The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-06-10 00:00:00

ARCHBISHOP MANNING ON PARIS.

On Sunday, a pastoral letter from Archbishop
Maiming upon the events which have lately occurred
in Paris was read in the churches ar.el Chapels of the
"archdiocese' of Westminster. After congratulating
the faithful that " in the midst of all our contentions
and divisions God is still worshipp-d in England," Dr.
Manning passes on to consider the, 'terrible j udgrooots
of God" on those who "cast Him oft" in a neighbour.
lug country. He says :

"We see there the legitimate working out of a political
system which began some eighty yeare eince with blasphem-
ing our Divine Itse! earner. : . . The loss of the knowleoge
and worship of God In Christ effaced the moral low from man's
consetence, and dissolved the bonds of public and private
life." From that day the French yeeple has lived on "•
spectacle of Imbecility, falling and rising, but riwng to fail
again. Dynasty after dynaety, revolution upon revelution, have
succeeded out to vanish away... . The legislators of the rights
of man have now spoken their last word, and worked out their
logical and moral results in the profaned churches, the
blood-stained streete, and universal wreck of Farts The
capital of the new civil nation and progress is In ashes. We
say this with a profound sorrow and sympathy for Chris.
Ilan, Catholic, and chivalrous France For it Is not France
herself who has rejected God, Insulted ills Immaculate
Mother, blasphemed the most Holy ea,rament, defiled
sanctuaries, martyred the priest. of Jeans r heist, slandered
Staten of Charity . . . trumpeted iiindelty and glorified
atheism. It le a sect, s facion, a conspiracy, %receding
through all nations, though making Its nest at lids time In
Part,; strengthening and arming Itself with the anarchical
principles of the last century, Is which neither the rights of
God nor the duties of man are to be found. . No
place has so bitterly expiated this ' I; ,spel of Anarchy'
the city whence it came forth to ere', the world. The
spectacle is too near. too 'Ovid, too awful to need word..
The smoke of Its palaces is on our hertz ; the hest of Its
burning may almost be felt by all. T.el men it before you ;
fur day., weeks, and months you have been watching the
last revelation of what man without God becomes and perpe-
trates.... It has come at last In gee. But this is not the
worst. The lithe's, , of the last century hen borne Its true
fruit, in the profound humiliation ot a noble people, In the
Impossibility of a etable dynasty, the extinction of the very
idea of country, and the dislntegretion if France.... But,
happily, the turbulence and tyranny of revolution have been
struck town by the conscience and will of the French nation—
s people, with all its aberrations, profoundly Christian; not-
withstanding the noisy minority of infidels, and the inertness
of the multitude of those who are Indifferent."
In conclusion, the Archbishop urges upon the " faith-
ful " the duty of Incres.sed zeal in the work of Christian
education, and of building schools and churches for the
multitudes, especially in our larger cities.