vV0537 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Miss Ida Langdon 
 
Ka '§\ti diaee 
 THE MOST REV. JOHN MAC HALE, 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF TDAM. 
 
 Claram el fititeralnle ^onun. 
 
 THE GREAT ARUHBISnOP OF THE WEST; 
 
 THE LOVKH of the POOK; 
 
 THE DEFENDER OF THE WEAK; 
 
 THE SHIELD OF THE PERSECUTED: 
 
 THE HONOUR OF IRKLAKD'S PRIESTHOOD; 
 
 rUE JOY AND THE QLOET OF THE IRISH PEOPLE AT U051R ANt 
 ABROAD, 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE HDMBLY AND LOVINGLT 
 
Q^^l 
 10557 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 St. Patrick, 
 
 The Christian Man the Man of the Day, • i 
 
 Temperance, • 
 
 The Attributes of Catholic Charity, - - • 
 The History of Ireland, as Told in Her Ruins, - 
 The Supernatural Life, the Absorbing Life of the 1 
 The Catholic Church the Salvation of Society, - 
 
 CatHoUc Education, • 
 
 The National Music of Lreland, 
 
 The Pope's Tiara— Its Past, Present, and Future, 
 
 The Exiles of Erin, 
 
 The Catholic Church the True Emancipator, 
 Tlie Irish People in their Kelation to Catholicity, 
 The Church, ....... 
 
 • • • 
 
 PAH 
 
 6 
 
 . . . 
 
 30 
 
 • • • 
 
 46 
 
 • • a 
 
 68 
 
 . 
 
 77 
 
 rish People. 
 
 107 
 
 • • 
 
 m 
 
 • • 
 
 W 
 
 - - 
 
 m 
 
 ■ • 
 
 188 
 
 • « 
 
 210 
 
 • • 
 
 . 236 
 
 • « 
 
 . 265 
 
 • . 
 
 278 
 
[^ Cornell University 
 y)M Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031298882 
 
NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS. 
 
 Messrs Cameron & Ferguson direct attention to the following 
 authorization of the Edition from which the present is correctly 
 reprinte(C They have also to express regret that all efforts have 
 failed so far to obtain the consent of the American Government 
 to an International Copyright Law, under which Father Burke 
 might have derived an author's benefit from the Sale on this side the 
 Atlantic. Under the existing arrangements between Great Britain 
 &nd the United States, competition compels production at prices so 
 toV that nothing is left for the author. 
 
 PREFACE BY FATHER BURKE. 
 
 " I feel that some apology is due to my readers for the appearance 
 of this book. I certainly never should have permitted the publica- 
 tion of these lectures if it were in my power to prevent it ; but as 
 parties, strangers to me, had announced their intention of publish- 
 ing them in book form, for their own benefit, I thought it incum- 
 bent on me to anticipate this by publishing the lectures myself 
 I' irst, that they might have the benefit of my own revision (howcvei 
 hasty and imperfect), and secondly, because I considered that m}' 
 Order had the best, and in fact, the only just title to any profits 
 that might arise from the sale of the book. /here is no prutensioo 
 to anything like style in these lectures, as they are merely, wiili 
 some exceptions, the newspaper reports, hastily revised. If, how- 
 ever, there be anything in them contrary to the teachings of th' 
 Catholic Church, that, I am the first to condemn and rcpuJiato." 
 
LECTUKES AND SERMONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. 
 
 ST PATEICK. 
 
 " Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their genera- 
 tion ; ♦ * * these men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed ; 
 good things continue with their seed. Their posterity are a holy 
 inheritance ; and their seed hath stood in the covenants : and theil 
 children for their sakes remain for ever ; their seed and their glory 
 shall not be forsaken. Let the people show forth their wisdom, and 
 the Church dpilare their praise." — Ecclcs. 44- 
 
 We are wssembled to obey the command of God expressed in 
 my text. One of the great duties of God's Church, to which 
 she has ever been most faithful, is the celebration of her saints. 
 From end to end of the year the Church's saints are the theme 
 of her daily thanksgiving and praise. They are her heroes, 
 and therefore she honours them ; just as the world celebrates its 
 own heroes, records their great deeds, and builds up monuments 
 to perpetuate their names and their glory. The saints were 
 the living and most faithful representatives ot Christ our Lord, 
 of his virtues, his love, his actions, his power, so that He lived 
 in them, and wrought in them, and through them, the redemp- 
 tion of men ; therefore the Church honours, not so much the 
 saint, as Christ our Lord in the saint ; for, in truth, the wisdom 
 of saintliness which she celebrates, wherever it is found, ia 
 nothing else, as described to us in Scripture, than "a vapour 
 of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory 
 af the Almighty God ; • * * the brightness of eternal light, 
 lad the tinspotited mirror of God's majest^ and the image of 
 
f LEOTTJKBS AND SEEMONS. 
 
 flis goodness ; ♦ * * and through nations she conveyeth her- 
 self into holy souls, she maketh the friends of God and prophets." 
 Nor does the Church's honour of the saints derogate from that 
 of God, as some say; otherwise the Lord, who is jealous of 
 His divine power and glory, would never command us to praise 
 the saints as he does in the words of my text, and in many 
 other parts of the Holy Scriptures: "Praise ye the Lord in His 
 saints," " God is wonderful in His saints," etc., etc Nay, so 
 far from lessening our love and praise of God, the saints are 
 the very channel through which praise is most acceptably given 
 to Him, and if the Scriptures command us to praise the Lord 
 in all His works, how much more in His saints — ^the master- 
 pieces of nature and grace! Let no one, therefore, suppose 
 that we are assembled to-day to dishonour God by honpuring his 
 saint : let no one imagine that we are come together to bless 
 and praise other than Our God Himself, "the Father of lights," 
 "for every best and every perfect gift" which He has given us 
 through our gi-eat Apostle, St. Patrick. He was " a man of 
 renown," for his work and his name are known and celebrated 
 by all men ; " and our father in his generation," for he "begat 
 us to God by the Gospel." He was, moreover, " a man of 
 mercy," for, when he might have lived for himself and for the 
 enjoyment of his own ease, he chose rather to sacrifice himself, 
 and to make his life cheap and of no account in his sight, and 
 this through the self-same mercy which brought the Lord 
 Jesus Christ forth from the bosom of the Father, namely, mercy 
 for a people who were perishing. His "godly deeds have not 
 failed," for the Lord crowned his labours with blessings of 
 abundance "Good things continue with his seed," for the 
 faith whicJti tie planted still flourishes in the land. "His pos- 
 terity are a holy inheritance," for the scene of his labours, grown 
 famous for holiness, obtained among the nations the singular 
 title of "the Island of Saints." "And his seed hath stood in 
 the covenants," for it is well known and acknowledged that no 
 power, however great, has been able to move them from the 
 faith once delivered to the saints. "His children for his sake 
 remain forever," for he blessed them, as we read, that they 
 should never depart from the fold of the "one Shepherd" into 
 which he had gathered them, and his prayer in heaven has veri- 
 fied for 1600 years his prophetic blessing on earth. " His 
 seed and his glory shall not be forsaken." for "they are the 
 
BT. PATBIOK. 7 
 
 dilldren of saints, and look for that life which God wtII givt to 
 tho 30 that never change their faith from Him." Seeing, there- 
 fore that ail the conditions of the Inspired Word have been so 
 strikingly fulfilled in our saint, is it wonderful that we should 
 "•ilso desire to fulfil the rest of the command, " Let the people 
 shov forth His wisdom, and the Church declare His praise ■? " 
 I propose, therefore, for your consideration — first, the character 
 of th 1 saint himself ; secondly, the work of his Apostleship ; and 
 thirdly, the merciful providence of Almighty God toward the 
 Irish Church and the Irish people. The light of Christianity 
 had burned for more than four hundred years before its rays 
 peneti-ated to Ireland. For the first three hundi'ed years of the 
 Church's existence the sacred torch was hidden in the catacombs 
 and cfives of the earth, or, if ever seen by men, it was only 
 when held aloft for a moment in the hands of a dying martyr. 
 Yet th.e flame was spreading, and a great part of Asia, Armenia. 
 ^Syptj Spain, Italy, and Gaul had already lighted their lamps 
 before that memorable year 312, when the Church's light, sud- 
 denly shooting up, appeared in the heavens, and a Romao 
 Emperor was converted by its brightness. Then did the spouse 
 of Christ walk forth from the earth, arrayed in all the " beauty 
 of holiness," and her " light arose unto the people who were 
 seated in darkness and in the shadow of death." The Christian 
 faith vas publiclypreached, the nations were converted, churches 
 and monasteries were everywhere built, and God seemed to 
 smile upon the earth with the blessings of Christian faith and 
 Roman civilization. A brief interval of repose it was; and God, 
 in His mercy, permitted the Church just to lay hold of society, 
 and establish herself amongst men that she might be able to 
 save the world, when, in a few years, the Northern barbarians 
 should have swept away every vestige of the power, glory, and 
 civilization of ancient Rome. It was during this interval, be- 
 tween the long-continued war of persecution and the first fall 
 of Rome, that a young Christian was taken prisoner on the 
 northern shores of Gaul, and carried, with many others, by his 
 captors, into Ireland. This young man was St. Patrick. He was 
 of noble birth, born of Christian parents, reared up with tenderest 
 care, and surrounded from his earliest infancy with all that could 
 make life desirable and happy. Now he is torn away from 
 parents and friends, no eye to look upon him with pity, no 
 heart to feel for the greatness of his misery ; and in his six- 
 
S LBOTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 teenth year, just as life was opening and spreading ont all its 
 . sweets before him, he is sold as a slave, and sent to tend cattle 
 upon the dreary mountains of the far north of Ireland, in hunger 
 and thirst, in cold and nakedness ; and there for long years did 
 he live, forgotten and despised, and with no other support than 
 the Christian faith and hope within him. These, however, failed 
 him n"t ; and so at length he was enabled to escape from his 
 captivity and return to his native lant Oh, how sweet to his 
 eyes and ears must have been the signts aud sounds of his 
 childhood ! how dear the embraces, how precious the joy of his 
 aged mother when she clasped to her " him that was dead, but 
 came to life again ! '' Surely he will remain with her now, nor 
 ever expose himself to the risk of losing again joys all the dearer 
 because they had once been lost. Not so, my brethren. Patrick 
 is no longer an ordinary man; one of us. A new desire has 
 entered into his soul and tuken possession of his life. A. passion 
 has sprung up within him for which he must live and devote 
 his futur«. This desire, this passion, is to prerich the Christian 
 faith in Ireland, and to bring the nation forth " from darkness 
 into the admirable light " of God. In the days of his exile, even 
 when a slave on the mountain -side, he heard, like the prophet, 
 a voice within him, and it said, "Behold, I have given my 
 words in thy mouth. Lo, I have set thee this day over the 
 nations and over kingdoms, to root up and pull down, and to 
 waste and destroy, and to build and to plant. Gird up thy 
 loins and arise, and speak to them all that I command thee." 
 And when he was restored to his country and to those who 
 loved him, the same voice spoke again, for he heard in a dream 
 the voice of many persons from a wood near the western sea, 
 crying out, as with one voice, " We entreat thee, O holy youth, 
 to come and walk still among us." " It was the voice of the 
 Irish," says the saint in his Confessions, " and I was greatly 
 affected in my heart." And so he arose, and once more leaving 
 father and mother, houses and lauds, went forth to prepare 
 himself for his great mission. Having completed his long 
 years of preparatory study, he turned his face to Rome, to the 
 fountain-nead of Christianity, the source of all jurisdiction and 
 Divine mission in the Church, the great heart whence the life- 
 blood of faith and sound doctrine flows even to her most dis- 
 tant members, the new Jerusalem and Sion of God, of which 
 it was wTitteu of old, " from Sion shall the law go forth, and 
 
ST. PATBIOK. 9 
 
 the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem ;" and here in Bome St. 
 Celestine the First laid his hands upon Patrick and consecrated 
 him first bishop of the Irish nation. 
 
 And now he returns to our shores a second time ; no longer 
 a bondsman, but free, and destined to bvaak the nation's chains: 
 " You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free :" 
 no longer dragged thither an unwilling slave of men, but drawn 
 by irresistible love, the willing slave of Jesus Christ ; no more 
 a stripling, full of anxious fears; but a man, in all the glory of 
 a matured intellect, in the strength and vigour of manhood, in 
 the fulness of power and jurisdiction ; with mind prepared and 
 spirit braced to bear and brave all things, and with heart and 
 soul utterly devoted to God and to the great enterprise before 
 him. Oh, my brethren, what joy was in heaven at that hour 
 when the blessed feet of the Bishop Patrick touched the shores 
 of Ireland — the ancient " Isle of Destiny." This was her des- 
 tiny surely, and it is about to be fulfilled — that she should be the 
 home and the mother of saints — of doctors and holy solitaries, 
 and pure virgins and martyrs robed in white, and of a people 
 acceptable before the Lord. That the Cross of Christ should 
 be the emblem of her faith for evermore, of her faith and of 
 her trial, of her tears and sorrow, and of her victory, " which 
 conquereth the world." golden hour amongst the hours ! 
 when the sands of the Irish shore first embraced softly and 
 lovingly the beautiful footprints of him who preached peace 
 and good things ; when Moses struck the rock, and the glisten- 
 ing waters of salvation flowed in the desert land ■, when the 
 "Name which is above all names" was first heard in the old 
 Celtic tongue, and the Lord Jesus, entering upon His new 
 inheritance, exclaimed, " This is My resting-place for ever 
 and ever ; here shall I dwell, because I have chosen it." 
 
 The conversion of Ireland, from the time of St. Patrick's 
 landing to the day of his death, is, in many respects, the 
 strangest fact in the history of the church. The saint met 
 with no opposition ; his career resembles more the triumphant 
 progress of a king than the difficult labour of a missionary. 
 The Gospel, with its lessons and precepts of self-denial, of 
 prayer, of purity, in a word, of the violence which seizes on 
 heaven, is not congenial to fallen man. His pride, his passions, 
 his blindness of intellect and hardness of heart, all oppose the 
 spread of the Gospel ; so that the very fact that mankind has 
 
10 LEOTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 BO universally accepted it is adduced as a proof that it must be 
 from God. The work of the Catholic missionary has, therefore, 
 ever been, and must continue to be, a work of great labour, 
 with apparently small results. Such has it ever been amongst 
 all the nations ; and yet Ireland seems a grand exception. She 
 is, perhaps, the only country in the world that entirely owes 
 her conversion to the work of one mat.. He found her univer- 
 sally Pagan. He left her universally Christian. She is, agam, 
 the only nation that never cost her apostle an hour of sorrow, 
 a single tear, a drop of blood. She welcomed him like a friend, 
 took the "Word from his lips, made it at once the leading feature 
 of her life, put it into the blood of her children and into the 
 language of her most familiar thoughts, and repaid her bene- 
 factor with her utmost veneration and love. And much, truly, 
 had young Christian Ireland to love and venerate in her great 
 Apostle. All sanctity, coming as it does from God, is an imi- 
 tation of God in man. This is the meaning of the word erf the 
 Apostle, " those whom he foreknew and predestined to be made 
 conformable to the image of His Son, the same He called, and 
 justified, and glorified." Conformity to the image of God is 
 therefore Christian perfection or sanctity, " the mystery which 
 was hidden from eternity with Christ in God." But as our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, " in whom dwelt the fulness of the God- 
 head corporally," is an abyss of all perfections, so do we find 
 the saints differing one from another in their varied participa- 
 tions of His graces and resemblance to His divine gifts, for so 
 " star differeth from star in glory." Then, amongst the apostles, 
 we are accustomed to think and speak of the impulsive zeal of 
 Peter, the virginal purity of John, etc., not as if Peter were not 
 pure, or John wanting in zeal, but that where all was the work 
 of the Spirit of God, one virtue shone forth more prominently, 
 and seemed to mark the specific character of sanctity in the 
 saint. N^ow, amongst the many great virtues which adorned 
 the soul of Ireland's Apostle, and made him so dear to the 
 people, I find three which he made especially his own, and 
 these were, a spirit of penance, deepest humility, and a devour- 
 ing zeal for the salvation of souls. A spirit of penance. It is 
 remarkable, and worthy of special notice in these days of self- 
 indulgence and fanciful religions, how practical the gospel is. 
 It is pre-eminently not only the science of reUgious knowledge, 
 but also of reUgious life. It t*>ll« us not only what we are tP 
 
ST. PATRICK. 11 
 
 beliuve, but also what we are to do. And now, what is the 
 first great precept of the gospel ? It is penance. My brethren, 
 " do penance, for the kingdom of God is at hand." And when, 
 on the day of Pentecost, the Prince of the apostles first raised 
 up the standard of Christianity upon the earth, the paople 
 " when they heard these things had compunction in their hearts, 
 and said to Peter, and to the rest of the Apostles, What shall 
 we do, men and brethren ? and Peter said to them, do penance^ 
 and be baptized, every one of you." This spirit of penance 
 was essentially Patrick's. His youth had been holy; prevented 
 from earliest childhood by " the blessings of sweetness," he had 
 grown up Uke a lily, in purity, in holy fear and love. Yet for 
 the carelessness and slight indiscretions of his first years, he was 
 filled with compunction, and with a life-long sorrow. His sin, 
 as he called it, was always before him, and with the prophet he 
 cried out, " Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of 
 tears to mine eyes, and I will weep day and night." In his 
 journeyings he was wout to spend the night in prayer, and tears, 
 and bitter self-reproach, as if he was the greatest of sinners ; 
 and when he hastened from " Royal Meath," into the far west 
 of the island, we read that when Lent approached, he suspended 
 his labours for a time, and went up the steep, rugged side of 
 Croagh Patrick, and there, like his Divine Master, he spent the 
 holy time in fasting and prayer ; and his " tears were his food 
 night and day." Whithersoever he went he left traces of his 
 penitential spirit behind him ; and Patrick's penance and Pat- 
 rick's purgatory are still familiar traditions in the land. Thus, 
 my brethren, did he " sow in tears," who was destined to reap 
 in so much joy ; for so it is ever with God's saints, who do his 
 work on this earth ; " going, they went and wept, scattering the 
 seed, but coming, they shall come with joy." His next great 
 personal virtue was a wonderful humility. Now, this virtue 
 springs from' a twofold knowledge, namely, the knowledge 
 of God and of ourselves. This was the double knowledge for 
 which the great St. Augustine prayed : " Lord, let me know 
 thee, and know myself, that I may love thee and despise my- 
 self ; " and this did our saint possess in an eminent degree. 
 This knowledge of God convinced him of the utter worthless- 
 ness of all things besides God, and even of God's gifts, except 
 when used for Himself ; and therefore he did all things for God 
 and nothing for self, and of "his own he gave Him back again; '» 
 
12 LBOTUEES AND SEftMONS. 
 
 he lost sight of himself in advancing the interests and the cause 
 of God; he hid himself behind his work in which he laboured for 
 God; and strangely enough, his very name and history come down 
 to us by reason of his great humility, for he would write himself 
 a sinner, and calls himself " Patrick, an unworthy, and ignorant, 
 and sinful man," for so he saw himself, judging himself by the 
 standard of infinite holiness in Jesus Christ, by which we also 
 shall all be one day judged Looking into himself he found 
 only misery and weakness, wonderfully strengthened, not by 
 himself, but by God ; poverty and nakedness, clothed and 
 enriched, not by hiinsolf, bit by God; and, fearful of losiug the 
 Giver in the gifts, he put away from him the contemplation of 
 what God had made 'lim, and only considered what he was him- 
 self. Thus was he always the most huff ble of men. Even when 
 seated in glory and surrounded by the love and admiring vene- 
 ration of an entire people, never was his soul moved from the 
 solid foundation of humility, the twofold knowledge ; and so he 
 went down to his grave a simple and an humble man. And yet 
 In this lowly heart there burned a mighty fire of love, a devour- 
 bg zeal for the so Is of his brethren. Oh! here inde id does he 
 shine forth " likened unto the Son of God;" for, like our Divine 
 Lord and Master, Patrick was a "zealous lover of souls." He 
 well knew how dear these souls were to the sacred heert of Jesus 
 Christ — how willingly the Lord of glory had spent Himself, and 
 given His most sacred and precious blood for them: how it was 
 the thought of their salvaJon that sustained Him during the 
 horror of His passion ; in the agony of His prayer ; when His 
 sacred flesh was torn at the pillar ; when the cruel thorns were 
 driven into His most holy brows ; when, with droop iig head and 
 wearied eyes, and body streaming blood from every open wound, 
 He was raised up on the cross to die heart-broken and aban- 
 doned, with the anger of God and the insults of men poured 
 upon him ^atrick knew all this, and it filled him with transports 
 of zeal for souls, so that, like the great apostle, he wished to be 
 as accursed for them ; and to die a thousand time rather than 
 that one soul, purchased so dearly, and the offspring of so much 
 love and sorrow, should perish. Therefore did he make himself 
 the slave and the servant of all, that he might gain all to God. 
 And in his mission of salration no difficulties retiirded him no 
 danger frightened him, no labow or sacrifice held him back, no 
 !>»"kness subdued him, no inftrmrty of body or mind overcam 
 
ST. PATBIOK. 18 
 
 him. Old age came upon him, yet he spared not himself, nor 
 did he for a moment sit dowa to count his years, or to number 
 his triumphs, or to consider his increasing wants ; but his voice 
 was clear and strong and his arm untiring, though he bad 
 reaped a harvest of many years, and had borne " the burthen 
 of the day and the heat •" and his heart was young, for it was 
 still growing, in the faith of those around him. Even to the 
 last day of his life " his youth was renewed like the eagle.'' 
 He repeatedly journeyed throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land, caring and tending with prayer, and blessing, and 
 tears, the plants which he had planted in this new vineyard of 
 God ; and grace was poured abroad from his lips, and " virtue 
 went forth from him," until the world was astonished at the 
 sight of a whole nation converted by one man, and the promise 
 made of old was fulfilled in Patrick, " I will deliver to you 
 every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon^ and no 
 man shall be able to resist thee all the days of thy life." And 
 now we come to the question, What did St. Patrick teach, and 
 In what form of Christianity did he expend himself for God f 
 For fifteen hundred years, my brethren, Christianity meant one 
 thing, one doctrine, one faith, one authority, one baptism ; now, 
 however, in our day, this same Christianity, though as undi- 
 vided, as true, as exclusive, as definitive as ever, is made to 
 signify many things ; and men, fondly imagining that our an- 
 cestors had no greater unity than ourselves, ask what form of 
 doctrine did St. Patrick preach to the Irish people ? I answer : 
 He preached the whole cycle of Catholic truth as it was in the 
 beginning, is now, and ever shall be to the end of time. He 
 taught them that Christ's most sacred body and blood are really 
 and truly present in the Blessed Eucharist, so that we find an 
 Irish writer of the same century (Sedulius) using the words 
 " we are fed on the body and the members of Christ, and so we 
 are made the temples of God ;" again, the language used by the 
 Irish Church at the time, as even the Protestant Bishop Usher 
 acknowledges, concerning the Mass, was " the making of the 
 body of the Lord." In support of the same truth we have the 
 beautiful legend of St. Bridgid — which, even if its truth be dis- 
 puted, still points to the popular faith and love whence it sprang 
 — how, when a certain child, named Nennius, was brought to 
 her, 'she blessed him, and prophesied that his hand shoidd one 
 day gfive her the Holy Communion ; whereupon the boy coverecl 
 
14 LEOTUEES AND SERMONB. 
 
 his right hand and never again let it touch any profane thing, 
 nor be even uncovered, so that he was called " Nennius na 
 ) laumh glas," or, Nennius of the clean hand, out of devotion and 
 love to the most Holy Sacrament. St. Patrick taught the doc- 
 trine of penance and confession of sms and priestly absolution ; 
 for we find, amongst the other proofs, an old penitential canon 
 of a synod held under the saint himself in 450, in which it is 
 decreed that " if a Christian kill a man, or commit fornication, 
 or go in to a soothsayer after the manner of the Gentiles, he 
 shall do a j'ear of penance ; when this year of penance is over, 
 he shall come with witnesses, and afterwards he shall be absolved 
 by the priest." He taught the invocation of saints, as is evi- 
 dent from numerous records of the time. Thus, in a most ancient 
 life of St. Bridgid we find the words, " There are two holy vir- 
 gins in heaven who may undertake my protection — Mary and 
 Bridgid— on whose patronage let each of us depend." In like 
 manner, we find in the synods of the time laws concerning the 
 " oblations for the dead ;" in the most ancient Irish missals 
 Masses for the dead are found with such prayers as " Grant, 
 Lord, that this holy oblation may work pardon for the dead and 
 salvation for the living ;" and in a most ancient life of St. Bren- 
 dan it is stated that " the prayer of the living doth much profit 
 the dead." But, my brethren, as in the personal character of the 
 saint there were some amongst his virtues that shone out more 
 conspicuously than the others, so in his teaching there were 
 certain points which appear more prominently, which seemed to 
 be impressed upon the people more forcibly, and to have taken 
 peculiar hold of the national mind. Let us consider what these 
 peculiar features of St. Patrick's teaching were, and we shall 
 see how they reveal to us what I proposed aa the third point 
 of this sermon, namely, the merciful providence of God over the 
 Irish Church and people. They were the following : Fidelity 
 to St. Peter's chair and to Peter's successor, the Pope of Rome ; 
 devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary ; prayer and remembrance 
 for the dead; and coufidiiig obedience and love for their bishops 
 and priests. These were the four great prominent features of 
 Patrick's teacning : by the first, namely, fidelity tt, the Pope, 
 he secured~the unity of the Irish Church as a living member of 
 the Church Catholic ; by the second, devotion to the Blessed 
 Virgin, he secured the purity and morality of the people ; bj 
 tie third, care of the dead, he enlisted on the side of Catholic 
 
ST. PATEIOK. IS 
 
 truth the natural love and strong feelings of the Irish charactei i 
 and by the last, attachment and obedience to the priesthood, 
 he secured to the Irish Church the principle of internal union, 
 which is the secret of her strength. He preached fidelity and 
 imswerving devotion to the Pope — ^the head of the Catholic 
 Church. Coming direct from Rome, and filled with ecclesias- 
 tical knowledge, he opened up before the eyes of his new chil- 
 dren and revealed to them the grand design of Alniighty God 
 in His Church. He showed them in the world around them 
 the wonderful harmony which speaks of God ; then rising into 
 the higher world of grace, he preached to them the still more 
 wonderful harmony of redemption and of the Church — the 
 Church, so vast as to fill the whole earth, yet as united in doc- 
 trine and practice as if she embraced only the members of one 
 small family or the inhabitants of one little village ; the Church, 
 embracing all races of men, and leaving to all their full indi- 
 vidual freedom of thought and action ; yet animating all with 
 one soul, quickening all as with one life and ono heart ; guiding 
 all with the dictates of one immutable conscience, and keeping 
 every, even the least, member under the dominion of one head. 
 Such was the Church on which Patrick engrafted Ireland — " a 
 glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle ;" a perfect body, the 
 very mystical body of Jesus Christ, through which " we, being 
 wild olives, are engrafted on Him, the true olive-tree," so that 
 " we are made the flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bones." 
 Now, Patrick taught our fathers, with truth, that the soul, the 
 life, the heart, the conscience, and the head of the Church is 
 Jesus Christ, and that His representative on earth, to whom 
 He has communicated all His graces and powers, is the Pope 
 of Rome, the visible head of God's Church, the Bishop of Bishops, 
 the centre of unity and of doctrine, the rock and the corner- 
 stone on which the whole edifice of the Church is founded and 
 built up. All this he pointed out in the Scriptures, from the 
 words of our Lord to Peter. Peter was the shepherd of the 
 fold, whose duty it was to " feed both lambs and sheep " with 
 " every word that eometh from the mouth of God." Peter was 
 the rock to sustain and uphold the Church : " thou art Peter, 
 and upon this rock I will build my Church '' (words which are 
 the very touchstone of faith in these days of sorrow). Peter's 
 was the strong, unerring voice which was ever to be heard in the 
 Church, defining her doctrines, warning off enemies, denouncing 
 
16 LEOTtntBS AND SERMONS. 
 
 errors, rebiiTfing sinners, guiding the doubtful, strengthening the 
 weak, confirming the "trnng ; and Jesus said, " Thou, Peter, 
 ronfirm thy brethren." Patrick taught the Irish people not to 
 he scandalized if they saw the cross upon Peter's shoulders, and 
 the crown of thorns upon his head, for so Christ lives in His 
 Church and in her supreme pastor ; but he also taught them 
 that he who strikes Peter strikes the Lord ; he taught them 
 what history has taught us, that " whosever shall fall upon 
 that stone shall be bruised ; and upon whomsoever it shall fall 
 it will grind him to powder." He taught them that in the day 
 when they separated from Peter they separated from Christ, as 
 did the foolish men in the Gospel : " After this many of his 
 disciples went baclj and walked no more with him. Then Jesus 
 said to the twelve, Will you also go away ? And Simon Peter 
 answered Him : Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." Thus it was, my brethren, that He 
 bound them to " the rock of ages," to Peter's chair, with firmest 
 bonds of obedience and love, and infused into their souls that 
 Bupernatural instinct which, for fifteen hundred years, has kept 
 them, through good report and evil report, through persecution 
 and sorrow, faithful and loyal to the Holy See of Rome. It 
 was a bond of obedience and love that bound Ireland to Rome. 
 Thus, in the beginning of the seventh century, when the Irish 
 bishops assembled to consider the question of celebrating Easter, 
 we find the Fathers selecting some " wise and humble men," 
 and sending them to Rome for instruction, " as children to 
 their mother ;" and this in obedience to a primitive law of the 
 Irish Church, which enacted that, in every difiiculty that might 
 arise, " the question should be referred to the Head of Cities," 
 as Rome was called. This devotion to the Holy See saved 
 Ireland in the day of trial. 
 
 The next great feature in Patrick's preaching was devotion 
 to the Mother of God. Of this we have abundant proof in the 
 numerous churches built and dedicated to God under her name. 
 CTtampotll |Hl)m're (TeampoiU Mhuire), or Mary's Church, be- 
 came a familiar name in the land. In the far west of Ireland, 
 where the traditions of our holy faith are still preserved, en- 
 shrined in the purest ic"!n of our grand old Celtic language, 
 the sweet name of the Iviother of God is heard in the prayers 
 and songs of the people, in their daily familiar converse, in the 
 supplications of the poor, not under *he title of " our Lady,* 
 
ST. PATBIOK. It 
 
 or of " the Blessed Virgin," but by the still more endearing 
 name of fjluirt fflatljait {Muire Mathair), "Mary Mother. 
 And so it was that Patrick sent his Catholic doctrines home to 
 the hearts of the people. He preached Jesus Christ under the 
 name by which He is still known and adored in that far western 
 [and : ^ac na Plafgl)lltne (Mac na Maighdme), " the Virgin's 
 Son," thus admirably insinuating the great mystery of the In- ( 
 carnation, and preaching Jesus through Mary ; and Mary her- 
 self he preached, with all her graces and glories, as " Mary 
 Mother.' The example of her virginal purity and maternal 
 love he made the type of the Irish maiden and mother ; and so 
 well did they learn their high lesson, that they have been for 
 ages the admiration of the world, and the glory of their afflicted 
 country. The devotion to Mary sank , deep into the heart of 
 the nation. So well had they already learned to love and appre- 
 ciate her, that, in a few years after their conversion to the 
 faith, when they would express their love and admiration for 
 the first great Irish virgin saint — St. Bridgld — they thought 
 they had crowned her with glory when they called her 
 " the Mary of Ireland." This devotion to Mary was a pro- 
 tecting shield over Ireland in the day of her battle for the 
 faith. 
 
 The third great prominent point in St. Patrick's preaching 
 was the doctrine of Purgatory, and consequently, careful thouj hi 
 and earnest prayer for the dead. This is attested by tlie oi i- 
 nances of the most ancient Irish synods, in whicl] oblaticiis, 
 prayers, and sacrifice for the dead are frequently mentioned, as 
 evidently being the practice, frequent and loving, of the people. 
 They -werf not unmindful of the dead, " like others who have 
 no hope." Svery ancient church had its little graveyard, and 
 the jealous care of the people, even to this day, for these con- 
 secrated spots, the loving tenacity with which they have clung 
 to them at all times, speak of their faith in this great doctrine, 
 and tell U3 how much Irish hope and love surrounds the grave. 
 " Nothing is our own except our dead," says the poet, and so 
 these affectionate hearts took with joy the doctrine of mercy, 
 and carried their love and their prayer beyond the tomb into 
 the realms of expiation, where the dross of earth is purged 
 away, the gold and silver refined, and souls saved are prepared 
 for heaven, " yet so as by fire." This doctrine of the Church, 
 80 forcibly taught by Patrick, and warmly accepted by the Irish 
 
18 liEOTUBES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 people, was also a great defence to the nation's faith during the 
 long ages of persecution and sorrow. 
 
 Finally, the great saint established between the people and 
 their priesthood the firmest bonds of mutual confidence and 
 love. In the Catholic Church the priest is separated from men 
 and consecrated to God. The duties of his office are so high, 
 so holy, and supernatural, and require such purity of life and 
 devotion of soul, that he must, of necessity, stand aloof from 
 amongst men and engage himself with God : for, to use the 
 words of the apostle, he is " the minister of Christ and the 
 dispenser of the mysteries of God." Hence, every Catholic 
 looks upon the priest as a supernatural man ; supernatural in 
 the unction of his priesthood, in his office, his power, his life, 
 his duties, and most sacred in his person as the anointed of 
 the Lord. This was the idea of the priesthood which Saint 
 Patrick impressed upon the Irish people. The very name by 
 which the priest has ever been known in our language, and 
 which has no corresponding word in the English tongue, sig- 
 nifies " a sacred man and a giver of sacred things." Such is 
 the exalted dignity of the priesthood, such the knowledge and 
 matured sanctity required for, and the tremendous obligations 
 and duties imposed upon ifc, that we generally find the first 
 priests of a newly converted people strangers ; men who in 
 Christian lands were brought up and educated for their high 
 mission. It would seem as if the young Christianity of a 
 people, like a vine but newly planted, were unable yet to 
 l3ear such full matured fruit of holiness. But it was not 
 so in Ireland, my brethren. There we behold a singular 
 instance of a people who immediately produced a national 
 priesthood. The priests and bishops of Ireland, who as- 
 sisted and succeeded Saint Patrick in his great work, were 
 almost to a man Irishmen. So congenial was the soil on 
 which the seedling of Christianity fell, that forthwith it sprung 
 up into the goodly tree of all holiness and power ; and so the 
 aged apostle saw around him, in " the ring of his brethren," 
 those whom he had himself baptised, anointed, and consecrated 
 into the ministry of God's altar and people. Taken thus from 
 the heart of the people they returned to them again laden with 
 divine gifts, and, living in the midst of them, joyfully and con- 
 tentedly ministered unto them " in all things that are of God." 
 A community of joy and sorrow, of good and of evil, was thu8 
 
ST. PATEICK. 19 
 
 established between the priesthood and the people of Ireland ; 
 an intercourse the most familiar yet most reverential; a union 
 of the strictest kind, founded in faith, fidelity, and affection, 
 md cemented by centuries of tears and of blood. 
 
 For more than a thousand years the work of St. Patrick waa 
 the glory of Christendom, The Virgin Church of Ireland, un- 
 stained even by one martyr's blood, became the prolific mother 
 of saints. Strang* indeed, and singular in its glory, was tha 
 destiny of Innisfail. The Irish Church knew no childhood, no 
 ages of painful and uncertain struggle to put on Christian usages 
 and establish Christian traditions. Like the children in the early 
 ages of the Church, who were confirmed in infancy, immediately 
 after baptism, Ireland was called upon as soon aa converted to 
 become at once the mother of saiots, the home and refuge of 
 learning, the great instructress of the nations ; and, perhaps, the 
 history of the world does not exhibit a more striking and glori- 
 ous sight than Ireland for the three hundred years immediately 
 following her conversion to the Catholic faith. The whole island 
 was covered with schools and monasteries, in which men, the 
 most renowned of their age, both for learning and sanctity, 
 received the thousands of students who flocked to them from 
 every land. Whole cities were given up to them ; as we read 
 »f Armagh, which was divided into three parts — " Trianmore," 
 or the town proper; '■'■ Trian-Fatrick," or the cathedral close; 
 " Trian-Sassenagh" or the Latia quarter, the home of the 
 foreign students. To the students the evening star gave the 
 signal for retirement, and the morning sun for awaking. When, 
 at the sound of the early bell, says the historian, " two or three 
 thousand of them poured into the silent streets and made their 
 way towards the lighted church, to join in the service of matins, 
 mingling, as they went or returned, the tongues of the Gael, 
 the Cimbri, the Pict, the Saxon, and the Frank, or hailing and 
 answering each other in the universal language of the Roman 
 Church, the angels in heaven must have loved to contemplate 
 the union of so much perseverance with so much piety." A.nd 
 thus it was, not only in St. Patrick's own city of Armagh, but 
 b Bangor, in Clonard, in Clonmacnoise, in Mayo ; of the Saxons 
 in Tagmahon and Beg-Erin, on the Slaney ; in famed Lismore, 
 on the Blackwater ; in Mungret, on the lordly Shannon ; in tha 
 far-off Islands of Arran, on the Western Ocean ; and in many 
 another sainted and historic spot, where the round tower aoid 
 
2d LEOTDBBS AND SERMONS. 
 
 the group of seven churches still remain, sUeut but eloquent 
 witnesses of the sanctity and the glory of Ireland's first Chris- 
 tianity. The nations, beholding and admiring the lustre of 
 learning and sanctity which shone forth in the holy isle, united 
 in conferring upon Ireland the proudest title ever j'et given to 
 a land or a people ; they called her " the Island of Saints and 
 Doctors." 
 
 The voice of history clearly and emphatically proclaims that 
 the intellectual supremacy and guidance of the Christian 
 world belonged to Ireland from the sixth to the ninth cen- 
 turies. But, although religion may flourish in the halls of 
 the university, and be fairly illustrated in the peaceful lives 
 of the saints, yet, there is one crown, and that, indeed, the 
 very countersign of faith, — " victoria quae vincit mundum fides," 
 — which can only rest on the brows of a church and a nation 
 which has been tried in the arena of persecution and war; 
 and that crown is victory. The bay-tree may flourish by 
 the river-side; the cedar may rear its majestic head on the 
 mountain top ; leaf and fair flower, and the fulness of fniit may 
 be there ; but it is only in the dark hour, when the storm sweeps 
 over the earth, and every weak thing yields to it, and is carried 
 away by its fury, that the good tree is tested, and its strength 
 is proved. Then do men see whether it has struck its roots 
 deep into the soil, and so twined them about the hidden rocks 
 that no power can tear them out. The good shi^ may sail be- 
 fore the prosperous gales, and " walk the waters " in all her 
 beauty and majesty ; but it is only on the morning after the 
 storm, when the hurricane has swept over the face of the deep, 
 when the angry waves have beaten upon her, and strained to 
 its utmost every element of her strength — seeking to destroy 
 her, but in vain, — that ^he sailor knows that he can trust to the 
 heart of oak, and sleep securely in his noble vessel. Thus it 
 is with the Church in Ireland. Her beauty and her sanctity 
 were known and admired both of God and man ; but her Lord 
 was resolved that she should wear such crown of victory as 
 never was placed on a nation's brows ; and therefore, at two 
 distinct periods of her history, was she obliged to meet and 
 conquer a storm of persecution and of war unequalled in the 
 world's annals. The first of these great trials came upon Ire- 
 land at the beginning of the ninth century, when the Northmen, 
 or Danes, invaded the country in mighty force. They came not 
 
ST. PATRICK. 21 
 
 only as the enemies of Ireland's nationality, but much more of 
 her faith ; and we invariably find that their first and most de- 
 structive fury was directed against the churches, monasteries, 
 and school*. The gloomy and terrible worship of Odin was to 
 replace the religion of Christ ; and for three hundred long years 
 the whole land was covered with bloodshed and confusion, the 
 nation fighting with heroic courage and perseverance, in defence 
 of its altars and homes ; until, at the close of the eleventh ceu- 
 tuiy, Ireland rose up in her united strength, shook off the 
 Pagan and fierce invaders from her virgin bosom, and cast them 
 into the sea. The faith and religion of Christ triumphed, and 
 Ireland was as Catholic, though far from being as holy, at the 
 end of the eleventh as she was at the end of the eighth century. 
 Now we can only realize the greatness of this result by com- 
 paring it with the history of other nations. Behold, for instance, 
 how completely the Mussulman invasions destroyed the Chris- 
 tianity of those ancient peoples of the East who had received 
 the faith from the lips of the apostles themselves ; how thor- 
 oughly the Saracens succeeded, in a few years, in destroying 
 the Christian faith of the north of Africa — that once famous 
 and flemishing Church, the Alexandria of St. Mark, the Hippo 
 of St. Augustine, the Carthage of St. Cyprian. History attests 
 that nothing is more subversive of the religion of a people than 
 Jong-continued war ; and of this great truth we have, without 
 going to the East or to Africa, a most melancholy proof in the 
 history of England. " The Wars of the Roses," as the strife 
 between the Houses of Lancaster and York was called, cover a 
 space of only thirty years, from 1455 to 1485. This war was 
 not directed at all against religion, but was simply a contention 
 of two great rival Houses struggling for the sovereignty ; and 
 yet it so demoralised the English people that they were pre- 
 pared to accept, almost without a struggle, the monstrous form 
 of religious error imposed upon them at the so-called Eeformar 
 Hon — an heretical Church with a tyrant, an adulterer, and a 
 murderer for its head. Contrast with these and many other 
 such terrible examples the glory of a nation that emerged fiom 
 a contest of three hundred years, which was really a religious 
 war, with faith unimpaired, and untarnished by the least stain 
 of superstition or infidelity to God. 
 
 It is not necessary for us to-day vo recall the sad events 
 thitt followed the Danish invaflion of Ireland. The crowa of 
 
22 LEOTUKBS AND 8EBM0NS. 
 
 empire fell from Ireland's brows, and the heart broke in the 
 nation's bosom. 
 
 " The emerald gem of the western world 
 Was set in the crown of the stranger," 
 
 It is, however, worthy of remark that although Ireland never 
 was united in her opposition to her English invader, as she had 
 been at Clontarf, still the contest for national existence was so 
 gallantly maintained that it was four hundred years since the 
 first Norman invasion before the English monarch ventured to 
 assume the title of " King of Ireland." It was in 1169 the 
 English first landed, and it was on the 19th of June, 1541, that 
 the royalty of Ireland was first transferred to an English dynasty, 
 and the Lordship of the Island of Saints conferred on one of the 
 most wicked and inhuman monsters that ever cm'sed the earth, 
 King Henry VIII. And now a new era of persecution and 
 sorrow opened upon Ireland. The nation was commanded to 
 gi\e up its faith and religion. Never, since the beginning of 
 the world, was an all-important question more solemnly put ; 
 never has it been more triumphantly and clearly answered. 
 The question was : Were the Irish people prepared to stand by 
 their ancient faith, to unite in defence of their altars, to close 
 with the mighty persecuting power of England, and fight her in 
 the cause of religion ? Solemnly and deliberately did Ireland 
 take up the gage and accept the great challenge. The issue 
 seemed scarcely doubtful. The world refused to believe that a 
 people who could never 'i>e united in the defence of their national 
 existence would unite as one man in defence of religion ; or that 
 the power which had succeeded in breaking Ireland's sceptre 
 and wresting her crown should be utterly defeated in its 
 mightiest and most persistent efforts to destroy Ireland's 
 ancient faith. Yet so it was to be. The " Island of Saints 
 and Doctors" was destined to be a land of neroes and martyrs, 
 and the sacred cause of Ireland's nationality was destined to 
 be saved in the victory which crowned her wonderful and 
 glorious battle for her faith. This is not the time nor the 
 occasion to dwell upon the details of that terrible struggle in 
 which the whole strength of earth's mightiest people was put 
 forth against us, which lasted for three hundred years ; which 
 was fought out on a thousand battle-fields ; which deluged 
 Ireland with the best blood of her children, and reduced her 
 fairest provinces, over and over again, to the condition of a 
 
St. patbiok. 23 
 
 Waste and desert land. But the Celt was entrenched in the 
 citadel of God ; the light of divme truth was upon his path, 
 the power of the Most High nerved his arm, and the spirit of 
 Patrick hung over him, like the fiery cloud that overshadowed 
 the hosts of Israel upon the plains of Edom and Madian. 
 
 Ireland's preservation of the Catholic faith has been a puzzle 
 to the world, and men have sought to explain ia many different 
 ways the extraordinary phenomenon. Some ascribe it to our 
 natural antipathy and opposition to England and everything 
 English , others again allege the strong conservatism of the 
 Irish character, and its veneration for ancient rites and usages, 
 merely because they are ancient ; whilst English historians and 
 philosophers love to attribute it to the natural obstinacy and 
 WTong-headedness which they say is inherent in the Irish. I 
 do not deny that, amongst the minor and human causes that 
 influenced the religious action of the Irish people, there may 
 have been a hatred and detestation of England. The false re- 
 ligion was presented to our fathers by the detested hands that 
 had robbed Ireland of her crown ; it was offered at the point 
 of the sword that had shed (often treacherously and foully) the 
 blood of her bravest sons ; the nauseous dose of Protestantism 
 was mixed in the bowl that poisoned the last of her great earls 
 — Owen Eoe O'Neil. All this may have told with the Irish 
 people ; and I also admit that a Church and religion claiming 
 to be of God, with such a divinely appointed head as the saintly 
 ' Henry the Eighth^ — such a nursing mother as the chaste Eliza- 
 beth — such gentle missionaries as the humane and tendet- 
 hearted Oliver Cromwell, may have presented diflSculties to a 
 people whose wits were sharpened by adversity, and who were 
 not wholly ignorant of the Christian character, as illustrated in 
 the history and traditions of their native land. 
 
 We may also admit to a slight extent the conservatism of 
 the Irish character and its veneration for antiquity. Oh, how 
 much our fathers had to love in their ancient religion ! Their 
 history began with their Christianity; their glories were all 
 mtertwined with their religion ; their national banners were in- 
 scribed with the emblem of their faith, " the green, immortal 
 Shamrock ;" the brightest names in their history were all asso- 
 ciated with their religion — " Malachi of the collar of gold," 
 dying in the midst of the monks, and clothed with their holy 
 habit on an island of Lough Enuel, near MuUingar, in Meath 
 
2i LBOTUEBS AKD SEBMONS. 
 
 —Brian, " the great Kiug," upholding the crucifix before his 
 army on the morning of Cloutarf, and expiring in its embraces 
 before the sunset— the brave Murkertach O'Brien answering 
 fearlessly the threat of William Rufus— for, when the English 
 king said, looking towards Ireland, " I will bring hither my 
 ships, and pass over and conquer the land ;" " Hath the King," 
 asked the Irish monarch, "in his great threatenings said, 'if 
 it please God?' " And when answered, no ; " Then tell him," 
 exclaimed the Irish hero, " I fear him not, since he putteth 
 his trust in man and not in God" — Roderick O'Connor, the 
 last " High King" of Ireland, closing his career of disaster 
 and of glory amongst the canons of the Abbey of Cong— saint, 
 and bard, and hero, all alike presented themselves to the 
 national mind surrounded by the halo of that religion which the 
 people were now called upon to abandon and despise. Power- 
 ful as was the appeal of history and antiquity, I cannot give it 
 any great weight in the preservation of Ireland's Catholicity. 
 I do not believe that adherence to ancient usage because of its 
 antiquity is a prominent feature of Irish character. We are by 
 no means so conservative as our English neighbours. It is 
 worthy of remark that usages and customs once common to 
 both countries, and long since abandoned and forgotten in Ire- 
 land (Christmas " waits," for instance, harvest-home feasts, 
 Maypole dances, a^id the like) are still kept up faithfully and 
 universally throughout England. The bells which, in Catholic 
 times, called the people to early Mass on Sunday morning, are 
 still rung out as of old, through mere love of ancient usage, 
 although their ringing from Protestant towers in the early 
 morning has no meaning whatever ; for it invites to no service 
 or prayer. And yet, in the essential matter of religion, where 
 antiquity itself is a proof of truth, the conservative English 
 gave up the old faith for the new ; whilst the Irish — in other 
 things so regardless of antiquity — died and shed thek blood 
 for the old religion, rather than turn for one instant to the 
 strange imposture of the new. 
 
 But none of these purely natural explanations can explain 
 the supernatural fact, that a whole people preferred, for ten 
 generations, confiscation, exile, and death, rather than surrender 
 their faith; and the true reason lies in the all-important circum- 
 stance, that the religion of the Irish people was the true religion 
 of Jeflus Christ, bringing not only light to the intelligence, but 
 
ST. fatbioe:. 26 
 
 grace and strength to the heart and will of the nation. The 
 Kght of their divine faith showed them the hollowness and 
 fallacy of Protestantism, in which they recogaized an outrage 
 upon common sense and reason, as well as upon God ; and the 
 grace of their holy Catholic religion enabled them to suffer and 
 die in its defence. Here it is that we recognize the providence 
 of God in the preaching of St. Patrick. The new and false 
 religion assailed precisely those points of Catholic teaching 
 which he had engraved most deeply on the mind and heart of 
 Ireland, as if he had anticipated the trial and prepared for it. 
 Attachment to the Holy See was more than a sentiment ; it 
 was a passion in the Irish bosom. Through good report and 
 evil report, Ireland was always faithful to Peter's chair ; and 
 it is a curious fact, that, when the Christian world was con- 
 fused by the pretensions of Antipopes, and aU the nations of 
 Christendom were, at one time or other, led astray, so as to 
 acknowledge some false pretender, Ireland, with an instinct 
 truly supernatural, never failed to discover, to proclaim, and to 
 obey the true pontiff. She is the only Catholic nation that 
 never was, for a moment, separated from Peter, nor mistaken 
 in her allegiance to him. Her prayer, her obedience, her love, 
 were the sure inheritance of each succeeding Pope, from Celes- 
 tine, who sent Saint Patrick to Ireland, to Pius, who, in our 
 own day, beheld Patrick's children guarding his venerable 
 throne, and prepared to die in his glorious cause. In every 
 Catholic land uuion with Rome is a principle. In Ireland it 
 was a devotion. And so, when the evil genius of Protestantism 
 stalked through the land, and with loud voice demanded of the 
 Irish people separation from Rome, or their lives, — the faithful 
 people of God consented to die, rather than to renounce the faith 
 of their fathers, transmitted to them through the saints. 
 
 Devotion to the Mother of God was the next great feature of 
 Patrick's preaching and of Ireland's Catholicity The image of 
 ill that was fairest in nature and grace, which arose before the 
 Byes of the people, as depicted by the great apostles, captivated 
 their imaginations and their hearts. They called her in their 
 prayers '•'■Miden dheelish," their darling Virgin. In every family 
 in the land the eldest daughter was a Mary ; every Irish maid 
 or mother emulated the purity of her vu'ginal innocence, or the 
 strength and tenderness of her maternal love. With the keen- 
 ness of love they associated their daily sorrows and joys with 
 
26 LEOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 hers ; and the ineffable grace of maiden modesty which cinng 
 to the very mothers of Ireland seemed to be the brightest reflec- 
 tion of Mary which had lingered upon the earth. Oh, how 
 harshly upon the ears of such a people grated the detestable 
 roice which would rob Mary of her graces, and rob the world 
 of the light of her purity and the glory of her example ! Never 
 was the Mother of God so dear to Ireland as in the days of the 
 nation's persecution and sorrow. Not even in that bright day, 
 when the Virgin Mother seemed to walk the earth, and to have 
 made Ireland her home, in the person of theu: own St. Bridget, 
 was her name so dear and the love of her so strong, as in the 
 dark and terrible time when, church and altar being destroyed, 
 every cabin in the laud resounded with Mary's name, invoked 
 in the Holy "Rosary, the great devotion that saved Ireland's 
 faith. 
 
 yhe third great leading feature of our holy religion assailed 
 by Protestantism was the sweet and tender doctrine of prayei 
 and love for the dead. That which is opposed to divine truth 
 is always, when we analyze it, an outrage on the best instincts 
 of man. Remembrance of those who are gone,' and a desire to 
 help them, to communicate with them, seems natural to us all : 
 and the more tender-hearted and affectionate and loving a peopla 
 are, the more deeply will they realize and appreciate the Catholic 
 doctrine of Purgatory, and prayer for the dead. How terrible 
 is the separation of death, as seen from the Protestant point of 
 view ! In the Catholic church this mystery of death is despoiled 
 of its worst bitterness. It is only a removal from our bodily 
 sight, as if the loved one were only gone on a journey for a 
 few days, to return to us again. Our intercourse with him 
 does not cease ; nay, we can do more for him now than ever 
 we could in life, and by our prayers obtain for him the relief 
 and consolation that will never be forgotten during the long 
 day of eternity in Heaven To a people like the Irish, natu- 
 rally affectionate, and strongly attached to each other, the 
 Christian doctrine of prayer for the dead must always be grate- 
 ful Our history served to deepen this portion of our Catholic 
 devotion, for it was a history of sorrow and of national priva- 
 tion ; and sorrow softens and enlarges the heart. A people 
 who had lost so much in life turned the more eagerly and 
 lovingly to their dead. I remember once seeing an aged woman 
 weeping and praying over a grare in Ireland; and when I 
 
ST. PATBIOK. J7 
 
 questioned hei endeavouring to console her, she said, " Let 
 me cry my fill , all that I ever had in this world are here in 
 this grave ; all that ever brought me joy or sorrow is here 
 under this sod ; and my only consolation in life is to come 
 here and speak to them, and pray for them, and weep." We 
 may imagine, but we cannot realize, the indigoation of our 
 lathers, when the heartless, sour-visaged, cold-blooded men of 
 Geneva came to them to tell them that henceforth they must be 
 " unmindful of their dead, like others who have no hope." This 
 doctrine may do for the selfish, light-hearted, thoughtless world- 
 ling, who loves nothing iu death, and who in life only loves for 
 his own sake ; but it would scarcely be acceptable to a generous, 
 pure, and lovi ig race, and withal a nation of mourners, as the 
 Irish were, w'len the unnatural doctrine was first propounded 
 to them. 
 
 Finally, the new religion was represented to the Irish people 
 by men who grotesquely represented themselves as successors 
 of the apostles. The popular mind in Ireland had derived its 
 idea of the Christian priesthood from such men as Patrick, 
 Columba, of lona, and Kevin, of Glendalough. The great 
 majority of the clergy in Ireland were at all times monastic — 
 men who added to the character and purity of the priest the 
 sanctity and austerity of the Cenobite. The virtues of Ireland's 
 priesthood made them the admiration of other lands, but the 
 idols of their own people. The monastic glories of ancient 
 Lismore and Bangor were still reflected from Mellifout and 
 Bective ; the men of Glendalough and ancient Armagh lived 
 on in the Franciscan and Dominican abbeys throughout the 
 land ; and the Catholic Church presented, in the 1 6th century, 
 in her Irish clergy, the same purity of life, sanctity and austerity 
 of morals, zeal, and learning, which illumined the world in ages 
 gone by. Steeped as our people were in sorrow, they could 
 not refrain from mirth at the sight of the holy " apostles " of 
 the new religion, the men who were to take the place of the 
 Catholic bishops, and priests, and monks, to teach and illustrate 
 by their lives the purer gospel which' had been just discovered 
 — the Mormouism of the 16th century. Euglish renegade 
 monks, English apostate priests, Euglish djuuken brawlers, 
 with a ferocious English aimy at their back, invaded the laud, 
 and, parading themselves, with their wives or concubines, be- 
 fore the eyes of the astonished and disgusted people, called 
 
28 LECTURES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 upon the children of St. Patrick and St. Columba to receive them 
 as "the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries 
 of God." Their religion was worthy of them — they had no 
 mysteries to dispense to the people ; no sacrifice, no penance, no 
 confession of sin, no fasting, no vows to God, no purity, no 
 counsels of the Gospel, no sacrament of matrimony, no priest- 
 hood, no anointing of the sick, no prayer for the dead. Gracious 
 God ! They came to a people whom they had robbed of their 
 kingdom of earth, and demanded of them also the surrender of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven ! Was ever heard such audacity ! 
 What wonder that Ireland took her own priest, her " soggarth 
 aroon" to her bosom ! Never did she know his value till now. 
 It was only when she had seen his hideous counterpart that 
 she realized all that she possessed in the humble child of St. 
 Francis and St. Dominick. The sunshine is all the more wel- 
 come when we have seen the blackness of the night ; the sweet 
 is all the sweeter when we have tasted bitterness ; the diamond 
 shines all the brighter when its dull, glassy counterfeit is set 
 beside it ; and the Angel of Light has all the purer radiance 
 of heaven around him after the affrighted eye has caught a 
 glimpse of the Spirit of Darkness. As strangers, the ministers 
 of Protestantism have lived in Ireland for three hundred years ; 
 as strangers they live in the land to-day. The people and 
 their clergy, united, " have fought the good fight, have kept 
 the faith," and we have hved to see the triumph of that faith 
 in our own day. 
 
