that " absence maketh the heart grow
fonder,''and those were days of divisions and divorces
and breaches of promise, though churls and cynics
had contemptuously cried out " off with old love
and on with the new," he believed that years of
absence from a Bilston tea party had not been able
to destroy his prospects of a welcome on this his
old battle ground—(applause). Huge gaps had
been made amongst old Bilston friends by death
during those years, and eyes and ears which once
saw and gave a friendly hearing to him had become
shut for ever to Black Country history. On his
present'visit he missed the rumble and grumble of
the neighbouring coal pit chains ; he looked in vain
for that local celebrity, that favoured genius of the
district, the old gin horse —(laughter) ; and neither
the cloud of smoke nor the pillar of fire told him
that breadwinners in the neighbourhood were win-
ing their bread abundantly or regularly. It was
too true that Bilston and its black diamonds were
doomed to suffer sad reverses and changes since
last he occupied the chair at their festal gathering—
(hear, hear)-. But he was bound to add that, not-
withstanding the langour and depression of trade,
the spirits of the Bilstonians seemed quite as buoy-
ant and their hearts quite as warm, and that the 41st
annual tea party seemed quite as successful as any.
thing which he had witnessed in that building in
the palmy days of yore —(applause). The import-
ance of those annual gatherings of a congregation
must not be measured by the mere figures of the
balance sheet, nor estimated by the number of .the
crowd who attended them. On that occasion they
bad met to pull down the unfortunate idols of the
country, bigotry and prejudice, and to build up the
beautiful edifice of religion and kindly charity—
(hear, hear) —to extend the right hand of fellowship
to those who differed from them, and to prevent the
possibility of difference, coolness, or misundestan
tag, between Catholic and Catholic. They met in-
deed, if it were possible, for a higher and grander
purpose than those he had mentioned. They met to
evidence that the old creed of old England was not
dead, nor dyiag, nor doting, but had had "its youth
renewed like the youth of the eagle." They met to
°oaten themselves followers of old Mother Rome,
and that though they staked their eternity upon that
religion which had been caluminated, vilified, perse-
euted, and cast out as evil, they, as Catholics, had
brows as broad, and brains as clear, and hearts as
warm, and hands as willing, and consciences as
sensitive. and they were as loyal and patriotic citi-
zens as any that were to be found within the British
Empire—(applause). There were some of their fel-
low citizens who sternly shut their eyes to a Catholic
book, and who felt it their duty to close their ears
to any argument that was advanced by a Catholic
priest ; but frozen indeed must the heart be which
thawed not to the warmth of charity, and hard and
cruel must be the bosom which was insensible to the
touch of friendship ; and as charity was the main-
spring of these their annual gatherings, and as on
such occasions they showed themselves kindly,
friendly, sympathetic, and fraternal to all around,
he believed that those annual gatherings were pro-
ductive of much benefit to those who differed from
them as well as to themselves—(applause). They
were there because their heart was in the work
which had stirred the heart of Great Britain and
Ireland, viz., how to discipline and train and edu-
cate as far as pcssible the rising generation; but in
that supreme work of educating the young they
b3lieved that it was not wise to break with the tradi-
tions and memories of the past. They believed that
it was neither decent nor prudent to treat with con-
tempt the experience of 1,800 years ; that it was
not merely a bluuder but was a folly, arid probably
a crime, to think of training a child in the way he
should go outside the principles and convictions
of Christendom, and that as " not by bread
alone doth man live but by every word which pro-
ceedeth from the mouth of God," so not by
"straight strokes and pothooks," not by pronouns,
irregular verbs, and the multiplication table
was a child to be schooled to the knowledge
and practice of his duties before God ani man.
From the moment when the mighty Master uttered
the fiat "Go and teach all nations," religion became
the guide the alma mater of national education,
and religion imparted to the work a stability which
was not to be overturned by social revolutions, and
threw around it an interest which was superior to
the interests, and passions, and politics of the hour.
Amidst the darkest and dreariest clouds which
broke upon the history of our race, religion made
heroic efforts to emancipate Europe firma the
thraldom of ignorance, and religion, without the
aid of Government grants, without such machinery
as the School Board handed down to after men all
that there was of knowledge, of sciences, and of ripe
wisdom in the ages of the past—(applause). When
there was scarcely any other law for Europe but the
cruel law of the sword, when the old empire of the
Casars that once legislated for the word had been
trodden to a wilderness under the hoofs of barbaric
ftwaders, when Attila with his Huns, Alaric with
his Goths, and Gement) with his Vandals were
carrying slaughter and fire thtough the provinces
of the old Roman empire, at that moment religion
beamed out as a lone star amidst the long and dark
and moonless night of barbarism—religion kept
alive the vestal fire of letters, and saved learning
from total extinction. Let them realise for a
moment how much education or leering owed to
the old" Black Watch," the priest and the monk.
The oldest universities of Europe were created by
Irish monks, and also the famous schools of Europe
including those of Ratisbon, Cologne, and Verdun.
