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Show FR. VAUGHN'S CRUSADING ENERGY. "High-speed living" is the designation under which Father Bernard Vaughan has delivered his latest denunciations of the vices of societyV "Smart Set," in commenting on which a London paper, the Daily Telegraph, pays noteworthy tribute trib-ute to the "crusading energy" of the eloquent Jesuit. Jes-uit. As to the "high speed" it asks, to begin wirii: Are we living fatally too fast for the best interest of the race, and is it impossible to check the insane in-sane momentum of the modern career? For all our vaunt of speed, are we but plunging like the 'Gad i-rene i-rene herd down the steep place of folly, into an abyss of 'moral and physical destruction? These, the writer goes on to observe, are questions which have just been pronounced with Characteristic energy, en-ergy, though in other terms, by the eloquent preacher who seems determined to play what may be called the part of the Savonarola of society. Whatever may be thought of the opinions of Father Fath-er Bernard Vaughan, there is no doubt of the crusading cru-sading energy and pictorial power with which he has been gifted. lie may be accused of over-coloring his themes, but if we want the preacher's efforts . to be of moral force, instead of a mere dramatic enjoyment for thoses who come to listen to him, we must pardon some exaggeration in the pulpit. As to sermons in general, the Telegraph remarks that those that are dull are of little more value than preachers who are dead, and in the face of a world always clogged with apathy with respect t the greatest moral issues which concern it, it is. aboe all, necessary that mankind should be rous?d by the dynamic energy of men who are in earnest, and have lent themselves to accomplfsh somewhat. It is a misfortune to the general interests of religion re-ligion that the ordinary sermon has become very largely a matter of routine, seldom inspired by fresh and living force. Sydney Smith deplored r,i his own time a tendency that has been noticeable in all the Christian ages. He did not hesitate to denounce the merely correct preachers of his own day as "holy lumps of ice;" and he added, with one of his most famous strokes of" humor. "Do you think -that sin is only to be removed fromsjuan as Eve was taken out of the side of Adam by casting him into a deep slumber ?" We have long since learned to condone the vehemence and originality of the stre.et crusade inaugurated by the Salvation Army, in consideration of the sincerity of its purposes. We shall not quarrel with Father Vaughan's denunciations de-nunciations simply because they are framed with a vigor to which the pulpit in this country has long been unaccustomed. If he confines himself to the careful study of social facts, to the penetrating diagnosis of modern psychology and its maladies, then the more trenchant the results are stated the better. Manifestly Father Vaughan carefully studies the "social facts" and is not wanting in the will and power to trenchantly state them and emphasize their cause and effects X. Y. Freeman's Journal. |