 Now, I say that in all this we see the Providence of God b 
 the labour of Ireland's glorious apostle. Who can deny that 
 the religion which St. Patrick gave to Ireland is divine ? A 
 thousand years of sanctity attest it ; three hundred years of 
 martyrdom attest it. If men will deny the virtues which it 
 creates, the fortitude which it inspires, let them look to the 
 history of Ireland. If men say that the Catholic religion 
 flourishes only because of the splendour of its ceremonial, the 
 grandeur of its liturgy, and its appeal to the seuses, let them 
 look to the historj' of Ireland. What sustained the faith when 
 church and altar disappeared "? when no light burned, no organ 
 pealed, but all was desolation for centuries ? Surely the divine 
 life, which is the soul of the Church, of which the external 
 worship and ceremonial are but the expression. But if they 
 will close their eyes to all this, at least there is a fact befor* 
 
ST. PATRIOK. 29 
 
 them — the most glorious and palpable of our day — and it is, 
 that Ireland'* Catholicity has risen again to every external glory 
 of worship, and triumphed over every enemy, Spealiing of our 
 Lord, St. Augustine says, "In that He died He showed Himself 
 man ; in that He rose again He proved Himself God." Has 
 not the Irish Church risen again to more thau her former cjJory? 
 The land is covered once more with fair churches, convents, 
 colleges, and monasteries, as of old ; and who shall say that 
 the religion that could thus suffer and rise again is not from 
 God? This glorious testimony to God and to His Christ is 
 tliine, holy and venerable land of my birth and of my love! 
 glory of earth and Heaven, to-day thy great apostle looks 
 down upon thee from his high seat of bliss, and his heart re- 
 joices ; to-day the angels of God rejoice over thee, for the light 
 of sanctity which still beams upon thee ; to-day thy troops of 
 virgin and martyr saints speak thy praises in the high courts 
 of heaven. \nd I, Mother, far away from thy green bosom, 
 hail thee from afar — as the prophet of old beholding the fair 
 plains of the promised land — and proclaim this day that there 
 is no land so fair, no spot of earth to be compared to thee, no 
 island rising out of the wave so beautiful as thou art ; that 
 neither the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars of heaven, shine 
 down upon anything so lovely sb thee, Ef in ! 
 
30 LBOTUbER AND SERMONS. 
 
 •• THE CHRISTIAN MAN THE MAN OF THE DAY.' 
 
 Mr friends, I have selected as the subject on which to address 
 you, the following theme : — " The Christian Man the Man of 
 the Day." You may, perhaps, be inclined to suppose that I 
 mean by this, that, in reality, the Christian man was the actual 
 man of the day. That he was the man whom our age loved to 
 honour ; that he was the man who, recognized as a Christian 
 man, received, for that very reason, the confidence of his fellow- 
 men, and every honour society could bestow upon him. Do 
 not flatter yourselves, my friends, that this is my meaning. I 
 do not mean to say that the Christian man is the man of the 
 day. I wish I could say so. But, what I do mean is, that 
 the Christian man, and he alone, must be the man of the day ; 
 that our age cannot live without him ; and that we are fast 
 approaching to such a point that the world itself will be obliged, 
 on the principle of self-preservation, to cry out for the Christian 
 man. But to-day he is not in the high places ; for the spirit 
 of the age is not Christian. Now, mark you, there is no man 
 li\ing who is a greater lover of his age than I. And, priest as 
 I am, and monk as well, coming here before you in this time- 
 honoured old habit ; coming before the men of the nineteenth 
 feiitury as if I were a fossil dug out of the soil of the thirteenth 
 century, I still come before you as a lover of the age in which 
 we live ; a lover of its freedom, a lover of its laws, and a lover 
 3f its material progress, But, I still assert that the spirit of 
 ^his nineteenth century ot ours is not Catholic. Let me prove 
 it. At this very moment the Catholic Church, through her 
 oisliops, is engaged in a hand-to-hand and deadly conflict, in 
 Riigland, in Ireland, in Belgium, in Prance, in Germany, ay, 
 (lid ill this country, with the spirit of the age; and for what? 
 The men in power try to lay hold of the young child, to control 
 liiat child's education, and to teach him all things except religion. 
 I5ut the bishops come and say : " This is a question of life and 
 ■l«;ith. and tlip rliilrl must be a Christian. Unless he is taught 
 
tHE OHEIStlAN MAN THE MAN OF THE BAY. 81 
 
 of God, it is a thousand times better that he were never taught 
 at all ; for knowledge without God is a curse, and not a bless- 
 ing." Now, if our age were Christian, would it thus seek ta 
 banish God from the schools, to erase the name of God clean 
 out of the heart of the little ones, for whom Jesus Christ, the 
 Son of God, shed his blood ? Another proof that the spirit of 
 our age is anti-Christian, for whatever contradicts Christ is 
 anti-Christian. Speaking of the most sacred bond of matri- 
 mony, which lies at the root of all society, at the fountain-head 
 of all the world's future — Christ has sai^, " What God hath 
 joined together, let no man put asunder." But the Legislature, 
 the spirit of this age of ours, comes in and says : " I will not 
 recognize the union as of God, and I will reserve to myself the 
 right to separate them." They have endeavoured to substitute 
 a civil marriage for the holy sacrament which Jesus Christ 
 sanctified by Ilis presence, and ratified by His first miracle — 
 the sacrament which represents the union of Christ" with His 
 Church. "I will not let God join them together," says the 
 State. *' Let them go to a magistrate, or a registrar." Let 
 God have nothing to do with it. Let no sanctifying influence 
 be upon them ; leave them to their own lustful desires, and to 
 the full enjoyment of wicked passions, unchecked by God. 
 Thus the State rules, in case of marriage, and says : " I will 
 break asunder that bond." And it made the anti-Chiistian law 
 of " divorce." " Whom God joins together," says the Master 
 of the world — whose word shall never pass away, though 
 heaven and earth shall pass away — " let no man separate." 
 God alone can do it ; the man who dares to do it shakes the 
 very foundation of society, and takes the key-stone out of the 
 arch. But the State, comes, and says : " I will do it." This 
 is the legislation — this is the spirit of our age. I do not mean 
 to say that there were not sins and vices in other ages ; but I 
 have been taught to look back from my earliest childhooil, 
 backward full six hundred years, to that glorious thirteentli 
 centurj-, for the bloom and flower of sanctity prospering upon 
 the earth. Still, I have been so taught as not to shut my eye,« 
 to its vices ; and yet, the spirit of that age was more Christi;in 
 than the spirit of this. The spirit tliat had faith enough to 
 declare that, whatever else was touched by profane hands, the 
 sanctity of the marriage sacrament was to remain inviolate — 
 when all recofftuzed its living author as the Son of God. It 
 
32 LBCTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 had faith enough to move all classes of men as one individua,!, 
 and as possessing one faith, and one lofty purpose. And this 
 is not the spirit of our age. Whom do we hear are the men 
 who invent and make our telegraphs and railroads, and all the 
 great works of the day ? We hear very little about Catholics 
 being anything general^ but lookers-on in these great matters ; 
 that Catholics had nothing to do with them, and that they 
 came in simply to profit by the labour of others. And yet, 
 don't we know that nearly every great discovery made upon 
 this earth was made by some Catholic man or other ; and some 
 of the greatest of them all made by old monks in their clois- 
 ters. And as the spirit of the day makes the man of the day, 
 I cannot congratulate you, my friends, that the man of the day 
 is a Christian man. Now, I am here this evening, to prove to 
 you, and to bring home to your intelligence, two great facts — 
 remember them always : First — The man the world makes in- 
 dependent of God, is such an incubus and curse, that the world 
 itself cannot bear him, that the world itself cannot endure him; 
 for, if he leaves his mark upon history, it is a curse, and foi 
 evil. Secondly — The only iniiuence that can purify and save 
 the world, is the spirit of that glorious religion which alone 
 represents Christianitj'. Call me no bigot if I say, that the 
 Catholic Church alone is the great representative of Christianity. 
 I do not deny that there is goodness! outside of it, nor that there 
 are good and honest men who are not of thjs Church. When- 
 ever I meet an honest, truthful man, I never stop to inquire if 
 he is Catholic or Protestant; I am always ready to do him 
 honour, as the noblest work of God. But this I do say — all 
 this is, in reality, represented in the Catholic Church. And I 
 further assert that the Catholic Church alone has the power to 
 preserve in man the consciousness that' God has created him. 
 And, now, having laid down my opening remarks, let us look 
 at the man of the day, and see what he is. 
 
 Ms Qy of you have the ambition to become men of the day. 
 It is a pleasant thing to be pointed at and spoken of as a man 
 of the day. " There is a man who has made his mark," There 
 is a man of whom every one speaks well ; the intelligent man, 
 the successful man, the man who is able to propound the law 
 by expressing his opinion — able to sway the markets ; the man 
 whose name is blazoned everywhere. You all admire this man. 
 But let us examine him in detail — for he ia made for mere show, 
 
THE OHRISTIAN MAN 1'HE MAN OF THE DAY. 33 
 
 a mere simulacrum of a man. Let us pick him la pieces, and 
 see what is in tliis man of the day — whether he will satisfy God 
 or man — see whether he will come up to the wants of society 
 or not Man, I suppose you will all admit, was created by 
 Almighty God for certain fixed, specific purposes and duties. 
 Surely, the God of wisdom, of infinite love — a God of infinite 
 knowledge and freedom, never communicated to an intelligent 
 human being power and knowledge like his own, without having 
 some high, grand, magnificent, and God-like purpose in view. 
 A certain purpose must have guided Him. Certain duties must 
 have attached to the glorious privileges that are thus imprinted 
 in man's soul as the image of God. And hence, my friends, 
 there are the duties man owes to the family, the duties of the 
 domestic circle, the duties he owes to society, to those who 
 a me within the range of his influence, within the circle of his 
 friendship, to those with whom he has commercial or other 
 relations, the duties he owes to his country and native land, hia 
 political duties ; and, finally, over them all, permeating through 
 them all, overshadowing all that is in him, there is his great 
 duty to Almighty God, who made him. Now, what are man's 
 duties in the domestic circle 1 Surely, the first virtue of man in 
 this circle is the virtue of fidelity, representing the purity of Jesus 
 Christ in the man's soul ; the virtues of fidelity, stability, and im- 
 movable loyalty to the vows he has pledged before high heaven, 
 and to all the consequences these vows have involved. God 
 created man with a hearty disposition to love and to find the 
 worthy object of his love ; and to give to that object the love of 
 his heart is the ordinary nature of man. A few are put aside — 
 among them the priest and the monk and the nun, to whom 
 God says, " I, myself, will be your love ; " and they know no 
 love save that of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet they have the 
 same craving for love, the same desire, and the same necessity. 
 But to them the Lord says : " I, myself, will be your love, your 
 portion, your inheritance." These, I say, are those who are 
 wrapt in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ This is not the 
 time nor the occasion for me to dwell upon tlie infinite joy and 
 substantial happiness of the days of those who have fastened 
 their hearts upon the great heart of Jesus Christ ; but, for the 
 ordinary run of mankind, love is a necessity; and the Almighty 
 has created that desire for love in the hearts of all men ; and it 
 has bec<»ae sanctified and typical of the union of Christ with 
 
34 LEOTUBBS AND SERMONS. 
 
 His Church — typical of the grace that Christ poured abroad 
 upon her. This love and union must lie at the very fountain- 
 head of society, it must sanctify the very spring whence all our 
 human nature flows ; for it is out of this union of two loviug 
 hearts that our race is propagated, and mankind continued to 
 live on earth. What is the grace that sanctifies it ? I answer, 
 it is the grace of fidelity. Understand me well ; there is nothing 
 more erratic, nothing more changeable than this heart of man , 
 nothing wilder in its acts, in its propensities, than this treacher- 
 ous heart of man. I know of no greater venture that a human 
 being can make than that which a young woman makes when 
 she takes the hand of a young man, and hears the oath from his 
 lips that no other love than hers shall ever enter his heart. A 
 treacheruus, erratic heart is this of man ; prone to change, 
 prone to evil influences, excited by every form of passing beauty. 
 But from that union spring the obligations of father and mother 
 to their progeny. Their children are to be educated ; and a? 
 they grow up and bloom into the fullness of their reason, the 
 one object of the Christian father and mother is to bring out of 
 these children the Christianity that is latent there. Christ enters 
 into that young soul by baptism ; but He lies sleeping in that 
 soul, acting only upon the blind animal instincts of infancy ; 
 and, as the child wakes to reason, Christ that sleeps there must 
 be awakened and developed, until that child comes to the full- 
 ness of his intellectual age, and the man of God is fully devel- 
 oped ui Ihe child of earth. Education is nothing unless it 
 brings out the Christ in the man. This is the true end and 
 object ul all education. Now, how does the man of the day 
 fulfil this end 1 how does he fulfil these duties to his wife and to 
 his children, these duties which we call the domestic duties? 
 This " clever " man of the day — how does he fulfil them ? He, 
 perhaps, in his humbler days, before he knew to what meridian 
 the sun of his fortune would one day rise, took to himself a 
 fair and modest wife Fortune smiled upon him. The woman 
 remained content only with her first and simple love, and with 
 fidelity to the man of her choice and the duties which that love 
 brought with them But how is it with the man of the day ? 
 Shall I insult tlie ears of the Christian by following the man of 
 the day through all the dark paths of his iniquity? Shall I 
 describe to )ou the glance of his lustful eye, forgetful of the 
 rows he has made to the one at home ? Can I tell you of the 
 
THE OHEISTIAN MAN THE MAN OP THE DAT. 35 
 
 man of the day, following every passing form, a mere lover of 
 beauty ; without principle, without G-od, without virtue, aud 
 without a thought of the breaking hearts at home ? Shall I 
 tell you of the mau of the day trying to conceal the silvering 
 hand of age as it passes over him, trying to retain the shadow 
 of departed youth — and why ? Because all the worst vices of 
 the young blond are there, for they are inseparable from the 
 man of the day Sometimes, in some fearful example, he comes 
 out before us in all his terrible deformity. The world is aston- 
 ished — the world is frightened for a moment ; 'out men who 
 understand all these things better than you or I come to us, and 
 say, " Oh ! this is what is going on ; this is the order of the 
 day." There is no vestige of purity, no vestige of fidelity. 
 Mind and imagination corrupted ; the very flesh rotting, defiled 
 by excess of uumeutionable sin. And if children are born to 
 the wicked and faithless adulterer, the time comes when the 
 State assumes that which neither God nor man intended it 
 should assume — namely, the office of instructor ; when the 
 State comes and says, " I will take the children ; I will teach 
 them everything excepting God ; I will bring them up clever 
 men, but infidels, without the knowledge of God." Then the 
 man of the day tiu'ns round to the State, and says, " Take the 
 labour off our hands ; these children are incumbrances ; we don't 
 want to educate them ; you say you will." But the Church 
 comes in, like a true mother — like the mother of the days of 
 Solomon ; and with heartbreaking accent says to the father, 
 " Give me the child, for it was to me that Christ said, ' Go and 
 teach ; go and educate.' " But the father turns away. He will 
 not trust his child to that instructor who will bring up his child 
 as a rebuke to him in his old age, for his wickedness, by its own 
 virtue and goodness. The spirit of our age not only tolerates 
 this, but actually assists all this. This man may tell his wife 
 that she is not the undisturbed mistress of her house. He may 
 come in with a writing of " divorce " in his hand, and turn his 
 wife out of doors Yes ; when her beauty and accomplishnionts 
 are not up to the tastidious taste of this man of the day, he 
 may call in the State to make a decree of " divorce," and depose 
 the mother of his children, the queen of his heart. 
 
 Let us now pass from the domestic to the social circle. He 
 is surrounded by his friends and has social influence. lie lias a 
 duty, to lay at least one stone in the buUdiug up of that society 
 
86 LEOTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 of which the Ahuighty created him a membei, jf ,d of which 
 He will demand an account in the hour of death. Every man 
 is a Uving member of society. He owes a duty to that society 
 What is that duty? It is a duty of truthfulness to our friends, 
 a good example to those arouud us, a respect and veneratioB 
 for every one with whom we come iu contact, especially the 
 young 'iveu the pagans acknowledge this in the maxim, 
 " Maxima debetur puero revereniia." The man of the day opens 
 his mouth to vomit forth words of blasphemy, or sickening 
 obscenity, and before him may be the young boy, growing into 
 manhood, learning studiously from the accomplished jester's 
 lips the lesson of iniquity and impurity that will ruin his soul. 
 Hear him, and follow him into more refined and general society. 
 What a consummate hj'pocrite he is, when he enters his own 
 house, dressed for the evening, with a smile upon his face, and 
 with words of affection upon his adulterous lips, he addresses 
 himself to his wife, or to his daughter, or to his lady friends ! 
 What a consummate hypocrite he is ! Ah ! who would imagine 
 that he knows every mysterj of iniquity and defilement, even 
 to its lowest depths ! Ah ! who would imagine that this smiling 
 face has learned the smile of contempt for everything that 
 savours of virtue, of purity, and of God ! Who would imagine 
 hat the man who takes the virgin hand of the young girl in his, 
 and leads her with so much confidence and so much gladness to 
 the altar, who would imagine that that man's hand is already 
 defiled with the touch of everything abominable that the demon 
 of impurity could present to him ! Tsike him in his relations 
 with his friends. Is he a trustworthy friend ? Is he a reliable 
 man? Will he not slip the wicked [jublication into the hands of 
 his young friend to instruct him in vice ? Will he not pass the 
 obscene book from hand to hand, with a pleasant look, as though 
 it were a good thing, although he knows the poison of hell is 
 lurking between its leaves ? Is he a reliable man ? Is he tru-^t- 
 worthy ? Go down and ask his friends will they trust him, and 
 Shey will turn and laugh in your face, and tell yov he is as 
 ' Slippery as an eel." 
 
 This is the man of the day — this boasted hero ol ours — in a 
 social way. Pass a step further on. Take him in his relations 
 to his country, to its legislature, to its government. Take him 
 in wliat they call the political relations of life. What shall I 
 say of him ? I can simply put it all in a nutshell. I aak you 
 
THE OHBISTIAN MAN THE MAN OP THE DAT. 37 
 
 friends, in this our day, suppose somebody were to ask you to 
 say a good word for him as for a friend ; suppose somebody 
 were to ask you the character of the man, and suppose you 
 said : " Well, he is an honest man ; a man of upright character 
 in business; a man of well -ascertained character in society; a 
 good father, a good husband — but, you know — he is a poli- 
 tician ?" I ask you, is there not something humiliating in the 
 acknowledgment — " He is a politician ? " Is it not almost as 
 if you said something dishonourable, something bad ? But 
 there ought to be nothing dishonourable in it. On the contrary, 
 every man ought to be a politician — especially in this glorious 
 new country, which gives every man a right of citizenship, and 
 tells him, " My friend, I will not make a law to bind and govern 
 you without your consent and permission " — why, that very 
 fact makes every man a politician among us. But if it does, 
 does it not also recognize the grand virtue which underlies 
 every free government — which makes every man a sharer in 
 its blessings because he enhances them by his integrity — which 
 makes politics something, not a shame and a disgrace, but 
 something to be honoured and prized as the aim of uuselfish 
 patriotism ? — What is that ? It is a love, but not a selfish love, 
 of his country ; a love, not seeking to control or share its 
 administration for selfish purposes — not to become rich — not to 
 share in this or take that — but to serve the country for its good, 
 and to leave an honourable and unblemished name in the annals 
 of that country's history. Is this the man of the day ? I will 
 not answer the question. I am a stranger amongst you, and it 
 were a great presumption in me to enter upon a dissertation on 
 the politics of America. But this I do know, that if the poli- 
 ticians of this country are as bad, or half as bad as their own 
 newspapers represent them, then it is no credit to a man to be 
 accounted a politician. Some time ago a fellow was arrested 
 xn Prance for having committed several crimes, and whilst he 
 pleaded guilty to the various counts of the indictment, he added, 
 as an extenuating circumstance, "but thank God I am no 
 Jesuit.'' This man had been reading the French infidel news- 
 papers, and he thought a priest something worse than himself. 
 Bad as he was, he thought it was only due to his character to 
 say that he was no Jesuit. " In the lowest depths, there's a 
 lower still," and this criminal imagined that he had not reached 
 the lowest and worst depth of crime as long as he could say 
 
38 LEOTUBES ANB SEEMONS. 
 
 that he was no Jesuit. If a man were arraigned for any con- 
 ceivable crime in this country, he might urge, as an extenuating 
 circumstance, " 'Tis true; I did it; but I am no politician ! " 
 Thanls: God, there are many and honourable exceptions. If 
 there were not many honourable exceptions what would become 
 of society ? Why, society itself would come to a stand-stili. 
 But there are honest and independent men, and no word of 
 mine can be regarded as, in the slightest degree, reflecting ou 
 any man, or class of men. True, I know no one — I speak 
 limply as a stranger coming amongst you, and from simply 
 reading the accounts that your daily papers give. 
 
 Now, I ask you, if the naan of the age, or the day, be such 
 — (and I do not think that I have overdrawn the picture ; nay 
 more — I am convinced that in the words I have used you have 
 recognized the truth — perhaps something less than the whole 
 truth — of " the man of the day " in his social, political, and 
 domestic relations) — I ask you — not as a Catholic priest at all, 
 but as- a man — as a man not without some amount of intelli- 
 e;ei)ce — as one speaking to his fellow-men as intellectual men — 
 can this thing go on ? Should this thing go on ? Are you in 
 society prepared to accept that man as a true man of the day ? 
 Are you prepared to multiply him as the model man 1 Are you 
 |)repared to say : " We are satisfied ; he comes up to our re- 
 quirements I " Or, on the other hand, must you say this : " It 
 will never do : if this be the man of the day, there is an end to 
 society ; if this be the man of the day, it will never do ; we 
 must seek another style — another stamp of man, with other 
 principles of conduct, or else society comes to a deadlock and 
 standstill." And to those two propositions I will invite your 
 attention Go back three hundred years ago When Martin 
 IjUther inaugurated Protestantism, one of the principles upon 
 which he rested his fallacy was to separate the Church from all 
 influence upon human affairs. Protestantism said : " Let her 
 each religion, but let her not be mixing herself up with this 
 [uestion or that." The Church of God, my dear friends, not 
 mly holds and is the full deposit of truth, not only preaches it, 
 lot only pours forth her sacramental graces — but the Church — 
 the Catholic Church — mixes herself up with the thousand ques- 
 tions of the day — not as guiding them, not as dictating or iden- 
 tifying herself with this policy or that, but as simply coming 
 in to declare, in every walk of life, certain principles and rulee 
 
THE OHBIBTIAN MAN TEE MAN OF THE DAT. S9 
 
 of conduct. Here let me advert to the false principle that, out- 
 side of the four walls of her temples, she has nothing to do with 
 man's daily work. This principle was followed out in France 
 in 1792-3, when not only was the Church separated from all 
 legitimate influence in society, but she was completely deposed, 
 for the time being. And now, the favourite expression of this 
 day of ours is : " Oh, let the Catholic priests preach until they 
 are hoarse ; let them fire away until they are black iu the face ; 
 but let us have no Catholicity here, Catholicity there, the priest 
 everywhere ! We will not submit to it, like the Irish, getting 
 the priest into every social relation; taking his advice iu every- 
 thing; acting under his counsel in everything. We will not 
 submit to be a priest-ridden people. We will not submit to 
 have the priest near ns at all, outside of his church. If he 
 stays there, well and good ; let those who want him go to him, 
 but outside the church- walls let every man do as he pleases." 
 For the last century all the Catholic nations of Europe — i»i 
 fact, the whole world — have, more or less, acted upon thit 
 principle. Let us see the advantages of all this. Has the 
 world, society, governments, legislatures, gained everything? 
 To the Church they say, " Stand aside ; don't presume to come 
 into the Senate or the Parliament. We will. make laws without 
 you. Don't be preaching to me about God ; I can get along 
 without you." The world has tried its hand, and it has pro- 
 duced that beautiful man I have described to you — the man of 
 the day— the accompUshed man — the gentleman — the mau in 
 kid gloves — the man who is so well dressed— the maa with the 
 gemmed watch and gold chain — the man with the lacquered 
 hah and well-trimmed whisker. Don't trust his word — he is a 
 liar ! Don't trust him. Oh, fathers of famiUes, children, don't 
 have anything to say to him ! He is a bad man. Keep away 
 from him. Close the doors of your government house — of youi 
 House of Representatives — against him. This is the man whom 
 the Church knows not as her creation ; whom the world and 
 whom society have to fear. If this is the best thing that the 
 world has created, surely it ought to be proud of its offspring | 
 Society lives and can only live upon the purity that pervades 
 the domestic circle and sanctifies it ; upon the truthfulness and 
 integrity that guard all the social relations of life and sanctify 
 them; and upon the pure and disinterested love of country 
 upon which alone true patriotism depends. Stand aside, mai 
 
40 LBOTUBEB AND SEHMONB, 
 
 of the day ! You are unfit for these things. Stand aside. 
 simulacrum, I counterfeit of roan, stand aside. Thou art 
 not fit to encumber this earth. Where is the truthfulness of 
 thy intellect, thou scoffer at all religion ? Where is the purity 
 of thy heart, thou faithless husband ? Where is the honesty 
 of thy life, thou pilfering politician? Stand aside! If we have 
 nothing better than j'ou, we must come to ruin Stand forth, 
 Christian man, and let us see what we can mate of thee ! 
 Hast thou principles, Christian man? He ad^•;lnces, and 
 says : " My first principle is this : that the Almighty God created 
 me responsible for every wilful thought, and word, and act of 
 my life. I berLe\e in that responsibility before God. I believe 
 that these thoughts, and words, and acts shall be my blessed- 
 ness or my damnation for eternity." These arc the first prvi'i- 
 ciples of the Christian man. Give me a man that binds' up 
 eternity with his thoughts, and his words, and his acts of to- 
 day. I warrant you he will be very careful how he tffci'cs, 
 how he speaks, and how he acts. 1 will trust that man, because 
 he does not love honesty for the sake of man, but for the love 
 of his own soul ; not fur the love of the world, but for the love 
 of God. Stand forth, Christian man, and tell us what are 
 thy principles in thy domestic relations, which, as father and 
 husband, thou hast assumed. He comes forth and says : " J 
 believe, and I believe it on the peril of my eternal salvation, 
 that I must be as true in my thought and in my act to the 
 woman whom I made my wife, as you, a priest, are to the altar 
 of Jesus Christ. I believe that, as long as the Angel of Death 
 comes not between me and tb;it woman, she is to be queen of 
 my heart, the mother and mistiess in my household ; and that 
 no power, save the hand of God, can separate us, or break the 
 tie that binds us." Well said! thou faithful Christian maa 
 Well said ! Tell us about thy relations to thy children. The 
 Christian man answers and says : " I believe and I know that 
 if one of these children rises up in judgment against me, and 
 cries out neglect and bad education and bad example ag'ainst 
 me, that alone will weigh me down and cast me into hell for 
 ever." Well said, Christian father! You are the man of 
 the day, so far. With you the domestic hearth and circle will 
 remain holy. When your shadow, after your day's labour, 
 falls across your humble threshold, it is the shadow of a man 
 loving the God of all fidelity, and of all sanctity, in his soul 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MAN THE MAN OF THE DAT. 41 
 
 What are your relations to your friends, Christian mant 
 He answers : " I love my friend in Jesus Christ. I believe 
 that when I speak of my friend, or of my fellow-man, every 
 word I utter goes forth into eternity, there to be registered for 
 or against me, as true or false, i believe that when my friend, 
 or neighbour and fellow-man, is in want or in misery, and that 
 'le sends forth the cry for consolation or for relief, I am bound 
 ;o console him, or to relieve him, as if I saw mj- Lord Himself 
 iying prostrate and helpless before me." " Who are thy 
 enemies, man of faith ? " He answers, " Enemies I have 
 none." " Do you not hold him as an enemy who harms you ? " 
 " No, I see him in my own sin, and in the bleeding hands and 
 open side of Jesus Christ, my God ; and whatever I see there 
 I must love in spite of all injustice." " What are your political 
 relations I" He answers and says, "If any one says of ac 
 other, he is a man who fattened upon corruption, no man can 
 say 80 of me. I entered into the arena of my country's service, 
 and came forth with unstained hands. Whatever I have done, 
 I have done for love of my country, because my country holds 
 upon me the strongest and highest claims after those of God." 
 Heart and mind are there. Oh, how graud is tb« character 
 that is thus built up upon Faith and Love ! Ofa, how grand is 
 this man, so faithful at home, so truthful abroad, sc irreproach- 
 able in the senate or the forum! Where shall we find him? 
 I answer, the Catholic Church alone can produce him. This is 
 a bold assertion. I do not deny that he may exist outside the 
 Catholic Church ; but if he does it is as an exceptioQ ; and the 
 exception proves thi rule. I do not deny much of what ^ have 
 said, if not all, to that glorious name that shall Uve forever as 
 the very type of patriotism, and honour, and virtue, and truth— < 
 the grand, the majestic, the immortal name of George Wash< 
 ingtou, the father of his country!' But, just as a man may 
 find a rare and beautiful flower, even in the field, or by th« 
 roadside, and he is surprised and says, " How came it to be 
 here ? How came it to grow here ? " When he goes into th( 
 garden, the cultivated spot, he finds it as a matter of course, 
 becanse the soil was prepared for it, and the seed was sown. 
 There is no surprise, no astonishment, to find the man of whom 
 I speak — the Christian man — in the Catholic Church. If you 
 (vant to find him, as a matter of course — if you want to find 
 :be agencies that produce him — if you want to find the soil ha 
 
42 LEOTUBBS AND SBEMONS. 
 
 must grow in, if he g^rows at all, you must go into the Catholic 
 Church, decidedly. Nowhere out of the Catholic Church is 
 the bond of matrimony indissoluble. In the Catholic Church, 
 the greatest ruffian, the most depraved man that ever lived, 
 the most faithless woman that ever cursed the world, if they 
 are faithless to everything, they must remain joined by the 
 adamantine bonds that the Church will not allow any man to 
 break. Secondly, the only security you have for all I have 
 spoken of as enriching man in his social and political relations, 
 is in conscience. If a man has no conscience, he can have no 
 truth ; he loses his power of discerning the difference between 
 truth and falsehood. If a man has no conscience, he loses all 
 knowledge and all sense of sin If a man has no conscience, 
 he loses, by degrees, even the very abstract faith that there is 
 for good in him. Conscience is a most precious gift of God ; 
 but, like every other faculty in the soul of man, unless it be 
 exercised it dies out. The conscience of man must be made 
 a living tribunal within him, and he must bring his own soul 
 and his own life before that tribunal. A man may kneel down, 
 he may pray to God, he may listen to the voice of the preacher 
 attentively and seriously; but in the Catholic Church alone 
 there is one sacrament, and that sacrament the most frequent, 
 and the most necessary, after baptism — and that is the sacra- 
 ment of penance; the going to confession — an obligation 
 imposed under pain of mortal sin, and of essential need to 
 every Catholic at stated times ; an obligation that no Catholic 
 can shrink from without covering himself with sin. This is at 
 once a guarantee for the existence of a conscience in a man, 
 and a restraining power, which is the very test, and the crucial 
 test, of a man's life. ^. Catholic may sin, like other men ; he 
 may be false in every relation of life ; he may be false in the 
 domestic circle ; he may be false socially ; he may be false 
 politically ; but one thing you may be sure of, that he either 
 does not go to confession at all, or, if he goes to confession, 
 and comes to the holy altar, there is an end to his falsehood^ 
 there is an end to his sin ; and the whole world around him, in 
 the social cncle, the domestic circle, the political circle, receives 
 an absolute guarantee, an absolute proof that that man must 
 be all that I have described the Christian man to be — a man in 
 whom every one, in every relation of life, may trust and con- 
 fide. This is the tpst. Don't speak to me of Ca<;}ioljcs wljp 
 
THE OHEISTIAN MAN THE MAN OJ" THE DAT. 43 
 
 don't give us this test. When a Catholic does not go to the 
 sacrameuts, I could no more trust in him than in any other 
 man. I say to you, don't talk to me about Catholics who 
 don't go to the sacraments. I have nothing to say of them, 
 only to pray for them, to preach to them, and to beseech them 
 to come to this holy sacrament, where they will find grace to 
 enable them to live up to the principles which they had for- 
 saken. But give me the practical Catholic, the intellectual 
 man ! Give me the man of faith. Give me the man of human 
 power and intelligence, and the higher power, divine principle 
 and divine love ! With that man, as with the lever of Ar«hi- 
 medes, I will move the world. 
 
 Let me speak to you, in conclusion, of such a man. Let me 
 speak to you of one whose form, as I beheld it in early youth, 
 now looms up before me ; so fiiis, in imagination, the halls of 
 my memory, that I behold him now as I beheld him years ago, 
 majestic in stature, an eye gleaming with intellectual power, a 
 mighty hand uplifted, waving, quivering with honest indigna- 
 tion ; his voice thundering, like the voice of a god in the tem- 
 pest, against all injustice and all dishonour. I speak of Ireland's 
 greatest son, the immortal Daniel O'Connell. He came. He 
 found a nation the most faithful, the most generous on the face 
 of the earth ; he found a people not deficient in any power of 
 human intelligence or human courage ; chaste in their domestic 
 relations, reliable to each other, and truthful — and, above all, a 
 people who, for centuries and centuries, had lived, and died, 
 and suffered, to uphold the Faith and the Cross. He came, 
 and he found that people, after the rebellion of Ninety-Bight, 
 down-trodden in the blood-stained dust, and bound in chains. 
 The vuice of Leland was silent. The heart of the nation was 
 broken. Every privilege, civil and otherwise, was taken from 
 them. They were commanded, as the only condition of the 
 toleration of their existence, to lie down in their blood-stained 
 fetters of slavery, and to be grateful to the hand that only left 
 them life He brought to that prostrate people a Christian 
 spirit and a Christian soul. He brought his mighty faith in 
 God and in God's Holy Church. He brought his great human 
 faith in the power of justice, and in the omnipotence of right. 
 He roused the people from their lethargy. He sent the cry 
 for justice throughout the land, and he proved his own ain- 
 «jrity to Ireland and to her cause, by laying down an incomt 
 
44. LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 of sixty thousand pounds a-j'ear, that he might enter into hei 
 Bei rice. He showed the people the true secret of their 
 strength himself. Thundering to-day for justice in the haks of 
 the English Senate, on the morrow morning he was seen in the 
 confessional, and kneeliug at the altar to receive his God — with 
 one hand leaning upon the eternal cause of God's justice, the 
 other leaning upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Upheld by these 
 and by the power of his own genius, he Wt his mark upon his 
 age ; he left his mark upon his country This was, indeed, 
 the " Man of his Day ! " the Christian man, of whom the world 
 stood in awe — faithful as a husband and father ; faithful as a 
 friend ; the delight of all who knew him ! faithful in his dis- 
 interested labours ! with an honourable, honest spirit of self- 
 devotion ia his country's :;ause ! He raised that prostrate 
 form ; he struck the chains from those virgin arms, and placed 
 upon her head a crown of free worship and free education. He 
 made Ireland to be, in a great measure, what he always prayed 
 and hoped she might be, " The Queen of the Western Isles, 
 and the proudest gem that the Atlantic bears upon the surface 
 of ii s green waters." Oh, if there were a few more like him ! 
 Oh, that our race would produce a few more like him \ Our 
 O'Cjnnell was Irish of the Irish and Catholic of the Catholic. 
 We are Irish and we are Catholic. How is it we havft not 
 more men like him ? Is the stamina wanting to us ? Is the 
 intellect wanting to us ? Is the power of united expression in 
 the interests of society wanting to us ? No ! But the religious 
 Irishman of our day refuses to be educated, and the educated 
 Irishman of to-day refuses to be religious. These two go hand 
 in hand. Unite the highest education with the deepest and 
 tenderest practical love of God and of your religion, and I see 
 before me, in many of the young faces on which I look, the 
 stamp of our Irish genius ; I see before me many who may be 
 the fathers and legislators of the Republic, the leaders of our 
 race, and the heroes of our common country and our commoti 
 religiou. 
 
TEMPJilEANOE 45 
 
 T^IMPERANCE. 
 
 My fiieuds : 1 have more than once had the honour of address- 
 
 uig a congiegatiou of fellow-Catholics and fellow-countrymen 
 
 since I came to the United States. I have spoken to them on 
 
 various subjects, all of them important, but never have I been 
 
 entrusted with a more important subject than that of the 
 
 Christian and Catholic virtue of temperance. I cannot forget 
 
 that most of you, if not all of you, are of my own race and my 
 
 own blood. It is a race of which none of us need be ashamed. 
 
 Perhaps our brightest glory, next to that of our Catholic faith, 
 
 is the drop of Irish blood that is in our veins. And I have 
 
 more than once asked myself, What is it that condemns this 
 
 race, whom God has blessed with so much intellect and genius, 
 
 upon whom He has lavished so many of His highest and 
 
 holiest gifts, crowning all with that gift of national faith, 
 
 that magniinceiit tenacity that, in spite of all the powers of 
 
 earth or hell, lias clung to the living Christ and his Church — 
 
 what it is that has condemned this race to be in so many lands 
 
 the hewers of wood and the drawers of water? " Quob regio 
 
 in terris nostri non plena lahoris i " Where is the nation, or 
 
 the land, on the face of the earth that has not witnessed our 
 
 exile and our tears ? And how is it that, whilst this man 
 
 or that man rises to eminence and prosperity, we so often, 
 
 though, thank God, not always, find that the Irishman, by 
 
 some fatality or otlier, is destined to be a poor man, a struggling 
 
 man * Well, there may be many reasons for this undoubted 
 
 fact. It may be our generosity, and I admit that it enters 
 
 largely as a reason. It may be a certain — if I may use the ex- 
 
 pression in this sacred edifice — a certain devil-may-care kind 
 
 of a spirit — " come day, go day, God send Sunday " — that 
 
 doesn't take much heed or much concern to the scraping 
 
 together of dollars in this world. But amongst the causes 
 
 of our depression there certainly is one, and that is the fatal 
 
 vice of intemperance. Now, mark me, my friends, I do not 
 
 say that we drink more than our neighbours. I have lived 
 
 amongst EDglishmen and Scotchmen, and I believe that, as ii 
 
46 LEOTUEES ANT* SERMONS. / 
 
 race — as a nation — the Scotchmen drink more than the Irish- 
 Qien. I have often and often seen a Scotchman at it, and he 
 could drink three Irishmen blind, But, somehow or other, 
 people of other lauds have a trick of sticking to the beer oi 
 the porter, and that only goes into their stomachs and sickens 
 them ; whilst the Irishman goes straight for the poteen or the 
 whiskey ; and that gets into his brain and sets him mad. 
 
 Now, my friends, I want to speak to yon as a glorious, most 
 honourable body of Catholics — mostly of Irishmen — ^banded 
 together as one man, for one purpose ; and that purpose is to 
 vindicate the honour of our manhood, of our religion, and of 
 our nationality, by means of the glorious virtue of self- 
 restraint, or of temperance. And I say that I congratulate 
 you as a society, as the component elements of a largely- 
 spread association or society, because in this our day every- 
 thing goes by association. In every department, in every 
 walk of commercial or social life, we have what in this country 
 »re called " rings," circles, associations, societies. Get up a 
 railway ; you must have a " ring." Open a canal ; you work 
 it by a "ring." Start a political idea ; you bring it prominently 
 before the people by a " ring." Elect an oiBcer to some public 
 office ; it must be done by a " ring." The world that we live 
 in nowadays is a world of associations ; and, unfortunately 
 for us, most of these associations are in the hands of the 
 devil. God must have His ; the Church must have hers ; and 
 men must save themselves, in this our day, just as so many 
 iose themselves, by association. And, therefore, it is necessary 
 for the purpose of strengthening oneself in good resolutions, 
 and of spreading the light of good example around him, that 
 in such a society as this a man should act on his fellow-man 
 by association. Now, if you wish to know the glorious object 
 for which you are associated in this grand temperance move- 
 ment ; if you wish to know the magnificent purpose which you 
 should have in view, all you have to do is to reflect with me 
 upon the consequence and the nature of intemperance, against 
 which you have declared war Let me depict to you, as well 
 as I can, what intemperance Is — what drunkenness is ; and 
 then I shall have laid a solid foundation for the appeal which 
 I make to you, not only personally to persevere in this glorious 
 cause of temperance, but to try, every man of you, like an 
 wangelist of this holy gospel, to gather as many as you can 
 
TEMFBBANOIl, 47 
 
 of your friends and associates, and oi those whom your in- 
 fluence reaches, to become members of this most salutary and 
 honourable body. No man can value a virtue until he knows 
 the deep degradation of the opposite vice. 
 
 Now, man has three relations : namely, his relations to 
 God who- made him, and who redeemed him upon the Cross ; 
 his relations to his neighbour ; and his sacred relations to him 
 self. Consider the vice of intemperance — how it affects this 
 triple relation of man First of all, my friends, what is our 
 relation to God? I answer, if we regard Almighty God as 
 our Creator, we are made in His image and likeness ; if we 
 regard Him as our Redeemer, we are His brothers, in the 
 human nature which He assumed for our salvation. Consider 
 your relations to God as your Creator. The Almighty God, 
 in creating all His other creatures on the earth, simply said, 
 " Fiat," — Let it be — and the thing was made. " Let there be 
 light," said the Almighty God, breathing over the darkness ; 
 immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, the glorious sun 
 poiu'ed forth his light ,• the moon took up her reflection, which 
 she was to bear for all ages of time ; and every star appeared, 
 like glittering gems, hanging in the newly-created firmament 
 of heaven. God said, " Let there be life," and instantly the 
 sea teemed with its life ; the bird took living wings and 
 cleaved the air ; the earth teemed with those hidden principles 
 of life that break forth in the spring-time, and cover hill and 
 dale with the verdure that charms the human e^'e. But, when 
 it was the question of creating man, Almighty God no longer 
 said, " Let him be ; " but he said — taking counsel, as it were, 
 with himself — " Let us make man in our own image and like- 
 ness." And then " Unto His own image He made him, frora- 
 ing his body from the slime of the earth " — the body which is 
 as nothing ; and breathing from His divine lips the breath of 
 life, which, in the soul of man, bears the image of God, in 
 being capable of knowledge, in being capable of love, in tlie 
 magnificent freedom of will in which God created man. Behold 
 the image of God reflected in man. God is knowledge ; God 
 s love— .the purest, the highest, the holiest, and most bene- 
 volent love — eternal and infinite love. God is freedom. Man 
 has power of knowledge, in his mtellect ; power of the highest 
 and purest love in his heart, in his affections ; freedom in 
 action. \q these three we ^r" the image of God 
 
48 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 Now, my friends, it is a singular fact that tlie devil maj 
 tempt a man in a thousand ways. He may get him to violate 
 the law of God in a thousand ways ; but he cannot rob him of 
 the Divine image that the law of God sets upon him in reason, 
 in love, and freedom. The demon of pride may assail us ; but 
 the proudest man retains those three great faculties in which 
 his manhood consists ; for man is the image of God The 
 image of God is in him ; his intelligence, love, and freedom 
 are the quintessence of his magnificent human nature that the 
 devil must respect. Just as of old the Lord gave to the devil 
 the power to strike his servant, Job ; to afflict him ; to cover 
 him with ulcers ; to destroy his house and his children ; but 
 commanded him to respect his life — not to touch his life, — so 
 Almighty God -.cenis to say to the very devils of hell: " You 
 may lead man, by temptations, into whatsoever sins ; but you 
 must respect his manhood ; he must still remaui a man." To 
 all except one I There is one devil alone — one terrible demon, 
 alone, who is able not only to rob us of that Divine grace by 
 which we are children of God, but to rob us of every essential 
 feature of humanity, in taking away from us the intelligence by 
 which we know, the affection by which we love, the freedom 
 by which we act as human beings, as we are. Who is that 
 demon ? Who is the enemy not only of God but of human 
 nature? Who is the powerful one who, alone, has the 
 attribute, the infernal privilege, not only of robbing the soul 
 of grace, but of taking from the whole being — from the time 
 he asserts Lis dominion there — every vestige and feature of 
 humanity? It is the terrible Demon of Intemperance. He, 
 alone, can lift up his miscreated brow and insult the Almighty 
 God, not only as the author of grace, but as the very author 
 of nature. Every other demon that tempts man to sin may 
 exult in the ruin of the soul ; he may deiide and insult 
 Almighty God for the moment, and riot in his triumph ; insult 
 Him as tlie outhor of that grace which the soul has lost. The 
 demon of drunkenness, alone, can say to Almighty God : 
 " Thou alone, Lord, art the fountain — the- source — the 
 Creator of nature and of grace. What vestige of grace is 
 here ? I defy you, I defy the world, to tell me that there is a 
 vestige even of humanity!" Behold the drunkard. Behold 
 the image of God, as he comes forth from the drinking saloon, 
 where he has pandered to the meanest, vilest, and most degrad- 
 
TEMPERANCE .. 
 
 ing of the senses — the sense of taste. He has laid down his soul 
 upon the altar of the poorest devil of them all — the devil of 
 gluttony. Upon that altar he has left his reason, his affec- 
 tions, and his freedom. Behold him, now, as he reels forth, 
 senseless and debauched, from that drinking-house ! Where 
 is his humanity ? Where is the image of God ? He is unable 
 to conceive a thought. He is unable to express an idea, with 
 his babbling tongue, which pours forth feebly, like a child, some 
 impotent, outrageous blasphemy against heaven! Where are 
 his affections ' He is incapable of love ; no generous emotion 
 can pass through him ; no high and holy love can move that 
 degraded, surfeited heart. The most that can come to him is 
 the horrible demon of impurity, to stir up within him every 
 foulest and grossest desiie of animal lust. Finally, where is 
 his freedom ? Why, he is not able to walk ! not aale to stand ! 
 he is not able to guide himself ! If a child came along, and 
 pushed him, it would throw him down. He has no freedom 
 left — no will. If, then, the image of the Lord in man be 
 intelligeuce — in the heart and in the will — I say this man is no 
 man. He is a standing reproach to our humanity. He is 
 a deeper and bitterer degradation to us even than the absurd 
 cheory of Darwin, the English philosopher, who tells us that 
 we are descended from apes. I would rather consider niv 
 ancestor an ape than see him lying in the kennel, a drunken 
 man. Such a one have I seen. I have seen a man in the 
 streets, lying there drunk — beastly drunk ; and I have seen 
 the very dogs come and look at him — smell him — wng thcii 
 tails, and walk off. They could walk, but he could not. 
 
 And is this the image of God ? Oh, Father in heaven ! far be 
 it from me to outrage Thee by saying that such a beast as this 
 is Thy image ! No; he is no longer the image of God, because 
 he has lost his intelligence. What says the Holy Ghost, — 
 " Man when he was in honour understood not — he hath been 
 compsL^d to senseless beasts and made like to them," no longer 
 the image of God, for his intelligence is gone — but only a 
 bi lite beast. 
 
 A.nd if such be <,he outrage that this demon of intemper- 
 ance IS able to put upon God, the Creator, what shall we say 
 ot the outrage upon God as the Redeemer ? Not contented 
 with being our Creator and our Sovereign Lord and Master, — 
 with having conferred upon us the supreme honour of being in 
 
50 tBOTUBBS AND SERMONS, 
 
 some degree like unto Him, — Almighty God, in the greatness 
 of His love, came down from heaven and became man ; was 
 incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was 
 made man. He became our brother, our fellow and companion 
 in Nature. He took to Him our humanity in all its integrity, 
 save and except the human person. He took a human soul, a 
 human body, a human heart, human affections, human rela- 
 tions — for He was truly the Son of His Virgin Mother. And 
 thus He b{^'"ame, says St. Paul, " the first-born amongst many 
 brothers." He who yesterday was but a worm, a mere 
 creature of God, a mere servant of God, and nothing more, — 
 to-day, in the sacred humanity of our Lord, becomes associated 
 in brotherhood with Christ, the Son of the Eternal God. As 
 such He can share our sorrows and our joys : we may give 
 Him human pain and human pleasm'e. If we are all that true 
 meii ought to be — all that Christian men ought to be — the 
 honour and glory goes to Christ, the author and finisher of our 
 faith, who in His sacred humanity purchased grace for us at 
 the cost of His most precious blood. If, on the other hand, 
 we degrade ourselves, cast ourselves down, lie down at the 
 feet of the devils, and allow them to trample upon us — then, 
 my dear friends, the dishonour falls not only upon us, but 
 through us upon the nature and humanity that Christ our Lord 
 holds, as He is seated at the right hand of His Father. Our 
 shame falls upon Him, because He was a man ; and so our 
 honour, our sanctity, is reflected back from Him, because it 
 can only come to us from His most sacred humanity. There- 
 fore, I add, that this sin of drunkenness has a particular and a 
 special enormity in the Christian man; for, what we are, 
 Christ, the Son of God, became. We are men ; He became 
 man. If we degrade ourselves to the level of the beasts of 
 the field, and beneath them, then we are degrading, casting 
 down, that sacred humanity which Christ took to Him at His 
 Incarnation. The Son of God respected it so much — He re- 
 spected humaa nature so much — that He took it with Him 
 into heaven, and seated it at the right hand of God. The 
 drunkard disrespects the same nature so much, that he drags 
 it down and puts it beneath the very beasts of the field. 
 Therefore, a special and specific dishonour does this sin, above 
 all others, do to our Lord and Redeemer. More than this, the 
 Son of God became man, in order that He might bring down 
 
TEMPBSANOB. 61 
 
 from heaven the mercy and the grace that was necessary for 
 our salvation. The mercy of God, my friends, is His highest 
 attribute, sm^passiug all Ills works. The greatest delight of 
 God is to exercise that mercy. " It is natural to Him," says 
 the great St. Thomas Aquinas — and, therefore, it is the first of 
 His works ; for it is the first prompting of the nature of God. 
 The mercy of God prompted Him to become man. Now, the 
 greatest injury that any man can offer to Christ our Redeemer, 
 is to tie up His hands and to oblige Him to refuse the exercise 
 of His mercy. This is the greatest injury we can offer to 
 Jod ; to tell the Almighty God that He must not — nay, that 
 He cannot — be merciful. There is only one sin, and one 
 sinner, alone, that can do it. That one sin is drunkenness ; 
 that one sinner is the drunkard — the only man that has the 
 omnipotence of sin, the infernal power to tie up the hands of 
 Grod, to oblige that God to refuse him mercy. I need not 
 prove this to you. You all know it. No matter what sin a 
 man commits — if, in the very act of committing it, the 
 Almighty God strikes him — one moment is enough to make 
 an act of contrition, to shed one tear of sorrow, and to save 
 the soul. The murderer, even though expiring with his hands 
 reddened with his victim's blood, can send forth one cry for 
 mercy, and in that cry be saved. The robber, stricken down 
 in the very midst of his misdeeds, can cry for mercy on his 
 soul. The impure man, even while he is revelling in his 
 impurity, if he feel the chillj' hand of death laid upon him, 
 and cry out, " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " — in that 
 cry may be saved. The drunkard alone — alone amongst all 
 sinners — lies there dying in his drunkenness If all the 
 priests and all the bishops in the Church of God were 
 there, they could not give that man pardon or absolution 
 of his sins, because he is incapable of it, — because he is 
 not a man ! Sacraments are for men, let them be ever so sin- 
 ful — ^provided that they be men. Ton might as well absolve 
 the four-footed beast as lift your priestly hand, my brethren, 
 over the drunkard ! I remember once being called to attend 
 a dying man. He was dying of delirium tremens ; and he was 
 drun^ 1 went in. He was raving of heU, devils, and flames ; no 
 GodI no mercy! I stood there. The wife was there, breaking 
 her heart. The children were there weeping. Said I, ' Why did 
 70Q send for me for this m^a 1 What can I do for himT H* 
 
62 LEOTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 is drunk ! He is dying ; but he is drunk ! If the Pope of 
 Rome were here, what could he do for him, until he gets 
 sober?" The one sin that puts a man outside the pale of 
 Grod's mercy • Long as that arm of God is, it is not long 
 enough to touch with a merciful hand the sinner who is in 
 the state of drunkenness. And this is the greatest injury, I 
 say again, that a man can offer to God, to say to Him, " Lord, 
 You may be just. I know that You don't wish to exercise 
 Your justice ; but You may. You may be omnipotent ; You 
 may have every attribute. But there is one that You must 
 not have, and must not exercise in my regard. I put it out of 
 Your power. And that is the attribute that You love the 
 most of all — the attribute of mercy." Thus the Father in 
 heaven sees — Christ sees — in the drunkard, His worst and 
 most terrible enemy. If, then, I say to you, as Christian 
 men, and as Catholic men, if you love the God who created 
 you — if you love the God who redeemed you — if you respect 
 the sacred image of God, which is in you — and if you respect 
 the mercy of God, which alone can save you — oh, my friends, 
 J. ask you for all this, not, indeed, to be sober man — (for, thank 
 God, you are that already) — but to be zealous, to be burning 
 with zeal to make every man, and especially every Catholic 
 man, sober and temperate as you are, by, every influence and 
 every power which you may bring to bear upon him. I 
 say that, in this, every Catholic man ought to be like a priest. 
 When it is a question of confession or communion — when it 
 is a question of anj' other Christian virtue — it is for us priests 
 to preach it ; it is for us to impress it upon you ; but, when it 
 is a question of the virtue which is necessary for our common 
 humanity ; when it is a question of putting away the sin that 
 robs a man even of his human nature and his manhood — every 
 man of you is as much a priest of that manhood as I am, or 
 any man who is within this sanctuary. We are priests of the 
 Gospel ; you, my friends, as well as we, are priests of 
 humanity. 
 
 Consider next the relation of man as to his neighbour 
 We are bound t(} love our neighbour — every man — I don't 
 care who he is, or what he may be— he may be a Turk, he 
 may be a Mormon, he may be an Infidel — but we must love 
 him ; we are bound to love him. For instance, we are bound 
 to regret any evil that happens to him ; because we are hound 
 
TEMPEBANOB. 53 
 
 to have a certain amount of love for all men. Well, ia that 
 charity which buida us to our neighbour, there is a greater 
 and a lesser degree. A man must love with Christian charity 
 all men. But there are certain individuals that have a special 
 claim on his love, — that he is bound, for instance, not only to 
 love but to honour, to worship, to maintain. And who are 
 they ? The father and the mother that bore us ; and the wife 
 that gave us her young heart and her young beauty ; the 
 children that Almighty God gave us. These, my friends — 
 these gifts of God given to you — the family, your wife, your 
 children — have the first claim upon you, and they have the 
 most striugent demand upon that charity concentrated, which, 
 as Christians, you must still diffuse to all men. Any man 
 that fails in his fraternal charity is no longer a child of God ; 
 " for if any man say he loves God, and love not his neighbour, 
 he is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Any man that 
 hates his fellow-man, or injures him wilfully, is no c-hild of 
 God. 
 
 Amongst those, 1 say, whom we are bound to love, are the 
 wife — the children. And this is precisely the point wherein 
 the drunkard, the intemperate man, shows himself more hard- 
 hearted than the wild beast. The woman that, in her j'outh, 
 and modesty, and purity, and beauty, put her maiden hand 
 into his before the altar of God, and swore away to him her 
 young heart and her j'oung love ; the woman who had the 
 trust in him to take him for ever and for aye ; the woman who, 
 if you will, had the confiding folly to bind up with him all 
 the dreams that ever she had of happiness, or peace, or joy in 
 this world ; the woman that said to him, " Next to God 
 and after God, I will let thee into my heart — and love 
 thee and thee aJjne;" and, then, before the altar of God 
 received the seal of sacramental grace upon that pure 
 love — this is the woman, and her children and his 
 children, to whom the drunkard brings the most terri- 
 ble of all calamities — poverty, blighted beauty, premature old 
 age, misery, a broken heart, sleepless eyes, ragged, wretched 
 poverty of the direst form — the woman whom he swore to love, 
 and to honour, and to cherish, and to render her the homage 
 of his true and manly affection ! Oh, my friends, every other 
 sin that a man may commit may bring against him the cry of 
 »ome soul scandalized : but the drunkard's soul must hear the 
 
54 LEOTUBES AND SBBMONS. 
 
 accusing voice of the passionate cry of misery wrung from the 
 broken heart, and the curse laid at the foot of the altar where 
 the sacramental blessing was pronounced when the youug 
 heart of the wife was given away ! Such a one did I meet. 
 Hear ma I waa oa a mission, some years ago, in a manufac- 
 turing town in England. I was preaching there every evening j 
 aud a man came to me one night, after a sermon on this very 
 subject of drunkenness. He came in — a fine man ; a strapping, 
 healthy, intellectual looking man. But the eye was almost 
 sunk in his head. The forehead- was furrowed with premature 
 wrinkles. The hair was white, though the man was evidently 
 comparatively young. He was dressed shabbily; scarce a 
 shoe to his feet, though it was a wet night. He came in to 
 me excitedly, after the sermon. He told me his history. " I 
 don't know," he said, "that there is any hope for me; but 
 Btill, as I was listening to the sermon, I must speak to you. 
 If I don't speak to some one my heart will break to-night." 
 What was his story ? A few years before he had amassed in 
 trade twenty thousand pounds, or one hundred thousand 
 dollars. He had married an Irish girl — one of his own race 
 and creed, young, beautiful, and accomplished. He had two 
 sons and a daughter. He told me, for a certain time everything 
 went on weU. " At last," he said, " I had the misfortune to 
 oegia to drink : neglected my business, and then my business 
 Degan to neglect me. The woman saw poverty coming, and 
 began to fret, and lost her health. At last, when we were 
 paupers, she sickened and died. I was drunk," he said, " the 
 day that she died. I sat by her bedside. I was drunk when 
 she was dying." "The sons — what became of themf" 
 "Well," he said, "they were mere children. The eldest of 
 them is no more than eighteen ; and they are both transported 
 for robbery." " The girl ?" " Well," he said, " I sent the 
 girl to a school where she was well educated. She came home 
 to me when she was sixteen years of age, a beautiful young 
 woman. She was the one consolation I had ; but I was drunk 
 all the time." " Well, what became of her?" He looked at 
 me. "Do you ask me about that girl?" he said, "what 
 became of her?" And, as if the man was suddenly struck 
 dead, he fell at my feet. " God of heaven ! God of heaven ! 
 She is on the streets to-night— a prostitute 1" The moment he 
 said that word, he ran oui I went after him. " Oh, no ! Oh, 
 
TEMPERAN06. 55 
 
 no !" he said ; " there is no mercy in heaven for me. I left my 
 child on the streets ! " He went away, cursing God, to meet a 
 drunkard's death. He had sent a broken-hearted mother to 
 the grave ; he sent his two sons to perdition ; he seat his only 
 daughter to be a living hell ; and then he died blaspheming 
 God! 
 
