Phelan

“ Michael Phelan turned in his wages each month to his mother, and out of what she allowed him to spend he couldn’t have saved $500 in five hundred years, at least not to his way of thinking. The trouble was that Rose had more than an inkling of this, and it galled her to think that her gallant brass-buttoned cop should permit himself to be still harnessed to his mother’s apron strings. ”

“ To the smart sets the limited reading matter the "half sheet of notepaper" contained was a positive recommendation; and at afternoon (Natal) teas there was many a "Slip" between the cup and the lip.
Time passed; and still the Column came not. We felt disgusted rather than distressed; we were yet confident of the Column's invincibility. Various tit-bits of secondary interest were served out to humour us, and a startling rumour was put in circulation—a rumour round which clung no element of justification to soften the wrath it aroused. ”

“ And if he lied to Lowry he may have been lying to us here to-day. I say that there is a reasonable doubt right there as to whether Brown is really a doctor or not. Such a doubt belongs to the defendant. He is entitled to it and it is our duty to acquit him!"
"Hear! Hear!" "That's so!" "Bully for you!" "What yer got to say now, eh?" "Take a vote!" "Pass the box!" resounded through the transom amid a tremendous scuffling of feet and scraping of chairs.
"Phelan!" gasped Mr. Tutt. "Who shall ever again have the temerity to suggest that the jury system is not the greatest of our institutions?" ”

“ Admit the want of any one of them and the contention falls to the ground. Now, what young priest coming out of college has this equipment? It is a singular fact, too, that these three can be acquired only by, and are the direct outcome of, pen practice. How is it that this fact has escaped so many? "Writing makes an exact man," says Bacon; and to the question: "How can I become an orator?" Cicero's answer was: "Caput est quam plurimum scribere." ”

“ Discussion on the Column and its catering potentialities had come to be proscribed, and lamentations over the sufferings of the inner man were as bitter as if all hope of alleviation had vanished for ever and hunger was to be our portion for all time. Indeed, when matters became worse a better spirit of resignation was manifested. To the seasoned campaigner roughing it on the Karoo our fare, plenty of it, might seem good, luxurious even ”

“ Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; ours were so ill that but for Bobs they must have ceased to beat. It was disconcerting to learn that Warren was in Natal, for it had been stated that Methuen was merely waiting Sir Charles to join him ere again attempting to fight his way to Kimberley.
New Year's Day! New Year's Day, indeed! Our Scotchmen sighed. Black tea for breakfast on New Year's Day was too much for them, and not a few of them (and others) felt constrained to take kopje dew instead. They drank brandy—so labelled in the tavern, but more widely notorious as "lyddite" in the town. ”

“ Thomas has enriched the world lay embedded in the mind of a Missionary priest: if he more than rivalled Suarez as a casuist, and Bellarmine as a controversialist, yet if he failed to acquire a mastery over the only instrument by which he could bring to bear the riches of his own intellect on the minds of those around him, of what value is all the wealth entombed within his head? ”

“ Their influence for good or evil is more powerful than that of armies or parliaments: that influence we can no more escape than we can escape the sunlight or the air that surrounds us. It penetrates our homes; it colours our thoughts; it furnishes motives for our actions. The Press is indeed the lever that moves the world of our day, and we are but the puppets of its will.
Such being the case, is it not a question of first importance for the priest to examine its bearing on his own life, and on the lives of those committed to his care? ”

“ But a glance shows how much more absurd it is to let a man pass out of his teens before putting him through a thorough course of elocution. It is while the muscles of throat and lungs are as flexible as a piece of Indiarubber, and the young ear sensitive to every nuance of sound, the future priest must learn to articulate, to pronounce correctly, to husband his breathing, to bend his voice with ease and mastery through the varied octaves of human passion. ”

“ Foes beset him on every side. He turns to the public library. The infidel review is crisp in style, its arguments catchy, and the brilliancy of its diction captivates. The pages of the fashionable novel are strewn with the rose leaves of literature: the plot enthrals. The arguments of the free-thought lecturer are well reasoned, the sophistries artistically concealed, whilst his mastery over the graces of elocution holds his audience spell-bound. ”

“ The college is but the training ground, not the final goal; the real field of our activities lies outside its walls. Yet when the scholastic course closes these richly-gifted men dip below the horizon, and the world seldom hears of them again; the destructive wave that in its silent strength is covering the land receives no check from them; they are engraving no impression on the intellect of the day. ”

“ That there is one sad cause is beyond all question—the bitterness of clerical criticism. The Irish priest who takes to the cultivation of letters ought to choose St. Sebastian for his patron saint; for he will have an arrow planted in every square inch of his body.
While we have no word of condemnation for the writers who are sucking the life-blood of Faith from our people, should one of ourselves show style in his sermons, or attach his name to a magazine article, the amount of mordant criticism he has to face is sufficient to make the stoutest heart sink. ”

“ No man can invariably read such works without growing imperceptibly better. His Catholic principles grow more robust; he becomes more fearless in expressing them; each volume leaves an aroma behind and imparts a new flavour to his life. Fresh oil is poured into the lamp of his piety, its flame burns brighter, he feels an unction in his prayers; he has a holy relish for the sacraments. ”

“ The language, its graces and powers, are for the priest the instruments by which darkened minds are illumined, by which the clear rays of living truth are flashed into their gloom.
The man that neglects to acquire a mastery of this instrument incurs a great responsibility.
The devil, too, has a message to deliver, a message of error; but at his command there are not only perverse intellects but all the elegance of polished language and all the persuasive graces of elocution. ”

“ The intellect will assimilate this foreign material and send it forth on some future occasion, palpitating with the warm blood of natural life, to strengthen the frame-work of your reasoning or adorn your composition with veins of natural beauty. ”