He would retained them that time was centuries
ago, when Oxford could boast of nearly 300 halls
and private schools besides its famous colleges; that
a single Benedictine monastery, gave to the world
more works of learning than both our English Uni-
versities, and that to the monk and the priest they
where indebted for the existence of the public
librariesof Europe not to speak of a host of inventions
and discoveries from which they derived benefit in
this 19th age—(applause). Whoever would sit down
and calmly cast up how much learning owed to the
monk and the priest would rise from the inquiry and
exclaim to educationists at the present hour, "Gentle-
men, you make admirable speeches about education,
butl tell you that you owe it to the old religious educa-
tionists, that you are able to speak at all ; you write
plausible leading articles„ you raise huge SUMS and
expend huge sums in the cause of popular education,
but nevertheless you are but as boys at the work
which giants did gloriously when the odds were
terrifically against them. One soldier of the "Black
Watch," a solitary monk, the Cardinal Ximenes, did
more than educationists have done in this 19th age:
he created the famous university of Alcala its 10,000
students.' And the man rising from the inquiry
would say, "When I weigh you in the balance side
by side with the pioneers.of letters in bygone ages,
I am forced to, I am obliged to paraphrase the
poet's verdict, and say of you—.
You have no title deeds to schools and chairs,

Savants sad pedagogues of earlier dates,
From graves forgotten stretch their dusky hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
—(applause). Knowing the priceless bles.ings which
religion had conferred upon education, Catholics were
reeolved to wash their hands of any system of popular
training which locked religion out of doors and left it
in the cold—(applause). Knowing that a mere
Pagan, but perhaps the wisest of Pagans, Cicero, had
expressly protested, " Let everything in the state be
considered eecond to religion," they themselves pro-
teeted that religious teaching must not be left to the
homosopathic treatment of the Sunday school, nor
must it be abandoned to the scant provision of poor
fathers and mothers round their poor firesides. They
had an interest in the spread of letters, but they had
a desper interest in the spread of morals—(here, here).
They wished their children, if possible, to become
perfect Solomons, but they believed it to be of supreme
importance that they should be children of the Lord
God, and members of the Communion of Saints.
They would think it quite right that their names
eheuld stand foremostron the roll of scholars, but they
believed it of vital coffsequence to watch and pray,
that their names might be found in the immortal book
of life. Their fathers and fathers' fathers made great
sacrifices for religion. During the cruel and painful
era of penal laws they met by the mountain side, and
swore to surrender everything except their honour,
their creed, and their God. He (tee speaker) be-
lieved his old flock would not prove themselves
unworthy of the stock from which they sprang, but
would take care that their children should know and
cling to the faith.. These were dangerous times. As
fathers and mothers, his hearers must have a vigilant
eye, and must exercise a wise supervision, so as to
supplement the religious training given to their
children in those schools by domestic training. They
could point out to them that in these days the holiest
truths were given up without a blush, that the tide
of crime was rising, that frauds and villainies, mur-
ders and suicides, were alarmingly on the increase,
and that cruel wounds and deeper de evils were
yearly undermining the existence of the empire of
Great Britain. Notwithstanding our boasted civil-
isation we had in this land no fewer than 140,000
criminals constantly incarcerated in gaol; we had a
vagrant and vagabond population of not less than
250,000 ; we had no fewer than 50,000 notorious
thieves and receivers of stolen goods, and probably
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their families, and changed happy homes into dens
of tears and woes, and want and despair. They
might tell their children that, although we were the
mighteat and probably the wealthiest nation which
time had seen, nevertheless we had annually a return
of a million and a quarter paupers of the Biiiieh
population, and probably the real number of those
who obtained parochial relief in 1871 was not less
than one-seventh of the whole population. At this
hour there were working men disappointed and
downhearted, making their way from town to town,
and brought to the verge of starvation; but never-
theless it was positively true that the income of the
working classes alone was £370,000,000 sterling,
and yet the nation had to expend in five years
£95,000,000 on poor rates and police rates; and yet,
year by year, they sacrificed to the demon drink,
eighteen and twenty millions sterling. These were
the terrible cancers which were eating their way to
the very heart of Great Britain. They were the
storm which the country was sowing to-day, and
which, but for some extraordinary providence of
God, must become a fearful hurricane to -morrow.
Was it, then, wise at such a moment to bring before
the nation such a programme as secular education ?
It was not wisdom in the midst of a storm to fling
compass and pilot into the waves, and it was not
prudence, nor patriotism to muzzle the voice of
Divine truth and to
.strike down religion by a
christian hand. Religion was worth nothing or it
was worth everything. Either it was the wildest
will-of-the-wisp which had crossed the path of man
on his road to the tomb, or it was that grand, that
divine reality upon which hinged everything for a
man whether for time or eternity—(applause). Re
ligion would prove the salvation of nations as well
as of individuals, and therefore he said that with the
truth of God they could brave the most fearful
tempests that might burst upon them, and upon that
truth, as upon a rock, like the Jews of old, they
were able once more to build up a nation's history
when captivity had crushed them—(applause).
A vote of thanks was accorded to the Chairman
for his address, and a concert followed, in which
Messrs. Smith, Coughlin, S. Proffitt, Grainger,
Turton, Miller, G. Proffitt, and J. Jones; Mrs.
Melvia, Mrs. Stilliard, and the Misses Caswell took
part. Mr. Caswell was the accompanist.