 Finally, consider the evil that a man does to himself. Loss 
 of health, first. You know the drunkard's death. You hear 
 what it is. I have over and over again, on my mission — 
 twenty-five years a priest, naturally euough, I must have met 
 alL sorts of cases — I have, over aud over again, had to atteud 
 many dying from drink ; and I protest to you, I have never 
 yet attended a man dying of deliiium tremens, that, for a fort- 
 night after, I was not struck as with an ague at what I had 
 witnessed. On one occasion, a priest attended a man. He 
 had sense enough to sit up in bed and say, " You are a priest ? " 
 He said, " Yes, I am." " Oh," he said, " I am glad of it. 
 Tell me ; I want to know one thing. I want to know if you 
 have the Blessed Sacrament with you?" " I have. The 
 moment he said so, the man sprang out of the bed, on to the 
 floor, crying out like a maniac : " Oh ! take away that God 1 
 take away that God ! That man has God with him. There is 
 no God for me ! " He was dead before the priest left the room, 
 crying out to the last, " There is no God for me ! " 
 
 The drunkard loses health, loses reputation, loses his friends, 
 loses his wife and family, loses domestic happiness, loses every- 
 thing ; and in addition to this, brings upon himself the 
 slavery that no power on earth, and scarcely — be it said with 
 reverence — any power in heaven, can seem to be able to 
 destroy ; all this is the injuiy that man inflicts upon himseK by 
 this terrible sin — the worst of all, as you may easily imagine. 
 What a glorious mission yours is! Yon have raised the 
 standard in defiance to this demon that is destroying the whole 
 world. You have declared that your names shall be enrolled as 
 a monument against the vice of drunkenness, Yon have, 
 thereby, asserted the glory of God in His image — man. The 
 glory of your humanity is restored by the angel of sobriety and 
 temperance ; the glory of Christ rescued from the dishonour 
 which is put upon Him by the drunkard, amongst all otlier 
 smners ; the glory of the Christian woman retrieved and 
 honoured, as every year adds a new. mellowing grace to the 
 
56 LECTUBEB AND SERMONS. 
 
 declining beauty which passes away with youth ; the glory of 
 the family, in which the true Christian son is the reflection of 
 the virtues of his true and Christian father. Finally, the glory 
 rf your own souls, and the assurance of a holy life and a happy 
 death. All this is involved in the profession which you mate 
 to be the Apostles and the silent but eloquent propagators of 
 this holy virtue — Temperance. Therefore do I congratulate 
 you on the part of God who created you. I congratulate you 
 for the regard that you have for the image of that God, on the 
 part of that God who redeemed you. I, His most unworthy 
 but anointed minister, have to congratulate you on the respect 
 which you have for the humanity which the Lord Himself 
 took to Him. On the part of your familj' and your friends, and 
 of the society of which you form so prominent a feature, I con- 
 gratulate you for the happiness and domestic comfort which 
 this virtue will ensure to you and to yours. On the part of 
 dear, and faithful, and loved old Ireland, as an Irish priest, I 
 congratulate you for your manly effort to raise up our people 
 and our race from a vice which has lain at the root of all our 
 national misfortunes and misery. On the part of your bishop 
 — holy, loving, laborious, and earnest — whose joy and whose 
 crown you are — I congratulate you for the comfort and the joy 
 that you will bring to him, to enable him to bear up the burden 
 of the spiritual solicitude of your souls and of the Church. As 
 a priest, for every highest and holiest cause — for every purest 
 source from which human joy can come — I congratulate you, 
 my dear friends, and I ask you to persevere in this glorious 
 effort in the cause of temperance' — the first, the greatest of 
 moral virtues — the grandest virtue which enshrines and pre- 
 serves in it the integrity of our humanity, and prepares that 
 humanity to receive the high, the Divine gifts of grace here, 
 and of glory hereafter in the everlasting kingdom of God. 
 Finally, so deep is the interest I take in this subject, that I 
 shall be only most happy, on every occasion, when my services 
 can be of any benefit or comfort to you, to render those 
 services to you in the sacred cause of temperance. 
 
 The effect of Father Burke's splendid address vipon the 
 vast congregation is indescribable. 
 
 As he proceeded, the audience, by one impulse, stood up in 
 their seats, and crowded up through the aisles, as if each one 
 
TEMPEBANOB. 57 
 
 were anxious to get near the speaker, as if to fix his very features 
 on their memories. Bishop Bayley listened with the closest 
 attention to every word the good priest uttered, and seemed 
 highly pleased and edified ; and at the conclusion of the 
 addi'ess warmly congratulated Father Burke, as did also the 
 reverend pastors present. On the occasion of his lecture in 
 the evening, the Bishop expressed the opinion, that if Father 
 Burke's wordsi upon this subject could be laid before the eyes 
 of every man, and woman, and child in the community, they 
 would be almost sufficient to banish the demon of intemperance 
 from every Catholic household in the land. This is, indeed, a 
 remarkable and generous compliment to the great preacher's 
 effort. 
 
 The regular business of the Convention was now entered 
 upon, the bishop opening the proceedings with prayer. 
 
 Mr O'Brien, the President, on calling the Convention to 
 order, stated that the following resolution had been offered for 
 adoption : 
 
 '■'■Resolved, That the delegates and citizens here present 
 earnestly beg of Father Burke to bear with him when he goes 
 from our midst, and to take with him, back to the old land, the 
 warmest thanks of our hearts for the service and the honour he 
 has done the Catholics of the State of New Jersey by his 
 magnificent discourse before the ' Total Abstinence Union ' 
 this day ; and that we, in the name of our fellow -Catholics of 
 adjoining counties, urgently request of him to meet our people 
 in aggregate mass Convention, at some central and convenient 
 point, to enable them to profit by the vdsdom and genius with 
 which he has treated the temperance question." 
 
 The President supplemented the resolution with grateful 
 refer<?iice to the generous action of their distinguished visitor, 
 and of their own bishop and clergy ; and then called for the 
 sense of the assembly upon the subject of the resolution, when 
 there arose all over the church one solid and resounding " aye," 
 loud enough, as it were, to carry the thanks which it em- 
 bodied to Father Burke's native hills, in the mother-laod 
 beyond the sea. 
 
5S lEOtURES AND SEKM0N8. 
 
 THE ATTKIBUTES OF CATHOLIC CHARITY. 
 
 Mt Dear Friends \ We all read the Scriptures ; but of the 
 many who read them, how few there are who take the trouble 
 of thinking profonndly on what they read! Any one single 
 passage of the Scriptures represents, in a few words, a portion 
 of the infinite wisdom of the Almighty God. Consequently, 
 any one sentence of those inspired writings should furnish the 
 Christian mind with sufficient matter for thought for many 
 and many a long day. Now we, Catholic priests, are obliged, 
 every day of our lives, in our daily office, to recite a large 
 portion of the divine and inspired Word of God, in the form of 
 prayer. Never was there a greater mistake than that made 
 by those who think that Catholics do not read the Scriptures. 
 All the prayers that we, priests, have to say — seven times a 
 day approaching the Almighty God — are all embodied in the 
 words of the Holy Scriptures ; and not only are we obliged to 
 recite them as prayers, but we are also obliged to make them 
 the subject of our daily and our constant thought. I purpose, 
 therefore, in approaching this great subject of the Attributes 
 of Christian Charity, to put before you a text of Scripture 
 which many of you have, no doubt, read over and over again — 
 viz. : the first verse of the Fortieth Psalm, in which the 
 Psalmist says : " Blessed is the man that, understandeth con- 
 cerning the needy and the poor." 
 
 Now, if you reflect, my dear friends, you will find that, at first 
 sight, it seems strange to speak of that man as "blessed" that 
 understandeth concerning the needy and the poor ; there seems 
 to be so little mystery about them ; they meet us at every 
 corner ; put their wants and their necessities before us ; they 
 force the sight of their misery upon our eyes ; and the most 
 fastidious and the most unwilling are obliged to look upon 
 their sorrows, and to hear the voice of their complaint and 
 their sufferings. What mystery is there, then, in the needy 
 and the poor 1 What mystery can there be ? And yet, in 
 the needy, and the poor, and the stricken, there is so profound 
 
THE ATTBIBUTEB OP OATHOLIO OHARITT. S9 
 
 a mystery that the Almighty God declared that few men 
 understand it ; and "blessed is he that ia able to fathom its 
 depths.' What is this mystery ? What is this subject — the 
 one which I have come to explain to you ? A deep and 
 mysterious subject ; one that presents to us far more of the 
 wisdom of the designs of God than might appear at first. 
 What is the mystery which is hidden in the needy and the 
 poor, and in which we are pronounced " blessed " if we can 
 only understand it thoroughly, and, like true men, act upon 
 that understanding? Let me congratulate you, first, that, 
 whether you understand this mystery or not, your presence 
 here to-night attests that you wish to act upon it ; that yours 
 are the instincts of Christian charity ; that the needy and the 
 poor and the stricken ones of God have only to put forth 
 their claims to you, at the pure hands of these spouses of 
 our Lord, and you are ready, in the compassion and the 
 tenderness of heart which is the inheritance of the children of 
 Christ, to fill theu- hands, that your blessings may find their 
 way to the needy and the poor. 
 
 And yet, although so prompt in answering the call of 
 charity, perhaps it will interest yon, or instruct you, that I 
 should invite your consideration to this mystery. What is it 1 
 In order to comprehend it, let us reflect. The Apostle St. 
 Paul, writing to his recently-converted Christians, lays down 
 ihis great rule for them : That, for the Christian man, there 
 are three virtues which form the very life and essence of 
 his Christianity ; and these are — not the virtues of prudence, 
 nor of justice, nor of high-mindedness, nor of nobleness, nor 
 of fortitude — ^no; but they are the supernatural virtues of 
 Faith, Hope, and Love. "Now, there remain to you, 
 brethren," he says, " Faith, Hope, and Cbnrity — these three ; 
 but the greatest of these is Charity." The life of the 
 Christian, therefore, must be the life of a believer — a " man 
 of Faith." It must be a hopeful life — an auticipative life — a 
 life that looks beyond the mere horizon of the present time into 
 the far-stretching eternity that goes beyond it — a life of hope ; 
 but, most of all, it must be a life of divine love. Those are 
 the three elements of the Christian character. Nowadays, it 
 is the fashion to pervert these three virtues. The man of 
 faith is no longer the simple believer. Faith means a bowing 
 down of the intellect to things that we cannot understand, 
 
60 LEOTUKES AND SERMONS. 
 
 because they are mysteries of God. But the idea of religion, 
 nowadays, is to reason and not believe. The Apostle, if he 
 were writing to the men of this nineteenth century, would be 
 obUged to say : " Brethren, now there remain to you argu- 
 ment and reason ; " but not faith ; for faith means, in the miud 
 of the same Apostle, the humbling, uuto full humiliation, of 
 intelligence before the mystery which was hidden for ages 
 with Christ in God, " Faith," says St. Paul, " is the argu- 
 ment of things that appear not." The Catholic Church, now- 
 adays, is called the enslaver of the intelligence — the incubus 
 upon the mind of man. And why? Because she asks him 
 to believe. Miud — men of intelligence who listen to me — 
 because she asks a man to beheve ; because she says to him, 
 " My son, I cannot explain this to you ; it is a mystery of 
 God;" and there is no faith where there is no mystery 
 Where there is the clear vision, the comprehensive conviction 
 of the intelligence, arising from argumentation and reason, 
 there is no sacrifice of the intellect — there is no faith. 
 
 Hope, nowadays, has changed its aspect altogether. Men 
 put their hopes in anythuig rather than in Christ. It is only 
 a few days ago I was speaking to a very intellectual man. He 
 was a Unitarian — a man of deep learning and profound research. 
 Speaking with him of the future, he said to me: "Oh, Father, 
 my future is the ennoblement of the human race; the grandeur 
 of the 'coming man ;' the perfect development, by every scien- 
 tific attainment, by every grand quality that can ennoble him, 
 of the man who is to be formed out of the civilisation and the 
 progress and the scientific attainments of this nineteenth cen- 
 tury." That was his language; and I answered him and said: 
 " My dear sir, my hope is to see Christ, the Son of God, shining 
 forth in all my fellow-men here, that He may ,shiue in them 
 forever hereafter. I have no other hope." 
 
 The charity of to-day has changed its aspect. It has be- 
 come a mere human virtue. It is compassionate, I grant you; 
 but not with the compassion that our Lord demands from His 
 people. It is benevolent, I am willing to grant you. We live 
 in an age of benevolence. I bow down before that human 
 virtue; and I am glad to behold it. I was proud of my fellow- 
 men, seeing the readiness and generosity with which, for 
 instance, they came to the relief of the great burned city on 
 the shores of the northern lake. I am proud when I come 
 
THE ATTRIBUTES OF OATHOLIO OHABITY. 61 
 
 here to hear New York and Jersey City and Hobokeu called 
 " cities of charities." It is the grandest title that tliey could 
 have. But when I come to analyze that charity — when I come 
 to look at that charity through the microscope that the Son of 
 God has put in my hands, viz.: — the light of divine faith — I 
 find all the divine traits disappear, and it remains only a human 
 virtue ; relieving the poor, yet not recognising the virtue that 
 reposes in them ; alleviating their sufferings, touching them 
 with the hand of kindness, or of benevolence, but not with the 
 leverential, loving hand of faith and of sacrifice. 
 
 On the other hand, loudly protesting against this spirit of 
 our age, which admits the bad, and spoils the good; which lets 
 in sin, and then tries to deprive of its sacramental character 
 the modicum if virtue that remains— protesting against all 
 this, stands the great Catholic Church, and says : " Children 
 of men, children of God, Faith, Hope, Charity, must be the 
 life of you; but your Faith and your Hope must be the 
 foundation of your Charity; for the greatest of these virtues 
 is Charity." 
 
 And why ? What is Faith ? Faith is an act of human 
 intelligence ; looking up for the light that cometh from on high 
 — from the bosom of God, from the eternal wisdom of God. 
 Recognising God in that light. Faith catches a gleam of Him, 
 and rejoices in its knowledge. Hope is an act of the will, 
 striving after God, clinging to His promises, and trying, by 
 realizing the conditions, to realize the glory which is the burden 
 of that promise. Charity, alone, succeeds in laying hold of 
 God. The God whom faith catches a glimpse of — the God 
 whom hope strains after — charity seizes and makes its own. 
 And, therefore, " the greatest of these is charity." When the 
 veil shall fall from the face of God, and when we shall behold 
 Him in heaven, even as He is and as He sees us, there shall 
 be no more faith ; it shall be absorbed in vision. When that 
 which we strain after, and hope for, to-day, shall be given us, 
 there shall be no more hope. It shall be lost in fruition. But 
 the charity that seizes upon God to-day, shall hold for all 
 eternity. Charity, alone, shall remain, the very life of the 
 elect of Clod. And, therefore, "the greatest of these is 
 diarity." 
 
 Are there amongst yon, this evening, any who are not 
 Oatholics ? If there be, you may imagine that because I come 
 
 
 
(2 LEOTXTBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 before you in the garb of a Dominican friar of the thirteenth 
 century — with seven hundred -years not only of the traditions 
 of holiness, but even of historic responsibility on my shoulders, 
 m virtue of the habit that I wear — ^you may imagine that I come 
 amongst you, perhaps, with an estranged heart and embittered 
 spirit against those without the pale of my holy, great, loving 
 mother, the Church of God — for which, some day, God grant 
 it may be my privilege to die. But no ! If there be one here 
 to-night who is not a Cathoic, I tell him that I love in him 
 every virtue that he possesses. I tell him " I hope for you, that 
 you will draw near to the light, recognise it, and enter into 
 the glorious halls illuminated by the Lamb of God — the Jerusar 
 lem of God upon earth, which needs not the sun nor the 
 moon, 'for the Lamb is the lamp thereof.'" And most 
 assuredly I love him. But I ask you, my friends, have you 
 faith? Have you simple belief, the bowing down of the 
 intelligence to the admission of a mystery into your minds — 
 acknowledging its truth — whilst you cannot explain it to your 
 reason ? Have you faith, my beloved ? — the faith that 
 humbles a man — the faith that makes a man intellectually as a 
 little child, sitting down at the awful feet of the Saviour, 
 speaking to that child, through his Church ? If you have not 
 this faith, but if you go groping for an argument here or an 
 argument there, trying to buUd upon a human foundation the 
 supernatural structure of divine beUef — then, I ask you, how 
 can you have hope ? seeing that Almighty God stands before 
 you and says : " Without Faith it is impossible to please me ; 
 without Faith it is impossible to approach me ; without Faith 
 you must be destroyed ; for I have said it — and my word 
 cannot fail — he that believeth not shall be condemned." And 
 if you have not Faith and Hope — the foundation — how can 
 you have the superstructure of divine Charity ? How can we 
 believe God unless we know him ? How can we love Him 
 unless iu proportion as we know him ? " Oh, God," exclaimed 
 the groat St. Augustine, " let me know Thee, and know Thee 
 \vf>ll, that I may love Thee and love Thee well !" 
 
 Now, these being the three virtues that belong to the 
 Christian character, let us see how far the mystery which is in 
 tlie needy and the poor enters into these considerations of 
 l'';iith, Hope, and Love. Certain it is that the charity which 
 the Almighty God commands us to have — that is to say, tht 
 
ttfe ATTRIBUTES OP OATHOLIO OHABITT. 63 
 
 love which He commands us to have for himself — is united to 
 the other commandment of the love that the Christian man 
 must have for his neighbour. Certain also it is that the 
 poorer, the more prostrate, the more helpless that neighbour is, 
 the stronger becomes his claim upon our love. Thirdly : it is 
 equally certain from the Scriptures that the charity must not 
 be a mere sentiment of benevolence, a mere feeling of com- 
 passion, but it must be the strong, the powerful hand extended 
 to benefit, to console, and to uplift the stricken, the powerless, 
 and the poor. " For," says St. John, " let us not love in 
 word, or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." And he adds : 
 " He that hath the substance of the world, and shall see his 
 brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him ; how 
 doth the charity of God abide in him ? " Therefore, your 
 charity must be a practical and an earnest charity. Such beiug 
 the precept of God with respect to the needy and the poor, 
 let us see how far faith and hope become the substratum of 
 that charity which must move us towards them. What does 
 faith tell us about these poor ? If we follow the example of 
 the world, building up great prisons, paying physicians, paying 
 those whom it deems worth while to pay for attending the 
 poor, the sick, and the sorrowful — if we consult the world, 
 building up its workhouses, immuring the poor there as if 
 poverty was a crime — separating the husband from the wife, 
 and the mother from her children — we see no trace here 
 of Divine faith. And why? Because Divine faith must 
 always respect its object. Faith is the virtue by which 
 we catch a gleam of God. Do we catch a gleam of Him 
 in His poor? If so, they claim our veneration, tender- 
 ness, and love. Now, I assert that the poor of God, the 
 afiSicted, the heart-broken, the sick, the sorrowful — represent 
 our Lord Jesus Christ upon this earth. Christ, our Lord, de- 
 clared that he would remain upon the earth and would never 
 leave it. " Behold," He saia, " I am with you all days unto 
 the consummation of the world." Now, in three ways Chri.-sf 
 fulfilled that promise. First of all. He fulfilled it in remaining 
 with His Church — the abiding spirit of truth and holiness — td 
 enable that Church to be, until the end of time, the infallible 
 messenger of Divine truth ; that is to say, the light of the world 
 — the unceasing and laborious sanctifier of mankind, '■'■ You 
 are the light of the world," says Christ ; " you are the salt ol 
 
54 Lectures aNd SEHMOiirs. 
 
 the earth. You are ikot only to illumine, but you are to pre- 
 serve and to purify. In order that you may do this, I will re- 
 main with you all days." Therefore is He present in the Church. 
 Secondly, He is present in the adorable sacrament of the altar, 
 and in the tabernacles of the Church— really and truly— as really 
 and truly as He is upon the right hand of His Father. There- 
 fore He said, " I will remain." And He indicated how He was 
 to remain when, taking bread and wine, he transubstantiated 
 them into His body and blood, saying, over the bread, " This is 
 »iy Body," and over the wine, " This is my Blood." But in 
 both these ways Christ, our Lord, remains invisibly upon the 
 earth. No man sees Him. "We know that He is present iu 
 the Church ; and, therefore, when the Church of God speaks, 
 we bow down and say, " I believe," because I believe and I 
 know that the voice that speaks to me re-echoes the voice of 
 my God, the God of Truth. When Christ, our Lord, is put 
 upon that altar, lifted up iu the hands of the priest — lifted up 
 in holy benediction, we bow down and adore the present God, 
 •laying : " I see Thee not, Lord, but I know that behind that 
 sacramental veil Thou art present, for Thou hast said ; Lo, I 
 Lim here ! This is my Body ! This is my Blood!" 
 
 But, in a, third way, Christ our Lord remains upon earth — 
 visibly, and no longer invisible. And in that third way he re- 
 mains in the persons of the poor, the sick, and the afflicted. He 
 identifies Himself with them. Not only during the thirty-three 
 years of His mortal life, when He was poor with the poor, 
 when He was sorrowful and afflicted with the sorrowful, when 
 He bore the burden of their poverty and the burden of our sins 
 on His own shoulders — not only was His place found amongst 
 the poor — He who said " the birds of the air have their nests, 
 the beasts of the field and the foxes have their holes — ^but the 
 Son of Man hath no place whereon to lay His head 1" not only 
 was He poor from the daj' that He was born in a stable, until 
 the day when, dying naked upon the Cross for pure charity, He 
 got a place in another "oian's grave — but He also vouchsafed to 
 identify Himself with His poor until the end of time, as if He 
 said : " Do you wish to find Me ? Do you wish to touch Me 
 with your hands ? Do you wi^ to speak to me words of con- 
 solation and of love 1 Oh, Christian man, go seek the poor and 
 the naked, the sick, the hungry, and the famishing ! Seek the 
 afflicted and the heart-broken, and iu them you will find Me ; 
 
THE ATTBIBUTE8 Of OATHOLIO OHAEITT. 66 
 
 for, Amen, I say unto you, whatsoever you do unto them, that 
 you do unto Me !" Thus does Christ, our Lord, identify Him- 
 self with the poor and the Church. He remains in the world, 
 in His Church, commanding that we shall obey her — for He is 
 God In His sacramental presence we may adore Him : He is 
 God. In His poor — in the afflicted, naked, hungry, famishing, 
 that we may bend down and lift Him up — He is God still ! A 
 most beautiful example of how the saints were able to realize 
 this do we find recorded in the life of one of the beautiful saints 
 of our Dominican Order — a man who wore this habit. He was 
 a Spanish friar. His name was Alvarez of Cordova. He was 
 noted amongst his brothers for the woiderful earnestness and 
 cheerfulness with which he always sought the poor and the 
 afflicted, to succour and console them. AVell, it happened upoB 
 a day that this man of God, absorbed in God and in prayer, 
 went forth from bis convent to preach to the people, and, as he 
 journeyed along the high-road, he saw, stretched helplessly by 
 the roadside, a man covered with a hideous leprosy — ulcerated 
 from head to foot — hideous to behold ; ajid this man turned to 
 him his, languid eyes, and, with faint voice, appealed to aim for 
 mercy and succour. The sun, ui all its noonday fervour, was 
 beating down fiercely upon that stricken man's head. He was 
 unable to move. Every man that saw him fled from him. 
 The moment the saint saw him he went over to him and 
 knelt down by his side, and he kissed the sores of the leprous 
 man. Then taking off the outer portion of onr habit — this black 
 cloak — he laid it upon the ground, and he tenderly took the 
 poor man and folded him in the cloak, lifted him in his arms, 
 and returned to his convent. He entered the convent. He 
 brought the leper to his o fm cell, and laid him on his own little 
 conventual bed. And, having laid him there, he went off to 
 find some refreshment for him, and such means as he could for 
 consoling him. ^le returned with some food and drink in his 
 hands, laid them aside, went over to the bed, and there he found 
 the sick man. He unfolded the cloak that was wrapped around 
 him. Oh ! what is this that he beholds ? The man's head wears 
 a crown of thorns ; on his hands and his feet are the marks of 
 nails, and forth from the wounded side streams the fresh blood! 
 He is dead ; but the marks of the Lord are upon him ; and then 
 the saint knew that the man whom he had lifted up from the 
 roadside was Christ, his God and his Saviovir ! And so, witk 
 
66 tEOTtJSES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 fche eyes of faith, do we recognize Christ in His poor. What 
 follows from this ? It follows, my friends, that the man who 
 thus sees his God in the poor, who looks upon them with the 
 eyes of faith, who recognizes in them something sacramental, 
 ^jae touch of which will sanctify him who approaches them — 
 that that man will approach them with tenderness ind with 
 reverence — that he will consult their feelings — that he will seek 
 to console the heart while he revives the body, and while he 
 puts meat and drink before the sick man or the poor man, he 
 will not put away from his heart the source of his comfort. He 
 will not sepnrate him from the wife of his bosom or the children 
 of his love. He will not relieve him with a voice unmindful of 
 compassion ; bending down, as it were, to relieve the poor. ISlo, 
 but he will relieve him in the truth of his soul, as recognising in 
 that man one who is identified, in the divinity of love and of 
 tenderness, with his Lord and Master. This explains to j'ou 
 the fact, that when the high-minded, the highly-educated, the 
 noblest and best of the children of the Catholic Church — the 
 young lady with all the prospects of the world glittering before 
 her- — with fortune and its enjoyments around her — with the 
 beauty of nature and of grace beaming from her pure counte- 
 nance — when the young lady, enamoured of heaven, and of the 
 things of heaven, and disgusted with the world, comes to the 
 foot of the sanctuary, and there kneeling, seeks a place in the 
 Church's holy places, and an humble share in her ministrations 
 the Church takes her — one of these — her holiest, her best, hei 
 purest ; and she considers that she has conferred the highest 
 honour upon the best of her children, when she clothes her with 
 the sacred habit of religion, and tells her to go and take her 
 pla,ce in the hospital, or in the poor-house, or in the infirmary, 
 or in the orphanage, and sit down and minister to the poor ; not 
 as relieving them, but as humbly serving them ; not as compas- 
 sionating them, but as approaching them with an almost infinite 
 reference, as if she were approaching Christ himself. Thus do 
 we see how the Catholic virtue of charity springs from heaven. 
 All tenderness of heart, all benevolence, all compassion, may be 
 there ; as no doubt it is, in these hearts, in „hese consecrated 
 ones, who in order that they might love Cjrist and His poor 
 all the more tenderly, all the more strongly, vowed to the Sa- 
 viour, at His altar, tliat no love should enter into theur bosom- 
 00 emotions of affection should ever thrill their hearts, except 
 
THE ATTRIBUTES OP OATHOLIO OHAEITT. 67 
 
 lOve for Him ; for Him, whoravar they found Him ; and they 
 have found Him in His poor and in Hia sick. All the teudeiesi 
 emotions of human beuevo'ence, of human compassion, of human 
 gentleness, may be there ; all that makes the good Protestant 
 lady — the good infidel lady, if you will — so compassionate to th< 
 poor ; yet, whilst the worldling, and those without the Churcl 
 bend down to an act of condescension in 'heir charity, thesf 
 spouses of the Son of God look up to the poor, and in theii 
 obedience seek to serve them ; for theh comp ission, their bene- 
 volence, their divinely tender hearts are influo. iced by the divine 
 faith which recognizes the Son of God in tie persona oC the 
 poor and the needy, the stricken and the aiflicU'd. 
 
 This is the Catholic idea of charity in its associations. Whs! 
 follows from this ? It follows, that when I, or the like of me, 
 who, equally with these holy women, have given our lives, and 
 our souls, and our bodies to the service of the Son df God, and 
 of His Church, when we come before our Catholic brethren to 
 speak to them on this great question of CathoUc charity, we do 
 not come as preaching, praying, beseeching, begging. Oh, no] 
 But we come with a strong voice of authority, as commanding 
 you, " If you would see the Father's brightness, remember the 
 poor, and, at your peril, surround them with all the ministrar 
 tions of charity and of mercy." 
 
 And how does hope enter into these considerations? Ah, my 
 friends, what do you hope for at all ? What are your hopes, I 
 ask the Christian man, the benevolent brother "1 I don't care 
 what religion you are of : Brother, tell me your hope ; because 
 hope from its very nature goes out into the future ; hope is a 
 realizing, by anticipation, of that which will one day come and 
 be in our possession. "What are your hopes ? Every man has 
 his hopes. No man lives without them. Every man hopes to 
 attain to some position in this world, or to gain a certain happi- 
 ness. One man hopes to make money and become a rich man. 
 Another man aspires to certain dignities, hopes for them, and 
 labours assiduunsly until he attains them. Another man 
 centres his hopes in certain passions, and immerses himself in 
 the anticipations of sensual delights. But I don't care wha- 
 your hopes are ; this I ask you : Are your hopes circumscribed 
 by this world, or do they go beyond the tomb ? Is all hope to 
 cease when the sad hour comes that will find each ami every 
 one of you stretched helpless on his bed of death, and tlu 
 
68 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 awfiu angel, beariug tlie summous of God, cries out, " Come 
 forth, soul, and come with me to the judgment-seat of 
 Christ!" Is all hope to perish then? No! no! but the 
 Christian's hope then only begins to be realized. No ; this life 
 is as nothing compared with that endless eternivy that awaita 
 us beyond the grave ; and there all our hopes are ; and the 
 hope of the Christian man is that when that hour comes that 
 shall find his soul trembling before its impending doom, await- 
 ing the sentence — that sentence will not be, " Depart from me, 
 accursed," but that it will be, " Come, my friend, my blessed 
 one, come and enjoy the happiness and the joy which was 
 prepared for thee ! " — this is our hope. Accursed is the man 
 who has it not. Miserable is the wietch that has it not ! 
 What would this life be— even if it were a life of ten thousand 
 years, replete with every pleasure — every enjoyment — unmixecj 
 by the slightest evil of sickness or of sorrow, if we knew that 
 at the end of those ten thousand years, the eternity beyond, 
 that should never know an end, was to be for us an eternity of 
 sorrow and of despair ! We should be, of all men, the most 
 miserable ; " for," says the Apostle, " if in this life only we 
 have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable." 
 " But, Christ is risen from the dead ; our hope ;" and we look 
 forward to the day when " we shall be taken up in the clouds 
 to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we be always with the 
 Lord;" translated from glory unto glory, until we behold His 
 face, uushrouded and unveiled, and be happy for ever in the 
 contemplation of God. This is our hope ; yours and mine. 
 But, remember, that although the Almighty God has promised 
 this, and our hope is built upon the fidelity with which He 
 keeps His word, still no man can expect the reward, nor can 
 build up his hope on a solid foundation, unless he enters into 
 the designs of God, and complies vtith the conditions that God 
 has attached to His promises of glory. What are these 
 conditions"? Think how largely the poor and the afQicted 
 enter into them ! " Come," the Redeemer and Judge will say, 
 " Come unto nie, ye blessed of my Father ! I'his is not the 
 first time that you have seen me. I was hungry, and you gave 
 me to eat ! I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink ! I was 
 naked, and you clothed me ! I was sick, and you visited me, 
 and consoled me \" And then the just shall exclaim : " Lord ! 
 when did we ever behold Thee, oh, powerful and terrible Son 
 
THE ATTRIBUTES OF CATHOLIC CHAEITT. 69 
 
 of God I when did we behold Thee naked, or hungry, or sick ? " 
 And He, answering, will call the poor — the poor to whom we 
 minister to-day ; the poor whom we console, and whose droop- 
 ing heads we lift np to-day — He will call them, aud say : 
 " Do you know these ? " And they will cry out : " Oh, yes ; 
 these are the poor whom we saw hungry, and we fed them ; 
 whom we saw naked, and we clothed them ; whom we saw 
 sick, and we consoled and visited them. These are the poor 
 that we were so familiar with, and that we employed Thy 
 epoubes, Christ, to minister unto, and to console!" Then 
 He will answer, and say : " I swear to yon that, as I am God, 
 as often as you have done it to the least of these, ye have done 
 it unto Me ! " But if, on the other hand, we come before him, 
 glorying in the strength of our faith; magniloquent in our 
 professions of Christianity ; splendid in our assumption of the 
 highest principles ; correct in many of the leading traits of the 
 Christian character — but with hands empty of the works of 
 mercy ; if we are only obliged to say with truth, " Lord, I 
 claim heaven ; but I never clothed the naked ; I never fed 
 the hungry; I never lifted up the drooping head of the 
 sick and the afflicted." Christ, our Lord, wUl answer aud say : 
 " Depart from me ! I know you not ; I do not recognize you. 
 I was hungry, and ye would not feed me in my hunger; I 
 was naked, and you would not clothe me in my nakedness ; I 
 was thirsty and sick, and you would not relieve me, nor con- 
 sole me in my sickness." And the reprobate will answer; 
 " Lord, we never saw The* hungry, or naked, or sick." And 
 then, once more, will He call the poor, and say : " Behold 
 these ; to these did you refuse your mercy, your pity, your 
 charity ; and I swear to you that, as I am God, in the day 
 that you refused to comfort, and to succour, and to consote 
 them, you refused to do it unto Me, Therefore, there is no 
 heaven for you." The golden key that opens the gate of 
 heaven is the key of mercy; therefore He will say: "As often 
 as yon are merc&ul to the poor, you are merciful to Me. I 
 %ave said: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find mercy." 
 Who, therefore, amongst you, believing in these things, 
 does not at once see that there is no true faith that does not 
 recognize Christ in His poor, and so succour them with vene- 
 ration ; who does not see that his hope is built upon tho rela- 
 tions which are established between him and the poor of God T 
 
70 LEOTTJEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 Thus, out of this faith and out of this hope spriugs the charity 
 with which we must relieve them. Now, mark how beautifully 
 all this is organized in the Catholic Church. There is a curious 
 expression in the Scriptures — it is found in the Canticles of 
 Solomon — where the spouse of the King — that is to say, the 
 Church of God — amongst other things, savs : " My Lord and 
 my King has organized charity in me.' " Ordinavit in me 
 caritatem" Thus it is not the mere temporary flash of en- 
 thusiasm — it is not the mere passing feeling of benevolence, 
 touched by the sight of their misery — that influences the 
 Catholic Church ; but it is these promises and these principles 
 of the Christian faith, recognizing who and what the poor are, 
 and our Christian hope, building up all the conditions of its 
 future glory upon this foundation. Therefore it is, that in the 
 Catholic Church, alone, is found the grand, organized charity 
 of the world. Nowhere, without her pale, do you find charity 
 organized. You may find a fair and beautiful ebullition of 
 pit}', here and there, as when a rich man dies and leaves, per- 
 haps, half a million of dollars to found an hospital. But it ia 
 an exceptional thing, my dear friends ; as when some grand 
 lady, magnificent of heart and mind — like, for instance, 
 Florence Nightingale — devotes herself to the poor ; goes into 
 the hospitals and the infirmaries for the wounded. It is an 
 exceptional case, I answer. If you travel out of the bounds 
 of that fair and beautiful compassion that runs in so many 
 hearts, and if you go one step farther into the cold atmosphere 
 of political or State charity, there is not one vestige of charity 
 there ; it becomes political economy. The State belie ve.s it is 
 more economical to pick up the poor from the streets and lanes, 
 to take them from their sick-beds, transferring them into poor- 
 houses and hospitals, and, whilst there, overwhelming them 
 with the miserable pity that patronizes, making its gifts a 
 curse and not a blessing, by breaking the heart whilst it re- 
 lieves the body. Such is " State charity." I remember once, 
 in the city of Dublin, I got a sick-cal! It was to attend a 
 poor woman. I went, and found, in a back lane in a city, a 
 room on a garret. I climbed up to the place. There I found 
 without exaggeration, four bare walls, and a woman seventy, 
 five years of age, covered with a few squalid rags, and lying 
 on the bare floor ; not as much as a little straw had she undei 
 her head. I asked for a cup to give her a drink of water. 
 
THE ATTRIBUTES OP OATHOLIO CHARITY. 71 
 
 There was no such thing to be had; and there was no 
 one there to give it I had to go out and beg amongst 
 the neighbours, until I got a cupful of cold water. I put 
 it to her dyiug lips. I had to kneel down upon that bare 
 floor to hear that dying woman's confession. The hand of 
 death was upon her. What was her story? tihe was the 
 mother of sis children; a lady, educated in a ladylike manner; 
 a lady, beginning her career of life in affluence and in comfort. 
 The six children grew up. Some married ; some emigrated ; 
 some died. But the weak and aged mother was alone, and 
 apparently forgotten. And now, she was literally dying, not 
 only of the fever that was upon her, but — of starvation ! As 
 I knelt there on the floor, and as I lifted her aged, gray-haired 
 head upon my hands, I said to her, " Let me, for God's sake, 
 have you taken to the workhouse hospital ; at least you will 
 have a bed to lie upon ! " She turned and looked at me. Two 
 great tears came from her dying eyes, as she said : " Oh, that 
 I should have lived to hear a Catholic priest talk to me about 
 a poor-house 1 " I felt that I had almost broken this aged 
 heart. On my knees I begged her pardon. " No," she said, 
 " let me die in peace ! " And there, whilst I knelt at her side, 
 her afflicted and chastened spirit passed away to God ; but the 
 taint of the " charity of the State " was not upon her. 
 
 Fow, passing from this cold and wicked atmosphere of politi- 
 cal economy, through the purer and more genial air of benevo- 
 lence, charity, and tenderness — of which there is so much, even 
 outside the Church — we enter into the halls of the Catholic 
 Church. There, amongst the varied beauties — amongst the 
 " consecrated forms of loveliness " with which Christ adorned 
 His Church — we find the golden garment of an organized char- 
 ity. We find the highest, the best, and the purest devoted to 
 its service and to its cause. We find every form of misery 
 which the hand of God, or the malice of man, or their own 
 errors, can attach to the poor, provided for. The child of 
 misfortune wanders through the streets of the city, wasting her 
 young heart, polluting the very air that she breathes — a living 
 sin ! The sight of her is siu — the thought of her is death — 
 ^e touch of her hand is pollution unutterable ! No man can look 
 upon her face and live ! In a moment of divine compassion, 
 the benighted and the wicked heart is moved to turn to God 
 With the tears of the penitent upon her young and sinful face 
 
72 LECTUEES AKD SERMONS. 
 
 sh© turns to the portals of the Church ; and there, at the very 
 threshold of the sanctuary of God, she finds the very ideal of 
 purity — the highest, the grandest, the noblest of the Church's 
 children. The woman who has never known the pollution of 
 a wicked thought — the woman whose virgin bosom has never 
 been crossed by the shadow of a thought of sin — the woman 
 breathing purity, innocence, grace — ^I'eceives the woman whose 
 ' -eath is the pestilence of hell ! Extremes meet. Mary, the 
 Virg-in, takes the hand of Mary, the Magdalene ; and, in the 
 organized charity of the Church of God, the penitent enters in 
 to be saved and sanctified. 
 
 The poor man, worn down and broken by poverty, exposed 
 in his daily labour to the winds and the rains of heaven, with 
 failing health and drooping heart, lies down to die. There, by 
 his bedside, stands the wife, and round her, her group of 
 little children. They depend upon his daily labour for their 
 daily bread. Now, that hand that laboured for them so long 
 and so lovingly, is palsied and stricken by his side. Now, his 
 dying eyes are grieved with tlie sight of their misery. His 
 ears are filled with the cry of the little ones for bread. Thg 
 despair of their doom conies to embitter his dying momenta 
 He looks from that bed of death out upon the gloomy world. 
 He sees the wife of his bosom consigned to a pauper's cell, to 
 await a pauper's grave ; and, for these innocent faces that 
 surround him, he sees no future but a future of ignorance and 
 of crime ; of punishment without hope of amendment ; and of 
 the loss of their souls in the great mass of the world's crimes 
 and misdeeds. But, whilst he is thus mournfully brooding, 
 with sad and despairing thoughts, what figure is this that 
 crosses the threshold and casta its shadow on the floor of the 
 house ? Who is this, entering noiselessly, modestly, silently, 
 shrouded and veiled, as a being of heaven, not of earth 1 He 
 lifts his eyes and he beholds the mild and placid face of the 
 Sister of Mercy, beaming purity, mixed with divine love, upon 
 him. yow the sunshine of God is let in upon the darkness of 
 his despairing soul. Now he hears a voice alniost as gentle, 
 almost as tender, almost as powerful as the voice of Him who 
 whispered in the ear of the Widow of Wain, ' " Oh, woman, 
 weep no more ! " And she tells him to fear not : that her 
 woman's hand will ensure protection for his children — and 
 education, grace, virtue, heaven, and God. I once remember 
 
THE ATTRIBUTES OF OATHOLIO CHARITY. 7& 
 
 I was called to attend a man, such as I have endeavoured tC) 
 describe to you. There were seven little children in the 
 house. There was a mother, the mother of those children, the 
 wife of him who was dying there. Two years before, this maij 
 had fallen from a scaffold, and was so shattered that he was 
 paralyzed ; and for two years he had lain upon that bed, 
 starving as well as dying. When I was called to visit this 
 man, I spoke to him of the mercy of God. He looked upop 
 me with a sullen and despairing eye. " This is the first time," 
 he said, " that you have come to my bedside." Said I : " Mj' 
 friend, this is the first time that I knew you were sick. Had 
 I known it, I would have come to you before." " No one," — 
 this was his answer — " no one cares for me. And you come 
 now to speak to me of the mercy of God ! I have been on 
 this bed for more than two years. I have seen that woman 
 and her children starving for the last two years. And do you 
 tell me that there is a God of mercy above me ! " I saw a1 
 once it was a case with which I could not deal. I left 
 the house on the instant, and went straight to a convent 
 of the Sisters of Mercy that was near. There I asked the 
 Mother Superior, for God's sake, to send one or two of the 
 nuns to the house. They went. Next day I visited him. 
 Oh, what a change I found ! No longer the dull eye of 
 despair. He looked up boldly and cheerfully from his bed of 
 sorrow, no longer murmuring against the mercy of God, but 
 with the deep thankfulness of a grateful heart. *•' Oh," said he, 
 I am so happy. Father, that I sent for you, — ^not so much for 
 anything you can do for me ; but you sent me two angels of God 
 from heaven 1 They came into my house ; and, for the first 
 time in two long years, I learned to hope ; to be sorry for my 
 want of resignation ; and to return, with love, to that God 
 whom I had dared to doubt ! '' Then he made his confession, 
 and I prepared him for death, Fatient he was, and resigned ; 
 and, in his last moments, when his voice was faltering — when 
 his voice became that of the departing spirit — his last words 
 were : " You sent to me the angels of God, and they told me 
 that when I should be in my grave they would be mothers to 
 my children ! " Oh, fair and beautiful Church, that knows so 
 well how to console the afflicted, to bind up the wounds of the 
 breaking heart, to lift up the weary and the drooping head. 
 Every form of human misery, every form of wretchedness-r- 
 
74 LEOTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 whether sent from God as a warning or a trial, or coming from 
 men's own excesses and folly, and as a punishment for their sins 
 
 every form of human misery and affliction, as soon as it is seen, 
 
 is softened and relieved by the gentlest, ihe tenderest, the 
 sweetest agency — ^the touch of God through His consecrated 
 ones. And it seems to the suffei-er as if the word of the pro- 
 mise to come were fulfilled in time — the word which says : 
 " The Lord Himself will wipe away every tear from the eyes of 
 His elect, and there shall be no more weeping, nor sorrow, nor 
 any pain, for the former things have passed away." 
 
 And thus, my friends, we see how beautifully charity is or- 
 ganized in the Catholic Church. Not one penny of your 
 charity is wasted. Every farthing that you contribute wUl be 
 expended wisely, judiciously, and extended to its farthest length 
 of usefulness in the service of God's poor and stricken ones. 
 And, lest the poor might be humbled whilst they are relieved, 
 lest they might be hurt in their feelings whilst consoled with 
 the temporal doles that are lavished upon them, the Church of 
 God, with a wisdom more than human, appoints as her minis- 
 ters of the poor those who, for the love of Christ, have become 
 poor like them. Behold these nuns ! They are the daughters 
 of St. Francis. Seven hundred years ago now, almost, there 
 arose in the city of Assisi, in Umbria, in Italy, a man so filled 
 with the sweet love of Christ — so impregnated with the spirit 
 of the Son of God, made man — that, in the rapture of his 
 prayer, the " stigmata " — the marks of the nails upon the hands 
 and feet, of the thorns upon the brow, of the wounds upon the 
 side of the Redeemer — were given to Francis of Assisi. Men 
 beheld him aud started from the sight, giving glory to God, 
 that they had caught a gleam of Jesus Christ upon the earth. 
 He was the only saint of whom we read, that, without opening 
 his lips, but simply coming and walking through the ways of 
 the city, moved all eyes that beheld him to tears of tenderness 
 and divine love : and he " preached Christ and Him crucified," 
 by merely showing Himself to men. These are the daughters 
 of this saint, inheriting his spirit ; and he, in the Church, is the 
 very ideal saint of divine and religious poverty. He would not 
 have a shoe to his foot. He would not have a second coat, 
 He would not have in his bag provision even for to-morrow ; 
 but waited, like the prophet of old, that it should come to him 
 from God, at the hands of his benefactors — tha very ideal saint 
 
x'HE ATTBIBUTES OF CATHOHO CHARITY. 75 
 
 of poverty ; and, therefore, of all others, the most devoted in 
 himself, and in his children, to God's poor. When there was a 
 question of destroying the religious orders in Italy, and of 
 passing a law that would not permit me, a Dominican, or these 
 nuns, Franciscans, to dwell in the land — just as if we were 
 doing any harm to anybody ; as if we were not doing our best 
 to save and serve all the people — Csesare Cantu, the celebrated 
 historian, stood up in the assembly and said : " Men ! before 
 you make this law, abolishing all the religious men and women 
 in the land, reflect for an instant. If any man amongst you, 
 by some reverse of fortune, become poor ; if any man amongst 
 you, in this enlightened age, is obliged to beg his daily bread ; 
 wouldn't you feel ashamed ? wouldn't you feel degraded to have 
 to go to your fellow-man to ask him for alms ? For me, if 
 God should strike me with poverty, I would feel it a degrada- 
 tion. But I would not feel it a degradation to go to a Domini- 
 can or a Franciscan, and ask him, a brother pauper, to break 
 his bread with me." 
 
 It is fitting that the voice which speaks to you this evening 
 — although it comes from one wearing the habit of St. Dominic 
 — should speak to you in the language of St. Francis of Assisi, 
 who was the bosom friend of the great Dominic of Guzman 
 United in life and in love as the Fathers were, their children are 
 united in that spiritual love which is the inheritance of God's 
 consecrated ones on earth. And, therefore, it is a privilege and 
 a glory to me to speak to you this evening on behalf of my 
 Franciscan sisters. Yet, not in their behalf do I speak, but in 
 behalf of the poor ; nor in belialf of the poor, but in behalf of 
 Christ, who identifies Himself with the poor; nor in behalf 
 of Him, but in your own behalf ; seeing that all your hopes 
 of the glory of heaven are bound up with the poor of whom I 
 speak, It is your glory, and the glory of this special charity, 
 that it was the first hospital founded in this State ; that at a 
 time when men, concentrating their energies to amass wealth, 
 immersed in their business, trying to heap up accumulations, 
 and gather riches and largo possessions, never thought of their 
 poor ; or, if the poor obtruded themselves, brushed them out 
 of their path, and told them to be gone ; then there came the 
 Church of Christ into the midst of you. She sought not 
 money, nor land, nor possessions. She brought these poor 
 nuns, vowed to noverty, desjpisina all the things of the world, 
 
/§ LEOTUEES AND SEKM0N8. 
 
 and leaving them behind them ; she built up her hospital for 
 the sick ; she brought her children of St. Francis of Assisi to 
 minister to them in mercy, in faith, and hope ; and, in the 
 gentleness of Divine charity, to-night the Franciscan nuns say 
 to you, " Blessed is the man that understandeth concerning 
 the needy and the poor ! " 
 
 I hope I may have thrown some light into the mind of even 
 yne amongst you, this evening, and let him see how blessed is 
 the man who knows his position concerning the needy and the 
 poor. I hope that those to whom my words give no light, 
 may, at least, be given encouragement to persevere. Perse- 
 vere, Catholics of Hoboken and Jersey City, in maintaining 
 these Sisters, in filling their hands with your benefactions, in 
 enabling them to pursue their calm but glorious career of 
 charity and of mercy. I know that in thus encouraging you, I 
 am advancing the best interests of your souls ; and that the 
 mite that you give today, which might be given for pleasure, 
 or sinfulness, snail return to you one day in the form of a 
 crown — the crown of glory which will be set upon your heads, 
 for ever and for ever, Hfore the Throne of God, by the hands 
 of the poor of Christ, Again I say to you, will your hear the 
 voice from the Throne . " Whatever you do to the poor, you 
 do it unto nie ! " Oh, may God send down His angel of mercy! 
 may the spirit of His mercy breathe amongst us ! may the 
 charity which guides your mercy — the charity, springing from 
 an enlightened and pure faith, and from a true and substantial 
 hope — bring your reward ; that so, in the day when Faith shall 
 perish with time — when Hope shall be lost, either in joy or 
 sorrow — either in the fruition of heaven or in the despair of hell 
 — ^that on that day you may be able to exclaim, when you first 
 catch sight of the unveiled glory of the Saviour, " Oh, Christ, 
 of all the beauties of God, it is true ' the greatest la Charity.' " 
 
THE HlSTOBIf OF IKELAinj, AS TOLD IN HEB RUINS. 77 
 
 THE HISTORY OF mELAND, AS TOIJ) IN HER 
 RUINS. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : Before I approach the subject of 
 this evening's lecture, I have to apologize to you, iu all earnest- 
 ness, for appearing before you this evening in my habit. The 
 reason why I put off my black cloth coat and put on this dress 
 — the Dominican habit — is, first of all, because I never feel at 
 home in a black coat. When God called me, the only son of 
 an Irish father and an Irish mother, from the home of the 
 old people, and told me that it was His will that I should 
 belong to Him in the sanctuary, the father and mother gave 
 me up without a sigh, because they were Irish parents, and 
 had the Irish faith and love for the Church in their hearts. 
 And from the day I took this habit — from that day to this — 
 I never felt at home in any other dress ; and if I were to come 
 befoie you this evening in black cloth, like a layman, and not 
 like an Irish Dominican friar, I might, perhaps, break down in 
 my lecture. But there is another reason why I appear before 
 you in this white habit ; because I am come to speak to you 
 of the ruins that cover the face of the old land ; I am come 
 to speak to you, and to tell you of the glory and the shame, and 
 the joy and the sorrow, that these ruins so eloquently tell 
 of ; and when I look upon them, in spirit now, my mind sweeps 
 over the intervening ocean, and I stand in imagination imder 
 the ivied and moss-covered arches of Atbenry, or Sligo, or 
 Clare-Galway, or Kilcouuell. The view that rises before me 
 of the former inmates of these holy places, is a vision of white- 
 robed Dominicans and of brown Franciscans ; and, therefore, 
 in coming to speak to you in this garment of the glorious 
 history which they tell us, I feel more myself, more in con- 
 sonance with the subject of which I have to speak, in appear- 
 ing before you as the child and the representative — no matter 
 kow unworthy — of the Irish friars — the Irii=h priests and 
 patriots who sleep in Irish graves to-night. 
 
78 LBCTUBBS AND SERMONS. 
 
 And now, my friends, the most precious — ^the grandest— 
 mheiitauce of any people, is that people's history. All that 
 forms the national character of a people, their tone of thought, 
 their devotion, their love, their sympathies, their antipathies, 
 their language — all this is found in their history, as the effect 
 is found in its cause, as the autumn speaks of the spring. 
 And the philosopher who wishes to analyze a people's character 
 and to account for it — to account for the national desires, 
 hopes, aspirations, for the strong sympathies or antipathies 
 that sway a peoi)le — must go back to the deep recesses of 
 their history ; and there, in ages long gone by, will he find 
 the seeds that produced the fruit that he attempts to account 
 for. And he will find that the nation of to-day is but the 
 child and the offspring of the nation of by-gone ages ; for it 
 is written truly, that " the child is father to the man." When, 
 therefore, we come to consider the desires of nations, we find 
 that every people is most stronglj' desirous to preserve its 
 history, even as every man is anxious to preserve the record 
 of his life ; for history is the record of a people's life. Hence 
 it is that, in the libiaries of the more ancient nations, we find 
 the earliest histories of the primeval races of mankind written 
 upon the durable vellum, the imperishable asbestos, or some- 
 times deeply carved, in mystic and forgotten characters, on the 
 granite stone or pictured rock, showing the desire of the 
 people to preserve their history, which is to preserve the 
 memory of them, just as the old man dying said, " Lord, keep 
 my memory green ! " 
 
 But, besides these more direct and documentary evidences, 
 the history of every nation is enshrined in the national tradi- 
 tions, in the national music and song ; much more, it is written 
 in the public buildings that cover the face of the land. These, 
 silent and in ruins, tell most eloquently their tale. To-day 
 " the stone may be crumbled, the wall decayed ;" the clustering 
 ivy may. perhaps, uphold the tottering ruin to which it clung 
 in the days of its strength ; but 
 
 " The sorrows, the joys of which once they were part, 
 Still round them, like visions of yesterday, throng." 
 
 They are the voices of the past ; they are the voices of ages 
 long gone by. They rear their venerable and beautiful gray 
 heads high over the land they adorn ; and they tell us the tale 
 of the glory or of the shame, of the strength or of the weak- 
 
THE HISTOBT OP IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HEE RUINS. 79 
 
 ness, of the prosperity or of the adversity of the nation to 
 which they belong. This is the volume which we are about to 
 open ; this is the voice which we are about to call forth from 
 their grey and ivied ruins that cover the green bosom of Ire- 
 land ; we are about to go back up the highways of history, and, 
 as it were, to breast and to stem the stream of time, to-day, 
 taking our start from the present hour in Ireland. What have 
 we here ? It is a stately church — rivalling — perhaps surpassing 
 — ^in its glory the grandeur of by-gone times. We behold the 
 Bolid buttresses, the massive wall, the high tower, the graceful 
 Bpire piercing the clouds, and upholding, high towards heaven, 
 the symbol of man's redemption, the glorious sign of the cross. 
 We see in the stone windows the massive tracery, so solid, so 
 strong, and so delicate. What does this tell us ? Here is this 
 church, so grand, yet so fresh and new and clean from the 
 mason's hand. What does it tell us 1 It tells us of a race 
 that has never decayed ; it tells us of a people that have 
 never lost their faith nor theii" love ; it tells us of a nation as 
 Btrong in its energy for every highest and holiest purpose, to- 
 day, as it was in the ages that are past and gone for ever. 
 
 We advance just half a century up the highwaj- of time ; 
 and we come upon that which has been familiar, perhaps, to 
 many amongst you, as well as to me — the plain, unpretending 
 little chapel, in some by-lane of the town or city — or the plain 
 and humble little chapel in some by-way in the country, with 
 its thatched roof, its low ceiling, its earthen floor, its wooden 
 altar. What does this tell us ? It tells us of a people strug- 
 gling against adversity ; it tells us of a people making their 
 first effort, after three hundred years of blood, to build up a 
 housCj however humble, for their God ; it tells us of a people 
 who had not yet shaken off the traditions of their slavery, upon 
 whose hands the chains still hang, and the wounds inflicted by 
 those chains are still rankling ; it tells us of a people who 
 scarcely yet know how to engage in the glorious work of 
 Church edification, because they scarcely yet realised the privi- 
 lege that they were to be allowed to live in the land that bore 
 them. Let us reverently bow down our heads and salute 
 these ancient places — tliese ancient, humble little chapels, ij 
 town or country, where we — we men of middle age — made om 
 first confession and received our first communion ; let us saluta 
 thuse places, hallowed iu our memories by the first, and there- 
 
80 LEOTUEBS AND SERMONS. 
 
 fore the stroDgest, the purest, holiest recollections and associa- 
 tions of our lives j and, pilgrims of history, let us turn into the 
 dreary, sc'itary road that lies before us. It is a road of three 
 hundred years of desolation and bloodshed ; it is a road that 
 leads through martyrs' and patriots' graves ; it is a road that 
 is wet with the tears and with the blood of a persecuted and 
 down-trodden people ; it is a road that is pointed out to us by 
 the sign of the cross, the emblem of the nation's faith, and by 
 the site of the martyr's grave, the emblem of the nation's un- 
 dying fidelity to God. 
 