“ Every tone would ring with earnestness: every sentence thrill with passion.
The thoughts, how clear! How convincing the arguments! Nature's unfettered strength would then, like a tidal wave, sweep you triumphantly onward to the goal.
Yet when you stand in the pulpit to plead a brief for Christ the simple, unaffected earnestness that everywhere else carries conviction is abandoned for such a musty instrument as an unctuous whine or a holy drone. The young priest should avoid it: it spells ruin. ”

“ Whether the priest moves or not the library is sure to come, and what in his hands would be a centre of diffusive light to the parish, under the control of semi-educated or conscienceless men may prove a dark curse.
Let the coarse and sensuous literature of England drop from our people's hands. Let us encourage native genius to dip her pen into the old holy well of Catholic truth, and build up a literature that will be racy of the soil and redolent of its Faith. Let us feed the minds of the young on the untainted productions of our own countrymen and women. ”

“ As when the Pentecostal fire rested on the Apostles' heads, a new light filled their minds and a new flame sprung up within their hearts; so when the same spirit breathes through the preacher's lips, the clouds of ignorance dissolve and the light of truth divine glorifies the minds and inflames the souls of his hearers. ”

“ There is the actor, haggard, jaded, toiling for hours at a single passage, that he may interpret its meaning and enchain his audience. While the world is dreaming the barrister is studying his brief, ransacking tomes, wading through statutes, in search of one to support his contention, knitting his defence in logical terseness, cudgeling his brains for ingenious appeals to move a jury. The lives of eminent lawyers are records of appalling drudgery. ”

“ The attorney and the theologian gather the dry bones, but on the preacher and the barrister lie the fourfold task of mortising the joints into each other, binding them with the sinews of argument, clothing them in living beauty and vitalizing the whole structure with the flame of impassioned earnestness. Only when this has been done will they live.
So thoroughly distinct are the two offices it rarely happens that a professional theologian becomes an efficient preacher. The concentration and exclusive exercise of one faculty unfits him for a task demanding many. ”

“ A truth, old indeed but now dressed in a new robe, lives before your mind with a meaning and a richness of colour never experienced before. Your will is swept captive on the crest of that subtle tide of unseen fire that seems to fill the air. You are bracing yourself to a heroic resolve. The preacher's voice, like ceaseless music, is still thrilling down through the avenues of your soul. ”

“ And when in other lands eyes grow dim with the mists of despair, they will look up and the light of a new-born hope will enkindle within them. And when hearts in other lands are sinking from repeated failure, they will pulse with the inspiration of a fresh courage when the story of our efforts and our triumphs is recalled. ”

“ The danger passed, and we sank back into the old, dreamy lethargy, and left the field open to the devil to sow his tares anew. Our greatest danger to-day is our apparent safety. We wrap ourselves into a false security, while a dry rot is permitted to stealthily corrode the pillars of intellectual conviction that must uphold all. Unless this is fought, and fought effectively, the structure of our Catholic life will topple like a house of cards. ”

“ Could we but take the twenty-two thousand Irish-born convicts out of the jails of one city—New York—with their clanking fetters and arrow-branded jackets, and march them through the length and breadth of Ireland, and show the youth, that, if some wear bangles, others wear handcuffs, it would go far to cure the microbe of unrest. ”

“ The vegetable world comes intervening between the raw chemicals and the hungry man. Out of earth and air and light it builds the ripened sheaf, the succulent apple and the savoury potato. So, though bookshelves groan under calf-bound tomes hoarding the hived treasures of the masters of theology, the common minds of the multitude would starve did not the preacher interpose as interpreter of the theologian's message, drawing forth from his storehouse truths and principles out of which he manufactures the daily bread on which the ordinary man must live. ”

“ That day, please God, shall never come, if we sink deep into our souls the conviction that a great effort is required, and fling our hearts into it; that the ever increasing new needs and foes of to-day cannot be met with the antiquated weapons of the past; that the old rut must be abandoned and the new ground broken: then the future is secure. The old citadel of Catholic Christendom will continue a fortress, flying the old flag, towering above the Atlantic breakers with a strength impregnable and a Faith undimmed—a Pharos of spiritual splendour. ”

“ Look into your own life and what do you discover. The unction of prayer sucked out of your soul, your relish for the Sacraments gone, a dry rot consuming your spiritual life, a nausea for supernatural things, a taste every day becoming more clayey, and an increasing appetite for grosser excitements. Books that you would tremble to touch a year ago you now devour without a pang; or perhaps the stray shreds of infidelity are weaving themselves into your future creed. Do not mind what you see with the eye of a conscience that is already half-dead. ”

“ It is unnecessary to trace the effects of such degrading teaching on the lives of the young, whose minds are as wax to receive and marble to retain: how the high standards of virtue taught in the school and strengthened in the home vanish: how the touchy sensitiveness of the pure soul becomes deadened and a hunger for grosser excitements is awakened. ”

“ A glamour is thrown over the sins and the sinners. Tears are demanded for libertines and their crimes are gilded. Virtue becomes a tyranny; the marriage bond an intolerable yoke, and the divorce court—which is truly a vestibule of hell—a haven of relief. ”

“ The young man staggers. He now turns to where he should expect to find strength. Under the pulpit next Sunday is a mind where the mists of doubt are gathering and darkening. He looks up to the "Light of the World" to have these mists dispelled. Instead of seeing his foes battered with their own weapons he sees these weapons, that in every domain are conquering for the devil, here despised. ”

“ Has a paralysis fallen on every hand that wields a Catholic pen? Does the light of Faith beaming on a human mind quench the beauties of imagination or dull the taste? Or, is a perfect style to be found only among the apostles of evil? Surely the long range of Catholic writers offers an ample variety of the most perfect exponents of literary style. ”