 And now what venerable ruin is this which rises before our 
 eyes, moss-crowned, embedded in clustering ivy? It is a 
 church, for we see the muUions of the great east window of the 
 sanctuary, throngh which once flowed, through angels and 
 sauits (le|iiited thereon, the mellow sunshine that warmed up 
 the arch above, and made mosaics upon the church and altar. 
 It is a church of the Mediaeval Choral Orders — for I see the 
 lancet windows, the choir whei'e the leligious were accustomed 
 to chant — yet popular, and much frequented by the people — for 
 I see outside the choir an annple space ; the side aisles are un- 
 incumbered, and the side chapels with altars — the mind of the 
 architect clearly intending an ample space for the people ; yet 
 it is not too large a church ; for it is generally one that the 
 preacher's voice can easily fill. Outside ot it runs the square 
 of the ruined cloister, humble enough, yet most beautiful in its 
 architecture. But now, church and cloister alike are filled with 
 the graves — the homes — of the silent dead Do I recall to the 
 loving memory of any one amongst you, scenes that have been 
 familiar to your eyes in the dear and the green old laud ? Are 
 there not those amongst you, who have looked, vith eyes 
 softened by lovp, and by the sadness of the recollections re- 
 called to the mind, under the chancel and the choir, under the 
 ample space of nave and aisle of the old Abbey of Athenry, or 
 in the old Abbey of Kilconneli, or such as these? What tale 
 do these tell ? They tell of a nation that, although engaged 
 in a hand-to-hand and desperate struggle for its national life, 
 yet in the midst of its wars was never unmindful of its God ; 
 they tell of Ireland when the clutch of the Saxon was upon 
 her — when the sword was unsheathed that was never to know 
 its scabbard from that day until this — and that never will, until 
 the diadem of perfoet freedom rests upon the virg'w brow of 
 
THE HISTOBY OF IRELAM), AS TOLD IN HBB EUIN8. 81 
 
 Ireland. They tell of the glorious days when Ireland's 
 Church and Ireland's Nationality joined hands ; and when the 
 priest and the people rose up to enter upon a glorious combat 
 for freedom. These were the homes of the Franciscan and 
 the Dominican friars— the men who, during three hundred 
 years of their residence in Ireland, recallea, m these cloisters, 
 the ancient glories of Lismore, and of Glendalough, and of 
 Armagh , the men who, from the time ♦^liey first raised these 
 cloisters, never left the laud — never abandoned the old soil, 
 but lingered around their ancient homes of happiness, of 
 sanctity, and of peace, and tried to keep near the old walls, 
 just as Magdalen lingered round the empty tomb, on Easter 
 morning, at Jerusalem. They tell of the sanctuaries, where 
 the hunted head of the Irish patriot found refuge and a place 
 of security ; they tell the Irish liistorian of the national councils, 
 formed for state purposes within them. These venerable walls, 
 if they could speak, would tell us how the wavering were en- 
 couraged and strengthened, and the brave and gallant fired 
 with the highest and noblest purpose for God and Erin; how 
 the traitor was detected, and the false-hearted denounced ; and 
 how the nation's life-blood was kept warm, and her wounds 
 were stanched, by the wise counsels of the old Franciscan and 
 Dominican friars. All this, and more, would these walls tell, 
 f they could speak ; for they have witnessed all this. They 
 witnessed it until the day came — the day of war, the sword, 
 and blood — that drove forth their saintly inmates irom theii 
 loving shelter, and devoted themselves to desolation and decay. 
 Let us bow down, fellow-Irishmen, with reverence and vsith 
 love, as we pass under the shadow of these ancient walls. And 
 now stepping a few years — scarcely fifty years — further on, 
 on the road of our history, passing, as we go along, under the 
 frowning, dark feudal castles of the Pitzgeralds, of the De 
 Laceys, the De Courcys, the Fitzadelms, and, I regret to say, 
 the De Burgs — the castles that tell us always of the terror of 
 the invaders of the land, hiding themselves in their strong- 
 holds, because they could not trust to the love of the people, 
 who hated them ; and because they were afraid to meet the 
 people in the open field — passing under the frowning shadows 
 of these castles, suddenly we stand amazed — criished, as it 
 were, to the earth — by the glories that rise before us in the 
 ruins of Mellifont, in the ruins of Dunbrodie, in ihe awful 
 
82 LEOTUKES AND SEKMONS. 
 
 ruins of Holy Cross and of Cashel, that we see yet uplifting, 
 in solemn grandeur, their stately heads in ruined beauty ovei 
 the land which thoy once adorned. There do we see the 
 vestiges of the most magniiiceut architecture, some of the 
 grandest buildings that ever yet were raised upon this earth 
 for God or for man. There do we see the lofty side-walls 
 pierced with huge windows filled with the most delicate 
 tracery ; there, when we enter in we throw our eyes aloft with 
 wonder, and see the groined, massive arches of the ceiling 
 upholding the mighty tower ; there do we see the grandeur of 
 the ancient Cistercians, and the Canons Regular of St. Augus- 
 tine, and the Benedictines. What tale do iliey tell us ? Oh, 
 they tell us a glorious tale of our history and of our people. 
 These were the edifices that were built and founded in Ireland 
 during the brief respite that the nation had from the day that 
 she drove the last Dane out, until the day that the first 
 accursed Norman came. A short time — a brief period; too 
 brief, alas ! too brief ! Ireland, exhausted after her three 
 hundred years of Danish invasion, turned her first thoughts 
 and her first energies to build up the ancient places that were 
 ruined — to restore and to clothe the sanctuaries of her faith, 
 vvith a splendour such as the nation had never seen before. 
 
 We will pass on. And now, a mountain-road lies before us. 
 The laud is filled again, for three centuries, with desolation and 
 with bloodshed and with sorrow. The hill-sides, on either hand 
 of our path, are strewn with the bodies of the slain; the valleys 
 are filled with desolation and ruin ; the air resounds to the 
 ferocious battle-cry of the Dane, and to the brave battle-cry of 
 the Celt, intermingled with the wailing of the widowed mother 
 and the ravished maid ; the air is filled with the crash and the 
 shock of battle. In terrible onset, the lithe, active, mail-clad, 
 fair-haired, blue-eyed warriors of the North meet the dark, stal- 
 wart Celt, and they close in mortal combat Toiling along, 
 pilgrims of history as we are, we come to the summit of Tara's 
 Eill, and there we look in vain for a vestige of Ireland's ruins. 
 But now, after these three hundred years of our backward jour- 
 ney over the highway of history, we breathe the upper air. 
 The sunshine of the eighth century, and of Ireland's three 
 centuries of Christianity, is upon our path. We breathe the 
 purer air ; we are amongst the mountains of God ; and a sight 
 the most glorious that nation ever presented opens itself 
 
THE HISTOBY OF IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HEE RUINS. 83 
 
 before our eyes — the sight of Ireland's first three centuries of 
 the glorious faith of St. Patrick. Peace is upon the land. 
 Schools rise upon every hill and in every valley. Every city 
 is an immense school. The air again is filled with the sound 
 of many voices : for students from every clime under the sui — 
 the German, the Pict, the Cimbri, the Frank, the Italian, the 
 Saxon, all are mingling together, conversing together in the 
 universal language of the Church, Eome's old Latin. They 
 have come, and they have covered the land ; they have come 
 in thousands and in tens of thousands, to hear, from the lips 
 of the world-renowned Irish saints, all the love of ancient 
 Greece and Kome, and to study in the lives of these saints ths 
 highest degree and noblest interpretation of Christian morality 
 and Christian perfection. Wise rulers governed the land ; hel 
 heroes are moved to mighty acts ; and these men, who came 
 from every clime to the university of the world — to the great 
 masters of the nations — go back to their respective countries 
 and tell the glorious tale of Ireland's strength and Ireland's 
 sanctity — of the purity of the Irish maidens — of the learning 
 and saintliness of the Irish priesthood ; of the wisdom of her 
 kings and rulers ; of the sanctity of her people ; until at 
 length, from out the recesses of history, there comes, 
 floating upon the breezes of time, the voice of an admiring 
 world, that proclaims my native land, in that happy epoch, 
 and gives to her the name of the island of heroes, of saints, 
 and of sages. 
 
 Look up. In imagination we stand, now, upon the highest 
 level of Ireland's first Christianity. Above us, we behold the 
 venerable hill-top of Tara ; and beyond that, again, far away, 
 and high up on the mountain, inaccessible by any known road 
 of history, lies, amidst the gloom — the mj-sterious cloud that 
 hangs around the cradle of every ancient race, looming forth 
 from pre-historic obscurity — we behold the mighty Round 
 Towers of Ireland. There they stand — 
 
 " The Pillar Towers of Ireland! how wondrously they stand, 
 By the rushing streams, in the silent glens, and the valleys of the land — 
 In mystic file, throughout the islt, they rear their heads sublime — 
 Those gray, old, pillar temples — those conquerors of time." 
 
 Now, having gone up to the cradle and fountain-head of 
 our history, as told by its monuments and its ruins, we shall 
 pause a little before we begin again our downward course. We 
 
84 LECTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 shall pause for a few moments under the shadows of Ireland's 
 round towers. There they stand, most perfect in their archi- 
 tecture ; stone fitted into stone with the most artistic nicety 
 and regularity ; every stone bound to its bed by a cement as 
 hard as the stone itself ; a beautiful calculation of the weight 
 which was to be put upon it, and the foundation which was to 
 sustain it, has arrived at this — that, though thousands of years 
 have passed over theu: hoary heads, there they stand, as firm 
 to-day as on the day when they were first erected. There they 
 stand, in perfect form, in perfect perpendicular ; and the 
 studeut of art in the nineteenth century can find matter for 
 admiration and for wonder in the evidence of Ireland's 
 civilization, speaking loudly and eloquently by the voice of 
 her most ancient round towers, Who built them ? You have 
 seen them ; they are all over the island. The traveller sails 
 up the placid bosom of the lovely Blackwater, and whilst he 
 admires its varied beauties, and his very heart within him is 
 ravished by its loveliness, he beholds, high above its green 
 banks, amidst the ruins of ancient Lismore, a venerable round 
 tower lifting its gray head into the air. As he goes on, 
 passing, as in a dream of delight, now by the valleys and the 
 hills of lovely Wicklow, he admires the weeping alders that 
 hang over the stream in sweet Avoca ; he admires the bold 
 heights, throwing their outlines so sharp and clear against 
 the sky, and clothed to their very summits with the sweet- 
 smelling purple heather ; he admires all this, until, at length, 
 in a deep vallej', in the very heart of the hills, he beholds, 
 reflecting itself in the deep waters of still Glendalough, 
 the venerable " round tower of other days." Or he has taken 
 his departure from the island of Saints, and, when his ship's 
 prow is turned toward the setting sun, he beholds upon the 
 headlands of the iron-bound coast of Mayo or western Gal way, 
 the round tower of Ireland, the last thing the eye of the lovpi 
 or traveller beholds. Who built all these towers, for what pur- 
 pose were they built ? There is no record or reply, although 
 the question has been repeated, age after age, for thousands of 
 vears. Who can tell ? They go so far back into the mists of 
 history as to have the lead of all the known events in the history 
 of our native land. Some say that they are of Christian origin ; 
 others, again, say, with equal probability, and perhaps greater, 
 that these venerable monuments are far more ancient than 
 
THE HISTOET OF lEtLAlTD, AS TOLD IN HEE RDINB. 85 
 
 Ireland's Catholicity ; that they were the temples of a by-gone 
 religion, and, perhaps, of a long-forgotten race. They may 
 have been the temples of the ancient Fire Worshippers of 
 Ireland ; and the theory has been mooted, that in the time 
 when our remotest forefathers worshipped the rising sun, the 
 priest of the sun was accustomed to climb to the summit of 
 the round tower, to turn his face to the east, and watch with 
 anxiety the rising of the morning star as it came up trembling 
 in its silver beauty above the eastern hills. Then, when the 
 first rays of the sun illuminated the valleys, he hailed its rising, 
 and proclaimed to the people around him their duty of worship 
 to the coming God. This is the theory that would connect 
 Ireland's round towers with the most ancient form of religion — 
 the false religion which truth dispelled, when, coming with the 
 sun of heaven, and showing before Irish intellect the glories of 
 the risen Saviour — the brightaess of the heavenly sun dimmed 
 for ever the glory of the earthly, and dispelled the darkness of 
 the human soul, which had filled the laud before with its gloom. 
 This is not the time nor the place to enter into an archaeological 
 argument as to whether the round towers are of Pagan oi 
 Christian origin, or as to whether they are the offspring of the 
 famous Goban Saor, or of any other architect, or of the men of 
 the fifth or of the sixth centuries ; or whether they go back 
 into the times of which no vestige remains upon the pages of 
 history, or in the traditions of men ; this, I say, is not the time 
 to do it. I attempted this once, and whilst I was pursuing my 
 argument, as I imagined, very learnedly and very profoundly, 
 I saw a man, sitting opposite to me, open his mouth, and he 
 gave a yawn ; and I said in my own mind, to myself, " My 
 dear friend, if you do not close your dissertation, that mai. will 
 never shut his mouth ; " for I thought the top of his head 
 would come off. But no matter what may be the truth of this 
 theory or that, concerning the round towers, one thing is cer- 
 tain, and this is the point to which I wish, to speak — that, as 
 they stand to-day, in the strength of their material, in the 
 beauty of their form, in the perfection of their architecture, in 
 the scientific principles upon which they were built, and which 
 tbey reveal, they are the most ancient amongst the records of 
 the most ancient nations, and distinctly tell the glorious tale of 
 the early civilization of the Irish people. For, my friends, re- 
 member that, amongst the evidences of progress, of civilizatioa 
 
i(S LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 amongst the oations, there is no more powerful aigument oi 
 evidence than that which is given by their public buildings. 
 When you reflect that many centuries afterwards, — ages after 
 ages — even after Ireland had become Catholic — there was no 
 such thing in England as a stone building of any kind, much 
 less a stone church — when you reflect that outside the pale of 
 the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome, there was no such 
 thing kuown amongst the northern and western nations of 
 Europe as a stone edifice of any kind ; then I say, from this, I 
 conclude that these venerable pillar temples of Ireland are the 
 strongest arg'uinent of the ancient civilization of our race. But 
 this also explains the fact that St. Patrick, when he preached 
 in Ireland, was not persecuted ; that he was not contradicted ; 
 that it was not asked of him, as of every other man that ever 
 preached the Gospel for the first time to any people, to shed his 
 blood in proof of his belief. No, he came not to a barbarous 
 people — not to an uncivilized race ; but he came to a wonder- 
 fully civilized nation — a nation which, though u!ider the cloud 
 )f a false religion, had yet attained to established laws and a 
 recognized and settled form of government, a high philosophi- 
 cal knowledge, a splendid national melody and poetry ; and her 
 bards, and the men who met St. Patrick upon the Hill of Tara, 
 when he mounted it on that Easter morning, were able to meet 
 him with solid arguments ; were able to meet him with the 
 clash which takes place when mind meets mind ; and, when he 
 had convinced them, they showed the greatest proof of their 
 civilization by rising up, on the instant, to declare that 
 Patrick's preaching was the truth, and that Patrick was a mes- 
 senger of the true God. We know for certain that, whatever 
 was the origin of these round towers, the Church — the 
 Catholic Church in Ireland- -made use of them for religious pur- 
 poses ; that she built her cathedrals and her abbey churches 
 alongside of them ; and we often find the loving group of the 
 " Seven Churches," lying closely beside, if not under the shadow 
 of, the round towers, We also know that the monks of old 
 set the Ci-oss of Cl;iist on these ancient round towers — that is, 
 on the upper part of them ; and we know, from the evidence of a 
 later day, tiiat when the Uiud was deluged in blood, and when 
 the faithful people \vere persecuted, hunted down — then it was 
 usual, as in the olden times, to light a fire in the upper portioh 
 of those round towers, in order that the poor and persecuted 
 
THE HISTORY OF IBELAND, AS TOLD IN HER EUINS. 87 
 
 might know where to find the sanctuary of God's altar. Thua 
 it was that, no matter for what purpose they were founded, the 
 Church of God made use of them for purposes of charity, of re- 
 ligion, and of mercy. 
 
 Coming down from these steep heights of history ; coming 
 down — like Moses from the mountain — from out the mysteries 
 that envelop the cradle of our race, but, like the prophet of 
 old, with the evidence of our nation's ancient civilization and 
 renown beaming upon us — we now come to the Hill of Tara. 
 Alas, the place where Ireland's monarch sat enthroned, the 
 place where Ireland's sages and seei's met, where Ireland's 
 poets and bards filled the air with the rich harmony of our 
 ancient Celtic melody, is now desolate ; not a stone upon a 
 stone to attest its ancient glory. " Perierunt etiam ruince ! '' 
 the very ruins of it have perished. The mounds are there, the 
 old moat is there, showing the circumvallation of the ancient 
 towers of Tara ; the old moat is there, still traced by the 
 unbroken mound whereby the " Banquet Hall," three hundred 
 and sixty feet long, by forty feet in width, was formed, and 
 in which the kings of Ireland entertained their chieftains, their 
 royal dames, and their guests, in high festival and glorious 
 revelry. Beyond this no vestige remains. But there, within the 
 moat — in the very midst of the ruins — there, perhaps, on the 
 very spot where Ireland's ancient throne was raised — there is a 
 long, grass-grown mound ; the earth is raised ; it is covered 
 with a verdant sod ; the shamrock blooms upon it, ?,nd the old 
 peasants will tell you this is the " Croppy's Grave." In the year 
 1798, the "year of the troubles," as we may well call it, some 
 ninety Wexford men, or therabouts, after the news came that 
 " the cause was lost," fought their way, every inch, from Wex- 
 ford until they came to the Hill of 'Tara, and made their last stand 
 on the banks of the River Boyne. There, pursued by a great 
 number of the king's dragoons, they fought their way through 
 these two miles of intervening country, their faces to the foe. 
 These ninety heroes, surrounded, fired upon, still fought and 
 would not yield, until slowly, like the Spartan band at Ther- 
 mopylre, they gained the Hill of Tara, and stood there like 
 lions at bay Surrounded on all sides by the soldiers, the 
 ofiBcer in command offered them their lives if they would only 
 lay down their armf One of these " Shelmaliers " lia,d that 
 moruing sent the colonel of the dragoons to take a cold bath io 
 
88 LEOTUKES AND SERMONS. 
 
 the Boyne. In an evil hour the Wexford men, trusting to the 
 plighted faith of this British oflSicer, laid down their arms ; and, 
 as soon as their guns were out of their hands, every man of 
 them was fired upon; and, to the last one, they perished 
 upon the Hill of Tara. And there they were enshrined among 
 the ancient glories of Ireland, and laid in the " Croppy's Grave." 
 And they tell how, in 1843, when O'Connell was holding his 
 monster meetings throughout the land, in the early morning 
 he stood upon the Hill of Tara, with a hundred thousand brave, 
 strong Irishmen around him. There was a tent pitched upon 
 the hill-top ; there was an altar erected, and an aged priest 
 went to offer up the Mass for the people. But the old women 
 — the women with the grey heads, who were blooming maidens 
 in '98 — came from every side ; and they all knelt round the 
 " Croppy's Grave ;" and just as the priest began the Mass, and 
 the one hundred thousand on the hill -sides and in the vales below 
 were uniting in adoration, a loud cry of wailing pierced the air. It 
 was the Irish mothers and the Irish maidens pouring out their 
 souls in sorrow, and wetting with their tears the shamrocks 
 that grew out of the " Croppy's Grave : " 
 
 " Dark falls the tear of him that mourneth 
 Lost hope or joy that never returneth ; 
 But brightly flows the tear 
 Wept o'er a hero's bier." 
 
 Tara and its glories are things of the past t Tara and ita 
 monarchs are gone ; but the spirit that crowned them at Tar? 
 has not died with them ; the spirit that summoned bard aud 
 chief to surround their throne has not expired with them. That 
 spirit was the spirit of Ireland's nationality ; and that spirit 
 lives to-day as strong, as fervid, and as glorious as ever it 
 burned during the ages of persecution ; as it ever lived in the 
 hearts of the Irish race. 
 
 And now, my friends, treading, as it were, adown the hill- 
 side, after having heard Patrick's voice, after having beheld, 
 on the threshold of Tara, Patrick's glorious episcopal figure, 
 as, with the sympathy that designated his grand, heroic char- 
 acter, he plucked from the soil the shamrock and upheld it, and 
 appealed to the imagination of Ireland — appealed to that 
 imagination that never yet failed to recognize a thing of truth 
 or a thing of beauty — we now descend the hill, aud wander 
 through the land where we first beheld the group of the 
 
*HE HISTORY OF lEELAND, AS TOLD IN HER KUINS. 89 
 
 " Seven Churches." Everywhere throughout the land do we see 
 the clustering ruins of these small churches. Seldom exceeding 
 fifty feet in length, they rarelj' attain to any such proportion. 
 There they are, generally speaking, under the shadow of some 
 old round tower — some ancient Celtic name, indicative of past 
 glory, still lingering around and sanctifying them. What were 
 these seven churches ? what is the meaning of them ? why 
 were they so numerous ? Why, there were churches enough, 
 if we believe the ruins of Ireland, in Ireland during the first 
 two centui'ies of its Christianity to house the whole nation. 
 Everywhere there were churches — churches in groups of seven 
 — as if one were not enough, or two. Nowadays, we are struck 
 with the multitude of churches in London, in Dubhn, in New 
 York ; but we must remember that we are a divided com- 
 munity ; and that every sect, no matter how small it is, builds 
 its own church ; but in Ireland we were all of one faith ; and 
 all of these churches were multiplied. But what is the mean- 
 ing of it? These churches were built in the early days of 
 [reland's mouasticism — in the days when the world acknow- 
 ledged the miracle of Ireland's holiness. Never, since God 
 created the earth — never since Christ proclaimed the truth 
 amongst men — never was seen so extraordinary and so miracu- 
 lous a thing as that a people should become, almost entirely, a 
 nation of monks and nuns, as soon as they became Catholic 
 and Christian. The highest proof of the Gospel is monasticism. 
 As I stand before you, robed in this Dominican dress — most 
 unworthy to wear it — still, as I stand before you, a monk, 
 vowed to God by poverty, chastity, and obedience — I claim for 
 myself, such as I am, this glorious title, that the Church of 
 God regards us as the very best of her children. And why ? 
 Because the cream, as it were, of the Gospel spirit is sacrifice ; 
 and the highest sacrifice is the sacrifice that gives a man 
 entirely, without the slightest reserve, to God, in the service 
 his country and of his fellow-men. This sacrifice is embodied 
 and, as it were, combined in the monk ; and, therefore, the 
 monk and the nun are really the highest productions of 
 Christianity. Now, Ireland, in the very first days of her con- 
 version, so quickly caught up the spirit and so thoroughly 
 entered into the genius of the Gospel, that she became a nation 
 of monks and nuns, almost on the day when she became a 
 nation of Christians. The consequence was, that throughout 
 
90 liEOItTBES AND SEEitOlt^. 
 
 the land — iu the villages, in every little town, on every hill- 
 side, in every valley, these holy monks were to be found ; and 
 they were called by the people, Who loved them and venerated 
 them so dearly — they were called by the name of Gulden, or 
 servants of God. 
 
 Then came, almost at the very moment of Ireland's conver- 
 sion and Ireland's abundant monasticism, embodied, as it were, 
 and sustained by that rule of St. Columba which St. Patrick 
 brought into Ireland — having got it from St. Martin of Tours 
 — then came, at that very time, the ruin and the desolation of 
 almost all the rest of the world. Eome was in flames ; 
 and the ancient Pagan civilization of thousands of years was 
 gone. Hordes of barbarians poured, in streams, over the 
 world. The whole of that formerly civilized world seemed to 
 be falling back again into the darkness and chaos of the bar- 
 barism of the earliest times ; but Ireland, sheltered by the 
 encircling waves, converted aud sanctified, kept her national 
 freedom. No invader profaned her virgin soil , no sword was 
 drawn, nor cry of battle or feud resounded through the laud ; 
 and the consequence was that Ireland, developing her schools, 
 entering into every field of learning, produced, in almost every 
 monk, a man fitted to teach his fellow-men and enlighten the 
 world. And the whole world came to their monasteries, from 
 every clime, as I have said before ; they filled the land ; and 
 for three hundred years, without the shadow of a doubt, 
 history declares that Ireland held the intellectual supre- 
 macy of the civilized world. Then were built those groups 
 of seven churches, here aud there; then did they fill the 
 land ; then, when the morning sun arose, every valley in 
 blessed Ireland resounded to the praises and the rnatin-song of 
 the monk ; then the glorious cloisters of Lismore, of Armagh; 
 of Bangor, of Arran arose ; and, far out in the western ocean, 
 the glorious chorus resounded in praise of God, and the musical 
 genius of the people received its highest development in hymns 
 and canticles of praise — the expression of their glorious faith. 
 For three hundred years of peace and joy it lasted ; and, during 
 those three hundred years, Ireland sent forth a Columba to 
 lona ■, a Virgil ius to Italy ; a Romauld to Brabant ; a Gaul (or 
 ' Gall us) to Prance — iu a word, every nation in Europe — even 
 iRome itself- all acknowledged that, iu those days, the light 
 of learning and of sanctity beamed upon them from the hoW 
 
HISTOET OP IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HEE RUINS, 91 
 
 wogeny of saiuts, that Ireland, the fairest mother of saints, 
 produced and sent out to sanctify and enlighten the world. 
 And, mark you, my friends, these Irish monks were fearless 
 men. They were the most learned men in the world, For 
 instance, there was one of them~at home he was called 
 Fearghal, abroad he was called Virgilius ; this man was a great 
 astronomer ; and, as early as the seventh century, he discovered 
 the rotundity of the earth, proclaimed that it was a sphere, 
 and declared the existence of the antipodes. In those days 
 everybody thought that the earth was as flat as a pancake ; 
 and the idea was, that a man could walk as far as the land 
 brought him, and he would then drop into the sea ; and that if 
 he took ship then, and sailed on to a certain point, why, then 
 he would go into nothing at all. So, when this Irish monk, 
 skilled in Irish science, wrote a book, and asserted this, which 
 was recognized in after ages and proclaimed as a mighty dis- 
 covery, the philosophers and learned men of the time were 
 astonished. They thought it was heresy, and they did the 
 most natural thing in the world — they complained to the pope 
 of him ; and the pope sent for him, examined him, examined 
 his theory, and examined his astronomical systfjm ; and this is 
 the answer, and the best answer, I can give to those who say 
 that the Catholic Church is not the friend of science or of 
 progress. What do you think is the punishment the pope 
 gave him ? The pope made him Archbishop of Salzbui-g. 
 He told him to continue his discoveries — continue your studies, 
 he said ; mind your prayers, and try and discover all the 
 scientific truth that you can ; for you are a learned man. 
 Well, Fearghal continued his studies, and so well did he su;dy 
 that he anticipated, by centuries, some of the most highly 
 practical discoveries of modern ages ; and so well did he mind 
 his prayers, that Pope Gregory the Tenth canonized him after 
 his death. 
 
 The Danish invasion came, and I need not tell you that these 
 Northern warriors who lauded at the close of the eighth cen- 
 tury, effecting their first landing near where the town of 
 Skerries stands now, between Dublin and Balbriggan, on the 
 eastern coast — that these men, thus coming, came as plunderers, 
 and enemies of the religion as well as of the nationality of the 
 people. And for three hundred years, wherever they came, 
 and wherever they went, the first thing they did was to put to 
 
92 LECTUEES AKD SERMONS. 
 
 death all the monks, and all the nuns, set fire to the schools, 
 and banish the students ; and, inflamed in this way with the 
 blood of the peaceful, they sought to kill all the Irish friars ; 
 and a war of extermination — a war of interminable struggle 
 and duration — was carried on for three hundred years. Ireland 
 fought them ; the Irish kings and chieftains fought them. We 
 ;ead that in one battle alone, at Glenamada, in the county of 
 Wicklow, King Malachi, he who wore the " collar of gold," and 
 the great King Brian, joined their forces in the cause of Ire- 
 land. In that grand day, when the morning sun arose, the 
 battle began ; and it was not until the sun set in the evening 
 that the last Dane was swept from the field, and they withdi'ew 
 to their ships, leaving six thousand dead bodies of their 
 warriors behind them. Thus did Ireland, united, know how to 
 deal with her Danish invaders ; thus would Ireland have dealt 
 with Pitzstephen and his Normans ; but, on the day when they 
 landed, the curse of disunion and discord was amongst the 
 people. Finallj-, after three hundred years of invasion, Brian, 
 on that Good Friday of 1014, cast out the Danes for ever, and 
 from the plains of Clontarf drov^e them into DubUn Bay 
 Well, behind them they left the ruins of all the religion they 
 had found. They left a people, who had, indeed, not lost their 
 faith, but a people who were terribly shaken and demoralized 
 by three hundred years of bloodshed and of war. One-half of 
 it — one-sixth of it — would have been sufficient to ruin any 
 other people ; but the element that kept Ireland alive — the ele- 
 ment that kept the Irish nationality alive in the hearts of the 
 people — the element that preserved civilization in spite of three 
 centuries of war, was the element of Ireland's faith, and the 
 traditions of the nation's by-gone glory. 
 
 And now we arrive at the year 1134. Thirty years before 
 in the year 1103, the last Danish army was conquered and 
 routed on the shores of Strangford Lough, ia the North, and 
 the last Danish King took his departure for ever from the green 
 shores of Erin. Thirty years have elapsed. /reland is 
 struggling to restore her shattered temples, her ruined altars, 
 and to build up again, in all its former glory and sanctity, her 
 nationality and monastic priesthood. Then St. Malachi— 
 great, glorious, and venerable name !— St. Malachi, in whom 
 the best blood of Ireland's kings was mingled with the best 
 blood of Ireland's saints — was Archbishop of Armagh. In 
 
THE HISTOET OF lEELAND, AS TOLD IN HER RUINS. 93 
 
 the year 1134, he iuvited into Ireland the Cistercian and the 
 Benedictine monks. They came with all the traditions of the 
 most exalted sanctity — with a spirit not less mild nor less holy 
 than the spirit of a Dominic or an Augnstine, and built up the 
 glories of Lindisfarne, of lona, of Mellifout, of Mouasterboice, 
 and of Monastereveii, and all these magnificent ruins of which 
 I spoke — the sacred monastic ruins of Ireland, Then the 
 wondering world beheld such grand achievements as it never 
 saw before, ontrivalling in the splendour of their magnificence 
 the grandem- of those temples which still attest the mediaeval 
 greatness of Belgium, of France, and of Italy. Then did the 
 Irish people see, enshrined in these houses, the holy solitaries 
 and monks from Clairveaux, with the light of the great St. 
 Bernard shining upon them from his grave. But only thirty 
 years more passed — thirty years only ; and, behold, a trumpet 
 is heard on the eastern coast of Ireland ; the shores and the 
 hills of that Wexford coast re-echo to the shouts of the Norman, 
 as he sets his accursed foot upon the soil of Erin. Divided aa 
 the nation was — chieftain fighting against chieftain — for, when 
 the great King Brian was slain at Clontarf, and his son and 
 his grandson were killed, and the three generations of the royal 
 family thus swept away — every sti'ong man in the laud stood 
 up and put in his claim for sovereignty — by this division the 
 Anglo-Norman was able to fix liiniself in the land. Battles 
 were fought on every hill in Ireland ; the most horrible scenes 
 of the Danish invasion were renewed again. But Ireland is 
 no longer able to shake the Saxon from her bosom ; for Ireland 
 is no longer able to strike him as one man. The name of 
 " United Irishmen " has been a name, and nothing but a name, 
 since the day Brian Boru was slain at Clontarf until this 
 present moment. Would to God that this name of United 
 Irishmen meant something more than an idle word ! Would to 
 God that, again, to day, we were all united for some great and 
 glorious purpose ! W^ould to God that the blessing of our 
 ancient, glorious unity was upon us ! Would to God that the 
 blessing even of a common purpo.se in the love of our country 
 guided us ! then indeed, would the Celtic race and the Celtift 
 nation be as strong as ever it was — as strong as it was upon 
 that evening at Clontarf, which behold Erin weeping over her 
 martyred Brian, but beheld her with the crown stil! upon her 
 brow. 
 
94 LE0TTJEB8 AND SBBMONS. 
 
 Sometimes victorious, yet oftener defeated — defeated not st 
 mucli by the shock of the Norman onset as by the treachery 
 md the feuds of her own chieftains — the heart of the nation 
 ras broken ; and behold, from the far sunny shores of Italy, 
 there came to Ireland other monks and other missionaries, 
 clothed ia this very, habit which I now wear, or in the sweet 
 brown habit of St Francis, or the glorious dress of St. 
 Augustine. Unlike the monks who gave themselves up to 
 contemplation, and who had large possessions, large houses 
 — these men came among the people, to make themselves at 
 home among the people, to become the " soggarths aroon " of 
 Ireland, They came with a learning as great as that of the 
 Irish monks of old — with a sturdy devotion, as energetic as 
 that of Columbkille, or of Kevin of Glendalough ; they came 
 with a message of peace, of consolation, and of hope to this 
 heart-broken people ; and they came nearly seven hundred 
 years ago to the Irish shores. The Irish people received 
 them with a kind and supernatural instinct that they had 
 found their champions and their priestly heroes ; and for 
 nearly seven hundred years the Franciscan and his Dominican 
 brother have dwelt together in the land. Instead of building 
 up magnificent, wonderful edifices, like Holy Cross, or 
 MeUifont, or Dunbrodie ; instead of covering acres with the 
 grandeur of their buildings, these Dominicans and Franciscans 
 went out in small companies — ten, or twelve, or twenty— and 
 they went into remote towns and villages, and there they dwelt, 
 and built quietly a convent for themselves ; and they educated 
 the people themselves ; and, by-and-bye, the people in the next 
 generation learned to love the disciples of St. Dominic and St, 
 Francis, as they beheld the churches so multiplied. In every 
 towulaiid of Ireland there was either a Dominican or a Francis- 
 can church or convent The priests of Ireland welcomed them ; 
 the holy bishops of Ireland sustained them ; the ancient reli- 
 gions of Ireland gave them the right-hand of friendship ; and 
 the Cistercians or Benedictines gave them, very often indeed, 
 some of their own churches wherein to found their congregation, 
 or to begin their missions. They came to dwell in the land 
 early in the twelfth century, and, until the fifteenth century, 
 strange to say, it was not yet found out what was the hidden 
 design of Providence in bringing them there, in what was once 
 tlitjir own true and ancient missionary Ireland. 
 
THE HISTOET OF IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HEB RUINS. 95 
 
 During these three hundred years, the combat for Ireland's 
 nationality was still continued. The O'Neill, the O'Brien, the 
 O'Donnell, the McGuire, the O'More, kept the national sword 
 waving iu the aii The Franciscans and the Dominicans cheered 
 them, entered into their feelings, and they could only not be 
 said to be more- Irish than the Irish themselves, because they 
 ivere the heart's blood of Ireland. They were the light of the 
 national councils of the chieftains of Ireland, as their historians 
 were the faithful annalists of the glories of these days of combat. 
 They saw the trouble ; and yet, for three hundred years the 
 Franciscan and Domini^-an had not discovered what his real 
 mission to Ireland was. But at the end of the three hundred 
 years came the fifteenth century. Then came the cloud of reli- 
 gious persecution over the land. All the hatred that divided the 
 Saxon and the Celt, on the principle of nationality, was now 
 heightened by the additional hatred of religious discord and divi- 
 sion; and Irishmen, if they hated the Saxon before, as the enemy 
 of Ireland's nationality, from the fifteenth century hated him 
 with an additional hatred, as the eaemy of Ireland's faith and 
 Ireland's religion. The sword was drawn. My friends, I speak 
 not in indigoation, but in sorrow ; and I know if there be one 
 amongst you, my fellow-countrymen, here to-night — if there 
 be a man who differs with me in religion — to that man I say : 
 " Brother and friend, you feel as deeply as I do a feeling of in- 
 dignation and of regret for the religious persecution of our native 
 land." No man feels it more — no man regrets more bitterly, 
 the element of religious discord, the terrible persecution of these 
 three hundred years, through which Ireland — Catholic Ireland 
 — has been obliged to pass ; no man feels this more than the 
 high-minded, honest, kind-hearted Irish Protestant. And wh\ 
 should he not feel it ? If it was Catholic Ireland that had per- 
 secuted Protestant Ireland for that time, and with such inten- 
 sity, I should hang my head for shame. 
 
 Well, that mild, scrupulous, holy man, Henry the Eighth, iu 
 the middle of the fifteenth century got a scruple of conscience ! 
 Perhaps it was whilst he was saying his prayers — he began to 
 get uneasy, and to be afraid that, maybe, his wife wasn't his 
 wife at all ! He wrote a letter to the pope, and he said : " Holy 
 Father, I am very uneasy in my mind!" The fact was, there 
 was a very nice young lady in the court. Her name was Anna 
 Boleyn. She was a great beauty. Henry got very fond of hor, 
 
96 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 and he wanted to marry her. But he could not marry her, be- 
 cause he was ah-eady a married man. So he wrote to the pope, 
 and he said he was uneasy in his mind — he had a scruple of 
 conscience ; and he said : " Holy Father, granf me a favour. 
 Grant me a divorce from Catherine of Arragou \ have been 
 married to hei for several j'ears. She has had several childreu 
 by me. Just grant me this little favour. I want a divorce!" 
 The pope sent back word to him : " Don't be uneasy at all in 
 your mind! Stick to your wife like a man; and don't be 
 troubling me with your scruples." Well, Henry threw the pope 
 over. He married the young woman whilst his former wife was 
 living— and he should have been taken that very day and tried 
 before the Lord Chief Justice of England, and transported for 
 life. And why ? Because if it had been any other man in 
 England that did it but the king, that man would have been 
 transported for life ; and the king is as much bound by the 
 laws of God, and of justice, and conscience, and morality, as 
 any other man. When Henry separated from the pope he 
 made himself head of the Church ; and he told the people of 
 England that he would manage their consciences for them 
 for the future. But when he called upon Ireland to join him 
 in this strange and (indeed I think my Ptotestant friends will 
 admit) insane act, — (for such, indeed, I think my Protestant 
 friends will admit this act to be ; for, I think, it was nothing 
 short of insanity for any man of sense to say : " I will take 
 ■he law of God as preached from the Ups and illustrated in 
 
 the life of Henry the Eighth "), Ireland refused. Henry 
 
 drew the sword, and declared that Ireland should acknowledge 
 him as the head of the Church ; that she should part with her 
 ancient faith, and with all the traditions- of her history, to 
 sustain him in his measures, or that he would exterminate the 
 [rish I'ace. Another scruple of conscience came to this tender- 
 hearted man 1 And what do you think it was' Oh, he said, 
 [ am greatly afraid the friars and the priests are not leading 
 good lives. So he set up what we call a " commission ; " and 
 he sent it to Ireland to inquire what sort of lives the monks 
 and friars and priests and nuns were leading; and the com- 
 missioners sent back word to him, that they could not find any 
 great fault with them ; but that, on the whole, they thought it 
 would be better to turn them out ! So they took their convents 
 and their churches, and whatever little property they possessed, 
 
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HER RUINS. 97 
 
 and these commissioners sold them, and put the money into 
 their own pockets. There was a beautiful simplicity about the 
 whole plan Well, my friends, then came the hour of the ruin 
 of the dear old convents of tlie Franciscans and Dominicans. 
 Their inmates were driven out at the point of the sword; they 
 weie scattered like sheep over the land. Five pounds was the 
 price set upon the head of the friar or priest — the same price 
 that was set upon the head of a wolf. They were hunted 
 throughout the land ; and when they fled for their lives from 
 their convent homes, the Irish people opened their hearts, and 
 said, " Come to us, Soggarth Aroon." Throughout the length 
 and breadth of the land they were scattered, witli uo shelter 
 but the canopy of heaven ; with no Sunday sacrifice to remind 
 the people of God; no Mass celebrated in public, and no 
 Gospel preached ; and yet they succeeded for three hundred 
 years in preserving the glorious Catholic faith, that is as strong 
 in Ireland to-day as ever it was. These venerable ruins tell 
 the tale of the nation's woe, of the nation's sorrow. As long 
 as it was merely a question of destroying a Cistercian or a 
 Benedictine Abbey, there were so few of these in the land that 
 the people did not feel it much. But when the persecution 
 came upon the Bhreahir, as the friar was called — the men 
 whom everybody knew — the men whom everybody came to 
 look up to for consolation in affliction or in sorrow ; when it 
 came upon him — then it brought sorrow and affliction to every 
 village, to every little town — to every man in Ireland. There 
 were, at this time, upwards of eighty convents of religious 
 Franciscans and Dominicans in Ireland that numbered very 
 close upon a thousand priests of each order. There were 
 nearly a thousand Irish Franciscans, and nearly a thousand 
 Irish Dominican priests, when Henry began his persecu- 
 tion. He was succeeded, after a brief interval of thirty 
 jears, by his daughter Elizabeth. How many Dominicans, 
 do you think, were then left in Ireland? There were a 
 thousand, you say? Oh, God of heaven! there were onlj 
 four of them left — only four ! All the rest of these heroii 
 men had stained their white habit with the blood that thej 
 shed for God and for their country. Twenty thousand men it 
 took Elizabeth, for as many years as there were thousands of 
 them, to try to plant the seedling of Protestantism on Irish 
 soil. The ground was dug as for a grave ; the seed of Pro- 
 
98 LEOTUEES AND SEKMONS. 
 
 testantism was cast into that soil ; and the blood of the nation 
 was poured in to warm it and bring it forth. It never grew— 
 it 'never came forth; it never bloomed! Ireland was as 
 Catholic the day that Elizabeth died at Hampton Court, gnaw- 
 ing the flesh oif her hands in despair, and blaspheming God- 
 Ireland was as Catholic that day as she was the day that 
 Henry the Eighth vainly commanded her first to become Pro- 
 testant. 
 
 Then came a little breathing-time — a very short time — and 
 in fifty years there were six hundred Irish Dominican priests 
 in Ireland again. They studied in Spain, in France, in Italy. 
 These were the youth, the children of Irish fathers and 
 mothers, who cheerfully gave them up, though they knew, 
 almost to a certainty, that they were devoting them to a 
 martyr's death ; but they gave them up for God. Smuggled 
 out of the country, they studied in these foreign lands ; and 
 they came back again, by night and by stealth, and they 
 landed upon the shores of Ireland ; and when Cromwell came 
 he found six hundred Irish Dominicans upon the Irish land. Ten 
 years after — only ten years passed — and again the Irish Do- 
 minican preachers assembled to count up their numbers, and to 
 tell how many survived and how many had fallen. How many 
 do you think were left out of the six hundred? But one hundred 
 and fifty were left; four hundred and fifty had perished — had 
 shed their blood for their country, or had been shipped away to 
 Barbadoes as slaves. These are the tales their ruins tell. I need 
 not spe.'ik of their noble martyrs. Oh, if these moss-grown 
 stones of the Irish Franciscan and Dominican ruins could speak, 
 they would tell how the people gave up everything they had, 
 for years and years, as wave after wave of successive perseci* 
 tions and confiscations and robbery rolled over them, rathe) 
 than renounce their glorious faith or their glorious priest 
 hood. 
 
 When Elizabeth died, the Irish Catholics thought her suc- 
 cessor, James I., would give them at least leave to live ; and, 
 accordingly, for a shc'^t time after he became king, James kept 
 his own counsel, and he J'd not tell the Irish Catholics whether 
 ho would grant them any concessions or not ; but he must have 
 given thein some euGouragemeat, for they befriended him, as 
 they had always done to the Houie of Stuart. But what do 
 you think the peoole did 1 As soon as the notion that they 
 
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HEB RUINS. 99 
 
 would be Jowed to live in the land took possession of them, 
 and that they would be allowed to take possession of the 
 estates they had been robbed of — instead of minding them- 
 selveSj the very first thing they did — to the credit of Irish 
 fidelity be it said — was to set about restoring the Franciscan 
 and Dominican abbeys. It was thus they restored the Black 
 Abbey in Kilkenny, a Dominican house ; they restored the 
 Dominican Convent in Waterford, Multifarnham, in West- 
 m.eath, and others ; and these in a few months grew up into all 
 their former beauty from ruin, under the loving, faithful, re- 
 storing hands of the Irish people. But soon came a letter 
 from the king ; and it began with these notable words : " It 
 has been told to us that some of our Irish subjects imagined 
 that we were about to grant them liberty of conscience." No 
 such thing ! Liberty of conscience for Irish Catholics 1 No ! 
 Hordes of persecutors were set loose again, and the storms of 
 persecution that burst over Ireland in the days of James I. 
 were quite as bad and as terrible as any that rained down 
 blood upon the land in the days of Queen Elizabeth. And so, 
 with varying fortunes, now of hope and now of fear, this self- 
 same game went on. The English determined that they would 
 make one part of Ireland, at least, Protestant, and that the 
 fahest and the best portion of it, as they imagined — ^namely, the 
 province of Ulster. Now, mark the simple way they went about 
 it. They made up their minds that they would make one pro- 
 vince of Ireland Protestant, to begin with, in order that h 
 might spread out by degrees to the others. And what did 
 they do ? They gave notice to every Catholic in Ulster to 
 pack up and begone — to leave the land. They confiscated 
 every single acre in the fair province of Ulster ; and the Pro- 
 testant Primate, the Archbishop of Armagh — a very holy man, 
 who was always preaching to the people not to be too fond of 
 the things of this world — ^he got forty-three thousand acres of 
 the best land of these convents in fee. Trinity College, in 
 Dublin, got thu'ty thousand acres. There were certain guilds 
 of traders in London — the " skinners," " tanners," the " dry- 
 salters;" and what do you think these London trade ;issix;iatious 
 got ? They got a present of two hundred and nine thousand eight 
 hundred acres of the fiuest land in Ulster ! Then all the rest 
 of the province was given in lots of one thousand, one thousand 
 five hundred, to two thousand acres, to Scotchmen and English- 
 
lOO LE0TUEE8 AND SERMONS. 
 
 men. Bat the very deed that gave it obligud them to take 
 Iheir oath that they would accept that laud upou this condition 
 — not so much as to give a day's work to a laboming man, 
 unless that labouring man took his oath that he was not a 
 Catholic. And so Ulster was disposed of. That remained 
 until Cromwell came ; and wheu the second estimate was made 
 of the kingdom it was discovered that there were iiearLf five 
 millions of acres lying still in the hands of the Catholics. And 
 what did Cromwell do? He quietly made a law, and he 
 published it; and he said, on the 1st of May, 1654, every 
 Catholic in Ireland was to cross the Shannon, and to go into 
 Connaught. Now, the river Shannon cuts off five of the 
 western counties from the rest of Ireland, and these five 
 counties, though very large in extent, have more of waste 
 land, of bog, and of hard, unproductive, stony soil than all the 
 rest of Ireland. I am at liberty to say this, because I myself 
 am the heart's blood of a Connaughtman. If any other maii 
 said this of Connaught, I would have to say my prayers, and 
 keep a very sharp eye about me, to try to keep my temper. 
 But it is quite true ; with all our love for our native land, with 
 all my love for my native province — all that love won't put a 
 blade of grass on an acre of limestone ; and that there are acres 
 of such, we all know. It was an acre of this sort that a poor 
 fellow was building a wall around. " What are you building 
 that wall for ? " says the landlord. " Are you afraid the cattle 
 will get out ? " " No, your honour, indeed I am not," says the 
 poor man ; " but I was afraid the poor brutes might get in," Then 
 Cromwell sent the Catholics of Ireland to Connaught ; and, re- 
 member, he gave them their choice. He said, " Now if you 
 don't like to go to Connaught, I will send you to hell ! " So the 
 Catholic Irish ]mt their heads together, and they said: "It is 
 better for us to go to Connaught. Ho may want the other 
 place for himself.'' God forbid that 1 should condemn 
 any man to hell ; but I cannot help thinking of what the pool 
 carman said to myself in Dublin once. Going along, he saw a 
 likeness of Cromwell, and he says, " At all events Cromwel' 
 has goiie to the devil," I said, " My man, don't be uncharit- 
 able. Don't say that ; it is uncharitable to say it." " Thunder 
 md turf ! " says he, " sure if he is not gone to the devil, where 
 8 the use of having a devil at all ? " At any rate, my friends, 
 fherever he is gone to, he confiscated at one act five millions 
 
THE HISTOEY OF IBELAND, AS VOLD IN HER EUINS. 101 
 
 of acres of Irish land ; with one stroke of his pen, he handed 
 over to his Cromwellian soldiers five million acres of the best 
 land in Ireland, the golden vale of Tipperary included. Forty 
 years later, the Catholics began to creep out of Connaught, 
 and to buy little lots here and there, and they got a few lots 
 here and there given to them by their Protestant friends. But, 
 at any rate, it was discovered by the government of England, 
 that the Catholics in Ireland were beginning to get a little bit 
 of the laud again ; and they issued another commission to inquhe 
 into the titles to these properties, and they found that there was a 
 million two hundred thousand acres of the land recurred to the 
 Catholics ; and they found, also, that that land belonged to the 
 crown ; and the million two hundred thousand acres were again 
 confiscated Sr> that, as soon as the people began to take hoW 
 of the land at all, down came the sword of persecution and <3 
 confiscation upon them. And Cromwell himself avowed with the 
 greatest solemnity, that as Ireland would not become Protestant, 
 Ireland should be destroyed. Now, is it to excite your feelings 
 of hatred against England that I say these things? No, no ; I 
 don't want any man to hate his neighbour. I don't want to 
 excite these feelings. Nor I don't believe it is necessary for 
 me to excite them. I believe— sincerely I believe — that an 
 effort to excite an Irishman to a dislike of England wouH be 
 something like an effort to encourage a cat to take a mouse. T 
 mention these facts just because these are the things that Ire- 
 land's ruins tell us ; because these are at once the history of 
 the weakness and the sadness, yet of the strength and of the 
 glory, of which these ruins tell us. I mention these things be- 
 cause they are matter of history ; and because, though we 
 are the party that were on the ground, prostrate, there is 
 nothing in the history of our fathers at which the Irishman of 
 to-day need be ashamed, or hang his head. But if you want to 
 know in what spirit our people dealt with all this persecution — 
 if you want to know how we met those who were thus terrible 
 in their persecution of ns — I appeal to the history of my 
 country, and I will state to you three great facts that will show 
 you what was the glorious spirit of the Irish people, even in the 
 midst of their sorrows ; how Christian it was and how patient 
 it was ; how forgiving and loving even to our persecutors it 
 was; how grandly they illustrated the spirit of duty at the 
 command of their Lord and Saviour ; and how magnificeatlj 
 
102 LEOTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 chey returned good for evil. The first of ttese facts is this : 
 At the time that England invaded Ireland — towards the close 
 of the twelfth century — there were a number of Englishmen in 
 slavery in Ireland. They were taken prisoners of war ; they 
 had come over witn the Danes — from Wales and from North 
 Britain, with their Danish superiors; and when Ireland con- 
 quered them, the rude, terrible custom of the times, and the 
 shocks that all peaceful spirit had got by these wars, had bred 
 so much ferocity in the people, that they actually made slaves 
 of these Englishmen ! And they were everywhere in the land. 
 When the English landed in Ireland, and when the first Irish 
 blood was shed by them, the nation assembled by its bishops 
 ■and archbishops in the Synod at Armagh, there said, " Per- 
 haps the Almighty God is angry with us because we have these 
 captive Christians and Saxons amongst us, and punishes us for 
 having these slaves amongst us. In the name of God we will 
 set them free." And on that very day every soul in Ireland 
 that was in slavery received his freedom. Oh, what a grand 
 Und glorious sight before heaven ! a nation fit to be free, yet 
 enslaved — yet, with the very hand on which others try tc 
 fasten their chains, striking off the chains from these English 
 slaves 1 Never was there a more glorious illustration of the 
 heavenly influence of Christianity since Christianity was 
 preached amongst the nations. The next incident is 
 rather a ludicrous one, and I am afraid that it will 
 make you laugh. My friends, I know the English people 
 well. Some of the best friends that I have in the world are in 
 England. They have a great many fine qualities. But there 
 is a secret, quiet, passive contempt for Ireland ; and I really 
 (elieve it exists amongst the very best of them, with very few 
 exceptions. An Englishman will not, as a general rule, hate 
 an Irishman joined to him in faith ; but he will quietly despise 
 us. If we rise and become fractious, then, perhaps, he will fear 
 us ; but, generally speaking, in the English heart there is, no 
 di ubt, a contempt for Ireland and for Irishmen. Now, that 
 showed itself remarkably in 1666. In that year the Catholics 
 of Ireland were ground into the very dust. That year saw 
 one hundred thousand Irishmen — six thousand of them beauti- 
 ful boys — sent off to be sold as slaves in the sugar-plantations 
 of Barbadoes That year London was burned, just as Chicago 
 was burned the other day. The people were left in miserv. 
 
THB HISTOBT OF IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HEB RtJINS. 103 
 
 The Catholics of Ireland — hunted, persecuted, scarcely able to 
 live — actually came together, and, out of pure charity, they 
 made up for the famishing people of London a present — a 
 grand present. They sent them over fifteen thousand fat 
 bullocks ! They knew John Bull's taste for beef They knew 
 his liking for a good beef-steak, and they actually sent him the 
 best beef in the world — Irish beef. The bullocks arrived in 
 London. The people took them, slaughtered them, and ate 
 them — a; id the Irish Catholics said, " Much good may they do 
 you ! " Now comes the funny part of it. When the bullocks 
 were all killed and eaten, the people of London got up a 
 petition to the Houses of Parliament, and they got Parliament 
 to act on that petition ; it was to the effect that this importa- 
 tion of Irish oxen was a nuisance ; and it should be abated. 
 But they had taken good care to eat the meat before they voted 
 it a nuisance. 
 
 The third great instance of Ireland's magnaaimous Chris- 
 tianity, and of the magnanimity with which this brave and 
 grand old people knew how to return good for evil, was in the 
 time of King James. In the year 1689, exactly twenty years 
 after the Irish bullocks had been voted a nuisance in London — 
 in that year there happened to be, for a short time, a Catholic 
 king in England. The tables were turned, The king went to 
 work and he turned out the Irish lord chancellor becauso he 
 was a Protestant, and he put in a Catholic chancellor in hia 
 place. He turned out two Irish judges because they were Pro 
 testauts, and he put in two Englishmen, Catholics, as judges in 
 their place. He did various actions of this kind, persecuting 
 men because they were Protestants and he was a Catholic. 
 And now, mark. We have it on the evidence of history that 
 the Catholic archbishop of Armagh and the Catholic pope of 
 Rome wrote to James the Second, through the lord lieutenant 
 over the Irish Catholics there, that he had no right to do that, 
 and that it was very wrong, Oh, what a contrast 1 When 
 Charles the First wished to grant some little remission of the 
 persecution in Ireland, because he was in want of money, the 
 Irish Catholics sent him word that they would give him two 
 hundred thousand pounds if he would bnly give them leave to 
 worship God as their own conscience directed. What encour- 
 agement the king gave them we know not ; at any rate, they 
 sent him a sum of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, by war 
 
104 LECTURES AND SERMONS, 
 
 of iDStalment. But the moment it became rumoured abroad, 
 the Protestant archbishop of Dublin got up m the pulpit of bt 
 Patrick's Cathedral, and he declared that a curse would fab 
 upon the laud and upon the king, because of these anticipated 
 concessions to the Catholics. What a contrast is here presented 
 between the action of the Catholic people of Ireland and the 
 action of their oppressoir ! And in these instances have w», 
 not presented to us the strongest evidence that the people who 
 can act so by their enemies were incapable of being crushed ? 
 Yes ; Ireland can never be crushed nor conquered ; Ireland can 
 never lose her nationality so long as she retains so high and 
 so glorious a faith, and presents so magnificent an illustration 
 of it in her national life. Never ! She has not lost it! She 
 has it to-day. She will have it in the higher and more perfect 
 form of complete and entire national freedom ; for God does 
 not abandon a race who not only cling to Him with an 
 unchanging faith, but who also know how, in the midst of 
 their sufferings, to illustrate that faith by so glorious, so 
 liberal, so grand a spirit of Christian charity. 
 
 And now, my friends, it is for me simply to draw one con- 
 clusion, and to have done. Is there a man amongst us here to- 
 night who is ashamed of his race or his native land, if that man 
 have the high honour to be an Iiishman ? Is there a man living 
 that can point to a more glorious and a purer source whence he 
 draws the blood in his veins, than the man who can point to 
 the bravery of his Irish forefathers, or the immaculate purity of 
 his Irish mother ? We glory in them, and we glory in the faith 
 for which our ancestors have died. We glory in the love of 
 country that never — never, for an instant — admitted that Ireland 
 was a mere province — that Ireland was merely a " West Bri- 
 tain." Never, in our darkest hour, was that idea adapted to the 
 Irish mind, or adopted by the will of the Irish people. And, 
 therefore, I say, if we glory in that faith — if we glory in the 
 history of their national conduct and of their national love, oh, 
 my friends and fellow-countrymen — I say it, as well as a priest 
 as an Irishman— let us emulate their example ; let us learn to 
 be generous to those who differ from us, and let us learn to be 
 charitable, even to those who would fain injure us. We can 
 thus conquer them. We can thus assure to the future of Ire- 
 land the blessings that have been denied to her past — the bles- 
 sing of religious equality, the blessing of religious liberty, the 
 
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, AS TOLD IN HBE KUINS. 106 
 
 blessing of religious unity, which, one day or other, will spring 
 up in Ireland again. I have often heard words of bitterness, 
 aye, and of insult, addressed to myself in the north of Ireland, 
 coming from Orange lips ; but I have always said to myself, 
 He is an Irishman ; though he is an Oi'aijgeraan, he is an Irisfi- 
 man. If he lives long enough, he will learn to love the priesl 
 that represents Ireland's old faith ; but, if he die in his Orangt 
 dispositions, his son or his grandson will yet shake hands witL 
 and bless the priest, when he and I are both in our graves 
 And why do I say this ? Because nothing bad, nothing un- 
 charitable, nothing harsh or venomous ever yet lasted long upon 
 the green soil of Ireland. If you throw a poisonous snake into 
 the grass of Ireland, he will be sweetened, so as to lose his 
 poison, or else he will die. Even the English people, when they 
 landed, were not two hundred and fifty years in the land, uuti. 
 they were part of it ; the very Normans who invaded us became 
 " more Irish than the Irish themselves." They became so fond 
 of the country that they were thoroughly imbued with its 
 spirit. And so, any evil that we have in Ireland, is only a 
 temporary and a passing evil, if we are only faithful to oui 
 traditions, and to the history of our country. To-day, there 
 is rehgious disunion; but, thanks be to God, I have Uved 
 to see religious disabilities destroyed. And, if I were now 
 in the position of addressing Irish Orangemen, I would say, 
 " Men of Erin, three cheers for the Church disestablishment ! " 
 And if they should ask me, " Why ? " I would answer, " H 
 was right and proper to disestablish the CUiurch, because the 
 ' Established Church ' was put in between you and me, and we 
 ought to love each other, for we are both Irish !" Every class 
 in Ireland will be drawn closer to the other by this disestablish- 
 ment; and the honest Protestant man will begin to know a 
 little more of his Catholic brother, and to admire him ; and the 
 Catholic will begin to know a little more of the Orangeman, and, 
 perhaps, to say, " After all, he is not half so bad as he appears." 
 And believe me, my friends, that, breathing the air of Ireland, 
 which is Catholic, eating the bread made out of the wheat which 
 grows out on Irish soil — they get so infused with Catholic blood, 
 that as soon as the Orangeman begins to have the slightest re- 
 gard or love for his Catholic fellow-countryman, he is on the 
 highway to become a Catholic — for a Catholic he will be, some 
 time or other. As a man said to me very emphatically once ; 
 
106 LEOTCEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 " They will all be Catholics one day, surely, sir, if they only 
 stay long enough in the country ! " I say, my friends, that thr 
 past is the best guarantee for the future. We have seen the 
 past in some of its glories. What is the future to be ? What 
 is the future that is yet to dawn on this dearlj -loved land of 
 ours ? Oh, how glorious will that future be, wnen all Irishmen 
 shall be united in one common faith and one common love ! Oh, 
 how fair will our beloved Erin be, when, clothed in reJigious 
 unity, religious equality and freedom, she shall rise out of tne 
 ocean wave, as fan-, as lovely in the end of time, as she was in 
 the glorious days when the world, entranced by her beauty, pro- 
 claimed her to be the mother of saints and sages. Yes, I see 
 her rising emancipated; no trace of blood or persecution on her 
 virgin face ; the crown, so long lost to her, resting again upon 
 her fair brow 1 I see her in peace and concord with all the 
 nations around her, and with her own children within her. I 
 see her venerated by the nations afar off, and, most of all, by the 
 mighty nation which, in that day, in its strength, and in its 
 youth, and in its vigour, shall sway the destinies of the world. I 
 see her as Columbia salutes her across the ocean waves. But 
 the light of freedom coming from around my mother's face vpill 
 reflect the light of freedom coming from the face of that natioL 
 which has been nursed in freedom, cradled in freedom, and 
 which has never violated the sacred principles of religious free- 
 dom and rehgious equality. I see her with the light of faith 
 shining upon her face ; and I see her revered, beloved, and 
 cherished by the nations, as an ancient and a most precious 
 thing ! I behold her rising in the energy of a second birth, 
 when nations that have held then heads high are humbled 
 in the dust ! And so I hail thee, 0, mother Erin ! and I say td 
 thee — 
 
 •• The nations have fallen, but thou still art young 
 Thy sun is but rising when others have set ; 
 And though slavery's clouds round thy morning have huns 
 TJie lull moon of Freedom shall beam round thee yet 1''' 
 
THE SUPEBNATUEAL LIFE OF THE lEiSfl PEOPLE. 107 
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE, THE ABSORBING LIFE 
 OF THE IRISH PEOPLE. 
 
 The occasion of my addressing you this evening arises from 
 ttie fact that many who were kind enough to take tickets for 
 the lecture at Cooper Institute, were prevented from being 
 present by the great crowds of kind sympathizing friends that 
 greeted me on that occasion. While, therefore, I am bound in 
 justice to do my best to meet the requirements of those who 
 were kind enough to purchase tickets for that lecture, I also 
 wish to apologize to you for any inconvenience that you may 
 have suffered on that evening from having been excluded. 1 
 do not desire, on this occasion, to go over the same subject or 
 the same ground as on the evening of Cooper Institute, but I 
 will endeavour to lead you into the inner spirit that animated 
 the great struggle for Ireland's faith and for Ireland's nation- 
 ality. To those amongst you who, like myself, are Irish, the 
 subject will be pleasing and interesting from a national point of 
 view. To those amongst you who are not Irish, the subject 
 will still be interesting, for I know of no more interesting sub- 
 ject to occupy the attention of any honourable or high-minded 
 man than the contemplation of a people in a noble struggle for 
 their life, both in their religion and in their national existence. 
 Now, fii-st of all, my dear friends, consider that there are two 
 slements in every man — two elements of life — namely, the na- 
 tural and the supernatural, the temporal and the everlasting, 
 the corporeal and the spiritual. If we reflect a little upon the 
 nature of man, we shall find that not only did the Almighty 
 God endow us with a natural life, a bodily existence, but that, 
 in giving to us the spiritual essence of the soul which is our 
 interior principle of life, and stamping upon that soul his own 
 Jivine image and likeness, as he tells us, it was the intention of 
 the Almighty God that every man should live not only by the 
 real, natural, and corporeal Ufe of the body, but by the spiritual 
 and supernatural life of the soul. The body has its require- 
 
108 LBCTUEES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 ments, its necessities, its dangers, its pleasures ; and so, in like 
 manner, the soul of man lias its requirements, its necessities, its 
 dangers, its pleasures ; and lie is indeed a mean specimen of 
 our humanity who does not live more for the intellectual and 
 the spiritual objects of the soul, than for the mere transitory 
 and material objects of the body. Yet, between the material 
 and the supernatural, the corporeal and the spiritual, there is a 
 strict analogy and resemblance. In the body, a man must be 
 born in order to begin his existence in this world, and the first 
 necessary element of life is that birth which is the beginning 
 of life. Then, when the little infant i i born into the world, he 
 requires daily food that he may grow f :i wax strong every day 
 until he comes from childhood to youth and from youth to the 
 fulness and the strength of his manhood. But when he has 
 attained to this full growth and strength, still does he requirp 
 food every day of his life in order to preserve him in that health 
 and strength which he enjoys. Yet with all this incipience o? 
 being and birth, with all this sustenance of daily food, from oui 
 the very nature of the body, from out a thousand causes that 
 surround him, every man of us must at some time or other feel 
 bodily disease and infirmity, Then the remedy — the cure — is 
 necessary in order to restore us to our health and vigour once 
 more. 
 
 Behold the three great necessities of the bodily or corporeal 
 life in man. To begin to exist, he must be born. To continue 
 his existence, in the full maintenance of his health and strength, 
 he must be fed ; and to restore him, whenever, by disease oi 
 infirmity, he falls away from the fulness of that existence, he 
 must apply proper remedies. As it is with the body, so it is 
 with the spirit. As it is in the order of nature, so it is in the 
 order of grace. The soul also must be born into its super- 
 natural life. The sovil must be strengthened by supernatural 
 food in ordei- to maintain its celestial strength in that super- 
 natural life. The soul, whenever it fails, or falls away from 
 that strength and that supernatural existence, must be 
 provided with remedies, in order that it may return once more 
 to the fulness of its supernatural manhood. ' nrt this is 
 precisely the point where the world fails to comprehend, I will 
 not say the gifts of God, but even the wants of man. If there 
 be one evil greater than all others in this nineteenth century of 
 ours, it is that men content themselves with that which is 
 
THE SUPERNATUEAL LIFE OF THE IBISH PEOPLE. 109 
 
 merely natural. They seek all that is required for the strength 
 and the enjoyment of the natural life, and they do not rise, and 
 they refuse — deliberately refuse — to rise, even in thought, even 
 in conception, to the idea of the supernatural life, and the 
 Buperiiatural requirements of man. The absence of the super- 
 natural idea, .he absence of the supernatural craving or appetite, 
 the contentment with being deprived of the supernatural ele- 
 ment, is the great evil of our day ; and I lay that evil solemnly, 
 as a liistorian as -weW as a priest, at the door of Protestantism. 
 Not only did Protestantism assail this, that, or the other specific 
 doctrine of the Church of God, but Protestantism killed and 
 destroyed the supernatural life in man. In order to see this, 
 all you have to do is to reflect what are the three elements of 
 the supernatural life. What do I mean when I speak of the 
 supernatural element of life ? I mean this : that we are obliged 
 to live not only for time, but for eternity ; not only for this 
 world, but for the world that is to come ; not only for our fel- 
 low-men, but, above all, for our God, who made us. Know 
 that no man can live for God unless he lives in God. Let rne 
 repeat this great truth again : No man can live for God unless 
 he lives in God ; and in order to live in God, he must be born 
 unto God. He must begin to live in God, if he is to live in 
 him at all — just as a man must be born into this world natur- 
 ally, if he is to live in this world. If, then, God in his wisdom, 
 in his mercy, in his grace, in his divine and eternal purposes, 
 be the supernatural life of man, it follows that the supernatural 
 birth of the soul lies in its being incorporated in Jesus Christ, 
 engrafted upon him — as St. Paul says, let into him — and 
 he makes this comparison : When the gardener has a 
 wild olive-tree — stunted, crooked, sapless — bearing, per- 
 haps, a few wild berries, without oil or without sap in 
 them— what does he do? He cuts off a branch of the 
 wild olive-tree, and he engrafts it into the bark and into the 
 body — the trunk — of a fully-matured olive, of a fruitful tree, 
 and then the sap of the fruitful tree passes into the wild and 
 heretofore fruitless branch, and it brings fort' the fulness of its 
 fruit, because of the better life and sap that was lot into it. So, 
 observed St. Paul the Apostle, we, as children of nature, and 
 in a merely natural life, are born of a wild olive-tree — the sin- 
 ful man ; but Christ, our Lord, the man from heaven, came 
 down teeming and overflowing wJtb the graces of God, with the 
 
ilO LECTURES AND SEBM0N8. 
 
 sanctity of God, and then, taking us from the natural stem, ne 
 engrafted us upon Himself, the true olive-tree ; and thus we are 
 let into Jesus Christ, until that grace, which is the essence of 
 the divine nature of God in all perfection, is participated unto us ; 
 wherefore, St. Peter does not hesitate to call a grace a kind of 
 participation of the divine nature. Thus, my dear friends, this 
 engrafting upon Christ is the spiritual and supernatural birth 
 and beginning of that supernatural life that is in man. How 
 is this effected? I answer: By the sacrament of bap- 
 tism ; and here, upon the very thi'eshold of supernatural life, 
 I find, to my horror and to my astonishment, that one of the 
 first fruits of Protestantism is the denial of baptismal regenera- 
 tion, the denial of baptismal grace, and the practical refusal to 
 administer the sacrament. It was not so in the first days of 
 Protestantism ; it was not so for many a long year. The ne- 
 cessity of a supernatural and a spiritual birth was recognized 
 even when other things were denied; but to-day it has come 
 to this, that the genius and the spirit of popular Protestantism 
 is opposed to the idea of baptismal regeneration. It goes 
 now by the figment of baptismal regeneration. They scoff at 
 it, and it is only a few years since that a Protestant clei'gyman 
 England refused to baptize the children who were born in 
 &is parish, and grounded his refusal upon an avowal that he 
 did not believe in the necessity of baptism, or that it brought 
 any good or grace to the young soul. At first the Protestant 
 world was alarmed, The Protestant Bishop of Exeter sus- 
 pended this clergyman. The clergyman appealed to the head 
 of the Protestant Church of England — namely, to Queen Vic- 
 toria and her council : the Queen, good woman, didn't mind him 
 at all ; she knew nothing about the matter. She had her 
 family and her children to look after, and her husband was alive 
 at the time : she didn't mind him at all ; she took no notice of 
 him, but the council did ; and they came together, these men — 
 they might have been Jews, they might have been infidels, they 
 might have been anything you like : and when I say this I do 
 not mean the sUghtest disrespect to the Jews or infidels ; but I 
 simply say they might have been men who did not believe at 
 all in Christianity nor in Christ. They came together, and they 
 decreed that baptismal regeneration, or the spiritual birth in 
 Christ, was no part of Protestant teachimg. Consequently, the 
 Bishop got an order from the council to remove his suspension, 
 
THE SUPERNATtrRAL LIFE OF THE IRISH PEOPLE. Ill 
 
 and the clergyman triumphed. There was a solemn act, a de- 
 claration of faith on the part of what they call the Head of the 
 Church, and a submission on the part of the Church itself to the 
 principle that Protestantism, as such, as a religion, refused to 
 acknowledge even the very beginning of the supernatural life, 
 which is baptism. Bet when a man is baptized into Christ, 
 and begins to live the supernatural life, the next thing that is 
 necessary for him, just as in the natural life, is to receive his 
 food. What food has God prepared for him ? He has prepared 
 a twofold kind of food ; the teaching of His truth, upon which 
 the intelligence of the child is to be fed, and his own divine 
 presence, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is the food 
 of the Christian soul in its supernatural life, necessary for that 
 life, and without which man can have no life in him. " Unless 
 you eat of the flesh of the Sou of Man," says Christ, " and 
 drink of His blood, ye shall not have life in you." Here again, 
 Protestantism is the destruction of the supernatural life, in its 
 denial of Christ's presence in the Blessed Sacrament. But even 
 with this sacramental food, high and holy as it is, great and 
 infinite in its power and strength — such is the atmosphere in 
 which we live, such is the corruption in the midst of which 
 our lot is cast, so numerous are the scandals and the bad ex- 
 amples around us, that there is still danger that the Christiap 
 man in his supernatural life may fail, and faU away somewhat, 
 and perhaps even entirely, from that principle of divine grace, 
 and from Jesus Christ who is the life of us all, This failing, 
 this falling away, is accomplished by sin. Sin is the evil, sin 
 is the infirmity, sin is the disease, the fever of the soul, and 
 therefore it was necessary for the Son of God, when He made 
 Himself the supernatural life of our souls, not only to give us a 
 beginning of hfe in baptism, not only to give us the food and 
 strength of that life in Holy communion, but also to provide a 
 remedy for taking away sin, and restoring the soul to its full 
 strength, and purity again. This He did in the day when, insti 
 tutiug the Sacrament of Penance, He gave to His Apostles the 
 power to lift up omnipotent hands over the sinner's head, and 
 apply to him the graces of Jesus Christ through sacramental abso- 
 lution, and in that application of grace, to wipe away his sins. 
 Once more do I encounter in Protestantism the ruin of man's 
 spiritual life, in its denial of the mercy of God, which reaches 
 the soul m the Sacrament of Penance. 
 
112 LEOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 Now, my Mends, in these three consist the supernatural 
 life, and you see how analogous, or how like it is to the natural 
 life. I was born into this world, I was born unto God by 
 baptism, I was fed in my infancy, in my youth, in my man- 
 hood; I am fed with the supernatural life at the alta^ I have 
 been lifted up from the bed of sickness, from the impotency 
 and weakness of disease, and the racking pain of fever, by the 
 powerful and the skillful hand of a physician who knew how 
 to purge and cleanse my bodily frame from the elements of 
 that disease. I have been lifted up from the bed of sin by the 
 wise, and skilful, and absolving hand of God's grace. 
 
 Let us go one step further. If a man, born into the world, 
 Sill infant, a child, is denied his food, if in his sickness he is 
 denied the help of a physician or the remedies which are 
 necessary for him, what follows? It follows that he dies. 
 And so, in like manner, my Catholic friends, baptism aloue will 
 not save us ; baptism alone will not preserve in us the life 
 which it has begun in us. We must keep that life by Holy 
 Communion j we must restore that life, repair its losses, in the 
 Sacrament of Penance, or else we inevitably die. Oh ! if I 
 could only drive this thought into the minds and into the hearts 
 of those Catholic brethren of mine who seem to think that a 
 man can live without confession or communion. You might 
 as well, my friends, expect to live without tasting food ; yeu 
 would be dead after three or four days ; and so I say to you, 
 the man who neglects confession and communion must die. 
 
 Again, not only is the spiritual life of man analogous to the 
 natural — not only is it like the natural — but it acts upon the 
 natural. The supernatural life in man acts upon him, upon his 
 daily actions, upon his natural desires and tendencies, shapes 
 and '-flnences his life, and preserves him in the integrity of 
 his being — for, mark what I tell you, that man only lives half 
 a life, and that the least half, who lives exclusively by the 
 natural life, and neglects the supernatural. The integrity of 
 man's life embraces both, and begins with the supernatural ; 
 and that supernatural agency at work within him — that union 
 with God, that life in God — by divine grace acts upon his 
 natural life. Hence the difference between a good and a bad 
 man. You take these two : one of them believes, the other 
 does not believe. One bows down his head with adoration and 
 love at the name of Jesus Christ, the other scoffs and laughs 
 
THE aUPERNATTJBAL LIFE OF THE IRISH PEOPLE. 113 
 
 when he hears that name, and blasphemes. One restrains hia 
 passions and his natural inclinations, keeping them within strict 
 virtue and purity, the other lets them out and lets his soul go 
 out like water from him ; lets his heart become liquefied within 
 him under the heating influence of every evil passion, and flow 
 from him in every form of impurity and sin. How unlike are 
 the proud, yet base-minded, dishonest, impure, luxurious men 
 of the world, and the prayerful, pure-minded father of a family 
 in the Catholic Church, faithful to his paternal obligations, 
 faithful to the wife of his bosom, faithful as the guardian and 
 educator of his children, living for his Church, and for prayer, 
 and for the sacraments, and living for them and for his family, 
 and for his children, far more than for himself. Take him and 
 put him side by side with this man with whom we are all so 
 familiar in this day of ours, the loose-living, licentious de- 
 bauchee — the man who lives as if he were not a married man 
 at all, neglects his wife, goes in the pursuit of every pleasure, 
 comes home jaded, disgusted, surfeited with sin, until every 
 highest and holiest purpose of life is forgotten or only affords 
 him disgust. Home has no charms for him. The pure-minded 
 woman, the modest woman, that gave him her heart and her 
 love, is despised by him, until at last he puzzles his brain to 
 try to break loose from his obligations as a husband and a 
 father. Whence this difference between the two men? The 
 difference arises from the fact that the supernatural life acts 
 npon the man who is united with God, shapes his life, restrains 
 his passions, purifies his nature, directs his intei.il — j, shapes 
 and forms all his actions; and thus we see t?.at the super- 
 natural life acts upon the natural, and is, as it were, the soul 
 of a man's true existence. 
 
 One thought more, my friends. What is a nation, a people 
 a State ? Why, it is nothing more than a collection of in- 
 dividuals. The man good or bad, the man faithful or unfaith- 
 ful, the man pure or impure, is multiplied by three or four 
 millions, o"- ten millions, or twenty millions, and there you have 
 a nation. Therefore you see clearly that whatever the man — 
 the avera^ o man — is, that the nation will be ; that if the 
 average man leads a supernatural as well as a natural life, 
 then there will be a supernatural national life, as well as a 
 natural life. Then the nation will live for something higher 
 and better and holier and more lasting than this world ; for 
 
114 LBOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 the nation is only the man multiplied. And here again is one 
 of thf* mistakes of this nineteenth century of ours, in our un- 
 reasoning aud unthinking minds. We separate these two ideas, 
 and we look upon a nation or a people as something distinct 
 from the individuals who compose it. It is not so. Men are 
 not surprised to find a nation doing an unjust act, declaring 
 an unjust war, seizing upon their neighbour's property, depriv- 
 ing some neighbouring people of their liberties and their rights. 
 Why, what is it ? It is a national act, but it brings a per- 
 sonal responsibility home to every man, and the nation that 
 does this is simply a multitude of robbers, a multitude of unjust 
 men, and the Almighty God will judge that national sin by 
 bringing it home to every man that took a part in it or who 
 refused to offer his heart and hand in manful resistance. 
 When, therefore, we consider a nation and a nation's life, we 
 have a right to look for the supernatural as well as the natural, 
 and if the supernatural be in the individual it will be in the 
 nation. Nay, more, just as the supernatural life acts upon the 
 natural in the individual man, so also in the life of a nation the 
 supernatural will act upon the natural action of the nation — 
 will shape their policy, will animate their desires, will give a 
 purpose to their grand national action, will create public opinion, 
 public sympathy and antipathy ; and we may explain the life 
 of a nation by the supernatural. And, as we have seen, that 
 where in the individual man there is the supernatural life in 
 Grod, and for God, and with God, there that supernatural life 
 preserves the integrity of the man's whole being, preserves 
 him in purity, preserves him in health and in the integrity of 
 his body ; so, also, in the nation, the supernatural life of a 
 people preserves the honour, the integrity, the strength, purity, 
 and vigour of their natural and national life. 
 
 Now, you may well ask me, what does all this tend to, 
 what are you driving at ? Simply this, my friends : I told 
 you that I invited you to enter with me into the inner soul of 
 the Irish people. I want to explain to you one great fact, and 
 it is this : How comes it to pass that a nation, the most 
 oppressed of all the nations on the face of the earth, not for a 
 day, uor for a year, but for centuries ; a nation deprived of its 
 rights, its constitutional rights habitually suspended ; a nation 
 in which the immense body of the people had no rights at all, 
 recognized nor enforced by law ; a nation trampled under foot, 
 
THfc ««UPERNATUBAL LIFE OP THE IRISH PEOPLE. 115 
 
 trampled down into the blood-stained earth by successive ware 
 after wave of invasion, and by ruthless and remorseless per- 
 Becutioii — how comes it to pass that this people has preserved 
 the principle of its national existence ; that it never consented 
 to merge its name, its history, its national individuality, into 
 that of a neighbouring and a powerful nation? All that 
 England has been doing for centuries, sometimes animated, 
 perhaps, with a good intention, very often with a bad one, has 
 been to try to so mix up Ireland and England together that 
 the Irish would lose sight of their past national history, that 
 they would lose sight of the great fact that they are a 
 distinct nationality, humble, subject, obedient to law, bowing 
 down under the yoke that was imposed upon them in spite of 
 them — a conquered nation, but a nation still, and unto the end 
 of time. How has this come to pass 1 Now, if yon will 
 reflect upon it, you will find that it is a mystery. You will 
 find, my friends, if you carefully read the history of nations, 
 that whenever one nation has succeeded in conquering another, 
 provided that other lay upon their frontier, that, after the lapse 
 of ages, the conquering nation has succeeded in absorbing the 
 very national existence of the race that it conquered. Thus, 
 for instance, we see how completely Rome succeeded in absorb- 
 ing and amalgamating all the neighbouring petty kingdoms of 
 Italy. She infused them into herself, so that all became one 
 Roman empire. It was nothing but Rome. It was never 
 called the empire of Rome and Tuscany, or the empire of Rome 
 and Naples, or the empire of Rome and Gaul — never ; but 
 the empire of Rome. England has never been able to call the 
 two islands by one name. It is Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 it will be so to the end. Nay, more ; we have there at our 
 very door in that green old cluster of islands that rise out of the 
 eastern Atlantic — we have a kingdom, not quite so ancient as Ire- 
 land, but a kingdom that lasted for centuries after Ireland's 
 nationality seemed to be destroyed — namely, the kingdom of 
 Scotland. They were the same race — they were Celts, as we 
 were — the same origin. In the remoter ages Scotland derived 
 its inhabitants from the Celtic race. The same language 
 almost ; I have conversed with Highlanders, and almost under- 
 stood every word of their language, it is so like my own native 
 tongue. They preserved their Ime of kings, they preserved 
 their magnificent nationality, splendid in its history, splendid in 
 
1 16 LECTUEES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 its virtues ; they had saints in their line of kings — ^that glorious 
 line of Scottish monarchs crowned in Holyrood, the ancient 
 palace of the land, by the heroic chieftains that stood around 
 them. Strong as she was once in her language, strong in her 
 position, strong in her religion arid in her ideas of nationality, 
 what is Scotland to-day? A mere destroyed nation — a pro- 
 vince of Great Britain. Every tradition of Scottish nationality 
 seems to have perished as a distinct nation ; and the only thing 
 that a Scotchman of to-day sees to remind him of the olden 
 time is the crumbling walls where once the monarch of the 
 Scottish race sat enthroned. How can you explain this? 
 Scotland never was subjected to the same miseries that have 
 been the fate of Ireland. I am only speaking history, and I am 
 speaking that history without the slightest passion. I am only 
 analyzing and trying to explain a great fact. I am speaking 
 history without the slightest disrespect for one people or an- 
 other. If you were all Englishmen, or all Scotchmen, I should 
 still be obliged, as a truth-telling and a historical man, to state the 
 facts as I am stating them. How can we explain these pheno- 
 mena ? I answer : The true explanation lies here, that the 
 supernatural life became so much the absorbing life of the Irish 
 people that it acted upon their natural life and preserved the 
 principle of their nationality. Ireland was born unto Christ 
 fourteen hundred years ago. The filni of Paganism fell from 
 her eyes, and, lifting up those eyes in the eagerness of her con- 
 templation, she beheld the transcendent beauty of Jesus Christ 
 She opened her arms — this nation — and called Him to her 
 bosom, and she has never parted with Him from that day to 
 this. He has been her life, generation after generation, and 
 all her children have been born individually unto Him by 
 baptism, and so, for more than one thousand years she lived, 
 until three hundred years ago she was called upon to give up 
 her life. England had already died. Protestantism arose three 
 hundred years ago. Tt became the national religion of the 
 English people : and the first principle of Protestantism was to 
 deny the Eucharistic food, which is the principle of superna- 
 tural life and strength, and the Sacramental grace, which is the 
 only food of the soul. Now, if we take a man, and shut him 
 np in a room, and refuse him his food, he will starve and die. 
 If you take a man stricken down with fever, or with cholera, 
 ■vt with some terrible disease, and refuse him medical assistance, 
 
THE SUPERNATUEAL LIFE OF THE IRISH PEOPLE. 1 17 
 
 the maa must die. The firat principle of Protestantism was to de- 
 prive men and nations of the food and the medicine of the super- 
 natm'allife; and when the question was solemnly put to 
 Ireland and to Scotland, " Will you consent to die 1 " Scotland 
 gave up her Catholic faith and died. Ireland clung to that 
 faith, laid hold of that religion with a grasp firm, decided, and 
 terrible in its clutch, and refused to die. Scotland gave up the 
 supernatural in order to preserve the natural Ireland sacri- 
 ficed the natural, her property, prosperity, wealth, let every- 
 thing go for that faith which she had maintained for one 
 thousand years. And I assert that there, in that supernatural 
 life, in that supernatural principle, lies the whole secret of 
 Ireland's nationality. 
 
 Take an average Irishman — I don't care where you find 
 him — and you will find that the very first principle in his mind 
 is, " I am not an Englishman, because I am a CathoUc." Take 
 an Irishman wherever he is found, all over the earth, and any 
 casual observer will at once come to the conclusion, " Oh ; h« 
 is an Irishman, he is a Catholic ! " The two go together. But 
 you may ask me, " Wouldn't it be better for Ireland to be as 
 Scotland is — a prosperous and a contented province — rather 
 than a distressed and a discontented nationality ? " Which ol 
 these two would you have the old land to be, my Irish fellow- 
 countrymen? To which of these two would you prefer to 
 belong? to Ireland as a prosperous and a contoiited province, 
 forgetful of her glorious national history, deprived of her reli- 
 gion, no light upon her altars, no God in the sanctuary, no sacra- 
 mental hand to be lifted over the sinner's head — Ireland banishing 
 the name of Mary — Ireland canny and cunning, fruitful and rich, 
 but having forsaken her God — Ireland blaspheming Patrick's 
 name, Patrick's religion — turning away from her graves and 
 saying : " There is no hope any more— no hope, no prayer ; " 
 but rich — canny, cuiming, and commonplace. Can you im- 
 agine this? Oh no! The Irishman, wherever be is, all the 
 world over, the moment he sees the altar of a Catholic church, 
 says: 
 
 " Cold in tLe earth at thy feet I would rather be, 
 Than wed what I love not, or turn one thought from thee." 
 
 Ireland a province ! No ; rather be the child of a nation, 
 rather be the son of a nation, even though upon thy mother's 
 brows I see a crown of thorns and on her hands the time-worn 
 
118 LEOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 chains of slavery. Yet upon that mother's face I see the light 
 of faith, of purity, and of God ; and far dearer to me is my 
 mother Ireland, a nation in her sorrow to-day, than if I beheld 
 her rich, and commonplace, and vulgar, and impure, and 
 forgetful of herself and of God. 
 
 Again, a nation does not exist for a day, nor for a year, nor 
 tor a century. A nation's life is like the fife of the Almighty 
 God. A nation's history is in the past, and her life is in the 
 far distant future. When the future comes — and it is coming 
 in the order of things, in the order of nature — it will not bring 
 ruin to Ireland. I don't profess to say that I desire it veiy 
 ardently ; I am a loyal subject ; I don't wish to speak treason, 
 even though I might here in this land ; I do not wish to say 
 a single word that might on my return to Ireland be put before 
 me as treason ; but I say that, in the ordinary course of things, 
 nations as great as England is and has been,have been broken 
 up in the course of time, and I suppose that the mcr' xrdent 
 and patriotic Englishman in the world does not expect his 
 British Empire to last for ever. Greece did not last foi 
 ever. Assyria, Rome, Carthage did not last. A very loyal 
 Englishman indeed, speaking of the Catholic Church, said: 
 ' The Church of Rome saw the commencement of all the 
 governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that 
 now exist in the world ; and we feel no assurance that she is 
 not destined to see the end of them aU. She was great and 
 respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the 
 Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still 
 flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the 
 temple of the Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished 
 vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the 
 midst of a vast solitude, take his stand in a broken arch of 
 London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul." Now, I say 
 that when that disruption comes, Scotland wrecks and goes 
 down ; but out of that very ruin, that will shake to pieces this 
 great Empire of Britain, Ireland, in virtue of her nationahty 
 and religion, will rise into the grandeur and fulness of the 
 strength and glory of that future which she has secured to 
 herself by being faithful in the past. To-day she is in the 
 dust ; she has been in the dust for ages ; but I ask you to look 
 mto history, study the past. When Holofernes came down 
 upon Judea, and summoned the Jewish people, if they wished 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE OP THE IRISH PEOPLE. 119 
 
 to preserve their lives and fortunes, to submit, be a province 
 of the Assyrian Empire, to give up their religion and kneel at 
 "Strange altars, if Judea in that day had consented, if she had 
 said, " Well, we believed that we were the people of God ; 
 now oppression has come upon us, and we must yield ; " if 
 Judea foreswore her ancient faith, if she consented to forsake 
 her ancient ideas of nationality, if she consented to lose her 
 distinctness of race, and to merge herself in a stronger nation, 
 but a stranger in blood, in race, in religion, oh, where would 
 be the glories that followed that day ; where would be Judas 
 Maccabeus ; where would be the glory of that family who led 
 the people of God; where would be all the subsequent 
 distinctness of Jewish glory that followed that noble resist- 
 ance, when a daughter of Judea was able to go forth, and 
 with her woman's hand cut off the invader's head ? The As- 
 syrian Empire broke into pieces, but Judea remained, because 
 the people had the grace to say in that day, " You say you will 
 destroy us unless we give up our faith, unless we consent to be- 
 come a province of your empire, unless we merge our distinct 
 nationality in yours. Speak not so, for we are children of the 
 saints, and we look forward to the promises which the Lord 
 hath made to that people who never changes its faith in Him." 
 Ireland looks forward to whatever of prosperity, whatever of 
 freedom, whatever of glory is in store for her. She wiU not 
 seek it before its time, with rash or rebellious hand. She has 
 learned too well the lesson of patience. She wiU not seek it 
 until God, in the revolution of ages, sends it to her ; but it will 
 certainly come, because that nation has preserved its national 
 existence by preserving its supernatural life in God. It will not 
 always be night. The clouds will not always lie there. It will 
 not always be that the Irishman is uncertain of the footing that 
 he has in the land, until he lies down in the grave. It will not 
 always be, as I heard once an old woman say, weeping in a 
 churchyard, " I had land, I had a place in this country, I W 
 a house. Oh, God ! they took them all from me, and nothing 
 remains but this grave." It will not always be thus. Justice, 
 glory, power, are ui the hands of God. Glory and power are 
 the gifts of God to every nation. To some that glory and that 
 power is given, even after they have forsaken the Lord their 
 God; but when it comes to dear old Ireland, it will be • 
 reward for her faith, and for her love of Jesus Christ. 
 
120 LBOTUBEe ^D SEBMONS. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THE SALVATION OP 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 Mt frieuds : The subject which, as you know, has been 
 announced to you, and which I purpose to treat before you 
 this evening, is the proposition that " The Catholic Church is 
 the Salvation of Society." Perhaps there are some amongst 
 you who think I am an unwontedly courageous man to make 
 so wild and so rash an assertion. And it must be acknow- 
 ledged, indeed, that for the past eighteen hundred years that 
 the Catholic Cliurch has existed, society has always endeavoured 
 to get away from her grasp, and to live without her. People 
 who admit the notion of the Church, who allow it to influence 
 their history, who let it influence their lives — if they rise to the 
 height of their Christian elevation, if they conform themselves 
 to the teachitigs of what is true, if they avail themselves of the 
 graces of the Church — they are very often scoffed at, and 
 called a priest-ridden and besotted people. Now-a-days, it is 
 the fashion to look upon that man as the best of his class who 
 has succeeded the most completely in emancipating himself 
 from every control of religion, or of the Catholic Church. 
 In one sense, it is a great advantage to a man to have 
 no religion — to shake off the influence of the Church. Such 
 a man remains without a conscience, and without remorse. 
 He saves himself from those moments of uneasiness and 
 self-reproach that come to most men until they completely lose 
 all reverence for God ; and the consequence is, that if he is a 
 sinner, and in the way of sin, he enjoys it all the more ; and 
 ne can make the more use of his time in every pathway of 
 iniquity, if he has no obstacles of conscience or of religion to 
 fetter him So far, it is an advantage to be without religion. 
 The robber, for instance, can rob more confidently if he can 
 manage to forget that there is a God above him. The murderei 
 can wash his hands more complacently, no matter how deeply 
 he stains them, if there is no condemning record, no accusing 
 
THIS CATHOLIC CHUBOfl THE SALVATION OF SOCIETY. 121 
 
 voice, no ear to hear the voice of the blood that cries out against 
 him for vengeance. He can pursue his misdeeds all the more 
 Bt his own ease. And so, for this, amongst many other rea- 
 sons, the world is constantly trying to emancipate itself from 
 the dominion of God, and from the control of the Church — the 
 messenger of the Saviour of the world. It would seem, there- 
 fore, at first sight, rather a hazardous thing to stand up in the 
 face of the world, and in the face of society to-day — this boasted 
 society — and say to them : " You cannot live — you cannot get 
 on without the Catholic Church ! She can do without you ! A 
 coterie here ! A tribe tliere ! A nation elsewhere ! A few 
 millions more or less, is, humanly speaking, of little account to 
 her. She can do without you. But you, at your peril, must 
 let her in, because you cannot do without her ! " Now, this is 
 the pith and substance of all that I intend to say to you here 
 to-night ; but not to say it without proof ; for I do not ask 
 any man here to accept one iota of what I say, on my mere 
 assertion, until I have proved it. 
 
 My proposition, then, is, that the Catholic Cliurch is the 
 salvation of society ; and it involves three distinct proposi- 
 tions, althougli it may appear to you to be only one : First, it 
 involves the proposition that society requires to be saved ; 
 then, it involves the proposition that the Catholic Church, so 
 far, has been the salvation of the world in times past ; out of 
 which grows the third proposition, namelj', that the Church 
 Catholic is necessary to the world in all future times ; and it is 
 her destiny to be, in time to come, what she has been in 
 time past — the salvation of society. . These are three distinct 
 propositions. Let us consider the first : Society requires to be 
 saved because it cannot save itself. 
 
 The man who admires this century of ours, and who 
 serenely glories in it — who calls it the " Age of Progress " — 
 the "Age of Enlightenment;"— who speaks of his own land — 
 be it Ireland or America, or Italy or Prance — as a country of 
 enlightenment, and its people as an enlightened people — this 
 man stands iimazed when I say to him that this boasted 
 society requires salvation. Somebody or other must save it. 
 For, consider what it has done. What has its produced with- 
 out the saving influence of the Catholic Church? We may 
 analyze society, as I intend to view it, from an intellectual 
 Btand-point. Then we shall see the society of learning — the 
 
122 LEOTDEES AND SEKMONS. 
 
 society of art and of literature. Or we may view it from a moral 
 stand-point — that is to say, in the government of the world, 
 and how the wheels of society work in this boasted progress 
 of ours — emancipated from the Catholic Church, as this society 
 has been mainly for the last three hundred years ; in some 
 countries more, in some countries less, in some countries entirely. 
 Now, I ask you, whnt has this society produced, intellectually, 
 morally, politically ? Intellectuallj'-, it has produced a philo- 
 sophy that asks us, at this hour of the day, to believe in 
 ghosts. The last climax of the philosophy of this nineteenth 
 century of om's is " Spiritualism," of which you have all heard. 
 The philosopher of to-day, unlike even the philosopher of the 
 Pagan times of old, does not direct his studies, uor the labours 
 of his mind, to the investigation of the truth and of the 
 development of the hidden secrets of nature — of the harmonies 
 of the soul of man — of the wants of the spirit of man. To 
 none of these does the philosopher of to-day direct his 
 attention. But this man — this leader of mine in society — 
 gets a lot of his friends around a table, and there they sit and 
 listen until " the spirits " begin to knock ; that is the pith and 
 substance of his philosophy. Another man — one of another 
 great school (and, indeed, these two schools may be said to have 
 divided the philosophical empire of our age), — a man who 
 claims to speak and to be represented by living voice in 
 our churches and pulpits, says : " Oh man ! son of the children 
 of men — since thou hast received a commission to sound the 
 Scriptures — to mend the " Word of God," as it is called — be- 
 lieve me when I tell you that our common ancestor was the 
 ape — and that it was by the merest accident — the accident of 
 progression, eating a certain kind of food, commingling with 
 the comliest of the monkey tribe, endeavouring, by degrees, to 
 walk erect instead-of crawling on our hands and feet — it was by 
 the merest accident — a congeries of accidental circumstances — 
 that we happen to be men." This is the philosophy of the 
 nineteenth century. This is the intellectual grandeur and " Pro- 
 gress of the Age," that says : " I don't require salvation 1 " 
 
 The moral progress of this society, which has emancipated 
 itself from the CathoUc Church — what is it ? It has produced 
 in this, oiu- society, sins of which, as a priest and a man, I am 
 ashamed to speak. It has produced in the city of New York 
 a terrible insult to a crucified Lord— that a woman, pretending 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUEOH THE SALVATION OF SOCIETY. 123 
 
 to be modest, should have chosen Good Friday night to advo- 
 cate impurity under the name of free -love ! Just as the intel- 
 lectual development of our society, emancipated from the Church, 
 has arrived at the glorious discovery of " Siiiritualism," so the 
 moral development of this age of ours has arrived at the deep 
 depth of free-love. Oh, grand and holy nineteenth century, 1 
 hail thee Thou art the parent of divorce. A brave century, 
 that ventured to destroy the bond that God Himself had made, 
 and commanded no man should sunder. Thy married daughters 
 must have recourse to the arts of the courtesan and the drugs 
 of the murderer in order to preserve their charms, and so keep 
 a slender and frail hold on the adulterous hearts of thy brave 
 married sous. The old names of husband and wife are wiped 
 out of thy enlightened vocabulary. They have perished ; they 
 are designations of the past. Oh, thou base and filthy age of 
 low desire and luxury, of dishonesty and Mormonism, it is well 
 for thee that the holy Catholic Church, the spouse of Christ, 
 the salt of the earth, is in the midst of thee, rebuking thee with 
 fearless and unchanging voice, sweetening thy polluted atmos- 
 phere with the fragrance of her virtues, atoning for thy vices 
 with fast, prayer, and sacrifice ; else, surely, thou Sodom of 
 the centuries, the Lord would consume thee with the fire of 
 His wrath ! 
 
 What is the political spirit of society, and the perfection to 
 which it has attained since it has been emancipated from the 
 Church ? Why, it has produced the " politician " of our day. 
 It has produced the ruler who imagines that he is set np, 
 throughout all the nations, only to grasp — justly if he can, un- 
 justly if he has no other means — every privilege of power and 
 )f absolutism. This age of ours gives us statesmen who make 
 secret treaties to rob their neighbours, kings who shed their 
 people's blood for the mere whims of personal ambition, or else 
 to carry out the schemes of a wily, dishonest diplomacy, robber- 
 mouarchs, at the head of robber-armies, plundering their honest 
 and unoffending fellow-sovereigns; millions of armed men 
 watching each other because right and iusuce have ceased to 
 be sufiicient protection to men and nations ; the people oppressed 
 and plundered to serve the purposes of the lustful ambition of 
 men in power ; venality and corruption everywhere overflowing. 
 It has produced in the people an unwillingness to obey even 
 just laws. I need not tell you ; you have the evidence of youi 
 
124 LECTURES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 own senses ; you have records of the daily actions of the world 
 laid before you every morniBg. This is the issue of the domi- 
 nant spirit of society, when society emancipates itself from the 
 Church, and, by so doing, endeavours to shake off God. Now 
 we come to the great question : quis medehitur ? Who shall 
 touch society with a scientific and healing hand What viitue 
 can we infuse into it ? That must come, I assert, from God, 
 and from Him alone, of whom the Scriptures say that " He 
 mado the nations of the earth for health ; " that He has made 
 our nature so that, even in its worst infirmity, it is capable of 
 cure. He came and found it io its worst infirmity ; society 
 rotten to its heart's core ; and the interior rottenness — the ob- 
 scurity of the intellect — the corruption of the heart — manifesting 
 itself in the actions and sins of which St. Paul, the Apostle, 
 says : " Nee nominahitur in vobis " — that they must not be even 
 mentioned among Christian men. Christ, the Son of God, be- 
 cause He was God — equal to the Father — girding Himself up 
 to the mighty work of healing this society, came down from 
 heaven and cured it, when no other hand but His could have 
 touched it with healing ; when no other virtue or power save 
 His could at all have given life to the dead world, purity to 
 the cornipt world, light to the darkened intellect of man. Prom 
 Him came life to the dead ; and that life was light to the 
 darkened and strength to the weak, because He was God. 
 
 Then the nations of Greece and Rome appeared in the 
 strength of their power — proud in their mental culture — proud 
 in the grandeur of their civilization — and contemptuously put 
 away and despised the message of the divine faith which was 
 sent to them ; and for three hundred long years persecuted the 
 Church of God. This great instructress, who came to talk in a 
 language that they knew not, and to teach them things that they 
 never heard of — both the things of heaven and the things of 
 earth — this great instructress, for three hundred years, lay hid 
 in the caves and catacombs of the earth, afraid to show her 
 face ; for the whole world — all the power of Pagan Rome, the 
 mistress of the world — was raised against her. There wa? 
 blood upon her virgin face. There was blood upon her holj 
 bosom — the blood of the innocent and of the pure ; and all th( 
 world knew of Christianity was the strong testimony which, 
 from time to time, was given of it, by youth and maiden, In 
 the arena of Rome, or in the amphitheatres of Antioch or of 
 
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THB SALVATION OF SOOIBTT. 125 
 
 Corinth. Then, ia punishment for their pride — as an act of 
 vengeance upon them for their rejection of His gospel — the 
 Almighty Grod resolved to brealv up their ancient civilization ; 
 to sweep away their power ; to bring the hordes of barbarous 
 nations from the north of Europe into the very heart of Rome, 
 the centre of the world's empire, and to crush and destroy it 
 vrith fire and sword, and utterly to break up all that society 
 which was formed, of old, upon the literature and the philo- 
 sophy of Greece and of Rome. Consequently, we behold, in 
 the fifth century, all the ancient civilization completely de- 
 stroyed, and the world reduced again almost to the chaos of 
 barbarism from which the Pagans of old had raised it. Arts 
 and sciences perished when the Goth and Vandal, Visigoth, 
 and Ostragoth, and Hun swept down like a swarm of locusts 
 over the old Roman Empire, and all the land subject to Roman 
 sway. A man justly called the " Scourge of God " led the 
 Huns. Alaric was at the head of his Visigoths. He swept 
 over Rome. He was asked to spare the city, out of respect 
 to the civilization of the world and the tombs of the Apostles ! 
 " I cannot withhold," exclaimed the Visigoth, " I cannot with- 
 hold. I hear within me a mysterious voice which says, ' Alaric I 
 on ! on to Rome !' " And so he came and sacked the city, 
 burned and destroyed its temples, and its palaces, and its libra- 
 ries, and its glories of painting and sculpture — hurled them all 
 into the dust ! And the desolation spread world-wide where- 
 ever a vestige of ancient civilization was found, until, at the 
 end of that fatal century, the Church of God found herself 
 standing upon the ruins of a world that had passed away. 
 Before her were the countless hordes of the savage children of 
 the North, out of which rugged material it was her destiny and 
 her ofiSce to form the society of modern times. Hard, indeed, 
 was the task which she undertook — not only to evangelize them, 
 to teach them the things of God, but also to teach them the 
 beauties of human art and human science — to sotten them with 
 the genial influences and the tender appliances of learning ; to 
 gain their hearts, and soften their souls, and mollify their man- 
 ners, and refine them by every human appliance as well as by 
 every Divine influence. For this task did she gather herself up. 
 She, in that day, collected with a careful and with a venerating 
 hand all that remained out of the ruiu of ancient literature, of 
 ancient poetrjj; of ancient history, in the laneuages of Greece 
 
126 LECTURES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 and of Rome. She gathered them lovingly and carefully to her 
 bosom. She laid them up iu her sacred recesses- — in her clois- 
 ters. She applied, dihgently, to the study of them, and to 
 the diffusion of them, the minds of the holiest and best of her 
 jonsecrated children ; until, in a few years, all that the world 
 had of refiaement, of learning, of all that was refining and 
 gentle, was all concentrated in the person of the lowly monk, 
 who, full of the lore of Greece and Rome — full of ancient 
 learning as well as that of the time — an artist — a painter — a 
 musician — a man of letters — covering all with the humility of 
 his profession, and hiding all in the cloister, yet treasured all 
 up for the society that was to come after him, and for the 
 honour and glory of God and of His Church. And so, by 
 degrees, the Church was enabled to found schools — and then, 
 colleges — and thence to form, gradually, universities — and to 
 obtain for them and to insure unto them civic and municipal 
 rights, as we shall see farther on. 
 
 By degrees she founded the great medissval universities, 
 gathering together all those who wished to learn, and sending 
 forth from her cloisters, her Dominicans, her Franciscans, to 
 teach philosophy and theology, whilst they illustrated the very 
 highest art in the beauty of their paintings and the splendour 
 which they threw around the Christian sciences. Universities 
 were founded by her into which she gathered the youth of 
 various nations ; and then, sending them home amongst their 
 rude and rugged fellow-citizens, she spread gradually the flame 
 of human knowledge, as well as the fire of Divine faith and 
 sanctity ind thus, for many a long century, did the Church 
 labour assiduously, lovingly, perseveringly, and so secured unto 
 us whatever blessings of learning we possess to-day. She saved 
 society for the time, by drawing forth its rude, chaotic elements, 
 and by her patient action in creating the light of knowledge 
 where the darkness of ignorance was before — with patient and 
 persevering effort bringing forth order out of disorder — until 
 her influence over the world was like the word of God, when, 
 upon the first day of creation. He made all things, and made 
 them to exist where nothing but void and darkness were before. 
 Nor can the history of by-gone times be disputed iu this ; nor 
 can any man allege that I am claiming too much for the 
 Catholic Church when I say that she alone has preserved to us 
 all the splendour of the Pagan literature of the ancient times— 
 
THE OAtfiOLIO CHTIKOH THE SALVATION OF 800IBTT. i27 
 
 all the arts and sciences ; that she alone has founded the great 
 schools and universities of Christendom, and of the civUized 
 world — even in Protestant countries to-day ; nay, more, that 
 nearly all the great scholars who shone as stars in the firma- 
 ment of learning were her children — either consecrated to her 
 ill the priesthood, or attached to her by the strongest and the 
 tenderest bonds of faith. Lest my word in this matter be 
 considered exaggerated, let me read for you the testimony of 
 a Protestant writer to what I say. He says to us :— 
 
 " If the Catholic Church had done nothing more than to 
 preserve for us, by painful solicitude and unrewarded toil, the 
 precepts and intellectual treasures of Greece and Rome, she 
 would have been entitled to our everlasting gratitude. But her 
 hierarchy did not merely preserve these treasures. They taught 
 the modern world how to use thorn. We can never forget 
 that at least nine out of every ten of all the great colleges and 
 universities in Christendom were founded by monks or priests, 
 bishops or archbishops. This is true of the most famous in- 
 stitutions in Protestant as well as in Catholic countries. And 
 equally undeniable is the fact, that the greatest discoveries in 
 the sciences and in the arts (with the sole exception of Sii 
 Isaac Newton) have been made either by Catholics or by thost 
 who were educated by them. Our readers know that Coper- 
 Dicus, the author of oiu: present system of astronomy, lived 
 and died a poor parish priest, in an obscure village ; and 
 Galileo lived and died a Catholic. The great Kepler, although 
 a Protestant himself, always acknowledged that he received 
 the most valuable part of his education from the monks and 
 priests. It were easy to add to these illustrious names many 
 equally renowned, in other departments of science, as well as 
 literature and the arts, including thoss of statesmen, orators, 
 historians, poets, and artists." 
 
 This is the testimony of a Protestant writer, confirmed by 
 the voice of history, to which I fearlessly appeal, when I lay 
 down the proposition, that if intellectual darkness, if the bar- 
 barism of ignorance, be a disease in society, then history proves 
 that the Catholic Church has been the salvation of society in 
 the cure of that disease. I might go deeper here, I might 
 show you here, in the beautiful reasoning of the great St. 
 Thomas Aquinas, how, in the Catholic Church alone, is tlie 
 solid basis of all intellectual knowledge. " For," observes the 
 
128 LECTURES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 » 
 3aint, " every science, no matter how different it may be from 
 others — every science rests upon certain principles that ^re 
 taken for granted — certain axioms that are accepted without 
 being proved. " Now," he goes on to say, " the principle of^ 
 acknowledged certainty, of some kind or other, lies at the base 
 T,nd at the foundation of every science, and of every form of 
 intellectual poM'er." But, in the sciences and in the intellectual 
 world, we find the same order, the same exquisite harmony, 
 which, in the works of God, we find in the material and 
 l)hysical creation. The principle, therefore, of all the arts and 
 sciences, each with its respective power, is, that all go up 
 in regular order from the lowest part of art to the highest of 
 human sciences — astronomy — until they touch divine theology, 
 which teaches of God and of the things of God. Upon the 
 certainty of that First Science depends the very idea of " cer- 
 tainty," upon which every other science is based. And, there- 
 fore, the key-note of all knowledge is found in the science of 
 divine theology, which teaches of God. Now, outside of the 
 Oatholic Church there is no theology— as a science ; because 
 science involves certain knowledge, and there is no certain 
 knowledge of divine things outside the Catholic Church. There 
 is no certain knowledge of divine things where truth is said to 
 consist in the inquiry after truth, as in Protestantism, where 
 religion is reduced from the principle of immutable faith, to the 
 mere result of reasoning, amounting to a strong opinion. 
 There is no certainty, therefore, outside of that Church that 
 speaks of God in the very language of God ; that gives a 
 message sent from the very lips of God ; that puts that 
 message into the God-lilre form of immutable dogma before the 
 minds of His children, and so starts them in the pursuit of all 
 human knowledge, with the certain light of divinely-revealed 
 truth, and with the principle of certainty deeply seated in their 
 minds. 
 
 Now, we pass from the intellectual view of society to the 
 moral view of it. Tn order to understand the action of the 
 Church here, as the sole salvation of society, I must ask you 
 to consider the dangers which threaten society in its moral 
 aspect These dangers are the following : First of all, the 
 libertinism, the instability, the inconstancy, and the impurity 
 of man. Secondly, the absence of the element of holiness and 
 •anctity in the education of childhood. Thirdly, the sens* of 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUEOH THE SALVATION OF SOCIETY. 12S 
 
 irresponsibility, or a kind of reckless personal liberty which 
 not only passes ns over from under the control of law, but cuts 
 off our communication with God, and makes us forget that we 
 are responsible to God for every action of our lives ; and so, 
 gradually, brings a man to believe that liberty and freedom 
 mean irresponsible licentiousness and impurity. These I hold 
 to be the three great evils that threaten society. The incon- 
 stancy of man — for man is fickle in his friendship, is unstable 
 in his love, is inconstant in his affections, subject to a thousand 
 passing sensations — his soul laid open to appeals from every 
 sense — to the ebb and flow of every pulse and every passion, 
 answering with quick response every impression of eye and 
 ear, and liable to change its estimate and judgment by the 
 ever-varying evidence of the senses. Need I tell you, my 
 friends — what your own heart has so often told you— how in- 
 constant we are? how the thing that captivates us to-day, we 
 will look coldly upon to-morrow, and the next day, perhaps, 
 with eyes of disgust? Need I tell you how fickle is that love, 
 that friendship of the human heart, against which, and its in- 
 constancy, the Holy Ghost seems to warn us? " Put not thy 
 trust in princes, nor in the children of men, it whom there is 
 no salvation." To guard against this inconstancy it is neces- 
 sary to call in divine grace and help from heaven. For it is a 
 question of confirming the heart of man in the steadiness, in 
 the unchangeableness, and in the purity of the love that is to 
 last all his life long. Therefore it is that the Catholic Church 
 sanctifies the solemn contract by which man promises to his 
 fellow-creature that he will love her, that he will never allow 
 that love for her to grow cold in his bosom, that he will never 
 allow even a thought of any other love than hers to cross his 
 imagination or enter into his soul, that he will love her in the 
 days of her old age as he loves her to-day, in the freshness of 
 her beauty, as she stands by his side before the altar of God, 
 and puts her virgin hand into his. And she swears to him a 
 corresponding love. But, ah ! who can assure to her that the 
 heart which promises to be hers to-day will be true to its pro- 
 mise ? who can insure to her that love, ever inconstant in its 
 own nature, and acted upon by a thousand influences, calculated 
 first to alienate, then to destroy it? How can she have the 
 courage to believe that the word that passed from that man's 
 lips, at that altar, shall never be regretted— never be repealed? 
 
130 LEOTOEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 I answer, the Catholic Ohurch comes ia and calls down a special 
 sacramental grace from heaven ; lets in the very blood of the 
 Saviour, in its sacramental form, to touch these two hearts, 
 ind, by purifying them, to eievate their affection into some- 
 thing more than gross love of sense, and to shed upon those 
 two hearts, thus united, the rays of divine grace, to tinge their 
 lives somewhat with the light of that ineffable love that binds 
 the Lord to His Church. And so, in that sacrament of matri- 
 mony, the Church provides a divine remedy for the inconstancy 
 of the heart of man ; and she also provides a sanctifying in- 
 fluence which, lying at the very fountain-head, and source, and 
 spring of our nature, sanctifies the whole stream of society 
 that flows from the sacramental and sanctifying love of Chris- 
 tian marriage. Do you not know that this society, in separa- 
 ting itself from the Church, has literally destroyed itself ? If 
 Protestantism, or Unitarianism, or any other form of error, did 
 nothing else than simply to remove from the sacrament of 
 matrimony its sacramental character — its sanctifying grace — 
 by that very act, that error of religious unbelief, it destroys 
 society. The man who destroys, in the least degree, the 
 firmness of the bond that can never be broken, because it 
 is bound by the hand of God, and sealed with the sacra- 
 mental seal — the man that touches that bond — the man that 
 takes from that sacrament one single iota of its grace, 
 makes himself thereby the enemy of society, and poUu^s 
 the very fountain-head from which the stream of our life 
 comes. When the prophet of old came into the city of Jericho, 
 they showed him the stream that ran by the city walls ; and 
 they said to him : " Behold, the situation of this city is very 
 good, as thou, my lord, seest ; but the waters are very bad and 
 the ground barren." He did not attempt to heal the stream as 
 it flowed thereby ; but he said, " Bring me a new vessel and 
 put salt into it; and when they had brought it, he went to the 
 spring of the waters and cast the salt into it and said: Thus 
 saith the Lord, I have healed these waters, and there shall be 
 no more in them death or bitterness ; and the waters were 
 healed unto this day." Thus he purified the fountam-head of 
 the spring of the waters of Jericho. Such is the sacrament of 
 marriage to human society. The future of the world— the 
 moral future of mankind — of the rising generations, all depend 
 apon the purity and the sanctity of the matrimonial tie. There 
 
THE CATHOLIC OHTJEOH THE SALVATION OP SOCIETY. 181 
 
 does the Church of God throw, as it were, the sacramental salt 
 of diviue grace into the fountain-head of our nature, and so 
 sanctifies the humanity that springs from its source. 
 
 The next great moral influence of society which requires the 
 Church's action is education. " The child," as you know, " is 
 father to the man ;" and what the child is to-day the man will 
 be in twenty or thirty years' time. Now, the young soul (rf the 
 child is like the earth in the spring season. Childhood is the 
 time of sowing and of planting, "Whatever is put into that 
 young heart in the early days of childhood will bring up, in 
 the summer of manhood and in the autumn of old age, its 
 crop, either of good or of evil. And, therefore, it is the most 
 important time of life. The future of the world depends upon 
 the sanctity of education. Now, in order that education may 
 be bad, it is not necessary, my friends, to teach the child any- 
 thing bad. In order to make education bad, it is quite enough 
 to neglect the element of sanctity and of religion. It is quite 
 enough to neglect the religious portion of the education. By 
 that very defect the education becomes bad. And why ? Be- 
 cause such is our nature — such the infirmity of our fallen state 
 — such is the atmosphere of the scenes in which we live in this 
 world — such the power of the infernal agencies that are busily 
 at work for our destruction, that, educate the child as carefully 
 as you may, surround him with the holiest influences, fill him 
 with the choicest graces, you still run great risks that, some 
 day or other, the serpent ot "mi will gain an entrance into that 
 young soul in spite of you. How much more if that young 
 heart be not replenished with divine grace ! How much more 
 if that young soul be not fenced round by a thousand appli- 
 ances, and a thousand defences against its enemies ! And 
 thus do we see that the principle of bad education is established 
 the moment the strong religious element is removed. Hence 
 it is that out of the sanctity of marriage springs the sanctity 
 of education in the Catholic Church, A.nd why? Because the 
 Church of God proclaims that the marriage-bond no man can 
 Ji.-jsolve ; that that marriage-bond, so long as death does not 
 come in to separate the man and wife — that that marriage-bond 
 is the one contract which no power on this earth can break, 
 Consequently, the Catholic woman married to the Catholic man 
 "mows that the moment their lips mutually pronounce their 
 marriage-vows, her pi^sitioa is defined and established fur ever- 
 
r32" tUCTXTRKS AND SERMONS, 
 
 more ; ttiat no one can put her down from the holy eminenct 
 of wife or of mother, and that the throne which she occwpiei 
 in the household she never can live to see occupied by another; 
 that her children are assured to her ; and that she is left in her 
 undisputed empire and control over them She knows that — no 
 matter how the world may prosper or otherwise with her — that 
 she is sure, at least, of her position as a wife, and of her claims to 
 her husband's love, and of the allegiance of his worship She 
 knows that even though she may have wedded him in the days 
 of poverty, and that should he rise to some great and success- 
 position — even if he became an emperor — she must rise with 
 him, and that he can never discard her ; and, consequently, shf 
 feels that her children are her own for ever. Now, the element 
 of sanctity in the family, even when the husband is a good 
 man — even when he is a sacrament-going man, as everj 
 Catholic man ought to be — yet the element of sanctity in the 
 family, and for the family, lies with the woman. It is the 
 privilege of the mother. She has the children under her eyt 
 and under her care the live-long day. She has the formation of 
 them — of their character — their fii-st sentiments, thoughts, and 
 works, either for good or evil. The seed to be planted - the 
 formation of the soul — is in the mother's hands; and therefore 
 it is that the character of the child mainly depends on the for- 
 mation which the mother gives it. The father is engaged in 
 his office, in keeping his business, oi at his work, all the day 
 long. His example, whether for good or bad, is not constantly 
 before the eyes — the observant eyes— of the child, as is the 
 example of the mother. And so it is, my friends, that all depends 
 upon the mother; and it is of vital importance that that mother 
 should blend in herself till that is pure, holy, tender, and loving, 
 and that she be assured of the sanctity of her position, of 
 which tl"^ '^burch assures her by the indissoluble nature of the 
 marriage tie. 
 
 Again, the Church of God follows the child into the school, 
 and she puts before the young eye, even before reason has 
 opened — she puts before the young sense the sight of things 
 that will familiarize the mind of the child with heaven and with 
 heavenly thoughts. She goes before the world, anticipates 
 reason, and tries to get the start of that " mystery of inquiry " 
 which, sooner or later, lying in the world, shall be revealed to 
 the eyes and the soul of this young child. Hence it is that in 
 
THE CATHOLIC CHtTBOH THE SALVATION OP SOCIETY. 133 
 
 her system of education she endeavours to mix up sacramental 
 graces, lessons of good, pictures of divine things, holy statues, 
 little prayers, singing of hymns — all these religious appliE^nces 
 —and endeavours to mingle them all constantly and largelj 
 with every element of human education, that the heart may be 
 formed as well as the mind, and that the will may be strength- 
 ened as well as the intellect and the soul of man. If, then, the 
 evil of a bad education be one of the evils of society, I hold 
 that the Church of G-od, in her scheme and plan of education, 
 proves that she is the salvation of society by touching that evil 
 with a healing hand. 
 
 The next great evil affecting the morals of society is the 
 3ense of irresponsibility. A man outside of the Catholic Church 
 is never expected to call himself to account for his actions. If 
 he speaks evil words, if he thinks evil thoughts, if he does 
 wrong things, the most that he asphes to is a momentary 
 thought of God. Perhaps he forms a kind of resolution not to 
 do these things any more. But there is no excruciating 
 self-examination ; there is no humiUating confession ; there is 
 uo care or thought upon motives of sorrow ; there is no 
 painstaking to acquire a firm resolution ; there are none of the 
 restraints against a return to sin with which the sacramental 
 agencies of the Catholic Church, especially through the sacra- 
 ment of penance, have made us all familiar. The Catholic man 
 feels that the eye of God is upon him. He is told that, every 
 time the Catholic Church warns him to prepare for confession. 
 He is told that, every time his eyes, wandering through the 
 church, rest upon the confessional. He is told that, every time 
 he sees the priest standing there, with his stole ou, and the 
 penitent going in with tearful eyes, and coming forth with eyes 
 beaming with joy and with the delight of forgiveness. He is 
 told this in a thousand ways ; and it is brought home to him 
 by the precepts and sacraments of the Church at stated times 
 in the year. The consequence is, that he is made to believe 
 that he is responsible to Almighty God ; and therefore this 
 obligation, creating a sense of responsibility, rouses and excites 
 this watchfulness of his own conscience. The man who feels 
 that the eye of God is upon him will also feel that the eye of 
 his own conscience is upon him. For watchfulness begets 
 watchfuhieBS. If the master is lookmg on whilst a servant is 
 doing anything, tbn servant will endeavour t« do it well, 
 
134 LEOTUBES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 and he will keep his eye upon the master whilst the 
 master is present. So a soldier, when he is ordered to charge, 
 turns his look upon his superior officer, whilst he dashes into 
 the midst of the foe. And so it is with ua. Conscience is 
 created, conscience is fostered and cherished in the soul by 
 a sense of responsibility which Aliiiigbty God gives us through 
 the Church and through her sacraments. What follows from 
 this ? It follows that the Catholic man, although in conscious 
 freedom, is conscious that he must always exercise that freedom 
 under the eye of God and under the dominion of His law ; so 
 that in him, even although he be a sinner for a time, the sense 
 of freedom never degenerates into positive recklessness or 
 license. 
 
 Finally, in the political view of society, the dangers that 
 threaten the world from this aspect are, first of all, absolutism, 
 and injustice, and oppression in rulers ; and, secondly, a spirit 
 of rebellion, even against just and established government, 
 amongst the governed. For the well-ordering of society lies 
 in this : that he who governs respects those whom he governs ; 
 and that those who are governed by him recognize in him only 
 the authority that comes to him from God. I say, from God. I 
 do not wish here, or now, to enter into the question as to the 
 source of power, and how far the popular element may or may 
 not be that source ; but I do say, that where the power exists, 
 even where the ruler is chosen by the people, that he exercises 
 til at power then as an official of the Almighty God, to whom 
 belongs the government of the whole system which He has 
 created. If that ruler abuses his power — abuses it excessively; 
 if he depises those whom he governs ; if he has not respect for 
 tlieir rights, their privileges, and their consciences, then the 
 balance of power is lost, and the gi'eat evil of political society 
 is inaugurated. If, on the other hand, the people, fickle and 
 inconstant, do not recognize any sacredness at all in their ruler, 
 if they do not recognize the principle of obedience to law as a 
 divine principle, as a necessary principle, without which the 
 world cannot live ; if they think that amongst the rights of 
 man — of individual man — is the right to rise in rebellion against 
 authority and law, the second great evil of political society is 
 developed, and the whole machinery of the world's government 
 is broken to pieces. What is necessary to remedy this? A 
 power — mark my words — a Dower recognized to be greater 
 
THE OATHOI-ia 0HT7E0H THI SALVATION OF SOCIETY. 185 
 
 than that of the people or than that of the people's government. 
 A power, wielded not only over the subject, but over the 
 monarch. A power, appealing with equal force and equal au- 
 thority to him who is upon the throne, to him who is at the 
 head of armies and empires, and to the meanest, and the 
 poorest, and the lowest of his subjects. What power has that 
 been in history! Look back for eighteen hundred years. 
 What power is it that has been exercised over baron and chief- 
 tain, king and ruler, no matter how dark the times — no matter how 
 convulsed society was — no matter how confused every element oi 
 government was — no matter how rude and barbarous the man 
 ners of men— how willing they were to assert themselves in the 
 fulness of their pride and savage power in field and in council! 
 What power was it that was ackuowledged supreme by them, 
 during twelve hundred years, from the close of the Roman 
 persecutions up till the outbreak of Protestantism? What 
 power was it that told the monarchs of the middle ages, that, if 
 they imposed an oppressive or unjust tax upon the people, they 
 were excommunicated ? What power was it that arose to tell 
 Philip Augustus of France, in all the lust of his greatness and 
 his undisputed sway, that if he did not respect the rights of hia 
 one wife, and adhere to her chastely, he would be excommu- 
 nicated by the Church, and abandoned by his people? What 
 power was it that came to the voluptuous tyrant, seated on 
 the Tudor's throne in England, and told him that, unless he 
 were faithful to the poor persecuted woman, Catherine of Arra^ 
 gon, his lawful wife, he would be cut off as a rotten branch, 
 and cast — by the sentence of the Church — into hell-fire? What 
 power was it that made the strongest and most tyrannical of 
 these rude mediaeval chieftains, kings, and emperors, tremble 
 before it? Ah, it was the power of the Vatican ! It was the 
 voice of the Church, upholding the rights of the people ; 
 sheltering them with its strong arm, proclaiming that no 
 injustice should be done to them : that the rights of the poorest 
 man in the community were as sacred as the rights of him who 
 sat upon the throne ; and, therefore, that sbe would not stand 
 by and see the people oppressed. An ungrateful world is this 
 of ours, to-day, that fogets that the Catholic Church was the 
 power that inaugurated, established, and obtained all those 
 civic and municipal rights, all those rights respecting commu- 
 nities which have formed the basis of what we call our moder 
 
136 LEOTUBES AND BEBMONS. 
 
 civilization ! Ungrateful age ! that reflects not, or chooses to 
 forget, that the greatest freedom the people ever enjoyed in 
 this -world, they enjoyed so long siS they were under the aegis 
 of the Church's protection ; that miver were the Italians so free 
 as they were in the mediseval Eepnblics of Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, 
 and Florence. That never were the Spaniards so free as when 
 their Cortes, as the ruUng voice of the nation, was heard 
 resounding in the ears of their monarchs, and respected by 
 them. That never were the English so free as when a saint 
 was their ruler, or when an Archbishop of Canterbury, with the 
 knights of the realm closed around him, told a tyrant they 
 would abandon him and depose him, unless he gave to the 
 people that chai'ter which is the foundation of the most glori- 
 ous constitution in the world. And thus, I answer, the Church 
 maintained the rights of the people, whenever those rights 
 were unjustly invaded by those who were in power. But, to 
 the people, in their turn, this Church has always preached 
 patience, docility, obedience to law, legitimate redress, when 
 redress was required. She has alwaj's endeavoured to calm theii 
 dpii'its, and to keep them back, even under great and sore 
 oppression, from the remedy which the world's history tells 
 us has always been worse than the disease which it has at- 
 tempted to cure— viz., the remedy of rebellion and revolution. 
 Such is the history of the Church's past. 
 
 Have I no* said with truth, that the Chiurch is the salvation 
 of society; that she formed society ; that she created what we 
 call the society of our day; and that if it had not been for her, 
 a large percentage of all that forms the literature of our time 
 would not now be in existence ? The most powerful restraints, 
 the most purifying influences that have operated upon society 
 for so many centuries, would not have sent down their blessings 
 to us — blessings that have been inherited, even by those who 
 understood them so little, that their very first act in separating 
 from the Church was to lay the axe at the very root of society, 
 by depriving the sacrament of matrimony of its sacramental 
 and indispensably necessary force. In like manner have I not 
 proved that, if there be a vestige of freedom, with the proper 
 assertion of right, in the world to-day, it can be traced dis- 
 tinctly to the generating and forming action of the Catholie 
 Chnrcii during those ages of faith, when the world permitted 
 itself to be moulded smd fashioned by her hands ? And, as 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUEOH THE SALVATION OF SOCIETY. 137 
 
 she was in the past, so must she be in the future. Shut youi 
 eyes to her truths — every principle of human science will feei 
 the shock ; and the science of sciences will feel it first — the 
 science of the knowledge of God, and of the things which He 
 has given us What is the truth ? Is it not a mere matter oi 
 fact, known by personal observation to many amongst us, that 
 the Protestant idea of sin involves infideUty — that is to say, a 
 denial of the divinity of Christ, of the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures, and of the existence of God? What is the Pro- 
 testant idea of the sinner ? We have it, for instance, iu theii 
 own description. There is, for instance, the account of the 
 Elder's deathbed. His son was a sinner. He comes to the 
 father's bedside. He is broken with grief, seeing that his 
 father is dying before his eyes. The father seizes the oppor- 
 tunity to remind the erring son, Remember that Christ died 
 for our sins, and that Christ was the Son of God. He begins 
 then to teach what a Catholic would consider the very first 
 elements of the catechism. But to him they were the conclu- 
 sions of a long life of study, and he has arrived now, at the 
 end of his days, at the very point at which the little Catholic 
 child starts when he is seven years of age. Now, in the 
 Catholic Church, these things, which are the result of careful 
 mquiry, hard study, the conclusions of years, perhaps, being 
 admitted as first principles — the time which is lost by the Pro- 
 testant in arriving at these principles, is employed by the 
 Catholic in applying them to the conduct and the actions of his 
 daily life — in avoidmg this danger or that, repenting <^f this 
 sin or that, praying against this evil or that — and so Ow. Shut 
 your eyes to the truths of Catholic teaching, and the divine 
 Scriptures themselves, on which you fancy, perhaps, that you 
 are building up your religion, are shaken from their pedestal of 
 a sure definition, and nothing remains but her reassuring power 
 —even to the inspiration of God's written word. Is not this 
 true ? Where, diuing the fifteen hundred years that preceded 
 Protestantism— where do we read of the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures being called in question t Where do we read of any 
 theologian omitting this phrase, leaving out that sentence, 
 because it did not tally with his particular views ? He knew 
 that he might as well seek to tie up the hands of God as to 
 thange one iota or syllable of God's revealed truth. But what 
 do we see during the last three hundred years ? Luther began 
 
138 LEOTUEES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 by rejecting the Epistle of St. James, calling it " An epistu 
 of straw," because there were certain doctrines there that did 
 not suit him. From his time, every Protestant theologian has 
 found fault with this passage or that of Scripture, as if it was 
 a thing that could be changed and turned and forced and 
 shaped to answer this purpose or that ; as if the word of God 
 coiild be made to veer about, north, east, south, and west ac< 
 cording to human wishes j until at length, in our own day, 
 they have undertaken a new version of the Scriptures alto- 
 gether ; and this is quietly going on in one great section of 
 the Church of England, whilst another great section of tht 
 Church of England disputes its authority altogether, and 
 tells you that the doctrinal part of it is only a rule to guidSj 
 and that the historical part of it is nothing more than a 
 myth, like the history of the ancient Paganism of Greece and 
 of Rome ! They discard the Church's action upon the morality 
 of society; tell her that they do not believe her when she 
 says, " Accursed is the man or woman that puts a divorce 
 into hia or her partner's hand;" tell her that they do not 
 believe her when she says, " No matter what the conduct of 
 either party is, I cannot break the bond that God. has made 
 — no matter what may be the difference of disposition — ^no 
 matter what the weariness that springs from the union ; I 
 cannot dissolve it. I cannot alter i^," If you dissolve it, I 
 ask you in all earnestness to what yoi reduce yourselves ? To 
 what does the married woman reduct, herself? She becomes 
 — (I blush to say it) — she becomes a creature living under the 
 suiterance and under the caprices of her husband. You know 
 how easy it is to trump up an accusation ! You have but to 
 defame that which is so delicate and so tender as a woman's 
 name ; a gentle and a tender and a pure woman's good name is 
 tainted and destroyed by a breath. No matter how unfound^i 
 the calumny or the slander, how easy it is first to defame and 
 then to destroy it ! At the time when the Protestant Church 
 was called upon by the people in England to admit the lawful- 
 ness of divorce, the Catholic Church raised up her voice in 
 deience of truth, and warned England that she was going into a 
 deeper abyss — warned the people that they were going to 
 destroy whatever sanctity of society remained amongst them— 
 warned them that there was an anathema upon the measure — 
 upon those who proposed it — upon those who aided it. Is it 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUBOH THE SALVATION OF SOOIBTT. 139 
 
 not Strange that the womauhood of the. world does not fly to 
 the Ctitholic Church for protection of their honour and dignity ? 
 "Would it not be much better for those sturdy females who are 
 looking for woman's rights, claiming the suffrage, and going 
 about the country lecturing, to turn their attention to the iufa- 
 mons law of divorce, and, if they will be agitators, to agitate 
 for its abolition ! 
 
 Such is the Church's action on the morale of society. Tell 
 her to shut up her confessionals ; tell her that her priests, 
 sittiog in those tribunals, are blasphemous usurpers of a power 
 that God has never given to man. What follows from this ? 
 Oh, my friends, do you think that you, or that any of you would 
 be better men if you were absolved to-morrow from all obliga- 
 tion of ever going to confession again ? Do you think you 
 would draw nearer to God ? Would we look more sharply after 
 ourselvf>s ? Do you not think that even those very human 
 agencies — ^the humiliation, the painstaking of preparation, the 
 violent effort to get out whatever we must confess — do you not 
 think all these things are a great restraint upon a man, and that 
 they help to keep him from sinning, independent altogether of 
 the higher argument of an offended God — of the crucified 
 Lord bleeding again at the sight of our sins. Most assuredly 
 they are. Most assuredly that man will endeavour to serve God 
 with greater purity, with greater carefulness — will endeavour to 
 remember the precept of the Saviour : " You must watch and 
 pray that you may not enter into temptation " — who is called 
 upon from time to time to sweep the chambers of his ovn 
 soul, to wash and purify every corner of his own heart, to ana- 
 lyze his motives, call himself to account, even for his thoughts 
 and words — examine his relations in regard to honesty, in re- 
 gard to charity with his neighbour — examine himself how he 
 fulfils his duties as a father, or as a husband, as the case may 
 be. The man who is obliged to do this is more likely to serve 
 God in purity and watchfulness than the man who never, from 
 the cradle to the grave, is obliged to ask himself, " How do I 
 stand with God ? " Kemove this action of the Church upon the 
 good conduct of society, and then you will have, indeed, the 
 work which was accomplished, and which is reaping its fulfil- 
 ment to-day — the work of the so-called great Reformer, Martin 
 Luther, who has brouglit it to this pass, that the world itself is 
 groaning under the weight of its own iniquity ; and society 
 
140 ■ LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 r'sfa? up ana exclaims that its very heart within it is rotted by 
 social evil. 
 
 Dibtuib the action of the Church upon political society, and 
 Vfhskt giiAiantee have you for the future ? You may see from 
 the past what is to be in the futui'e ; for, when Luther broached 
 his so-called " Reformation," the principle upon which he went 
 was that the Catholic Church had no business to be an univer- 
 sally Catholic body ; that she should break herself up into 
 national Churches — the Church of Germany, the Church of 
 England, the Church of France, the Church of America, and so 
 on. And, in fact, Protestantism to this day in England is called 
 the Church of England. The necessary consequence of this 
 was, that the head of the State became also the head of the 
 Church ; the essential Catholic bond of the Church, which is 
 communion with the pope, her head, being broken and dis- 
 solved. The two powers were concentrated in him — one as 
 Grovernor, head of the State — the other as Euler and head of 
 the National Church. He was to become King over the con- 
 sciences of the people, as well as Euler of their external public 
 actions. He was to make laws for the soul as well as for the 
 body. He was to tell them what they were to believe and how 
 they were to pray, as well as to tell them their duties as citi- 
 zens. He was to lead them to heaven ! The man who led his 
 armies in the battle-field was to persuade his people that the 
 way to heaven lay through rapine and through blood ' But so 
 it was. And, strange to say, in every nation in Europe that 
 accepted Protestantism, the monarch became a tyrant at once. 
 The greatest tyrant that ever governed England was the man 
 who introduced Protestantisn,. So long as Henry VIII. was a 
 Catholic — although he was a man of terrible passions — still, 
 the Church, reminding him of his soul, bringing him occasion- 
 a,lly to the confessional, trying to shake him out of his iniqui- 
 ties — had some control over him ; and he conquered his passions, 
 and kept himself honom-able and pure. The moment that this 
 man cast off his allegiance to the Church — the very day he pro- 
 claimed that he was emancipated from the pope, and did not 
 believe in the pope or acknowledge him any more — that very 
 day lie turns to Anne Boleyn, takes and proclaims her his wife 
 ^Catherine, his rightful wife, still living ; and in a few days, 
 frhen his heart grew tired of Anne, and bis eyes were attracted 
 by some other beauty, he s«nt Anne to the block, and had hei 
 
THE CATHOLIC OHUKCH THE SALVATION OF SOCIETY. 141 
 
 head cut off — and he took another lady in her place , and, in a 
 short time, he cut off her head also. And so, Gustavus Vasa, 
 of Sweden, when he became a Protestant, at once assumed and 
 became the head of an absolute monarchy. The very kings of 
 the Catholic countries imitated their Protestant brethren in this 
 respect, for we find the Catholic monarchs of Spain cutting off 
 the ancient privileges of the people in the Cortes, saying : " I 
 am the State, and every man must obey ! " It is quite natural. 
 The more power you give into a man's hands the more absolute 
 he becomes The more you concentrate in him the spiritual as 
 well as the temporal power, the more audaciously will he exercise 
 both temporal and spiritual power, and the more likely is it that 
 you are building up in that man a tyrant — and a merciless 
 tyrant — to oppress yon. From the day that society emancipated 
 itself by Protestantism from the action of the Church, revolu- 
 tion, rebellion, uprising against authority became the order of 
 the day, until at length the world is overrun with secret 
 societies which swear eternal enmity to the altar and to the 
 throne. 
 
 And so, my dear friends, we see that we cannot move with- 
 out the Church of God — that nations may go on for a time, and 
 may be upheld by material prosperity ; but without a surer 
 basis they will certainly be overthrown. The moments are 
 coming, and coming rapidly, when all the society of this world 
 that wishes to be saved will have to cry out with a mighty 
 voice to the Catholic Church. Persecuted, despised to-day, she 
 will yet come to us with her light of truth — with her sanctify- 
 ing influences — with her glorious dominion over king and 
 subject, to save them from the ruin which they have brought 
 upon their own heads. That will be a day of grace for man. 
 It will be a day of the world's necessity. And when that day 
 comes — and I behold it now in my mental vision, this uprising 
 of the whole world in the hands of the Church — it will bring 
 peace, security, holiness, and joy to society 1 see thee, 
 glorious spouse of Christ ! O mother Church, 1 see thee seated 
 once more, in the councils of the nations, guiding them with a 
 divinely infused light — animating them with thy spirit of jus- 
 tice. I see thee, mother, as of old I saw upon the seven 
 hills a glorious city arise out of the ruins of the Goth and Visi- 
 goth and Vandal ; so out of the men of this day— relapsing into 
 chaos through neglect of thee — do I behold ih.ee forming the 
 
142 LE0TUBE8 AND SERMONS. 
 
 glorious city that shall be; a society in which men shall be 
 ioyal and brave, truthful, pure, and holy ; a city in which he 
 people shall grow up formed by thee for God ; a city in which 
 all men, governors and governed, will admit the supremacy ol 
 law, the sanctity of principle, the omnipotence of justice ! And, 
 0, mother, in the day when that retribution comes — in that day 
 of the world's necessity — the triple crown shall shine again 
 upon the brows of thy chief, Peter's successor, and the Vicar of 
 Chiist; the triple crown, the most ancient and the holiest in 
 the world ; and the Prince of Peace will extend his sceptre 
 over the nations ; and every man will rejoice as in a n«w life I 
 
OATHOUO EDUOATXOH. 148 
 
 CATHOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 I PBOPOSE to speak to you, my dear friends, this evening, 
 on the question of " Catholic Education." My attention was 
 attracted this morning to a notice in one of the leading papers 
 of this city, in which the writer warned me, that if I was not 
 able to find a solution for this difficult question of education j 
 which would be acceptable to all classes, I might please my 
 co-religionists, but that I could not please the public. Whilst 
 I am grateful to the writer of that article, or to any one else 
 that gives me advice, I have to tell you, my friends, and the 
 writer of that notice, and everybody else, that I have not come 
 to this country, nor have I put on this habit, to please either 
 the public or my co-religionists, but to announce the truth of 
 God, in the name of His holy Church. He who accepts it, 
 and believes it, and acts upon it, shall be saved : he that does 
 not choose to believe, Christ, our Lord, Himself says, shall be 
 condemned. God help us ! God pity the people whose religious 
 teachers have to try and please their co-religionists and the 
 public ! Sreat Lord ! how terrible it is when the spirit of farce 
 and of unreality finds its way, even into the mind of the man 
 who is to proclaim the truth by which alone his fellow-men 
 and himself can be saved. But it was remarked, and truly, in 
 the same article, " that this is one of the most — perhaps, the 
 most — important questions of the day." No doubt it is. I 
 don't suppose I could have a more important theme for the 
 subject of my thoughts, or of my words, than of that education. 
 This is a question that comes home to every man amongst us. 
 No man can close his mind against it. No man can shut it 
 out from his thoughts. No man in the community can fold 
 his arms and say, " This is a question which does not concern 
 me, consequently, upon which I am mdifferent." No ; arid 
 why ? Because every man amongst us is obliged to live in 
 society ; that is to say, in inter-communion with his fellow- men. 
 Every man's happiness or misery depends, in a large degree, 
 upon th*" state of society in which he lives. Jf the associations 
 
144 LECTTJEES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 that BTtrround us are good, and holy, and pure ; if our children 
 are obedient, if our servants are honest, if our friends are loyal, 
 and our neighbours are peaceable, if the persons who supply 
 ns with the necessaries of life are reliable — how far all these 
 things go to smooth away all the diEBculties, and annoyances, 
 and anxieties of life ! And yet, all this depends mostly upon 
 education. If, on the other hand, our children are rude, dis- 
 obedient, and wilful ; if those around us be dishonest, so that 
 we must be constantly on our guard against them ; if our 
 friends be false, so that we know not on whose word to rely ; 
 if everything we use and take to clothe ourselves be bad, and 
 adulterated, or poisonous — how miserable all this makes life I 
 And yet, these issues, I say again, depend mainly upon edu- 
 cation. Therefore, it is a question that comes home to every 
 man, and from which no man can excuse himself, or plead 
 indifference or unconcern. 
 
 Now, first of all, my friends, consider that the greatest 
 misfortune that Almighty God can let fall upon any man is the 
 curse of utter ignorance, or want of education. The Holy 
 Ghost, in the Scriptures, expressly tells us that this absence of 
 knowledge, this absence of instruction and education, is th« 
 greatest curse that can fall upon a man ; because it not oulj 
 unfits him for his duties to God, and for the fellowship of th« 
 elect of God, and for every Godlike and eternal purpose, but il 
 also unfits him for the society of his human kind ; and, there- 
 fore, the Scripture says so emphatically — " Man, when he was 
 in honour " (that is to say, created in honour), " lost his 
 knowledge." He had no knowledge. What followed? He 
 was compared to senseless beasts and made like to them. 
 What is it that distinguishes man from the bnite? Ts it the 
 strength of limb 1 No ! Is it gracefulness of form 1 No ! 
 Is it acute sensations — a sense of superior sight, or a more 
 intense and acute sense of hearing ? No i In all these 
 things many of the beasts that roam the forest exceed us. 
 We have not the swiftness of the stag; we have not the 
 Btrengt>i "f the lion ; we have not the beautiful grace of the 
 antelope of ike desert ; we have not the power to soar into 
 the tpper air, like the eagle, who lifts himself upon strong 
 pinions and gazes on the sun. We have not the keen sense 
 of sight of many animals, nor the keen sense of hearing 
 nf others. In what, then, lies the difference ^nd the supeji- 
 
OATHOLIO EDUCATION. 145 
 
 ority of man ? Oh, my dear friends, it lies in the intelligence 
 that can know, and the heart which, guided by that intelligence, 
 is iufluenced to love for intellectual motives, and in the will, 
 which is supposed to preserve its freedom, by acting under the 
 domiuion of that enlighteued intellect and mind. For, mark 
 you, it is not the mere power of knowing that distinguishes 
 man from the brutes, and brings him to the perfection of his 
 nature. It is the actual presence of knowledge. It is not the 
 mere power of loving that distinguishes man from the lower 
 creatures. No. For if that love be excited by mere sensuality, 
 by the mere appeal to the senses, it is not the high human 
 love of man, but it is the mere lust of desire and passion of 
 the brute. It is not the will that distinguishes man in the 
 nobility of his nature from the brute ; but it is the will, pre- 
 serving its freedom, keeping itself free from the slavery and 
 iominion of brute passions, and answering quickly — heroically 
 — to every dictate of the high, and holy, and enlightened in. 
 telligence that is in man. What follows from this ? It follows 
 that if you deprive him of intelligence or knowledge, if yon 
 leave him in utter ignorance and withdraw education, you 
 thereby starve, and, as far as j'ou can, annihilate the very 
 highest portion of the soul of man ; you tlieieby dwarf all his 
 spiritual powers ; you thereby leave that soul, which was 
 created to grow, and to wax strong, and to be developed by 
 knowledge — you leave it in the imbecility and the helpless- 
 ness of its natural, intellectual, and spiritual infancy What 
 follows from this ? It follows that the uneducated, uuiustiucted, 
 ignorant, dwarfed individual is incapable of influencing the 
 affections of the heart with any of the higher motives of love. 
 It follows that if that heart of man is ever to love it will 
 not love upon the dictate of the intelligence, guiding it to 
 an intellectual object, but, like the brute beast of the field 
 it will seek the gratification of all its desires upon thd 
 mere brutal, corporeal evidence of its senses. What follows, 
 moreover? It follows that the will which was created by 
 the Almighty f^od in freedom, and which, by the very com- 
 position of man's nature, was destined to exercise that free- 
 dom under the dictate of intelligence, is now left without its 
 proper ruler, an intelligent, instriKted intellect ; and, therefore, 
 in the uninstructed man the allegiance of the will--«ad its 
 domiuion — is ti-ansferred to the passions, desires, depraved ii^- 
 
U6 LEOTUKES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 clinations of man's lower nature. And so we see that in the 
 purely and utterly uninstructed man there can be no loftiuess 
 of thought, no real purity of affection, nor can there be any 
 5eal intellectual action of the will of man. Therefore, I con- 
 tlude that the greatest curse Almighty God can let fall upon a 
 man is the curse of utter ignorance, unfitting him thereby for 
 every purpose of God and every purpose of society. 
 
 First, then, my dear friends, I assert that want of education, 
 or ignorance, imfits a man for his position, no matter how 
 humble it be, in this world and in society. For all human 
 society exists amongst men, and not amongst inferior animals, 
 because of the existence in men of intelligence. All human 
 society or intercourse is based upon intellectual communication, 
 thought meeting thought ; intellectual sympathy corresponding 
 with the sympathy of others. But the man who is utterly un- 
 instructed ; the man who has never been taught to write or to 
 read ; the man who has never been taught to exercise any act 
 of his intelligence ; the poor, neglected child that we see about 
 our streets — growing up without receiving any word of in- 
 struction — grows up, rises to manhood, utterly unfit to com- 
 municate with his fellow-men, for he is utterly unprepared for 
 that intercommunion of intelligence and intellect which is the 
 function of society. What follows ? He cannot be an obedient 
 citizen, because he cannot even apprehend in his miud the idea 
 of law. He cannot be a prosperous citizen, because he cat 
 never turn to any kind of labour which would require the 
 slightest mental effort. In other words, he cannot labour as a 
 man. He is condemned by his intellectual imbecility to labour 
 merely with his hands. Mere brute force distinguishes his 
 labour ; and the moment you reduce a man to the degree and 
 amount of mere corporeal strength, the moment you remove 
 from his labour the application of intellect, that moment he is 
 put in competition with the beasts ; and they are stronger than 
 he ; therefore he is inferior to them. Take the utterly unin- 
 Btructed man ; he it is that is the enemy of societj He can- 
 not meet his fellow-men in any kind of intellectum intercom- 
 munion Re is shut out from all that the past tells him in the 
 history of the world ; from all the high pi-esent interests that 
 are pressing around him ; from all his future he is shut out by 
 his utter destitution of all religious education as well as civil. 
 What follows from this? Isolated as he is — flung bacJj upon 
 
OATHOLIO EDUCATION. 147 
 
 his solitary self — no humanizing touch ; no gentle impulse ; 
 no softening remembrance even of sorrow or trouble ; no aspira- 
 tion for something better than the preserjt moment ; no remorse 
 for sin ; no consolation in pain ; no relief in affliction ; nothing 
 of all this remains to him : an isolated, solitary man, such as 
 you or I might be, if in one moment, by God's visitation, all 
 that we have ever learned should be wiped out of our minds ; 
 all our past lost to us ; all the hopes of the future cut off from 
 us ; such is the ignorant man ; and such society recognizes him 
 to be. If there be a man who makes the State, and the 
 Govertiment of the State, to tremble, it is the thoroughly un- 
 instructed and uneducated man ; it is the class neglected in 
 early youth, and cast aside ; and utterly uninstructed and un- 
 developed in their souls, in their hearts, and in their intellects. 
 It is this class that, from time to time, comes to the surface, 
 in some wild revolution, swarming forth in the streets of 
 London, or the streets of Paris, or in the streets of the great 
 Continental cities of Europe ; swarming forth, no one knows 
 from whence ; coming forth from their cellars ; coming forth 
 from out the dark places of the city -, with fury unreasoning in 
 their eyes, and the cries of demons upon their lips. These are 
 the men that have dyed their hands red in the best blood of 
 Europe, whether it came from the throne or the altar. It is 
 the thoroughly uninstructed, uneducated, neglected child of 
 society that rises in God's vengeance against the world and 
 the society that neglected him, and pays them back with 
 bitter interest for the neglect of his soul in his early youth. 
 Therefore it is, that statesmen and philosophers cry out, in 
 this our day, " We must educate the people." And the 
 great cry is. Education Quite true, and right! 
 
 And if the world demands education, r-uch more does the 
 Catholic Church. She is the true mother, not merely of the 
 masses, as they are called, but of each and every individual soul 
 amongst them. She it is to whose hands God has committed 
 the eternal interests of man, and, therefore, it is with a zeal far 
 greater than that of the world the Catholic Church applies 
 lierself to the subject and question of education. Why so 1 
 Because if, as we have seen, all human society is based upon 
 knowledge, upon intercommunion of intellect — of which th» 
 uninstructed man is incapable— the society which is called the 
 Church ^the supernatural and divine society — is also much 
 
148 LECTUBES AND SBEMONS. 
 
 more emphatically founded upon the principles of knowledge. 
 What is the foundation, the bond, the link, the life and soul of 
 the Catholic Church? I answer — faith. Faith in God. 
 Faith in every word that God has revealed. Faith, stronger 
 than any human principle of belief, opinion, or conviction. 
 Faith, not only bowing down before God, but apprehending 
 what God speaks ; clasping that truth to the mind, and inform- 
 ing the intelligence with its hght; admitting it as a moral 
 influence into every action and every motive of a man's life. 
 It is the soul and life of the Catholic Church. Faith 1 What 
 is faith? It is an act of the intelligence, whereby we know 
 and believe all that God has revealed. Faith, then, is know- 
 ledge ? Most certainly ! Is it an act of the will ? No ; not 
 directly — not essentially — not immediately. It is, directly, 
 essentially, and immediatelj', an act of the intellect, and not of 
 the will. It is the intellect that is the subject wherein faith 
 resides. The will may command that intellect to bow down 
 and believe ; but the essential act of faith is an act of the 
 intelligence, receiving light and accepting it — and that light is 
 knowledge ; therefore, the Catholic Church cannot exist with- 
 out knowledge. 
 
 More than this, the world has many duties which it imposes 
 upon man, which require no education, little or nothing of in- 
 struction ; for instance, the duty of labour, where one man, 
 educated and instructed, taking his position at the head of the 
 woi-ks or the engineering, is able to direct ten thousand men ; 
 there, amongst these ten thousand, no great amount of instruc- 
 tion or education is necessary or required ; but the Catholic 
 Church, on the other hand, imposes a great many tasks upon 
 her children, every one of them requiring not only intellect but 
 highly-trained and well-educated intellect. Look through the 
 duties that the Church imposes upon us. Every one of these 
 duties is intellectual. The Church commands us to pray. 
 Prayer involves a knowledge of God, a knowledge of our own 
 wants, and a knowledge how to elevate our souls to God ; for 
 prayer is the elevation of the soul ; and the uninstructed soul 
 cannot elevate itself to the apprehension of a pure spiritual being. 
 The Church commandsus to preparefor confession. Thatinvolves 
 a knowledge of the law of God, in order that we may examine 
 ourselves, and see wherein we have failed; that involves a know- 
 ledge of ourselves, b order to study ourselves, that we may 
 
OATHOLIO EtoiJCATION. 149 
 
 discover our sins. Preparation for confession involves a know- 
 ledge of God's claim to our love, in order that we may 
 find motives for our sorrow. The Church commands us to 
 approach the Holy Communion. That approach involves the 
 high intellectual act whereby we are able with heart and with 
 mind to realize the unseen, the invisible, yet present God, and 
 to receive Him. We see the strong act of the intellect realizing 
 the unseen, and transcending the evidence of the senses, so as 
 to make that unseen, invisible presence act upon us more 
 strongly — agitate us more violently — than the strongest emotion 
 that the evidence of the senses can give. 
 
 The Chm'ch commands us to understand what her sacra- 
 meuts are ; and that is a high intellectual act, whereby we 
 recognize God's dealings with man through the agency of 
 material things. In a word, every single duty the Catholic 
 Church imposes is of the highest intellectual character. 
 
 Again, though the world demands Ivuowledge and educa- 
 tion as the very first element of its society, still the motive 
 power that the world proposes to every man is self-interest ; 
 the appeal that the world makes, through the thousand chan- 
 nels through which it comes to us, is all an appeal tr self, 
 All the professions, all the mercantile operations, all the duties 
 and pleasures of life, all appeal to the individual to seek 
 his own self-aggrandizement — his own self-indulgence — to 
 make life happy and pleasant to himself. Not so with the 
 Church her foundation is faith ; and the motive she puts 
 before every man is not self, but charity. Just as self 
 concentrates the heart of man, narrows his intellectual and 
 spiritual horizon, makes him turn in upon his own con- 
 tracted being, and so narrows every intellectual and spiritual 
 power within him ; charity, on the other hand, which is the 
 motive propounded by the Church, enlarges and expands the ■ 
 heart of man, enlarges the horizon of his intellectual view, and 
 lifts him up above himself Like a man climbing the moun- 
 tain side, every foot that he ascends he sees the horizon enlarging 
 and widening around him. So, also, every Catholic, the more 
 he enters into the spirit of his holy religion, the more does he 
 perceive the intellectual, moral, and spiritual horizon enlarging 
 — taking in more interests and manifesting more beauties of a 
 spiritual order. So it is with the Church of God. She depends 
 more upon education than even the world, both from the funda- 
 
150 LECTUEES AND BBriMONS. 
 
 mental principle of faith, which is an act of the intellect, and 
 the motive of action, which is charity, which is an expansion of 
 the intellect, and also from the nature of the duties which she 
 imposes upon her children, and which are all of the highest 
 intellectual character. 
 
 And yet, my friends, strange to say, amongst the many 
 oddities of this age of ours, there is a singular delusion which 
 has taken hold of the Protestant mind, that the Catholic Church 
 is opposed to education ; that she is anxious to keep the people 
 ignorant ; that she is afraid to let them read ; that she does 
 not like to see schools opened, and that she is afraid of en- 
 lightenment. They argue so blindly and yet so complacently 
 that when you find a good-natured and good-humoured Protes- 
 tant man or woman calmly talking about these things, it is 
 difficult to keep from laughing ; it is easy enough to keep your 
 temper, but very hard to keep from laughing. For instance, 
 talking about Spain or Mexico ; calmly and complacently telling 
 how the whole country is to become Protestant as soon as the 
 whole people " learn how to read, you know ! " and " begin to 
 reason you know ! " " If we can orjly get good schools amongst 
 them." Then they believe the infernal lies told them ; for in- 
 stance, the lie is told that,inRome, since Victor Emmanuel entered 
 it, thirty-six schools had been opened — taking it for granted there 
 were no schools there before ! I lived twelve years in Rome, 
 under the Pope, and there was a school almost in every street ; 
 not a child in Rome was uneducated ; nay, more — the Chris- 
 tian brothers and the nuns went out in the streetsi of Rome 
 regularly every morning, and went from house to house, and 
 up-stairs in the tenement houses, amongst the poor people, 
 picking up the childien ; or if they found a little boy running 
 about in the streets he was taken quietly to school. They went 
 out regularly to pick up the children out of the streets ; and 
 yet these men who are interested in blinding the foolish Protes- 
 tant mind, come with such language as this — for it is the popular 
 idea, which they wish to perpetuate, that the Catholic Church 
 s afraid of education No, my friends, the Catholic Church is 
 afraid of one man more than any other, and that is the ignorant 
 man. The man who brings disgrace upon his religion is the 
 thoroughly ignorant man, if he is a professed Catholic; and 
 the man impossible to make a Catholic of is the thoroughly i"-- 
 Dorant Protestant. Tlie more ignorant he is the less chance there 
 
OATHOLIO EDUCATION. 151 
 
 is of making a Catholic of him. The truth is, in this day of 
 ours the great couversious made to the Catholic Church in 
 this country and Europe, from Protestantism, all take place 
 amongst the most enlightened and highly-educated and culti- 
 vated people. AVhy? Because the more the Pretestant reads 
 and the more he knows, the nearer he approaches the Catholic 
 Church, the true fountain-head and source of education. Why 
 is this accusation brought against the Catholic Church that she 
 is afraid of this and afraid of that 1 I will tell you why. Be- 
 cause she insists, in the teeth of the world, and in spite of the 
 world's pride and ignorance and bloated self-sufficiency — the 
 Catholic Church insists, as she has insisted for eighteen hundred 
 and seventy-two years, on saying, " I know how to teach ; you 
 don't ; you must come to me ; you cannot live without me. 
 Don't imagine you can live by yourselves, or you will fall back 
 into the slough of your own impurity and corruption." The 
 world does not like to hear this. The Catholic Church insists 
 that she alone understands what education means ; the world 
 does not like to hear that. But I come here to-night to prove 
 it, not only to you, my Catholic friends, my co-religionists, but 
 if there be one here who is not a Catholic to him also, and so to 
 please the public if they choose to be pleased ; but if my co- 
 religionists or the public choose to be displeased, the truth is 
 there personified in the Church, and that truth will remain after 
 the co-religionists and the indignant public are all swept away. 
 There are three systems of education that are before us in 
 this country. There are three classes of men who are talking 
 about education ; namely — those who go for what is called a 
 thoroughly secular system ; those who go for a denominational 
 system, as far as it is Protestant ; and the Catholic, who goea 
 in for Catholic education. Let us examine the three. There is a 
 large class in England and in America who assume the tone of 
 the philosopher, and who, with great moral dignity, and infinite 
 presumption, lay down the law for their neighbours, and tell 
 them, " There is no use quarrelling, my dear Baptists and 
 Methodists, and you, pestering Catholics ; on the other hand, 
 you want your schools — every one wants their own school; let 
 us adopt a beautiful system of education, that will take in every 
 one, and leave your religious differences among yourselves; let 
 us do away with religion altogether The child has a great 
 deal to be tinght indppondeut of religion. There is history, 
 
162 LEOTtJEES AND SEBM0N8. 
 
 philosophy, geography, geology, engineering, steam works ; 
 all these things can be taught without any reference to God at 
 all. So let us do this ; let us adopt non sectarian education." 
 Now, my friends, these are two big words : non-sectarian — a 
 word of five syllables — and education ; nine syllables alto- 
 gether. Now, when people adopt greai big words, in this 
 way, you should always be on your guard against them ; 
 because, if I wanted to palm off something not true, I would 
 not set it out in plain English, but try to involve it in big 
 words ; for, as the man in the story says, " if it is not sense, 
 at least it is Greek." So, these two words, non-sectarian 
 education, if you wish to kuow what they mean, turn it into 
 EngUsh. Non-sectarian education, in good old Saxon English, 
 means teaching witlwut God: five syllables. Teaching your 
 chiidren, fathers and mothers, and educating them without 
 God ! Not a word about God, no more than if God did not 
 exist! He can be spoken of in the family; He may be 
 preached in the temple, or in the church ; but there is one 
 establishment in the laud where God must not come in ; where 
 God must not be mentioned — and that establishment is the 
 place where the young are to receive the education that is to 
 determine their life, both for time and eternity; the place where 
 the young are to receive that education upon which eternity 
 depends. The question of heaven or hell, for every child 
 there, depends upon that education, and that education must 
 be given without one mention of the name of the God of 
 Heaven ! 
 
 Try to let it enter into your minds what this amiable system 
 is. This beautiful system is founded upon two principles, 
 which lie at the bottom of it; namely — The first principle is, that 
 man can attain perfection withoiit the aid of Jesus Christ at 
 all This system of education does not believe in Christ. It 
 is tne Masonic principle ; the principle of the Freemasons over 
 again, namely: that God has made us so, that without any 
 help from Him at all, without any shadow of grace, or sacra- 
 ment, or religion, we can work out nerfection in ourselves ; 
 therefore, we are independent of God. It is the last result of 
 human pride ; and hence, the secular education which does not 
 take cognizance of God, says, we can bring up these children 
 to be what they ought to be, without teaching them anything 
 about God. The second principle upon which it is based is, 
 
OATHOLIO EDUCATION. 153 
 
 that the eud of human life, under the Christian dispensation, 
 is not what Christ, our Lord, or St. Paul, supposed it to be, 
 but something else. The Scriptures declare that the end of 
 the Christian's purposes in this life should be to incorporate 
 himself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and to grow into the ful 
 ness of his age and his manhood in Christ ; lo put on the 
 Lord— the unity, the love, the generosity, and every virtue of 
 our Divine Lord and Saviour. This is to be the end of the 
 Christian man ; the purpose of his life, on which all depends. 
 Now, these principles are expressly denied on the part of those 
 who teach without God. Can they teach without God— the 
 Almighty God, who has them in the hollow of His hand 1 
 The principle is absurd in itself. To teach human sciences 
 vvithout God is an impossibility. For instance, can you teach 
 history without God ? The very first passage of history says: 
 " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ; " 
 and, therefore, in this system of education, the professor of 
 history, the teacher, must say: " My dear children, I am going 
 to teach you history; but I must not begin at the beginning; 
 for there we find God, and He is not allowed in the school ! " 
 Can you teach philosophy without God 1 Philosophy is de- 
 fined to be the pursuit after wisdom. It is the science that 
 traces effects to their causes ; and the philosopher proceeds 
 from the existence of the first cause ; and that first cause is 
 God ; therefore the philosophy that excludes God must begin 
 with the second cause: just as if a man wanted to teach a little 
 boy how to cast up sums, and he said, " We will begin with 
 number two ; there is no number one." The child would turn 
 round and say, " Is not number two a multiplication of number 
 one? How can there be a number two unless there is a number 
 one to be multiplied ? " Can a man teach the alphabet and 
 leave out the first letter A, and say, let us begin with the letter 
 B? Such is the attempt to teach philosophy or history without 
 God. Can they teach geology without God. Can they ex- 
 clude from their disquisitions upon the earth, and the earth's 
 surface and the soil of the earth — can they exclude the 
 Creator's hand? They attempt to do it; but in their very 
 attempt they preach their infidelity. Hence, no man can teach 
 geology without being either a profound and pious believer in 
 revelation, or an avowed and open infidel. In a word, not one 
 oi these human sciences is therr that does not, in its ultimate 
 
154 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 result and analysis, fall back upon the first truth — the foun- 
 tain of all truth — the cause of all certainty — and that is God. 
 
 But, putting all these considerations aside, let us suppose 
 we gave our children to these men to instruct them ; they say, 
 the parents can teach at home any form of religion they like 
 Let us suppose we give our children to the instruction ol 
 these men. Do they know how to educate them? They 
 don't know what the word education means. What does it 
 mean? It means, in its very etymology, to bring forth, to 
 develop, to bring out what is in the mind. That little child of 
 seven years is the fatlier of the man. It is only seven years 
 of age, but it is the father of the man that will be in twenty 
 years time. Now, to educate and bring out in that child every 
 faculty, every power of his soul, that he will require for the 
 exercise of his manhood to-morrow — that is the true meaning 
 of the word education. In the human soul there are two dis- 
 tinct systems of powers, both necessary for the man, both 
 acting upon and influencing his life. First of all, is the 
 intelligence of a man ; he must receive education. But there 
 is, together with that pure intellect or intelligence, there is the 
 heart that must also be educated ; there are the affections 
 there is the will ; and as knowledge is necessary for the 
 intellect, divine grace is necessary for the heart and for the 
 will. K you give to your child every form of human know- 
 ledge, and pour into him ideas in abundance, and develop and 
 bring forth every faculty of his intellect, and let nothing be 
 hid from him in the way of knowledge, but do not mind his 
 heart, and do not educate his spirit and affections — how is he 
 to subdue his passions ? Do not speak to him of his moral 
 duties, which are to be the sinews of his life, and do not 
 attempt at all to strengthen, and teach the will to bow to the 
 intellect ; do not speak to him of his moral duties, nor the 
 things that he must practice — what will you have at the em 
 of the education ? An intellectual monster Fancy a little 
 child, five or six years old. Suppose all the growth was turned 
 into his head, and the rest of his body remained fixed ; in a 
 few years you would have a monster ; you would have a little 
 child with the head of a giant upon him. Don't attempt to 
 purify the affections, and you will develop, indeed, the intellect, 
 but the other powers will be in such disproportion that you 
 have made an intellectual monstei'. You have made something 
 
OATHOLIO EDUCATION. 155 
 
 worse, you have made a moral monster ! It is quite true, 
 Knowledge is power. But all power in creation requires restraint 
 m order to be useful. Without such restraint, it is hurtful and 
 aestructive. The horse will serve you only as long as you can 
 Keep him in hand with bit and bridle. The locomotive is 
 uselul only as long as the engineer's hand controls it. The 
 Ugntning, which unrestrained would destroy you, becomes the 
 messenger of your thoughts when guided and restrained by the 
 electric wire. You have given that man power by giving him 
 Knowledge. But you have not given him a single principle to 
 purify, and influence, or restrain that power, so as to use it 
 properly. Therefore, you have made a moral monster. And, 
 now, that man is all the more wicked, and all the more 
 heartless, and all the more remorseless and impm-e, in pre- 
 cisely the same proportion as you succeed in making hir 
 cultm-ed and learned. This is the issue of this far-famed 
 system of non-sectarian education. 
 
 There is another system of education, and it is that of our 
 separated brethren in this land, who say that they are quite 
 as indignant as we are, and as horrified at the idea of an 
 utterly Godless education; that they do not go in for a God- 
 less education ; on the contrary, they ^ean to have God every- 
 where. They are trymg now to pu* Him in the American Con- 
 stitution if they can succeed. They also build then- schools ; and 
 they think that Catholics are the most unreasonable people in 
 the world because we do not consent to send our children to 
 them. They say, " What objection can you have to the Bible ? 
 Don't you believe in it as well as we do?" They say, " Cannot 
 you send your children to us on the platform of our common 
 Christianity ? There are a great many things that we believe 
 together." They say, " We will not ask to teach the children 
 one iota agamst the Catholic worship ; nor ask them to partici- 
 pate in any religious teaching, only as far as they hold that general 
 trut'' in common with our Protestant children.'' So they ask 
 & to stand with them on the platform of a common Christianity? 
 Well, my friends, a great many Catholics are taken by this, and 
 chink it is very unreasonable, and that it is almost bigotry In 
 the Catholic Church to refuse it. Well, let us but examine 
 what the platform of our common Christianity allows ; what does 
 rt mean ? Here is a Protestant school, carried out on Protestant 
 principles. Let us suppose that they shut up the Protestant 
 
166 LEOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 Bible, and put it aside, but carry on the school on Protestant 
 principles as far as they go in common with the Catholic faith ; 
 the Catholic is invited to share the school with them. First of 
 all, my friends, how far do we go together I don't know if 
 there be any Protestant here ; if there is I don't wish to say a 
 harsh, disrespectful, or unpleasant word ; but let us consider 
 how far we can go together — the Protestants and Catholics I 
 Well, they answer, first of all, " We believe in the existence of 
 God. Thanks be to God, we do ! — ^the Protestants and 
 Catholics are united on that ; both believe there is a God above 
 us. The next great dogma of Christianity is — " We believe in 
 the Divinity of Christ." Stop, my friends ! I am afraid that 
 we must shake hands and part. I am afraid the platform of 
 our common Christianity is too narrow. Are you aware that 
 it is not necessary for a Protestant to believe in the Divinity of 
 Jesus Christ ? A great many Protestants do believe it, most 
 piously and most fervently ; a great many Protestants believe 
 in it as we do. It is most emphatically true, however, that there 
 are clergymen of the Church of England preaching in Pro- 
 testant churches throughout England, who deny the Divinity 
 of Jesus Christ ; and it is emphatically true that at this very 
 moment the whole Protestant world is trying to get rid of the 
 Athanasian Creed, because that creed says whoever does 
 not believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ cannot enter into 
 the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, I must fling back this 
 assertion. I cannot grant it. I wish to God I could. No, my 
 friends, if to-morrow, the Anglican clergy who have written 
 against the Divinity of our Lord, and against the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, and against all forms of religion, in works 
 that are printed, asking all the pious Protestants of England 
 to believe in their ideas — professors of England enjoying their 
 yearly salaries ; preaching religion (God save the mark !) — if 
 one of these men were to appear on trial to-morrow, the Queen 
 and her Council would decide that the Divinity of Christ is not 
 a necessary doctrine. You go one step beyond the existence of 
 God, and the platform is overthrown ; and the Catholic and 
 the Protestant child can no longer stand side by side. Into 
 that Protestant school goes a Protestant child, to be tajght 
 his rehgion. Everything that his religion requires him to 
 believe he is taught, but the Catholic child, before he can go in 
 to receive his instruction, must leave behind him, outside the 
 
OATHOLIO EDUCATION. 157 
 
 door, his belief in the Sacraments, Confession, the Holy Com- 
 munion, prayers for the dead, the Blessed Virgin, all the saints, 
 the duty of self-examination and of prayer ; in a word, all the 
 specific duties, all the principles of the Catholic religion must 
 be forgotton and ignored by that Catholic child before he can 
 come down low enough to take a seat on the platform with his 
 little Protestant brother. Is it any wonder that we should no( 
 like to do it i If you should live in a beautiful house, well 
 furnished, with every convenience, and your neighbour was 
 living in a damp cellar, where it was cold and dark, and if h« 
 asked you to come down and live with him, you would answer, 
 "I am much obliged, my dear friend; but I prefer not." If 
 you had a good dinner of roast beef, and your neighbour had 
 only a salt herring ; and he requested you to eat with him, you 
 would answer, " No, I can't do it." And so, when they ask 
 us to come down from the heights of our Catholic knowledge, 
 to go out of the atmosphere of the sacrameiits and of the 
 divine presence of Jesus Christ, the atmosphere of responsi- 
 bility to God, realized and asserted in confession and com- 
 munion ; and from the intercessory prayer of Mary, the mother 
 of Jesus Christ, and of the saints ; and ask us to forget our 
 dead, ask us to give up everything that a Catholic holds dear, 
 that we may have the privilege of standing upon the miserable 
 platform of " our common Christi.inity," with our Protestant 
 brethren ; we must say that we are much obliged to them, but 
 beg to decline their offer. I say it is a meagre meal that they 
 offer us ; but, inasmuch as we have something a great deal 
 better and more luxurious at home, we beg leave to be 
 excused ; and if they choose to come to us, let them step up 
 to our Catholic schools and find all that they can find m their 
 Pi-otestant schools and a great deal more ; but if they choose 
 not to do it, we cannot help it, we cannot go down to them, 
 never ! 
 
 Now, on the principle of Cathulic education, the Catholic 
 Church says: " I know how to educate ; there is no single 
 power in that child's soul, not a single faculty, either intellec- 
 tual, moral, or spiritual, that I will not bring forth into its full 
 bloom. That child requires knowledge for its intelligence ; a,nd 
 every form of human knowledge ; so that we can compete with 
 every other teacher in the world." Thus the Church provides, 
 BO that she fears no competition, but can hold her own in every 
 
 F 
 
158 LEOTUEES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 branch of secular education. Some time ago there was a Com- 
 mission issued by the British Government to examine the 
 schools of Ireland. They thought to convict our Catholic 
 schools of inefficiency ; at least they thought that we paid so 
 much attention to religion, that we did not give the children 
 enough secular knowledge. Their commissioners went through 
 the land, and solemnly reported, in the House of Commons, 
 that they found that no schools in Ireland imparted so much 
 secular knowledge as the Christian brothers and the nuns. 
 They had to say it. The teachers in the other schools declared 
 that secular knowledge was their first object, and religion, if 
 admitted at all, a secondary thing. The Christian brothers 
 said : religion first, and secular knowledge afterward. The 
 other schools admitted a miserable modicum of religion, in order 
 to induce the child to receive secular education ; but the Chris- 
 tian brothers admitted secular knowledge, in order to induce in 
 the child's heart and soul religion. And yet, in the rivahy, the 
 Catholic Church was so completely ahead — even in imparting 
 Becalar knowledge — that our enemies, on this question of secu- 
 lar education, were obliged to acknowledge that there is nothing 
 ftt all iu Ireland Uke the schools of the Christian brothers and 
 of the nuns. 
 
 The Church says, " Let no fountain of human knowledge 
 be denied. Let every light which human knowledge and 
 science can bring, be thrown upon that intelligence. I am not 
 i fraid of it. I desire that the child may have intelligence ; the 
 more I can flood that intellect with the light, the better guarantee 
 I have that the man will be a true and fervent, because an 
 eminently intellectual, Catholic." But the Church adds, "that 
 child's heart requires to be instructed ; that child's affections 
 require to be directed ; that child's passions must be purified ; 
 that child must be made familiar with the things and joys of 
 heaven before he becomes familiar with the sights and joys of 
 earth." Therefore, she takes the child, before he comes to the 
 age of reason, and makes his young eyes to be captivated with 
 the images, and sweetness, and spiritual beauties of Jesus and 
 Mary ; and draws, and makes that young heart full of love for 
 the Eedeemer before the appeal of passion excites the earthly 
 love ; before the mystery of iniquity that is in the world is re- 
 vealed to his reason. Therefore, she draws that child, and 
 familiarises his mind with the words of faith, and the language 
 
CATHOLIC EDUCATION. 159 
 
 of heaven and prayer ; intermingling with his amusements 
 and studies an element of devotion and of religion. Because she 
 recognizes that as much as the world stands in need of intel- 
 lectual men, far, far more does it stand in need of honest men, 
 pure men, high-minded men. Because she knows if knowledge 
 is not intermingled with grace, that knowledge without grace 
 becomes a curse instead of a blessing. It was the curse of the 
 world tliat it was so intellectual in the era of Augustus, because 
 says St. Paul, " Thej' refused to admit God into their know 
 ledge ; and God gave them up to a reprobate sense." What 
 follows '. Every faculty of the mind, of the affections, as well 
 as of the intellect, is brought out in that child ; so that the 
 whole soul is developed, and has fair play, and is brought forth 
 under the system of Catholic education. 
 
 Which of these tbvee systems, think you, is the most neces- 
 sary for the world ? Ah ! my friends, I was asked to please 
 the public as well as my co-religiouists. I wish to God I could 
 please the public with such a doctrine as this, and propound 
 the truth ; and say to the public, to every father and mother 
 in America, Protestant and Catholic — when God gave you tha* 
 child, it was only that, by your action and by yom- educa 
 tion, that child might grow into the resemblance of Jesus 
 Christ ; it was only that Christ, the Son of God, might be 
 multiplied in men, that men are born at all. What do you 
 imagine we came into this world for ? To become rich ? It is 
 hard for the rich man to be saved ! To become great and 
 wondrous before the world's eyes? Oh, this greatness is like 
 the mist which the rays of the morning sun dispel. No ! God 
 made us for eternity; and now, eternity depends upon oui 
 bringing out in our hearts, in our affections, in the interest 
 and harmony of our lives, in the simple faith and belie! 
 of our souls, in every highest virtue— bringing out within 
 us and clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 And, now, I ask again, which of the three systems o! 
 education is likely to do this? Would to God that 1 
 could please the public of America when I preach Jesus 
 Christ, and Him alone. Now, surely it is to our schools thai 
 we can apply His word who said, " Suffer the little children to 
 come unto Me." And if the public are not pleased when they 
 hear His name; when they hear how they are to implant Hiiu 
 in their children's lives— all I can do is to pray for the pubhc. 
 
160 LBCTtJEES AND SEBMONB. 
 
 that the Almighty God may open their blind eyes, and let in 
 the pure light into their darkened intellects. 
 
 I know, my friends, that it is hard upon the Catholics of 
 this country to be constantly called upon to build one set of 
 schools for Catholicg, end to be obliged, as citizens, to build 
 aaother set, and furnish them, for persons wealthier or bettei 
 off than themselves. It is a hardship ; and I don't think the 
 State — with great '■espect to the ay^^horities — ought to call 
 upon you to do it. But still, great a« the hardship is, when 
 you consider that your children receive in the Catholic schools 
 what they cannot receive elsewhere — when you consider that 
 your own hopes for heaven are bound up in these children, arid 
 that the education they ueed they can receive only in the 
 Catholic school, and nowhere else — you must put up with this 
 disadvantage, and make this sacrifice, among many others, to 
 gain heaven. For it is written, " The kingdom of heaven 
 Gaffers violeuce, and the violent shall bear it away." 
 
tHE NATIONAL MUSIC OF IBELAND. 16i 
 
 The national music of Ireland. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : The subject on which I propose 
 to address you this evening is already, I am sure, sufficiently 
 suggested to you by the beautiful harp that stands before me. 
 The subject of the lecture is the national music of Ireland and the 
 bar ds of Ireland, as recorded iu the history of the nation . I have 
 chosen this subject, my dear friends, whereon to address you, and 
 if you ask me why — knowing that it was to be my privilege to 
 address an audience mostly of my fellow-countrymen, I thought 
 that I could find no theme on which, as an Irishman, to address 
 my fellow-countrymen, more fitting than that of music. I 
 remember that, amongst the grandest and most ancient titles 
 that history gives to Ireland, there was the singular title of 
 " the Island of Song." I remember that Ireland alone, 
 amongst all the nations of the earth, has, for her national 
 emblem, a musical instrument. When other nations stand 
 in the battle-Seld, in the hour of national effort and national 
 triumph — when other nations celebrate their victories — when 
 they unfold the national banner, we behold there the lion, or 
 some emblem of power ; the cross, or some emblem of faith , 
 the stars — as in the " Star-spangled Banner " of America — an 
 emblem of rising hope ; but it is only in the bygone days, 
 when Ireland had a national standard, and upheld it gloriously 
 on the battle-field — it was only then that Ireland unfolded 
 that national standard, which, floating out upon the breezes 
 of heaven, displayed embodied in that " field of green" 
 the golden harp of Erin, What wonder, then, that, when I 
 would choose a subject pleasing to you and to me — something 
 calculated to stir all those secret emotions of national life and 
 historical glory which are still our inheritance, though we are a 
 conquered people — that I should have chosen the subject of our 
 national music. But, first of all, my friends, when we analyze 
 the nature of man, we find that he is a being made up of a body 
 and a soul ; that is to say, there are two distinct elements of 
 nature which unite in man. There is the body — perishable — 
 
162 LfiOtUEteS AND SBiatONS. 
 
 material — gross; there is the soul — spiritual — angelic, and 
 coming to us from heaven. For, when the Creator made man, 
 He formed, indeed, his body from out of the slime of the earth ; 
 but He breathed, from His own diviue lips, the vital spark, and 
 set upon his soul the sign of divine resemblance to Himself. 
 The soul of man is the seat of thought; it. is the seat of affec- 
 tion ; it is the seat of all the higher spiritual and pure emotions. 
 But, grand as this soul is — magnificent in its nature, in its 
 origin, in its ultimate destiny — it is so united to the body of 
 man, that, without the evidence of the senses of the body, the 
 Boul can receive no idea, nor the spirit throb to any high or 
 spiritual emotion. The soul, therefore, dwelling within us, is 
 ever waiting as it were to receive the sensations that the five 
 bodily senses convey to it. All its pleasure or its pain, its 
 sorrow or its joy — all must come through the evidence of these 
 senses. The eye looks upon something pleasant — upon these 
 beautiful flowers of nature's loveliness ; and the pleasure that 
 the eye receives passes to the soul, and creates the emotion of 
 the feeling of pleasure in the body, for a thing of beauty, and, 
 •n the soul, of gratitude to the Lord God who gave it. 
 
 Amongst all these senses of the body — although the eye be 
 the master, as St. Augustine tells us, still the sensations which 
 the soul receives through the ear — the sense of hearing — are 
 the highest, most innocent, and spiritual of all. The evidence 
 of the eye seems to appeal more directly to the intelligence of 
 the mind ; it stirs us up to think ; it seldoms calls up strong, 
 passionate, instantaneous emotion; but it stirs up the mind to 
 think and consider. The ear, on the other hand, seems to 
 bring its testimony more directly to the spirit — to the seat of 
 the affections in man. The sense of hearing appeals more to 
 the heart than to the mind. Hence it is that, although "faith 
 conies by hearing," and faith is the act of the intellect, bowing 
 down before that great truth which it apprehends through the 
 sense of hearing, and at the sound of the preacher's voice — 
 it is still the medium through which that faith is received into 
 the heart. This the Church of God has always recognized, 
 and, from the earliest ages, has striven, by the sweet strains 
 of her sacred music, to move the affections of man towards 
 God. But, in truth, has it not been from the beginning thus 
 — that men have always been accustomed to express their 
 emotions of joy or of sorrow to the sound of song 1 Our fii'st 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIC OT IRELAND. 16£ 
 
 parent had not yet quitted this earth — this earth, which was 
 made so miserable by his sin — until his eyes beheld, amongst 
 the descendants of Cain, a man named Tubal, " who was tlie 
 father of those who play upon organs and musical Instruments." 
 It was fitting that the first musician the world ever beheld 
 should have been a child of the reprobate and murderer, Cain. 
 Almighty God permitted that music should start from out of the 
 children of the most unhappy of men. No doubt tliev sought, 
 by the sweet strains of melody, to lighten the burden that 
 pressed upon the heart and spirit of their most unhappy 
 father. No doubt they tried in the same strains of sweet 
 melody to give vent to their own sorrows, or to lighten the 
 burden of their grief and despair, by expressing it in the lan- 
 guage of song. For so it is in the nature of man. The little 
 babe in its mother's arms expresses its sense of pain by the 
 wail of sorrow; and expresses its meaning so well, that when 
 the mother sees her child's lips open and emit the high, inar- 
 ticirlatt' cry of joy, she knows that the mysterious sunshine of 
 delight and pleasure is beaming upon the soul of her child. 
 The mother herself may have never sung until tbe voice of 
 nature is awakened within her when first she bears her first- 
 born in her arms. Then she learns the lay that soothes it to 
 sloep — 
 
 ' ' The mother, taught by Nature'^ hand, 
 Her child, when -weeping, 
 WiU lull to sleeping 
 With some sweet song of her native land." 
 
 That music — the natural melody of music— has a powerful in- 
 fluence upon the soul of man, I need not tell you. There is not 
 one amongst us who has not experienced, at some time or other, 
 in listening to the strains of sweet melody— the strains of song 
 — the sensatio:i either of joy increased, or sorrow soothed, in 
 his soul. Thus, of old, when Saul, the King of Israel, abandoned 
 his God, and an evil spirit came upon him, from time to time 
 shadowing and clouding his mind with despair, bringing to him 
 the frenzy of ungovernable sorrow — then his skilfnl men 
 sought and lirought him the youth David, and he sat in the 
 presence of the king; and when the spirit came upon Saul and 
 txoubled him, David took his harp and played upon it ; and the 
 spirit departed, and the king was calmed, and his mighty 
 sorrow passed away. So, in like manner, when the people of 
 
164 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 old would express meir joy or their exultation before the Lord 
 God, as in the day when the glorious temple of Jerusalem was 
 opened, one hundred and twenty priests came and stood before 
 all the people, and, from brazen trumpets, sent forth the voice 
 of melody ; and the house of the Lord was filled with music, 
 and every heart was gladdened, and all Israel lifted up its voice 
 in song, in unison with their royal Prophet King, as he played 
 upon his harp of gold. Thus it is, that amongst the various 
 senses and their evidences, the sense of hearing, through music, 
 is that which seems most directly and immediately to touch the 
 heart and the spuit of man. It is the most spiritual in itself of 
 aU the senses. The object that meets the eye is something 
 tangible, substantial, material. The object that appeals to the 
 taste is sometMng gross and material. The thing that presents 
 itself to the senses, through the touch, must be palpable and 
 material. But what is it that the sense of hearing presents to 
 the soul ? It is an almost imperceptible wave of sound, acting 
 upon a delicate membrane — a fibre the most delicate in the 
 human body — the drum of the ear, which is affected by the 
 vibration of the air, carrying the soimd on its invisible wings. 
 And thus it comes — a spiritual breath, through the most 
 spiritual and soul-like of all the senses, and of all the evidences 
 those senses bring to the soul of man. 
 
 The effect of music upon the memory is simply magical. 
 Have you ever, my friends, tested it? Is there anything in 
 this world that so acts upon our memory as the sound of the 
 old, familiar song, that we may not have heard for years ? 
 We heard it, perhaps, in some lonely glen, in dear old Ireland, 
 let us say. We have been familiar from our youth with the 
 iound of that ancient melody, as the man sang it following his 
 liorses, ploughing the field ; as the old woman murmured it, 
 whilst she rocked the child ; as the milk-maid chanted it, as she 
 aiilked the cows in the evening ; it is one of the traditions of 
 our young hearts, and of our young senses. Then, when we 
 leave the Green Land, and go out amongst strange people, we 
 hear strange words, and strange music. The songs of our 
 native land for a moment are forgotten, until upon a day, 
 perhaps, as we are passing, that air, or old song, is sung 
 again. Oh, in an instant, that magic power in the sound of 
 the old, familiar notes throngs the halls of the memory with 
 the dead. They rise out of their graves, the friends of our 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIC OF IRELAND. " 165 
 
 youth, the parents, and the aged ones, whom we loved and 
 revered. Our first love rises out of her grave, in all the fresh- 
 ness of her beautJ^ So they fill the halls of the memory, the 
 ones we may have loved in the past, with the friends whom 
 we never expected to thiuk of again. 
 
 Well does the poet describe it when he says : 
 
 " Wlien through life unblest we rove, 
 
 Losing all that made life dear, 
 Should some notes we used to love, 
 
 In days of boyhood meet our ear ; 
 Oh ! how welcome breathes the strain, 
 
 Wak'ning thoughts that long have slept— 
 Kindling former smiles again. 
 
 In faded eyes that long have wept. 
 
 " Like the gale that sighs along 
 
 Beds of oriental flowers, 
 Is the grateful breath of song, 
 
 That once was heard in happier houri. 
 Filled with balm the gale sighs on, 
 
 Though the flowers have sunk in death ; 
 So, when pleasure's dream is gone, 
 
 It's memory lives in Music's breath ! 
 
 " Music !— oh ! how faint, how weak, 
 
 Language fades before thy speU ! 
 Why should feeling ever speak, 
 
 When thou canst breathe her soul so well I 
 Friendship's balmy words may feign, 
 
 Love's are even more false than they ; 
 Oh ! 'tis only Music's strain 
 
 Can sweetly soothe, and not betray !" 
 
 No words of mine can exaggerate the power that music haa 
 over the soul of man. When the glorious sons of St. Ignatius 
 — the magnificent Jesuits — went down to evangelize South 
 America, to preach to the native Indians, the hostile tribes lined 
 the river bank ; the savage chieftains and warriors, in their 
 war-paint and dress, stood ready to send their poisoned arrows 
 through the hearts of these men. They would not listen to 
 them, or open their minds to their influence, until, at length, 
 one of the missionaries who were in a boat sailing down one of 
 the great rivers, took a musical instrument and began to play 
 an old, sacred melody, and the others lifted up theh voices and 
 Bang : sweetly and melodiously they sang, voice dropping in 
 
166 LECTDKES AND SERMONS. 
 
 dfter voice, singing the praises of Jesus and Mary. The woods 
 resoimded to their peaceful chants ; the very birds upon the 
 trees hushed their songs that they might hear ; and the savages 
 threw down their arms and rushed, weaponless, into the river, 
 following after the boats, listening, with captive hearts, to the 
 music. Thus, upon the sound of song, did the light of divine 
 grace, and of faith, and Christianity, reach the savage breasts 
 of these Indians. 
 
 What shall we say of the power of music in stirring up all 
 the nobler emotions of man? The soldier arrives after his 
 forced march, tired, upon the battle-field. He hopes for a few 
 hours' rest before he is called upon to put forth all his strength. 
 The bugle sounds in the morning, and this poor and unrested 
 man is obliged to stand to his arms all day, and face death in 
 a thousand forms. The tug of war lasts the whole day long. 
 Now retreating, now advancing, every nerve is braced up, 
 every emotion excited in him, until at length nature appears to 
 yield, and the tired warrior seems unable to wield his sword 
 another hour. But the national music strikes up ; the bugle 
 and the trumpets send forth their sounds in some grand national 
 strain ! Then, with the clash of the cymbal, all the fire is 
 aroused in the man. Drooping, fainting, perhaps wounded as 
 he is, he springs to his arms again. Every nobler emotion of 
 valoui- and patriotism is raised within him ; to the sound of 
 this music, to the inspiration of this national song, he rushes 
 to the front of the battle, and sweeps his enemy from the 
 field. 
 
 Thus, when we consider the nature of music, the philosophy 
 of music, do we find that it is of all other appeals to the senses 
 the most spiritual ; that it is of all other appeals to the soul 
 the most powerful ; that it operates not as much by the mode 
 of reflection as in exciting the memory and the imagination, 
 causing the spirit and the affections of men to rise to nobler 
 efforts, and to thrill with sublime emotions and influences. 
 And, therefore, I say it is, of all other sciences, the most noble 
 and the most godlike, and the grandest that can be cultivated 
 by man on this earth. 
 
 And now, as it is with individuals, so it is with nations. As 
 the individual expresses his sense of pain by the discordant 
 cry which he utters ; as the individual expresses the joy of 
 hia soul by the clear voice of natural music ; so, also, every 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIO OF IBELAND. 167 
 
 nation has ita own tradition of music, and its own national 
 melody and song. Wherever we find a nation with a clear, 
 distinct, sweet, and emphatic tradition of national music, coming 
 down from sire to son, from generation to geueratiou, from the 
 remotest centuries — there have we evidence of a people strong 
 in character, veil marked in their national disposition — there 
 have we evidence of a most ancient civiUzation. But wherever, 
 on the other hand, you find a people light and frivolous — not 
 capable of deep emotions in religion — not deeply interested in 
 their native land, ;■ 1 painfully aff'^cted by her fortunes — a 
 people easily losing their nationalit.- or national feeling, and 
 easily mingling with strangers and amalgamating with them — 
 there you will be sure to find a peo^.* with scarcely any tradi- 
 tion of national melody that wo>iid deserve to be classed 
 amongst the songs of the nations. Now, amongst these 
 nations, Ireland — that most ancient end holy island in the 
 western sea — claims, and deservedly, upon the record of 
 history, the first and grandest pre-eraiuoiice among all peoples. 
 I do not deny to other nations high musical excellence. I 
 wUl not even say that, in this our day, we are not surpassed 
 by the music of Germany, by the music of Italy, or the music 
 of England. Germany, for purity of style, for depth of ex- 
 pression, for the argument of song, surpasses all the nations 
 to-day. Italy is acknowledged to be the queen of that 
 lighter, more pleasing, more sparkling, and, to me, mora 
 pleasant style of music. In her own style of music, England 
 is supposed to be superior to Italy, and, perhaps, equal to Ger- 
 many. But, great as are the musical attainments of these 
 great peoples, there is not one of these nations, or any other 
 nation, that can point back to such national melody, to such a 
 body of national music, as the Irish. Eemember, that I am not 
 speaking now of the laboured composition of some great master ; 
 I am not speaking now of a wonderful Mass, written by one 
 man ; or a great oratorio, written by another— works that 
 api^eal to the ear refined and attuned by education ; works that 
 delight the critic. I am speaking of the song that lives in the 
 hearts and voices of all the people; 1 am speaking of the 
 national songs you will hear from= the husbandman, in the 
 field, following the plough ; from the old woman, singing to 
 the infant on her knee ; from the milk-maid, coming from the 
 milking ; from the shoemaker at his work, or the blacksmith 
 
168 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 at the forge, while he is shoeiDg the horse. This is the true 
 song of the nation ; this is the true national melody, that is 
 handed down, in a kind of traditional way, from the remotest 
 ages; until, in the more civilized and cultivated time, it is 
 interpreted into written music ; and then the world discovers, 
 for the first time, a most beautiful melody in the music that 
 has been murmured in the glens and mountain valleys of the 
 country for hundreds and thousands of years. Italy has no 
 such song. Great as the Italians are, as masters, they have 
 no popularly received tradition of music. The Italian peasant 
 — (I have lived amongst them for years) — the Italian peasant, 
 while working- in the vineyard, has no music except two or 
 three high notes of a most melancholy character, commencing 
 upon a high dominant and ending in a semitone. The peasants 
 of Tuscany and of Campagna, when, after their day's work, 
 they meet, in the summer's evenings, to have a dance, have 
 no music ; only a girl takes a tambourine, and beats upon 
 it, marking time, and they dance to that, but they have na 
 music. So with other countries. But go to Ireland ; listen to the 
 old woman, as she rocks herself in her chair, and pulls down 
 the hank of flax for the spuming; listen to the girl coming 
 home from the field with the can of milk on her head; and 
 what do you hear? — the most magnificent melody of music, 
 Gro to the country merry-maldngs and you will be sure to find 
 the old fiddler, or old white-headed piper, an infi;ute source of 
 the brightest and most sparklmg music. 
 
 How are we to account for this? We must seek the cause 
 of it in the remotest history. It is a historical fact that the 
 maritime or sea-coast people of the north and west of Europe 
 were, from time immemorial, addicted to song. We know, for 
 instance, that in the remotest ages, the kings of our sea-girt 
 island, when they went forth upon their warlike forays, were 
 always accompanied by their harper, or minstrel, who animated 
 them to deeds of heroic bravery Even when the Danes came 
 sweeping down in their galleys upon the Irish coast, high on the 
 prow of every war-boat sat the scald, or poet — white-haired, 
 heroic, wrinkled with time — the historian of all their national 
 wisdom and their natiowal prowess. And when they approachecl 
 their enemj', sweeping with their long oars through the waves, 
 he rose in the hour of fiattle, and poured forth his soul in song, 
 and fired every warrior to the highest and mos* heroic deeds. 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIO OF IBELAND. 169 
 
 Thus it was in Ireland, when Nial of the Nine Hostages swept 
 down upon the coast of France, and took St. Patrick (then a 
 youth) prisoner; the first sounds that greeted the captive's eai 
 were the strains of our old Irish harper, celebrating m a lan- 
 guage he knew not, the glories and" victories of heroes lone 
 departed. 
 
 Now, it was Ireland's fortune that the sons of Milesius came 
 and settled there. They came from Spain in the earliest ages, 
 and they brought with them a tradition of civilization, of law, 
 and of national melody. They established a system of jurispru- 
 dence, established the leign of law, and of national governmenl 
 in the land ; they made Ireland a nation, governed by kings 
 recognising her constitution and laws — governed by an elective 
 constitutional monarchy. Assembled thus, they met in the loftv 
 and heroic halls of ancient Tara. There our ancient history tells 
 as that, after the kings who sat upon his throne, the very first 
 places among the princes of the royal family were given to the 
 bards. They were the historians of the country. They wrote 
 the history of the nation in their heroic verse, and proclaimed 
 that history in their melodious song ; they were the priests of 
 that ancient form of Paganism, that ancient and mysterious 
 Druidical worship whose gloomy mysteries they surrounded 
 with the sacred charm of music. And so they popularized theh 
 false gods, by appealing to the nation's heart, through song. 
 They were the favourite counsellors of the kings ; they were the 
 most learned men in the land ; they knew all the national tradi- 
 tions, and all the nation's resources ; and, therefore, if a war was 
 to be planned, or an alliance to be formed, or a treaty to be made, 
 the bards were called into the council ; it was their wise counsel 
 that guided and formed the national purposes. They accom- 
 panied the warrior-king to the field of battle ; and that warrior- 
 king's highest hope was that, in returning triumphant from the 
 field of his glory, his name might be immortalized amongst his 
 fellow-men, and enthroned in the fame of the bardic verse ; or 
 that, even if he was borne back dead upon his shield from the 
 battle-field, his name would be perpetuated, and his fame 
 would live on in the hearts and minds of his countrymen, 
 enshrined in the glories of national song. Hence it is, that 
 from the earliest date of Irish history — long before the light of 
 Christianity beamed upon us — the bards were the greatest men 
 of the land. The minstrels of iirin filled the land with the 
 
^'^^ LE0TUBE8 AND SERMONS. 
 
 fownd of their songs ; and the very atmosphere of Ireland was 
 impregnated with music. And when God gave to our native 
 land one of His highest gifts — a true poetic child ; second to 
 none in brilliancy of imagination, in sympathy with nature, in 
 tenderness of heart, and in wonderful copiousness of metaphor 
 and of purest language, the poet found the road to fame 
 and immortality opened to him in the grand old music of Erin, 
 He had only to translate into our language of to-day the 
 thoughts, and to wed them to the melody of the olden time, 
 and whilst many a now honoured name shall be forgotten, 
 Ireland's Tom Moore shall live for ever in his Irish melodies. 
 He took into his gifted hands the dear harp of his country, the 
 long silent harp of Erin, he swept its chords to the ancient lay, 
 and " gave all its notes to light, freedom, and song." 
 
 " Sing, sweet harp, oh sing to me 
 
 Some song of ancient days, 
 Whose sounds in this sad memory 
 
 Long buried dreams shall raise. 
 Some lay that tells of vanished fame 
 
 Whose light once round us shone, 
 Of noble pride now turned to shame, 
 
 And hopes for ever gone. 
 Sing, sad harp, thus sing to me — 
 
 Alike our doom is cast ; 
 Both lost to love and memory, 
 
 We live but in the past. " 
 
 His doom was indeed cast witn Ireland's harp and li-eland' 
 music, and that doom is immortality. 
 
 Addressing that loved harp, he exclaims : — 
 
 " Dear harp of my country, in darkness I found theej 
 
 The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long; 
 When proudly, my own island harp, I unbound thee, 
 
 And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song. 
 The warm lay of love, and the light note of gladness 
 
 Have wakened thy fondest, thy liveliest thrill, ' 
 But so oft hast thou echoed the deep sigh of sadness. 
 
 That even in thy mirth it -"nil steal from thee still. 
 
 . Dear harp of my country, farewell to thy numbers, 
 
 This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine! 
 Go, sleep, with the sunshine of fame on thy slumbers. 
 
 Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine. 
 If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover. 
 
 Has throbb'd at our lay, 'tis thy glory alone, 
 I was but as the wind passing heedlessly over, 
 
 And all the wild sweetness I waked was thine owij." 
 
TUB NATIONAL MtJSIO OF IRELAND. 171 
 
 Yes ; Ireland's poet was a lover of his country, and was 
 smitten with her glory ; but finding that glory eclipsed in the 
 present, he went back to seek it in the past, and found every 
 ancient tradition of Erin's ancient greatness still living in the 
 hearts of the people and the voice of their national song. Iv 
 was the music of Ireland, as it was the bards of Ireland, that 
 kept the nation's life-blood warm, even when that life-blood 
 seemed to be flowing from every vein. It was the sympathy 
 of Ireland's musia — the strong, tender sympathy of her bards 
 — that sustained the national spirit, even when all around 
 seemed hopeless. The first great passage in our history, as 
 recorded by Ireland's poet, and by him attuned to a sweet 
 ancient melody, describes the landing of the Milesians in Ire- 
 land. It was many centuries before Christianity beamed upon 
 the land. An ancient Druidical prophec foretold that the sous 
 of a certain chief called Gadelius ere to inherit a beautiful 
 island in the West. This became a dream of hope to him and 
 to his sons ; so, at last, they resolved to seek this island of 
 " Innisfail." And, as- the poet so beautifully expresses it : — 
 
 " They came from a land beyond the sea; 
 Aid now, o'er the Western main. 
 Set sail, in their good ships, gallantly, 
 From the sunny land of Spain. 
 > Oh ! Where's the isle we've seen in dreams f 
 Our destined home or grave,' — 
 Thus sung they, as, by the morning's beams, 
 They swept the Atlantic wave. 
 
 And lo, where afar o'er the ocean shines 
 
 A sparkle of radiant green, 
 As though in that deep lay emerald mines. 
 
 Whose light through the waves were seen. 
 'Tis Innisfail! — 'tis Innisfail!' 
 
 Rings o'er the echoing sea. 
 While, bending to Heaven, the warriors hail 
 
 The home of the brave and free ! " 
 
 For many years after their landing, the Milesians laboured 
 CO make Ireland a great country, and they succeeded. But t'ue 
 brightest light of all had not yet beamed upon us ; the light of 
 Christianity was not yet upon the land. Yet many indications 
 foretold its coming ; and, amongst others, there is one, com- 
 memorated in ancient tradition and ancient song, which the 
 poet has rendered into tiie language of our day. We are told that, 
 
1:72 LteCTtJEES Aisrl) SBEMONB. 
 
 years before Irelaud became Catholic, the daughter of acertaii 
 king named Leara, or Lir, whose name was Fionuuala, was 
 changed by some magic agency into the form of a swan ; and sh( 
 was doomed to roam through the lakes and rivers of Ireland, unti 
 the time when the bell of Leaven should be heard ringing foi 
 the first Mass ; then the unhappy princess was to be restoreii 
 to her natural shape. So the reasoning bird sailed on, and sht- 
 sang to the rivers, and to the lakes, and to the cascades, tbt 
 song : — 
 
 " Silent, oh Moyle, be the roar of thy waters: 
 
 Bl-eak not, ye breezes, your chain of repose; 
 While, murmuring mournfully, Lir's lonely daughter, 
 
 Tells to the night star her tale of woes. 
 When shall the swan, her death-note singing. 
 
 Sleep with wings in darkness furl'd ? 
 When shall Heaven, its sweet bell ringing, 
 
 Call my spirit from this stormy world ? 
 
 Sadly, oh Moyle, to thy winter wave weeping, 
 
 Fate bids me languish long ages away; 
 For still in her darkness does Erin lie sleeping; 
 
 Still doth the pure light its dawning delay 
 •Vhen shall the day-star, mildly springing. 
 
 Warm our isle with peace and love ? 
 iVhen shall Heaven, its sweet bell ringing, 
 
 Call my spirit to the fields above ? " 
 
 The light came ; and Patrick, the CathoUc bishop, stood 
 upon Tara's height, to meet the intelligence, the genius, and 
 the mind of Ireland. The light came ; and Patiick, the bishop, 
 stood, with a voice ringing to words never heard before in the 
 Celtic tongue, and to a music newly awakened in the land, 
 with the Gospel of Christ upon his lips, and the green sham- 
 rock in his hand. And these wise Druids leaned upon their 
 harps, listened and argued uutil conviction seized upon them, 
 and Dhubhac, the head of the bards, seized his harp and said : 
 " Oh, ye kings and men of Erin ! this man sf eaks the glory of 
 the true God ; and this harp of mine shall never resound again 
 save unto the praises of Patrick's God." Then all that was in 
 Ireland of intelligence, of affection, of bravery, of energy, of 
 talent, and of soul, rose up ; they sprang to Patrick, clasped 
 him to their hearts, and rose to the very height of Catholic and 
 Christian perfection, with all the energy and t' te noble heart of 
 the old Celtic nation. 
 
lllE NATIONAL MUSIC OF IRELAND. 173 
 
 Then begau three centuries of such glory as the world never 
 beheld before or siuce. The whole island became an island of 
 saints and sages. Monasteries and colleges crowned every hill 
 and sanctified everj' valley ; and this era of sanctity continued 
 until the whole island became the monastic centre of Europe. 
 Upon the rising heights of Mungret, on the Shannon's banks, 
 five hundi-ed monks, all well-skilled in music, sang the praises 
 of Got In Bangor, in the county Down, thousands of Irish 
 monks established the custom of taking up the praise of God in 
 successive choirs, — night and day, day and night ; — so that the 
 voice of the singer, the notes of the harper, the sound of the 
 organ, were never for an instant silent in the glorious choirs of 
 that ancient monastery. Then do we read, upon the testimony 
 of one of our bitterest enemies, the English historian, Sylvester 
 Giraldus, commonly known as " Giraldus Cambrensis," that the 
 Irish so excelled in music, that the kings of Scotland and Wales 
 came thence to Ireland to look for harpers and minstrels to take 
 back with them, to be the pride and honour of their courts. 
 And the students who came from all the ends of the earth to 
 study in the colleges and schools of Ireland, among other things, 
 learned the music of the land, and went home to charm their 
 friends and their fellow-countrymen in Germany, in France, in 
 the north of Italy, with the strains and the splended tradition 
 of music that they had learned in the island that was the mother 
 of song. 
 
 St. Columba, or Columkille, was the head of the bards in Ire- 
 land. At that time so great was the honour in which the bards 
 were held, that an Irish king bestowed the barony of Ross- 
 Carberry — a large estate, carrying with it titles of nobility — 
 upon a minstrel harper, in return for a glorious song. Oh, 
 how well must the bard have been honoured, how maguificeutly 
 and grandly appreciated, when the kings of the land sought to 
 bestow their highest dignities upon the child of song! In 
 this degenerate age, if a thing is worth scarcely anything, our 
 phrase is, "'tis scarcely worth a song ! " but, fourteen hundred 
 years ago, a song in Ireland, if it was well written, and set to 
 original music, and the harper could skilfully sweep the chords 
 of his lyre, and excite joy or pleasure in the heart of his monarch 
 — that harper received a crown of gold, broad lands, and titles 
 
 of nobility. , , , ^ 
 
 A few years later, we find that there were twelve bandred 
 
/ 
 
 174 ajEotures anb sermons. 
 
 masters of the art of music in Ireland, and that King Hugh of 
 Ireland was so much afraid of them, of their influence with the 
 people, beside which his own royalty seemed to be nothing — 
 so deep'y was music loved by the people — that he became 
 jealous, and was about to pass a decree for the destruction of 
 the minstrels wholesale ; when St. Columba, who was far away 
 at lona, hearing that his brother bards were about to be de- 
 stroyed, hastened from his far northern island ; and by his 
 powerful pleading saved the minstrelsy of Ireland, He was a 
 bard ; and he pleaded as a bard for his fellow-bards ; and he 
 succeeded. And well it is said, that Ireland and Scotland 
 may well be grateful to the founder of lona, who saved the 
 music which is now the brightest gem in the crown of both 
 lands. 
 
 But the piety and the peace that shone upou the land by 
 the glory of Ireland's virtue in these bygone days was so 
 manifest, that, as if they knew it but had no fear, the kings and 
 chieftains of the land resolved to test it. From the northwest 
 point of the island, a young maiden, radiant in beauty, alone 
 and unprotected, covered with jewels, set out to travel through- 
 out the whole length of the land. On the highway she trod 
 any hour of the morning, mid-day, and the evening ; she pene- 
 trated through the centre of the island ; she crossed the 
 Shannon ; she swept the western coast and came up again to 
 the shores of Munster ; she penetrated into the heart of royal 
 Tipperary ; slie met her countrymen on every mile of her read 
 — no man of Ireland even offended her by a fixed stare ; no 
 man of Ireland addressed to her an offensive word; no hand of 
 Ireland was put forth to take from her defenceless body one 
 single gem or jewel that shone thereon. The poet describes 
 her as meeting a foreign knight, a stranger from a distant 
 land, who came to behold the far-famed glory of Catholic 
 Jreland •— 
 
 " Rich and rare were the gems she wort, 
 And a bright gold ring on her wand ghe bore- 
 But, oh ! her beauty was far beyond 
 Her sparkling gems or snow-white wand. 
 
 Lady ! dost thou not fear to stray, 
 
 So lone and so lovely, along this bleak way/ 
 
 Are Erin's sons so good or so cold, 
 
 Aa not to be tempted by woman or gold ) " 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIO OF IBELAND. 175 
 
 Sir Knight T feel not the least alarm, 
 
 No son of Erin will offer me harm ; 
 
 For though they love woman and golden store, 
 
 Sir Knight ! they love honour aad virtue more.' 
 
 On she went, and hti maiden smile, 
 In safety lighted her round the Green Isle; 
 And blest for ever is she who relied 
 On Erin's honour, and Erin's pride." 
 
 This vision of historic loveliness and glor^ was rudely shat- 
 tered and broken by the Danish invasion at the end of the 
 eighth century. The Danes landed on the coast of Wexford, 
 and the fate of the couutry^was imperilled ; the religion of the 
 coantry was threatened ; the piety of the country almost ex- 
 tinguished ; and, for three hundred years, the question was one 
 of national existence. In every field of the land the blood of 
 the people flowed like water. For instance, when the Danes 
 and the Irish met in the county of Wicldow, they encountered 
 each other near the " sweet Vale of Avoca." The battle began 
 at six o'clock in the morning : it lasted till nightfall. The 
 rivers flowed red with blood; but when the sun was setting, and 
 the Irish standard of green was flung out, the Gael were victori- 
 ous, and six thousand dead bodies of the Danes covered the Vale 
 of Glenamana. Something more glorious even than the tender 
 reminiscences of our national poet is the recall of the victory 
 which was gained there. He praises the vale for its beauty - — 
 
 " There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet 
 As the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet ; 
 Oh ! the last rays of feeling and life must depart 
 Ere the bloom of that vaUey shall fade from my heart." 
 
 But it is not " the beauty that nature has shed o'er the 
 scene " that is its grandest reminiscence : it is the battle fought 
 in that neighbouring vale, which saw the glorious Kiog 
 Malachi the Second return victorious, wearing 
 
 " The collar of gold. 
 Which he won from the proud invader," 
 
 llie evening that saw the laurels of Wicklow sprinkled with 
 thf red blood of the Danish foe. For, as the poet says,— 
 
 " Less dear the laurel growing. 
 Alive, untouch'd, and blowing, 
 
 Than that whose braid 
 
 Is plaok'd to shade 
 The brows with victory glowing. 
 
176 liECTUEES AND SBEM0N8 
 
 Yet, although the future was so giievously imperilled — although 
 so many interests were threatened with destruction — yet Ire- 
 land, during these three hundred years of Danish war, kept 
 her music. Her bards were in the battle-fields ; and often the 
 sound of tne harp mingled with the cry of the combatants ; 
 and often the hand that " smote down the Dane," like that of 
 the glorious king who fell at Clontarf, — Brian Boroimhe, — 
 was a hand that could not only draw the sword and wield it, 
 but could sweep the harp, and bring forth from its chords of 
 silver or of gold the genius and the tenderness of Irish song. 
 We can well imagine on the field of Clontarf, when Brian went 
 forth to the battle, the chief of his bards, MacLiag, accom- 
 panying him to the field, going before him as he re\iewed his 
 irmy, and bringing forth with trembling fingers the spirit of 
 ftie natioaal music, which braced the arms of the hero. That 
 minstrel had to take back with him the dead body of his aged 
 and loved master ; and he lifted up his voice in a song, the 
 sweetest and most tender, yet most manly expression of the 
 grief of the friend and the servant, as he sat in the deserted 
 halls of Kincora, and filled it with his lamentation over the 
 body of Ireljffid's greatest king. He told the nation to re- 
 member his glories, and the bards to fling out the name of 
 Brian as the strongest argument of bravery. 
 
 " Remember the glories of Brian the Brave, 
 
 Though the days of the hero are o'er ; 
 Though lost to Mononia, and cold in the grave, 
 
 He returns to Kincora no more. 
 The star of the field, which so often hath poured 
 
 It's beam o'er the battle, is set ; 
 But enough of its glory remains on each sword, 
 
 To light us to victory yet. 
 
 Mononia ! when Nature embellish'd each tint 
 
 Of thy fields and thy mountains so fair, — 
 Did she ever intend that a tyrant should print 
 
 The footstep of slavery there ? 
 No ! Freedom, whose smile we shall never resign, 
 
 Go, tell our invaders, the Danes, 
 That 'tis sweeter to bleed for an age at thy shrine, 
 
 ThAn to sleep but a moment in chains." 
 
 Brian passed to his honoured grave, and to the immortality 
 rf his Irish human fame ; and, with his lips upon the crucifix. 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIO OP IRELAND. 177 
 
 he sent forth his spirit to God. The unhappy year, 1168, 
 came, and brought with it the curse of Ireland, in the first 
 cause of the English invasion. Bear with me, ye maidens and 
 mothers of Ireland : bear with me when I tell you that this 
 curse was brought upon us by an Irishwoman ; and I would 
 not mention her, save that in all history she is the only daughter 
 of Ireland who ever fixed a stain on the fair fame of our woman- 
 hood. She was an Irish princess, named Dearbhorgil, who 
 was married to O'Ruark, Prince of Breffni, but eloped with 
 Dermod MacMurchad, King of Leinster. O'Ruark, at the 
 time, was absent upon a religious pilgrimage (if devotion. His 
 return to his abandoned home, and his despair, are com- 
 memorated in song. The whole nation was roused, and the 
 unhappy Dearbhorgil and her paramour, the iKiiig of Leinster, 
 were banished from the Irish soil. Why ? Because, with her 
 traditions of fame and glory, there was no room on the soil of 
 [reland for the adulterous man or for the faithless woman. 
 Thus driven forth, MacMurchad invoked the aid of Henry II. 
 to reinstate him ; and in the year 1169 that monarch sent 
 over an English, or rather a Nornuiii, army ; they set loot upon 
 Ireland, and there they are, unfmtunately, to-day. From 
 that hour to this, the history of Ireland is wi'itten in tears and 
 blood. On returning, his thoughts full of God, O'Ruurk sees 
 the towers of his castle rise before him. The poet thus de- 
 scribes his emotion ; 
 
 The valley lay smiling before me, 
 
 Where so lately I left her behind; 
 Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me, 
 
 That saddened the joy of my mind. 
 I looked for the lamp, which she told me 
 
 Should shine when her pilgrim returned; 
 But, though darkness began to enfold me, 
 
 No lamp from the battlements burned. 
 
 I flew to her chamber ; 'twas lonely, 
 
 As if the loved tenant lay dead ! 
 Ah ! would it were death, and death only ! 
 
 But no, the young false one had fled ! 
 And there hung the lute, that could soften 
 
 My very worst pain intf bliss ; 
 While the hand that had waked it so often 
 
 Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiaa. 
 
178 LECTURES AND 8EBM0NB. 
 
 ' There was a time, falsest of women. 
 
 When Breffni's good sword would have sought 
 That man, through a million of foemen, 
 
 AVho dared but to doubt thee in thought I 
 Wli lie now — oh degenerate daughter 
 
 Of Erin, how fallen's thy fame. 
 Through ages of bondage and slaughter 
 
 Thy country shall bleed for thy shame. 
 
 • Already the curse is upon her.' 
 
 And strangers her valleys profane; 
 They come to divide, to dishonour, 
 
 And tyrants they long will remain. 
 Bat, onward, the green banner rearing ; 
 
 Go, flesh every sword to the hilt ; 
 On our side is virtue and Erin, 
 
 On theirs is the Saxon and guilt." 
 
 The F/ar — the sacred war — began. We know that for four 
 hundred sad years that war was carried on, with varying 
 Buccess In many a field was it well fought and well defended 
 — this cause of Ireland's national independence. Many a man, 
 glorious in her history, wrote his name upon its annals with 
 the point of a sword dripping with Saxon blood. Yet the 
 cause was a losing one, though not a lost one. Well might 
 Ireland's patriots weep when they saw division in the camp 
 and division in the council; when they saw the brightest 
 names in Ireland's historj' going to look for Norman honours 
 — to sink the proud names of O'Brien, O'Neill, or O'Donnell in 
 the vain title of the Earl of this or the Earl of that. Well 
 might the impassioned minstrel exclaim, in the agony of the 
 thought that, perhaps, Ireland was never more to be a nation : 
 
 " Oh, for the swords of former time ! 
 
 Oh, for the men who bore them ! 
 When, armed for Kight, they stood sublime^ 
 
 And tyrants crouched before them; 
 When pure yet, ere courts began 
 
 With honours to enslave him, 
 The noblest honours worn by man 
 
 Were those which virtue gave him." 
 
 How faied it with the bards during this long-protracted 
 agony of national woe ? They still animated the hopes of the 
 nation ; they still made their appeals to the Irish heart ; they 
 still made the pulse of the nation throb again to the sound 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIC OP lEELAHD. 179 
 
 of their glorious harps. Spenser, the English poet, reproached 
 them, because they sang only of love. Alas! they had scarcely 
 any other subject left them. The time of national glory — of 
 national prosperity — was gone. They were the voice of an 
 oppressed and down-trodden people, therefore did the Irish 
 bard answer : 
 
 " Oh, blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers 
 
 Where pleasure lies carelessly smiling at fame; 
 He was born for much more, and, in happier hours. 
 
 His soul might have burned ■\vith a holier flame. 
 The string which now languishes loose o'er the lyre. 
 
 Might have bent a proud bow to the warrior's dart ; 
 And the lip which now breathes but the song of desire. 
 
 Might have poured the full tide of a patriot's heart " 
 
 Yes ; they did not content themselves, these bards, with 
 merely animating the national purpose, and thrilling and 
 rousing the national heart and courage. Thej' did more. In 
 the day of battle and danger, when they sounded the tocsin 
 for the war and for the fight, then the bards that could have 
 awakened, and did awaken, the tenderest strains of song, were 
 foremost in the battle-field, fighting for Erin. It is more than 
 an idle tradition, that which is embodied in the poet's verse: 
 
 " The minstrel boy to the war has gone ; 
 
 In the ranks of death you'll find hi/u ; 
 His father's sword he has girded on, 
 
 And his wild harp slung behind him. 
 ' Land of song,' cried the warrior bard, 
 
 ' Though all the world betrays thee, 
 One sword at least thy right shall guard. 
 
 One faithful harp shall praise thee.' 
 
 The minstrel fell, but the foeman's chain 
 
 Could not bring his proud soul under, 
 The harp he loved ne'er spoke again, 
 
 For he tore its chords asunder ; 
 And said, ' No chains shall suUy thee 
 
 Thou soul of love and bravery ! 
 Thy songs were made for the pure ana tree, 
 
 They shall never sonnd in slavery.' " 
 
 From the day that the Norman invader first set foot on the 
 goil of Ireland— we have the testimony of history for it ; the 
 Irish bards and minstrels— Irish to their hearfa cotO— were in 
 
180 LEOTUEES AND SBKAlONS. 
 
 the habit of coming into the English camp, and playing their 
 national Irish airs The English knew that these men were 
 their enemies ; they had orders from the king to arrest any 
 harper that came into the camp, because they came only as 
 spies, to find out the strength and disposition of their forces ; 
 yet, glory of Ireland ! so sweet was the performance of these 
 men, so melodious their music, that, in spite of the royal de- 
 crees, the English soldiers, officers, and generals, used to go 
 out to look for these harpers and bring them into the camp. 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote a History of Ireland — was 
 obliged to admit there was no such music heard in the world. 
 " This people, however," he says, " deserves to be praised for 
 kheir successful cultivation of music, in which their skill is 
 beyond comparison superior to that of every nation we have 
 seen." The statutes of Kilkenny in 1367, forbade the Irish 
 minstrels to enter the English pale, and made it penal to give 
 them shelter or entertainment ; and yet King Henry the Sixth 
 complains that his Irish subjects persist in paying "^rrawrfw 
 bona et dona," great gifts and offerings, in exchange for Irish 
 music, and so he ordered his marshal in Ireland, to imprison 
 all tlio harpers he could lay hands on. Queen Elizabeth, fol- 
 lowing in the footsteps of her holi/ and accomplished father, 
 imitating him in everything, even in her immaculate purity, 
 passed another law. She said, " We never can conquer 
 Ireland, and we can never make Ireland Protestant as long as 
 the minstrels are there ;" and she passed a law that they were 
 all to be hung: and there was a certain lord in her court, with, 
 I regret to say, an Irish title, my Lord Barrymore, who pro- 
 mised to do this ; and was appointed, and took out a commis- 
 sion to hang every man that was a harper. Why? Because 
 the same spirit by which the bard and minstrel had kept the 
 nation up to its national contest, now turned its attention to 
 the other element of discord, and when the national war 
 became a religious war, the bard proved as Catholic as he was 
 Irish. 
 
 There are tvro ideas in the mind of every true Irishman, 
 and these two ideas England never was able to root out of the 
 land, nor out of the intellect, nor out of the hearts of the Irish 
 people. And these two ideas are: Ireland is a Nation. 
 That is number one. iJlELAND IS A Catholio NATION; 
 and 80 will she remain. Plundered of our property, thej 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIO OF IRELAND. 181 
 
 made us poor. We preferred poverty rather thtssi deuy our 
 religion, and become renegades to God. Our schools were 
 taken from us, and they thought they could reduce us thereby 
 to a state of beastly ignorance. They made it a crime for an 
 Irishman to teach his son how i/O read. Our religion kept us 
 enlightened in spite of them. England never, never succeeded 
 in affixing the stain of degradation and ignorance upon the 
 Irish people. They robbed us of liberty as well as of pro- 
 perty; they robbed us of life; they took the best sons of the 
 land, and slaughtered them ; they took the holy priests from 
 the altars, and slaughtered them ; they took our bishops, the 
 glorious men of old, and slew them. When Ireton entered 
 Limerick, he found O'Brien, the Bishop of Emly— a saint of 
 God—found him there, where an Irish bishop ought to be, in 
 the midst of his people, rallying them to the fight, sending 
 them into the breach again and again. They took O'Brien, 
 the Irish bishop, brought him into the open street, before his 
 people, and they slaughtered him, as a butcher would slaughter 
 a beast. They took Bishop O'Hurley, and brought him to 
 Stephen's Green, in Dublin, and there tied him to a stake, and 
 roasted him to death at a slow fire. They took six hundred 
 of my own brave brethren — Dominicans — brave, true men, 
 Irishmen all. Elizabeth of England, wherever you are to-night, 
 I believe you have the blood of these six hundred priests upon 
 you — ail except four ! There were only four left ! Think of 
 this ! They thought that when an Irishman was completely 
 crushed, he ought to buy at least an acre of land, the land that 
 belonged to him, or a morsel of bread to feed his family, by 
 becoming a Protestant. The Irish— men and women — declared 
 that their religion and their faith was dearer to them than their 
 lives. The Irish peasant man — pure, strong, warlike, deter- 
 mined, high-minded, true to his God, true to his native land, 
 true to his fellow-men, knelt down before the ruined shrine 
 of the Catholic Church that he loved, and to that Church he 
 said : — 
 
 " Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheered my way, 
 Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round me lay ; 
 The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burned. 
 Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turned. 
 Yes, slave as I ■war, in thine arms my spirit felt free, 
 And blesa'd even the sorrows th^^t made me more dear to tha«. 
 
182 LECTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 Thy rival was honoured, whilst thou wert wronged and scorned ; 
 
 Thy crown was of briars, while gold her brows adorned ; 
 
 She wooed me to temples, while thou lay hid in caves ; 
 
 Her friends were aU masters, while thine, alas ! were slaves. 
 
 Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be. 
 
 Than wed what I love not, or turn one thought from thee." 
 
 All thia time England recognised in the Irish barda, not 
 only the enemies of her dominion, which would fain extinguish 
 the nationality of Ireland, but still more, the enemies of her 
 reformed Protestant religion, which would rob Ireland of her 
 ancient faith, which she received from her Apostle. The bards 
 lived on, however. In spite of Henry VIII,, in spite of 
 Elizabeth, and in spite of my Lord Barrymore, who took the 
 contract as hangman, to dispose of them, they lived on down 
 to the time of Carolan, who died in 1738 ; and we have in 
 Jamieson's letters from Scotland the testimony of a man who 
 says, that the Scotch, in the memory of living men in his 
 time, used to go over to Ireland to study music. Handel, the 
 great composer, one of the greatest giants of modern song, 
 went over to London ; he was coldly received. He went from 
 England to stay in Dublin, where he was so warmly received, 
 and found every note of his music so thoroughly appreciated, 
 that he immediately set to work and wrote that immortal 
 work, the Oratorio of the Messiah, under the inspiration of an 
 Irish welcome. This grandest of all modern pieces was first 
 brought out in Dublin, before an Irish audience. 
 
 Carolan, the last of the bards, died but a few years before 
 Moore was born. It seemed as if the last star in the firma- 
 ment of Ireland's bards had set. It seemed indeed as if 
 
 " The harp that once through Tara's halls 
 The soul of music shed, 
 Now hung as mute on Tara's walls 
 As if that soul were fled." 
 
 But that star of Ireland's song, Tom Moore, greatest of Ire- 
 land's modern poets, immortalized himself, as well as the songa 
 of his country, in his famous Irish Melodies. Where have you 
 ever heard such simple yet entrancing melodies. The great- 
 est men among modern composers have a knowledge that this 
 music has a melody of its own that cannot be equalled. Some 
 of these melodies are as ancient »a Ireland's Christianity ; othei-s 
 
tHE NATIONAL MUSIO Ot" IBELAND. 183 
 
 are sftid to date from remote Pagan times. So fair and beauti- 
 ful is the melody of " Eileen a Roou," which was composed in 
 the thirteenth century, by the minstrel O'Daly, that the im- 
 mortal Handel declared he would rather be the author of that 
 simple melody than rf all the works that ever came from his 
 pen or from his mind. They are sung in every land. They are 
 admired wherever the influence of music extends. Even in our 
 own modern times, they have softened and prepared the English 
 mind to grant us Catholic Emancipation. Of course the most 
 powei ful motive of that measure, as experience has proved, 
 was fear. That is the principal motive for any concession we 
 receive from England. But certain it is that the Irish songs 
 and melodies of the old Irish bards popularised the Irish char- 
 acter in England, and enabled us the more easily to gain that 
 which was wrung from England's king and England, through 
 the sympathy that was created by Moore's melodies. Hence 
 it is that he himself expresses the anguish yet the hope of the 
 bard : — 
 
 " But though glory be gone, and though hope fade away, 
 
 Thy name, loved Erin ! shall live in his songs ; 
 Not even in the hour when his heart is most gay, 
 
 Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs. 
 The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains ; 
 
 The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the dee|i, 
 Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains, 
 
 bhj,ll uause at the song of their captive and weep ! " 
 
 Music is the most spiritual of all human enjoyments. The 
 pleasures of the taste are gross ; the pleasures of the eye are 
 dangerous ; the pleasures of the ear, the delight of listening t<f 
 strains of sweet song, is at once the most entrancing and leas\ 
 dangerous of all the pleasures of sense. You may enjoy most 
 the pleasure of music without sensuality ; it is scarcely cap- 
 able of exciting any undue emotion of the heart or temptation of 
 the mind. ' lay, more ; we know from the Scriptures that music, 
 that song, is the native language of heaven, as it is the natural 
 and untaught expression of man upon the earth. We know, 
 that as music recalls the most vivid and tender recollections of 
 earth, so that the dead start from their graves and throng 
 once more the halls of memory ^t the sound of the well-known 
 song, so also we know the joy of even the blessed angels of 
 Glod is expressed in the language of Divine and celestial song. 
 
184 LEOTtJKBS AND SEBM0N8. 
 
 It was a theory of old that the very spheres moved to a grand 
 harmony of their own, whereupon our national bard sanfi— ^ 
 
 ■' Sing — sing — music was given 
 To brighten the gay and kindle the lovitig ; 
 
 Souls here— like planets in heaven — 
 By harmony's laws alone are kept moving." 
 
 but that which is a simple theory of the spheres of the lower 
 firmament^ is to be received as a reality when we regard the 
 harmony of the divine sphere of heaven. There the angels 
 sing the praises of God — there the air of heaven is resonant 
 with cries of joy, with the sweet concord of many sounds, 
 mingled with the angelic harpers upon their harps. Oh, let us 
 hope that as we, as a nation, have the privilege amongst the 
 nations to hold in our national melodies the sweetest and 
 tenderest strains of human song, so may we, as children of 
 that nation and land of song, carry our taste with us into the 
 field of the purest of melodies, and that those who saug best 
 upon earth may sing best in the courts of God. In vain would 
 Ireland's song be the brightest of all earthlj' melody, unless 
 that song wore to be perpetuated in the higher echoes and 
 grander melodies of heaven. Have we not reason to believe 
 those bards and heroes who stood in the hour of battle and 
 danger and difficrltv for their home and their naticnal liberty, 
 for God and their native land, and died for it ; have ^ve not good 
 reason to believe that these chiidien of song have joined the 
 higher and celestial choir 1 Yes, Ireland's minstrels sang the 
 apostolic song of faith, the viigin song from the Ups of the holy 
 St. Bridget — the song of the holy, pure, stainless daughters of 
 Erin, who are now, as in days past, our joy and glory ; their 
 long was the sweetest on earth, and I have no doubt will be 
 the sweetest in heaven. Let us, therefore, cling to the loved 
 old land that made heroes of them, to the love of our old 
 religion that made saints of them ; let us remember that every 
 Irishman, all the world over, and every son of an Irishman, 
 and every grandson of an Irishman — has that blood in his 
 veins which brings to him the responsibility and the tradition 
 of fifteen hundred years of national, as well as religious glory ; 
 the responsibility through whi(;ji our fathers from their graves 
 appeal to us for God and for Erin ; the noblest, the best blood 
 in which a pure uationaUty, always preserved and left distinct. 
 
THK NATIONAL MUSIC OF IRELAND. 185 
 
 IS sanctified by the highest purity of an unchanged and 
 unchanging faith. That is the glory of every Irishman in the 
 world: and it brings a responsibility, for such a man is 
 obliged, beyond all other men, to live up to these traditions, 
 and show that he is no degenerate scion of such a race. I 
 have come here amongst you, and on my return to Ireland, I 
 will bear in my heart the joy and on my lips the glad message 
 that you, my friends, are no degenerate sons of Ireland. I 
 will bring home to cheer the saddened hearts at home — I will 
 bring home to gladden the expectant hearts at home, the good 
 and the manly and the glorious message, that I have met 
 thousands and thousands of Irishmen in America ; but that, 
 amid all the rising glories of their new country, I have not met 
 one who had forgotten his love or his affection for the land of 
 his birth. If such a one there be, if such an Irisliman exist, so 
 forgetful of the historj', so dead to the glory of his native land, 
 as to be ashamed of being an Irishman, if such a man be in 
 existence iu this country — he has spared me the pain, the 
 humiliation, and the disgust of showing himself to me. 
 
 And now, my friends, having invited your attention to the 
 subject of Ireland's national music, let me wind up with one or 
 two reflections similar to those with which I began. Irish song 
 has played a large part not only in the strengthening oi 
 Ireland's sons, but also in the conciliation of Ireland's most 
 bitter enemies. Although Moore made every true heart and 
 every true and noble mind in the world melt into sorrow at the. 
 contemplation of Ireland's wrongs, and the injustice that she 
 suffered, as they came home to every sympathetic heart upon 
 the wings of Ireland's ancient melody — yet he said to the harp 
 of his country : — 
 
 " Go sleep with the sunshine of fame on thy slumben. 
 Till waked by some hand less unworthy than mine." 
 
 A hand less unworthy came— a hand less unworthy tha,D 
 Thomas Moore's— a hand more loyal and true than even his 
 was— when in Ireland's lays appeared the immortal Thomas 
 Davis He and the men whose hearts beat with such high hope 
 for young Ireland— seized the sad, silent harp of Enn, and sent 
 forth another thrUl in the invitation to the men of the North 
 to join hands with their Catholic brethren— to the men of ttM 
 
186 LECTURKS AND SERMONS, 
 
 South to remember the ancient glories of " Brian the Brave.* 
 To the men of Conuaught, he seemed to call forth Roderick 
 O'Connor from his grave at Clonmacnoise. He rallied Ireland 
 in that year s»o memorable for its hopes and for the blighting of 
 those hopes. He and the men of the Nation did what this world 
 has never seen in the space of time, by the sheer power of 
 Irish genius, by the sheer strength of Young Ireland's intellect ; 
 the Nation of '43 created a national poetry, a national literature, i_ 
 which no other country can equal. Under the magic voices 
 and pens of these men, every ancient glory of Ireland stood 
 forth again. I remember it well. I was but a boy at the 
 time ; but I remember with what startled enthusiasm I would 
 arise from reading "Davis's Poems;" and it would seem to 
 me that before my young eyes I saw the dash of the Brigade 
 at Pontenoy. It would seem to me as if my young ears were 
 filled with the shout that resounded at the Yellow Pord and 
 Benburb — the war cry of the Red Hand, ^ajn ^twca ^bn — as 
 the English hosts were swept away, and, like snow under the 
 beams of the hot sun, melted away before the Irish onset. The 
 dream of Mie poet — the aspiration of the true Irish heart — is 
 yet unfulfilled. But, remember, there is something sacred in 
 the poet's dream. The inspiration of genius is second only to 
 the inspiration of religion. There is something sacred and in- 
 fallible — with all our human fallibility — in the hope of a nation 
 that has never allowed the hope of freedom to be extinguished. 
 For many a long year, day and night, the sacred fire that was 
 enkindled before St. Bridget's shrine, at Kildare, was fed, and 
 sent its pure flame up to heaven. The day came when that 
 fire was extinguished. But the fire that has burnt for nearly a 
 thousand years upon the altar of Ireland's nationality, fed with 
 the people's hopes, fed with the people's prayers, that fire has 
 never been extinguished, even though torrents of the nation's 
 blood were poured out upon it ; that fire burns to-day ; and 
 that fire will yet illumine Ireland. 
 
 I will conclude with one word. Even as King Lir's lonely 
 daughter, Piounuala, sighed for the beaming of the day-star, 
 so do I sigh, When shall that day-star of freedom, mildly 
 springing, Ught and warm our isle with peace and love ? Wheo 
 shall the bell of sacred liberty ringing, call every Irish heart 
 from out the grave of slavery — from out the long, miserable 
 night of servitude — to walk i" the full blaze of our national 
 
THE NATIONAL MUSIC OP IRELAND. 187 
 
 freedom and our natioaal glory V Oh, may it coine! God, 
 make our cause thy cause ! I speak as a priest as well as an 
 Irishman ; I claim, in my prayer, to that God to whom my 
 people have been so faithful — to give us not only that crown 
 of eternity to which we look forward in the Christian's hope — 
 but, oh, to give us, in His justice, that crown of national 
 liberty and glory to which we have established our rij^ht by so 
 many agea of fidelity. 
 
188 I.IiCTURKS AND SERMONS 
 
 THE POPE'S TIARA— ITS PAST. PRESENT, AND 
 FUTURE. 
 
 May it please your Grace : Ladies and Gentlemen . The 
 subject on which I propose to address you is : " The Pope's 
 Tiara, or Triple Crown ; its Past, its Present, and its Future." 
 We read of a celebrated orator of Greece, that the grandest 
 effort he ever made was in a speech which he pronounced upon 
 a crown. I wish I had, to-night, the genius or the eloquence 
 of Demosthenes ; for my theme, my crown, is far beyond the 
 glory of the crown of which he spoke, as my thoughts and my 
 eloquence are inferior to his. 
 
 Amongst the promises and prophetic words that we read in 
 Scripture concerning our Divine Lord and Redeemer, we read 
 that it was prophesied of Him that He should be a king ; that 
 He should rule the nations ; that He should wear a crown ; and 
 that His name was to be called " The Prince of Peace." He 
 came ; He fulfilled all that was written concerning Him ; and 
 He uiansmitted His headship and His ofiSce in the holy Church 
 to be visibly exercised and to be embodied before the eyes of 
 men in the Pope of Rome. And, therefore, amongst the other 
 privileges -vrhlch He conferred upon His vicar, He gave him 
 that his brows should wear a crown. Therefore it is that, 
 from the first day of the Church's history, her ruler, her pope, 
 her head, rises before us, a sceptred man amoiugst men, and 
 crowned with a glorious crown. Therefore it is that, encircling 
 his honoured brows, for ages, the world has beheld the triple 
 crown, or tiara, of which I am to speak to you this evening. 
 Every other monarch amongst the nations wears for his crown 
 a single chclet of gold. Ornament it as you will, there is but 
 one circle ; that would represent the meeting and the centring 
 in the person of the sovereign of all the temporal interests and 
 authority of the State. ITpon the pope's brows, however, rests 
 a triple crown, called the tiara. It is made up of three distinct 
 circles of gold. The first of these is symbolical of the univer- 
 
THE POPETS TIARA. 189 
 
 sal episcopate of the Pope of Rome — that is to say, of his 
 headship of all the faithful in the Church ; for, " there shall be 
 but oue fold and one shepherd," was the word of Chris (■ The 
 second of these circles that crowns the papal brows represents 
 the supremacy of jurisdiction, by which the pope governs not 
 only all the faithful in the world at large, feeding them, as their 
 supreme pastor, but by which, also, he holds the supremacy ot 
 jurisdiction and of power over the anointed ministers, and the 
 episcopacy itself, in the Church of God. The third and 
 last circle of this crown represents the temporal influence, the 
 temporal dominion, which the pope has exercised and enjoyed 
 for more than a thousand years in this world. 
 
 Behold, then, what this tiai'a means. Upon those great 
 festival days, when all the Catholic world was accustomed to 
 be represented by its highest, by its best and noblest, by its 
 most intellectual representatives iu Rome, the Holy Father was 
 seen enthroned, surrounded by cardinals, patriarchs, arch- 
 bishops, bishops, the priesthood, and the faithful. There he sat 
 upon his high, and ancient, and time-honoured throne ; and upon 
 his head did he wear tbi.s triple crown, symbolizing his triple 
 power. 
 
 Now, my friends, in the Church of bod everything is 
 organized ; everything arranged and disposed in a wouderfui 
 harmony, which expresses the mind and the wisdom oi God 
 Himself. And therefore it is, that in every detail of the 
 Catholic liturgy and worship, we find the very highest, and the 
 very holiest gifts symbolized and signified to the man of faith. 
 What do those three circles of the pope's tiara symbolize 1 
 They signify, first of all, the unity that God has set upon His 
 Church ; secondly, they signify the power and jurisdiction that 
 God has conferred upon His Church ; and thirdly, they signify 
 all these benefits of a humane kind, which the Church has con- 
 ferred upoLi this world, and upon society. 
 
 The first circlet of this tiara represents the unity of the 
 Church. For it tells the faithful, that although they may be 
 diffused all the world over, although they may be counted by 
 hundreds of millions, although they may be found in every 
 clime, and speaking every language, although they _ maybe 
 broken up into various forms of government, thinking in varied 
 forms of thought, having varied and distinguished interests in 
 the things that should never peri.sli, but abide with them for 
 
 G 
 
190 LEOTUBES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 eternity ; that moment, out of all these varied elements, out of 
 these multiplied millions, out of these different nations, arises 
 one thought, one act of obedience, one aspiration of prayer, 
 one uplifting of the whole man, body and soul, in the unity of 
 worship, which distinguishes the Catholic Church, the spouse 
 of Christ. This was the first mark that Christ, the Son of 
 God, set upon the brows of His Church. He set upon her the 
 glorious seal of unity in doctrine, that all men, throughout the 
 world, who belonged to her, were to be as one individual man, 
 in the one soul and the one belief of their divine faith. He set 
 upon her brows the unity of charity — that all men were to be 
 one, in one heart, and in one bond, which was to bind all 
 Christian men to their fellow-men, through the one heart of 
 Christ. And, in order to effect this unity, the Son of God put 
 forth, the night before He suffered, the tender, but omnipotent 
 prayer, in which He besought His Father that the unity of the 
 Church should be Visible to all men, and that it should be so 
 perfect as to represent the ineffable unity by which He was 
 one with His Father, in that singleness of nature which is the 
 quintessence of the Almighty God. It was to be a visible 
 unity. It was to be a unity that would force itself upon the 
 notice of the world. It was to be a unity of thought and 
 belief that would convince the world that the one mind, and 
 the one word of the Lord of all truth, was in the heart and in 
 the inteUigence, and upon' the lips of His Church. It would 
 be in vain that Christ, the Son of God, prayed for that unity, 
 if it was to be a hidden thing, not seen and known by men ; if 
 it was to be a contradictory thing, involving an outrage upon 
 all logic and all reason ; as, for instance, the Protestant idea 
 of unity, which is, " Let us agree to differ." " Let us agree to 
 differ." Why, what does this mean? It means something like 
 what the Irishman meant, when he met his friend, and said, "Oh, 
 my dear fellow, I am so happy and glad to meet you ! And I 
 want to give you a proof of it." And he knocked him down. But 
 you remember this was the sign of love. And so, the Protestant 
 logic of this world says : " Let us agree to differ." That is 
 to say : Let us create unity by making disunion. Now, as the 
 divine, eternal, incarnate wisdom determined that that crown 
 and countersign of unity should be visible upon His Church, 
 
 it \vfas absolutely necessary for him to constitute one man one 
 
 udividua) man — as the visible sign and guarantee of that unity 
 
■fHE pope's tiaea. 191 
 
 in the Church for ever. It would not have answered to have 
 left the twelve Apostles equal in power, equal in jurisdiction. 
 For, all holy as they were, all inspired as they were, if equal 
 power and jurisdiction had been left to all, if no one man 
 amongst them had been brought forth and made the head of 
 all, with all their perfection, with all their inspiration, with all 
 their love for Christ, they would not, being twelve, have repre- 
 sented the sacred principle of unity in the Church. Therefore 
 did Christ, the Son of God, from amongst the twelve take one, 
 called that man forth, He laid His hands upon him, and said, 
 " Hear him ! hear his words ! " That He did not say of any 
 of the others, but took care that all the others should be pre- 
 sent to witness these words and to acknowledge their chief. 
 He took that man in the presence of the twelve, and He said 
 to him — to them: "Hitherto you have been called Simon; now 
 I say your name is Cephas, which means a rock ; and upon 
 this rock I will build My Church." Again, in the plainest of 
 language he said to that man : " Thou — thou, rock, confirm 
 thy brethren ! " In the presence of all, He demanded of that 
 man the triple, thrice-repeated acknowledgment and confession 
 of his love. '•■ Peter," He said to him, " you know how dearly 
 John, my virgin friend, loves Me. Do you love Me more 1 
 You know how well all these around Me love Me. Do you 
 love Me more than all ? " And until Peter three times asserted 
 that he loved His Master with a love surpassing that of all 
 others, Christ delayed His divine commission. But, when the 
 triple acknowledgment was made, He said to Peter : " Peed 
 thou My lambs ; feed thou My sheep." " There shall be one 
 fold," said the Son of God, " and one shepherd." That was 
 the visible unity of the Church ; that was to be the counter- 
 sign of the divine origin of the Church of God, and that was 
 to be represented unto all ages by the one head and supreme 
 pastor of all — the Pope of Rome. 
 
 Mark the splendid harmony that is here. The adorable Son 
 of God is one with the Father, by the ineffable union of nature, 
 from all eternity. The Son of God, made man, still is man. 
 and only man, in the hypostatical union in which the two 
 natures met in one divine person. The Church that sprung 
 from Christ — the Lord God and man, united— is to be one 
 until the end of time. And, therefore, the principle of unity 
 passes, as it ware, from Christ to Peter, and from Fvter to 
 
192 LEOTUKES AND SEEMONB. 
 
 each succeeding pontiff ; so that the Church of God is recog» 
 iii,zed by its union with its head, aud by that, the One Head, 
 which governs all. Therefore did St. Ambrose say: " Sho\v 
 me Peter ; for, where Peter is, there is the Church of God." 
 
 Now, you see at once the significance of that fiist circle of 
 gold that twines round the papal crown. It speaks of the 
 pope as the supreme pastor of all the faithful, It speaks of 
 him as the one voice, aud the only one, able to fill the world, 
 and before whose utterances the whole Christian and Catholic 
 world bows down as one man. It speaks of the pope as the 
 one shepherd of the one fold ; and it tells us that as we are 
 hound to hear his voice, and as that voice can never resound 
 through the whole Church, which cannot by possibility pro- 
 claim a lie — that when the Pope of Kome speaks to the faithful 
 as supreme pastor, pronouncing upon and witnessing the faith 
 of the Catholic Church — that the self-same spirit that preserves 
 I hat Chun h fioiii falling into error, preserves her pastor, so 
 that he can never propound to her anything erroneous or 
 unholy, or at variance with the sacred morality of the Chiistian 
 law. 
 
 The second circle of gold represents the second great attri- 
 bute that Christ, our Lord, emphatically laid upon liis Church, 
 As clearly as He proved that that Church should be one, so 
 clearly did He pray and prophesy that that Church was to 
 have power and jurisdiction. " All power," He said to His 
 Apostles, " all power in Heaven and upon earth is given unto 
 Me." Behold the Head of the Church speaking to His 
 Church. " Given unto Me ! " "I am the centre of that 
 power." " As the father sent Me, thus indued with power, so 
 do I send you." A.nd then He set upon the brows of His 
 Apostles, and, through them, on the Church, the crown of 
 spkitual power. But, as all- power is derived from God, it 
 follows that in the Church of God, whoever represents, as 
 viceroy and vicar, supreme pastor and ruler of the Church — 
 whoevei' represents Christ, who is the source of all power, that 
 man has supreme jurisdiction in the Church of God, not only 
 over the faithful, but over the pastors of the flock and the 
 episcopacy James, and John, and Andrew, aud Philip, and 
 the others, were all bishops. St. Ignatius of Antioch, and all 
 the succeeding great names that adorn the episcopal roll in the 
 Church — all had power ; all exercised power ; and all were 
 
THE POPES TIAKA. 193 
 
 recognized as the Church recoguizes them and theu- successors 
 still, as her archbishops and bishops ; and all had that power 
 by divine institution, and that their episcopacy in the Church 
 is of divine origin ; and yet that power is so subjugated and 
 subordinated, that the pope is the supreme bishop of bishops, 
 to whom Christ said, " feed not only the lambs," my faithful ; 
 but " feed my sheep," the matured ones and holy ones in the 
 sanctuary of the Church. 
 
 Finally, the third circle of gold twining around that time- 
 honoured crown of the tiara, represents the temporal power that 
 the pope has wielded for so many centuries, and which has lieen 
 the cause of so many blessings, and so much liberty and civil- 
 ization to the world. 
 
 It was not in the direct mission of the Church of God to 
 civilize mankind, but only to sanctify them. But, inasmuch as 
 no man can be sanctified without being instructed, without the 
 elements of civilization being applied to him, therefore, in- 
 directly, but most powerfully, did Christ, our Lord, confer 
 upon His Church that she should be the great former and 
 creator of society ; that she should be the mother of the 
 highest civilization of this world ; that she should be the giver 
 of the choicest and the highest of human gifts ; and, therefore, 
 that she sliould have that power, that jurisdiction, that posi- 
 tion, in her head, amongst the rulers of the nations, that 
 would give her a strong voice and a powerful action in the 
 guidance of human society. And as to the second circle of 
 this golden crown — -viz., the universal pastorate of the Chiu'ch 
 — and the supremacy, even in the sanctuary — both of these 
 did Peter receive from Christ ; and these two have been twined 
 round the papal brow by the very hand of the Son of God, 
 Himself ! 
 
 The third circle, of teujporal power, the pope received at the 
 hands of the world ; at the hands of human society ; at the 
 jjands of the people. And he received it out of the necessities 
 of the people, that he might be their king, their ruler, and their 
 father upon this earth. 
 
 Now, such being the tiara, we come to consider it in the 
 past, as history tells us of it; in its present, as we behold it 
 to-daj'; and in its future. 
 
 How old is this tiara ? I answer that although the mere 
 material crown and its form dates only from about the year 
 
194 LUOttJEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 1340, or '42, and the pontificate of Benedict tne Twelfth, the 
 tiara itself — the reality of it — the thing that it signifies — is as 
 ancient as the Church of God, which was founded by Christ, 
 our Lord. In the past, from the day that the Sou of God 
 ascended into heaven, all history attests to us that Peter, and 
 Peter's successors, were acknowledged to be the supreme pas- 
 tors of the Church of God. Never, when Peter spoke, nevei 
 did the Church refuse to accept his word, and to bow down 
 before his final decision. In the very first Council of Jerusa- 
 lem, grave questions that were brought before the assembly 
 were argued upon by various of the Apostles, until Peter rose, 
 and the moment that Peter spoke and said, " Let this be done 
 so ; let such things be omitted ; such things be enforced " — ■ 
 that moment every man in the assembly held his peace, and 
 took the decision of Peter as the very echo of the Invisible 
 Head of the Church, who spoke in him, by, and through him. 
 In all the succeeding ages, the nations bowed down as they 
 received the words of the Gospel. The nations bowed down 
 and accepted that message on the authority and on the testi- 
 mony of the Pope of Rome! Where amongst the nations 
 who have embraced the Cross — where, amongst the nations 
 who have upheld the Cross — where is there one that did not 
 receive its mission and its Gospel message, on the message 
 and on the testimony of the Pope of Rome ? Prom the very 
 first ages, whilst they yet lay hid in the catacombs, we read of 
 saintly missionaries going forth from under the pope's hands 
 to spread the message of Divine Truth throughout the lands. 
 Scarcely had the Church emerged from the catacombs, and 
 burst into the glory and splendour of her renewed existence, 
 than we find one of the early Popes of Rome' laying his hand 
 upon the head of a holy youth that knelt before him, conse- 
 crating that youth into the priesthood, into the episcopacy, and 
 sending him straight from Rome to a mission, the grandest 
 and the most fiuitful — the most glorious of any in the Church. 
 That pope \vas Celostine, of Rome, and the man whom he sent 
 was Patrick, who, by the Pope's order, wended his way tc 
 Ireland. From the Pope of Rome did he (Patrick) receive his 
 mission and his message. Prom the Pope of Rome did he re- 
 ceive his authority and his jurisdiction. The diploma that he 
 brought to Ireland was attached to the Gospel itself. It was 
 the testimony of the Church of Christ, countersigned by Celes- 
 
THE POPE'S TIABa. 195 
 
 tine, who derived his authority from Peter, who derived his 
 from Christ. A.ud when, in his old age, he had evangelized 
 the whole island ; when he had brought Ireland into the full 
 light of the Christian faith, and into the full blaze of her 
 Christian sanctity, the aged apostle, now drooping into years, 
 called the bishops and the priests of Ireland around him ; and, 
 amongst his last words to them were these : " If ever a diflS- 
 culty arises amongst you ; — if ever a doubt of any passage of 
 the Scripture — or of any doctrine of the Church's law — or of 
 anything touching the Church of God or the salvation of the 
 souls of your people — if ever any doubt arises amongst you, 
 go to Rome — to the mother of the nations — and Peter will 
 instruct you thereon ! " Well and faithfully did the mind and 
 the heart of Ireland take in the words of its saintly Apostle. 
 Never— through good report or evil report — never has Ireland 
 swerved for one instant — never has she turned to look with a 
 favouring or a reverential eye upon this authority or upon that; 
 but straight to Peter. Never has she, for an instant, lost her 
 instinct, so as to mistake for Peter any pretender, or any other 
 pope ! Never, for an instant, has she allowed her heart or 
 her hand to be snared from Peter ! It is a long story. It is 
 a story of fourteen hundred years. But Ireland has preserved 
 her faith through her devotion to Peter, and to the Pope of 
 Kome, Peter's successor; and she has seen every nation during 
 these fourteen hundred years — every nation that ever separated 
 from Peter — she has seen them, one and all, languish and die, 
 until the sap of divine knowledge, until the sap of divine 
 grace, was dried up in them ; and they utterly perished, be- 
 cause they were separated from the Rock of Ages, t-he Pope of 
 Rome. 
 
 Just as the people, in all ages, and in all times, oowed down 
 Liefore their supreme pastor, so, also, has the episcopate in the 
 Church of God, at all times, recognized the supremacy of the 
 Pope of Rome, and, at all times, bowed before the second 
 crown that enqircles his glorious tiara. Never did the episco- 
 pacy of the Catliolic Church meet in council except upon the 
 invocation of the Pope of Rome Never did they promulgate 
 a decree until they first sent it to the Pope of Rome to ask 
 him if it was according to the truth, and to get the 
 seal and the countersign of his name upon it, tlr.it it might have 
 the authority of the Church of God before their people. From 
 
LEOTUEES AND HfiEMONS. 
 
 time to time, in the history of the episcopate, there have been 
 rebellious men that rose up against the authority, and dis- 
 puted the power of the Church of Rome. But, just as the 
 nations that separated from Peter, separated themselves thereby 
 from the unity of the truth, and of sanctity, and of Christian 
 doctrine, and of Christian morality, so, in like manner, thfc 
 bishop who, at any time, in any place, or in any age, disputed 
 Peter's power, Peter's authority, and separated from him, was 
 cut off from Peter and from the Church ; the mitre fell, dishon- 
 oured, from his head ; and he became a useless member lopped 
 off from the Church of God, without power, without jurisdiction, 
 without the veneration, or the respect, or the love of his people 
 Thus has it ever been in times gone by. The Pope of Rome 
 commands the Church through the episcopate. 'The Pope of 
 Rome speaks and testifies to the Churcli's doctrine through the 
 episcopate. Whenever any grave, important question, touch- 
 ing doctrine, has to be decided, the Pope of Rome has always 
 called the episcopate about him — not that he could not decide 
 but that he might surround his decision with all that careful 
 and prudent examination, with all that weight of uuiversal 
 authority over the world, which would bring that decision, 
 when he pronounced it, more clearly and more directly home to 
 every Catholic mind. And faithful has that episcopate been, 
 since the day that eleven bishops met Peter, the pope, in- 
 Jerusalem, in the first Council, down to the day when, three 
 years ago, eight hundred Catholic archbishops and bishops 
 met Peter's successoi in the halls of the Vatican, and bowed 
 down before the word of truth upon his lips. 
 
 Such, in the past, as history attests — such were the two 
 circles of the supreme pastorate and the supreme jurisdiction in 
 the Church, 
 
 The Roman empire, as you all know, was utterly destroyed 
 by the incursions of the barbarians, in the fifth century. A 
 king, at the head of his ferocious army, marched on Rome. 
 The pope was applied to by the terrified citizens ; and Leo the 
 Great went forth to meet Attila, " the Scourge of God." He 
 found him in the midst of his rude barbarian warriors, on the 
 banks of the Mincio. He found him exulting in the strength 
 and power of his irresistible army. He found him surging and 
 sweeping on toward Rome, with the apparent force of inevitable 
 destiny, and with his outspread wings of destruction. He 
 
THE POPE'S TIAEA. 197 
 
 fouud him iu the pride and supreme passion of his lustful and 
 barbaric heart, sworn to destroy the city that was the " Mother 
 of Nations." And, as he was in the very sweep of his conquest 
 and pride — unfriended and almost alone, having nothing but the 
 majesty of his position and of his glorious virtue around him, 
 the pope said : " Hold ! Rome is sacred, and your feet shall 
 never tread upon its ancient pavement ! Hold ! Let Rome be 
 spaved ! -And, whilst he was speaking, Attila looked upon the 
 face of the man, and presently he saw over the head of St. 
 Leo, the pope, two angry figures, the Apostles St. Peter and 
 St. Paul, with fire and the anger of God beaming from their 
 eyes, and with drawn swords menacing him. And even as the 
 angel stood in the prophet's path of old, and barred his progress, 
 so did Peter and Paul appear in mid-air and bar the barbarian. 
 " Let us return," said he, " and let us not approach this terrible 
 and God-defended city of Rome 1 " Attila fled to his northern 
 forests, and Leo returned, having saved the existence and the 
 blood of ancient and imperial Rome ! But army followed army ; 
 until, at length, Alaric conquei'ed and sacked the city, burned 
 and destroyed it, broke up all its splendour and all its glory, 
 overran and destroyed all the surrounding provinces ; and so 
 the destruction that he began was completed a few years latei 
 by the Odoacer, who wiped away the last vestige of the ancient 
 Roman empire ! Then, my friends, all Italy was a prey to 
 and was torn with factions ; covered with the blood of the 
 people. There was no one to save them. In vain did they 
 appeal to the distant eastern emperor at Constantinople. He 
 laughed at their misery, and abandoned them in the hour of 
 their deepest affliction and sorrow ; whilst wave after wave of 
 barbaric invasion swept over the fair land, until life became a 
 burden too intolerable to bear, and the people cried out, from 
 their breaking hearts, for the Pope of Rome to take them unde: 
 his protection, to let them declare him king, and so obtain his 
 safeguard and his protection for their lives and their property. 
 For many long years the Pope resisted the proffered crown. It 
 grew upon his brows insensibly. It came to him in spite of 
 himself. We know that, year aftei year, each successive pope 
 was employed sending letters, sending messengers, to supplicate, 
 to implore the Christian emperor to send an army for the pro- 
 tection of Italy ; and when he did send his army, they were 
 worse, in their heretical lawlessness, more tyrannical, mor« 
 
198 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 blood-thirsty ovet the unfortunate people of Italy, than even the 
 savage hordes that came down from the north of Europe. 
 And so it came to pass that, in the dire distress of the people, 
 the pope vs^as obliged to accept the temporal power of Rome, 
 and of some of the adjoining provinces. History tells us that 
 he might, in that day, have obtained, if he wished it, the 
 sovereignty over all Italy. They would have been only too 
 happy to accept him as their king ; but no lust of power, uo 
 ambition of enapire guided him; and the great St. Gregory 
 tells us that he was oppressed with the cares of the temporal 
 dominion, and that it was forced upon him against his will 
 
 However, now tbe crown is upon his head Now he is 
 acknowledged a monarch — a reigning king amongst monarchs. 
 And now let us see what was the purpose of God in thus 
 establishing that temporal power in so early a portion of the 
 history of the world's civilization. At that time, there was no 
 law in Europe. The nations had not yet settled down or 
 formed. Every man did as he would. The kings were only 
 half -civilized, barbarous men recently converted to Christianity 
 wielding enormous power, and only too anxious to make that 
 power the instrument for gratifying every most terrible passion 
 of lust, of pride, of ambition, and of revenge. Chieftains, 
 taking to themselves the titles of baron, duke, margrave, and 
 so on, gathered around them troops, bands of mercenaries, 
 and preyed on the poor people, until they covered the whole 
 continent v?ith confusion and with blood. There was no power 
 to restrain them. There was no power to make them spare 
 their people. There was no voice to assert the cause of the 
 poor and the oppressed, save one ; and that was the voice of 
 the monarch who was crowned in Rome, the ancient and 
 powerful head of the Catholic Church. Whence came his in- 
 fluence or his power over them ? Ah, it came from this ; that, 
 with al' their crimes, they still had received from God the gift 
 of faith, and they knew — the very worst amongst them kuew — 
 as history tells us, that when the pope spoke it was the echo 
 of the voice of God. They acknowledged it as a suprem« 
 power over their consciences, over their actions — as a power 
 that could be wielded not only for their salvation, but even for 
 their destruction, by the terrible sentence of excommunication, 
 by which the pope could cut them off from the Church. The 
 faith that was in the hearts of these rude kings was also dia- 
 
THE POPE'S TIARA. 199 
 
 seminated amongst their people ; and so strong was it, that 
 the moment the pope denounced or excommunicated any 
 monarch, that moment, no matter how great he was as a 
 warrior, as a statesman, as a writer — that moment the people 
 shrank from him, as they would from the pest-stricken leper, 
 and his voice was no longer heard as an authority either on 
 the battle-field or in the council-chamber. Knowing this, the 
 kings were afraid of the pope. Knowing this, the people 
 looked up to the pope ; and if any king overtaxed his 
 people, and ground them to the earth, or if any king violated 
 the law of eternal justice by shedding the blood of any man 
 without just cause, or if any king declared an unjust and 
 unnecessary war, or if any king repudiated his lawful wife, 
 and, in the strength and power of his passion, sought to 
 scandalize his subjects, and to openly insult and outrage the 
 law of Grod — the people, the soldiery, society, the abandoned 
 and injured woman, all alike looked up to and appealed to the 
 Pope of Rome, as the only po\\-<?v that could sway the world, 
 and strike terror into the heart of the greatest, the most power- 
 ful, and the most lawless king upon the earth. 
 
 History — from every source from which we can draw it— 
 tells us what manner of men wore the kings and dukes and rulers 
 the pope had to deal with. What manner of men were they ? 
 In the eleventh century, the Emperor Otho invited all his 
 nobility to a grand banquet ; and whilst they were in the midst 
 of their festivity in came one of the king's officers with a long 
 list of the names of men who were there present ; and every 
 man whose name was called out, had to rise from the bamiuet 
 and walk into a room adjoining, and there submit to an unjust, 
 a cruel, and an instantaneous death. These were the kind of 
 men that the pope had to deal with. Another man that we 
 read of was Lothair. His lustful eye fell upon a beautiful 
 woman , and he instantly puts away and repudiates his virtuous 
 and honoured wife, and he takes to him this concubine, in the 
 face of the world, proclaiming, or suggesting that he could 
 proclaim, that, because he was an emperor, or a king, he was 
 at liberty to violate the law of God, outrage the proprieties of 
 society, scandalize his subjects, and take hberties with their 
 honour and with their integrity, which would not be permitted 
 to any other man. How did the pope, in these instances, deal 
 witli such men ? How did he use the temporal power, so great 
 
200 LECTURES AND SEKMONS. 
 
 and so tuemendous, with which God and society had invested 
 him 7 He made the murderers do public penance, and make 
 restitution to the families of those whose blood they had shed. 
 He called to him that emperor, Lothair ; he brought him before 
 him ; he bade him, in a public church, and before all the people, 
 repudiate that woman whom he had taken to his adulterous 
 embrace ; take back his lawful empress and queen, pledge to 
 her again, by solemn oath, before all the people, that he never 
 would love another, and that he would be faithful to her as a 
 husban'd and a man, until the hour of his death Lothair broke 
 his oath — his oath taken at that solemn moment, when the 
 pope, with the ciborium in his hand, held up the body of th( 
 Lord, and said, " Until you swear fidelity to your lawful wife, 
 I will not place the Holy Communion upon your lips.'' He took 
 that oath ; he broke it ; and that day month — one month after 
 he had received that communion — he was a dead man ; and the 
 whole world — ^the whole Christian world — recognized in that 
 death the vengeance of God falling upon a perjured and an 
 excommunicated sinner. How did the pope vindicate, by his 
 temporal power and authority, the influence that it gave him 
 amongst the kings and the nations? How did he operate 
 upon society ? When King Philip, of France, wished to 
 repudiate his lawful wife, and take another in her stead, the 
 pope excommunicated hizn, and obliged him, in the face of the 
 world, to take back, and to honour with his love and with his 
 fidelity the woman whom he had sworn before the altar to 
 worship and to protect as long as he lived. How did the pope 
 exercise his temporal power, when Spain and Portugal, both 
 in the zenith of their power, were about to draw the sword, 
 and to deluge those fair lands with the blood of the people ? 
 The pope stepped in and said, " No war ; there is no necessity 
 for war ; there is no justification for war ; and if you shed the 
 blood of yoiu- people," he said to both kings, " I will cut you 
 both off, and fling you, excommunicated, out of the Church." 
 Thus did he preserve the rights — the sacred rights of marriage; 
 thus did he preserve the honour, the integrity, the position of 
 the Christian woman — the Christian mother, who is the source, 
 the fountain-head of all the world's society, and the one 
 centre of all our hopes. Thus did he save the people, curb the 
 angry passions of their sovereigns ; thus did he tell the king, 
 " So long as you rule justly, so long as you respect the rights 
 
THE pope's TIABA. 201 
 
 of the humblest of your subjects, I will uphold you ; I will set 
 a crown upon your head, and I will fling around you all the 
 authority and all the jurisdiction, and sacredness of your 
 monarchy I will preach to your people obedience, loyalty, 
 bravery, and love ; but if you trample upon that people's rights, 
 if you abuse your power to scandalize them, to injure them in 
 their integrity, in their conscience, I will be the first to take the 
 crown from your head, and to declare to the world that you are 
 unworthy to wear it." Modern historians say, " Oh, we admit 
 all this ; but what right had the pope to do it ? " What right 
 had he to do it? What right? The best of right. Who on 
 this earth had a right to do it, if not the man who represented 
 Christ, the Originator and the Saviour of the world ? What 
 right had he to do it "? He had the right that even society 
 itself, and the people gave him ; for they cried out to him, 
 " Save us from our kings ; save us from injustice ; save us 
 trom dishonour ; and we will be loyal and true as long as our 
 leaders and our monarchs are worthy of our loyalty and our 
 truth." 
 
 Such, in the past history of the world, was the third circle 
 that twines round the papal crown. 
 
 Now, passing from the past to the tiara of to-day, what do 
 we find ? We find a man in Rome, the most extraordinary, in 
 some things, of all those that ever succeeded to the supremacy 
 of the Church, and in the office of St. Peter — most extraordi- 
 nary, particularly in his misfortunes — most extraordinary iu 
 the length of his reign, for he is the only pope that has outlived 
 " the years of Peter " — most extraordinary in the ingratitude 
 of the world towards him, and the patience with which he has 
 borne it — most extraordinary in the heroic firmness of his char- 
 acter, and in the singleness of his devotion to his God and to 
 the spouse of God, the Church^-Pius IX., the glorious pontiff, 
 the man whom the bitterest enemies of the Church, whom the 
 most foul-mouthed infidels of the day are obliged to acknow- 
 ledge as a faithful and true servant of the Lord His God, a 
 faithful ruler of the Church, and a man from whose aged coun- 
 tenance there beams forth upon all who see him, the sweetness 
 and the purity of Christ. I have seen him in the halls of the 
 Vatican ; I have seen the most prejudiced Protestant ladies and 
 gentlemen walk into the audience-chamber ; I have seen them 
 come forth, theh eyes streaming with tears ; I have seen them 
 
202 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 come forth, entranced with admu'ation, at the vision of sanctity 
 and venerableness that they have beheld in the head of the 
 Catholic Church. lie is extraordinary in that he has outlived 
 the years of Peter. Well do I remember him, as he stood 
 upon the altar five-and-tweuty years ago, fair and beautiful iu 
 his youthful manhood. Well do I remember the heroic voice 
 that pealed like a clarion over the mighty square of St. Peter's, 
 and seemed as if it was an angel of God that was come down 
 from heaven, and, in a voice of melodious thunder, was flinging 
 a Pentecost of grace and blessing over the people, Five-and- 
 twenty years have passed away, and more. Never during the 
 long roll of pontiffs — never did man sit upon St. Peter's chair 
 so long ; so that it even passed into a proverb, that no pope 
 was ever to see the years of Peter. The proverb is falsified in 
 Pius. He has passed the mystic Rubicon of the papal age. 
 He has passed the bounds which closed around all his prede- 
 cessors. He has passed the years of Peter upon the papal 
 thi'one. Oh ! may he live, if it be God's will, to guide the 
 Church, until he has doubled the years of Peter. He is singu- 
 lar in what the world calls liis misfortunes ; but what, to me, 
 or any man of faith, must absolutely appear as a startling re- 
 semblance to the last week that the Lord, our Saviour, spent 
 before His passion, in Jerusalem. I remember Pius IX. sur- 
 rounded by the acclamations and the admiration of the whole 
 worW No word of praise was too great to be bestowed upon 
 him. lie was the theme of every popular writer. He was the 
 idol of the people. The moment they beheld him the cry came 
 forth : " Viva, viva, il salvatore de la patria 1 " Long live the 
 saviour of his people and of his country ! To-day he must not 
 show his face in the very streets of Rome ; and in the very 
 halls of the deserted Vatican he hears the echoes of the shouts 
 of those that cry, " Blepsed be the hand that shall be imbrued 
 in thy blood, Pius ! " Now, I ask any man on the face of 
 the earth, what has this man done? What can the greatest 
 enemy of the pope lay his hand upon, and say, he has done so 
 and so, and he has deserved the change of popular friendship, 
 and of popular opinion 1 The greatest enemy that the pope 
 has on earth is not able to bring a single charge against him, 
 durin!? these twenty-five years, to account for that change of 
 opinion. What has changed blessings into curses ? What 
 has changed homage and veneration into contempt and obloquy? 
 
THE POPE'S tIARA. 20S 
 
 There is no accounting for it. It is like the change that came 
 over the people of Jerusalem, who, oa Palm Sunday, cried, 
 " Hosannah to the Son of David," and on Good Friday morning 
 cried, " Give Him to us ! We will tear Him to pieces and cru- 
 cify Him! '■ There is no accounting for it. Has he oppressed 
 the Roman people ? No. I lived many years in Rome under 
 his pontificate. There was no taxation worth speaking of ; 
 there was no want, no misery. There was plenty of education 
 for the children, plenty of employment, plenty of diversion. 
 There was no forcible conscription of the youth, to send them 
 into soine vile cesspool of corruption, in the shape of a barrack, 
 or to hunt them out to the battle-field, to be mown down and 
 flung into blood-stained graves. No ; every man possessed 
 his house and his soul in peace. There was prosperity in the 
 iMiid. And over all this there was the hand ever waving a 
 blessing, and a voice invoking benediction and grace for his 
 people. Whence came the change? No man can tell. There- 
 fore, I say, this man is extraordinary in his misfortunes, inas- 
 much as they bring out, in the most striking and terrible 
 manner, his resemblance to his crucified Lord and Saviour, the 
 Head of the Church. He is singular in the magnificence of his 
 character. The student of history may read the lives of all the 
 popes that have come down from Peter to Pius, and I make this 
 assertion, that there is not a single feature of grandeur or mag- 
 nificence in the character of any one of these popes, that does 
 not shine out, concentrated, in the character of Pius IX. We 
 admire the missionary zeal of St. Gregory the Great, of St. 
 Celestine. Pius the Ninth has sent from under his own hand, 
 and from under his own blessing, men who have honoured his 
 pontificate, as well as the Church, their mother, by shedding 
 their blood in martyrdom, for the faith. Prom under his hand 
 have gone forth those holy ones who have languished in the 
 dungeons of China and of Japan. From under his hand have 
 gone forth those heroic Jesuit sons of St. Ignatius, that have 
 lifted the standard of the Cross, and uplifted the name — the 
 name which forms their crown and their glory, even in the eyes 
 of ruen, unto the furthest nations of the earth. If we admire 
 the love of Rome that shines forth in the character of St, Leo 
 the Great, who was the pope amongst them all that ever loved 
 Rome and the Romans so tenderly as the heart of Pius IX. 
 loved them ? When he came to the throne there were RomauB 
 
204 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 in exile, aua there were Komans iu prison. Tiie very first act 
 of the pontiff was to fling open the prison-doors, and to say to 
 these children of misfortune, " Come forth, Italians ; breathe the 
 pure air and feast youi- eyes upon the loveliness of your native 
 land. There were Romans who were iu exile : he sent them 
 the message of manumission, and of pardon, and of love, iu 
 whatever land they were, and said, '' Come back to me ; — come 
 back and sit down in ]jeace and contentment under my empire ; 
 for, Rome, and children of Rome, I love you." This was 
 the language and these were the emphatic accents of the 
 glorious Pius IX. Where was the pope who ever embellished 
 Rome as he did ? I lived iu Rome during the first year of his 
 pontificate ; I lived there in the last. I might almost say that 
 he found it a city of brick, and that he handed it over to Victor 
 Emmanuel, the robber, a city of polished aud shining marble. 
 Orphanages, hospitals, public schools, model lodging-houses, 
 public baths and lavatories, splendid fountains ;' everj'thing 
 that the Roman citizen could require, either for his wants or 
 for his luxury, or, if you will, Jiis pleasure, the magnificent 
 hand of Pius IX. provided ; for, for the last five-and-twenty 
 years, that haiid has never ceased in beautif^-ing and embellish- 
 ing his loved and impeiial Rome. We admii'e the glorious 
 firmness, the magnificeut, rock-like endurance of St. Gregory 
 VII., whom history knows by the name of Hildebrand ; how he 
 stood in the path of the impious German emperors. Like a 
 rock against which the tide dashes, but dashes in vaiu — so did 
 he stand to stem the torrent of their tyranny and of their cor- 
 ruption. We admire Gregory VII., when, saying Mass before 
 the emperor, he took the Blessed Eucharist into his hands and 
 turned round, with the Holy Communion, and said, "0 majesty, 
 I am about to give you the Holy Body of Jesus Christ. I 
 swear before mj' God," said the pope, " in whose presence I 
 now stand, that I have never acted save for the Church which 
 He loves, and for the happiness of His peopk Now, King ! 
 swear thou the same ; and I will put God upon thy hps ! " The 
 emperor hung his head and said, " I cannot swear it, for it 
 would not be true ; " and the Holy Communion was denied 
 him. We admire that maguificent memory in the Church of 
 God, which upheld the rights of Peter and of the Church against 
 king and kaiser ; but, I ask you, does not the image of the 
 sainted Gregc^:y VII. rise before our eyes from out the re- 
 
THE POPE'S TIAEA. 205 
 
 cesses (f history, and come I'oith into the full blaze of the 
 present goneratioii in the raagiiificeut constancy and firmness 
 of Pius IX., the Pope of Rome? It was a question of only 
 giving- up a little child that was baptized into the Christian 
 Church, and engrafted by baptism upon Christ, our Lord, — a 
 little child that was engrafted unto the Son of God and His 
 Church, had received the rights, and claimed, in justice, to come 
 to know and love that God on whom he had been engrafted by 
 baptism. A.11 the 'powers of the world — all the dukes and 
 kings and governments in Europe — came around the pope, and 
 said, " You must give up that child ; he must be taught to 
 blaspheme and to hate that Lord upon whom he has been 
 engrafted by baptism. He must not belong to Christ, or 
 the Church, even though he is baptised into it." And they 
 asked the pope, by the surrender of that child, to proclaim the 
 surrender of that portion of the Church's faith that tells us, on 
 the authority of the inspired Apostle, that, by baptism, like a 
 wild olive branch let into a good tree, we are let into Jesus 
 Christ. They sent their fleets to Civita Vecchia; they 
 pointed their cannon against the Vatican, and told the pope 
 that his existence and his life depended upon his giving up 
 that child. And he declared, in the face of the world, and 
 pronounced that word which will shine in characters of 
 glory on his brow in heaven — he pronounced the immortal 
 non possumiis — " I will not do it, hecause I cannot do it ! " 
 If he wants an epitaph, the moat glorious language that need 
 be written on his tomb would be, " Here lies the man 
 whom the whole world tried to coerce to commit a sin ; and 
 who answered the world ' non possnmus ' — I cannot do it." 
 This is the man that to-day wears, and so gloriously wears, 
 the time-honoured tiara that has come down to him through 
 eighteen hundred years of suffering and of glory, of joy and of 
 sorrow. 
 
 The third circlet — that of the temporal power — for a time is 
 ^one. There is a robber, who calls himself a king, seated now 
 in the Quirinal, in Eome. He had not the decency to tell the 
 pope that he was coming to plunder him. He had not the 
 decency, when he did come to Rome, to build a house for him- 
 self ; Dut he must take one of the old man's bouses. It was a 
 question of bringing his women into these, the pope's own 
 chambers, which were always like sanctuaries, where ladies gen«- 
 
206 LECTtTRES AND SERMONS. 
 
 rally are not permitted to come in. There was a kind of tradition 
 of holiness about them, and exclusiveness iu this way ; and he 
 brings his queen and his "ladies all " to these chambers, where, 
 if they had a particle of womanly decency, and delicacy, and 
 propriety, they would not enter. I do not believe there is a 
 lady here listening' to me, who would walk into the Quirinal 
 to-morrow, even if she was iu Rome. The third circlet, for a 
 time, is plucked from the pope's brow ; and, instead of a crown 
 of gold, the aged man has bent down and -has received, from 
 the hands of ungrateful Italy, the present of a crown of thorns. 
 But, as if to compensate him for the temporary absence of the 
 crown of temporal rule ; as if to make up to him for that which 
 has been plucked, for a time only, from the tiara ; the Almighty 
 God has brought out, in our age, upon the pontificate of Pius 
 IX., the other two circlets, that of supreme Pastorate and 
 supreme Bishop of the Church, with an additional lustre and 
 glory that they never had before. Never, in the history of the 
 Catholic Church, have the faithful, all the world over, listened 
 with so much reverenqe, with so much love, with so much faith 
 and joy, as the Catholics of the world, to-day, listen to the 
 voice of Pius IX., in Rome Never have the bishops of the 
 Catholic Church shown such unanimity, such unity of thought, 
 such profound and magnificent obedience. Never has the epis- 
 copate of the Catholic Church so loudly, emphatically, and 
 unitedly upheld the privileges and the glories of its head, as 
 the episcopacy of this day has upheld the glory of the papacy 
 of Pius IX. And it is no small object of praise and of thank- 
 fulness to us, that when eight hundred men amongst them, 
 loaded with the responsibility of the Church — eight hundred 
 men, representing all that the Church had of perfection, of the 
 priesthood, and of jurisdiction and power — when these eight 
 hundred men were gathered round the throne of the august 
 pontiff, they represented to the world, in its hostility, in its in- 
 fidelity, iu its hatred, so firm a front, that they were all of one 
 mind, of one soul ; one voice only was heard from the lips of 
 these eight hundred ; and that voice said, " Tu es Petrus !" ■ 
 Pius ! Peter speaks in thee, and Christ, the Lord, speaks in 
 Peter. One of the most honoured of these eight hundred — one 
 of the foremost iu dignity and worth — now sits here in the 
 midst of you, the bishop, and pastor of your souls. He can 
 bear living witness to the fact which I have stated. Out of the 
 
THE POPE'S TIARA. 207 
 
 resoiircea of hia learned mind — out of his Roman experience as 
 au archbishop — will he tell you — out of his historic lore will he 
 tell you — ^that never was the Church of God more united, both 
 in the priesthood and episcopacy, and in the people ; more 
 united iu ranks cemented by faith, and strengthened by love, 
 than the Christian and Catholic world to-day is around the 
 glorious throne of the uncrowned pontiff, Pius IX. 
 
 And what shall be the future of this tiara ? We know that 
 the crown of universal pastorship and the crown of supremacy 
 are his ; that no man can take from him that wliich has 
 grown unto him under the hand of Jesus Christ. We know 
 that he may be an exile to-morrow — that he may be without a 
 home, persecuted and hunted from one city to another. But, 
 we know that God and the Church of God liave set their seal 
 upon him, and their sign that no other man upon this earth can 
 wear, namely, that he is the head of the Church, and the infal- 
 lible guide of the infallible flock of Christ. Will his temporal 
 power be restored? Will the third circle ever again shine iipoi' 
 that tiara ? It is a singular fact that the only man who can 
 speak of the future with certainty is tlie Catholic. Every other 
 man, when he comes to discuss any subject of the future, must 
 say, " Well, in all probability, perhaps, it may come to puss ; 
 it may be so and so ; " but the Catholic man, when he comes to 
 speak of the future, says : " Such and such things are to come ;" 
 he knows it as sure as fate. There is not a man amongst us 
 that does not know that this usurpation of Rome is only a ques- 
 tion of a few days— only a question of a few days — that the 
 knavish king may remain this year, next year ; perhaps a few 
 years more; but as sure as Rome is seated upon her seven 
 hills, so surely will the third circle of the tiara be there; so 
 surely must there be a Pope-king there. And why 1 i'or the 
 simplest of all reasons: that her empire, or her teinpoial 
 power, is very convenient, and very useful, and very necessary 
 for the Church of God ; and that whatever is convenient, or 
 useful, or necessary for her, God in Heaven will provide for 
 her. That temporal power will return as it returned iu the 
 times of old, because it is good for the Church, and because 
 the world cannot get on without it. The hand that has held 
 the reins of society for a thousand years and more— the hand 
 that has held the curb tight upon the passions and the 
 ambition, and tke injustice of kings — the Ijaud that has 
 
«08 LEOTUEES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 held, with a firm grasp, the reins that govern the people, 
 is as necessary in the time to come, as it was in the times 
 past; and, therefore, God will keep that hand that holds 
 the veins of the world, a royal hand. "lence it is that we 
 Catholics have not the slightest apprehension, the slightest 
 fear, about this. We linow that, even as our Divine Lord and 
 Master suffered m Jerusalem, and was buried and remained 
 for three days in the grace, and undeniably rose again, all the 
 more glorious because of his previous suffering — so, in like 
 manner, do we know that out of the grave of his pvesen' 
 tribulation — out of the trials of to-day. Plus IX., or Pius th« 
 Ninth's successor — for the pope lives forever — will rise more 
 glorious in his empire over the world, and in his inflnence and 
 power, all the more glorious for having passed through the 
 triliulations of the present time, 3nt, my friends, just as the 
 most precious hours in the life of our Lord were the hours of 
 His suffering — just as that was the particnLir time when every 
 loving heart came to tlim — the tmie when the highest privi- 
 leges were conferred upon mankind, namely to wipe the sweat 
 and blood off his brow ; to take the cross off his shoulders ; to 
 lift Him from His falling, and His faintness upon the earth ; 
 BO, also, the present is the hour of our highest privilege as 
 Catholics, when we can put our hand to cheer, to console, to 
 help our Holy Father the Pope. This hall is crowded; and, 
 from my priestly, Catholic, and Irish heart, I am proud of it 
 It is easy to acclaim a man when he is " on the top of the 
 wheel," as they say, and everything is going well with him. 
 It is easy to feel proud of the pope when the pope shines out, 
 acknowledged by all the kings of the earth. Ah, but it is the 
 triumph of Catholic and of Irish faith, to stand up for him, to 
 nphold him before the world, and, if necessary, to fight fol 
 him, when the whole world is against him. Therefore, I hope, 
 that when the proceeds of this lecture art) sent to the man 
 who, although poor and in prison to-day, has kept his honour, 
 has kept his nobility of character ; and, when millions were 
 put before him by the robber-king, said he would not dirty his 
 hands by touching them ; but when the honest and the clean 
 money of to-night shall be sent to him, I hope that some one 
 of those officials here will also inform him that that money 
 was sent to him with cheers and with applause, and from loving 
 and generous Irish Catholic hearts ; that it was given as Ire' 
 
THE POPE'S TIARA. 109 
 
 land always has given when she gave — given Tnth a free 
 hand and a loving and generous heart As a gi-eat author and 
 writer of our day said, "I would rathei get a cold potato from 
 an Irisl.man, than a guinea in gold and a dinner of beef from 
 an Englishman." 
 
 And now, my friends, I have only to state to you that, from 
 my heart, I thank you for your presence here this evening, I 
 know tha* the sacrediiess of the cause brought you here as 
 Catholics I flatter myself a little, that, perhaps, some of you 
 came, because, when I was last here before you, I told you, in 
 all sincerity, that my heart and soul were in this lecture, and 
 that I would take it as a personal favour if the ball were 
 crowded this evening. The hall is crowded : and I am grate- 
 ful to you for your attendance and your patience in listening 
 to me, and for the encouragement that you gave me by your 
 applause. 
 
210 LECTURES AND SBRMONB. 
 
 THE EXILES OF ERIN. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : One of the strongest passions, and 
 the noblest that God has imparted in the heart of man, is 
 the love of the land that bore him. The poet says, and well : 
 
 " Breathes there a man with soul so dead. 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 This is my own, my native land ? " 
 
 The pleasure of standing upon the soil of our birth ; the 
 pleasure of preserving the associatious that surrounded our 
 boyhood and our youth; the pleasure — sad and melancholy 
 though it be — of watching every gray hair and every wrin- 
 kle that time sends even to those whom we love, these are 
 amongst the keenest and the best pleasures of which the heart 
 of man is capable. Therefore it is that, at all times, exile from 
 native land has been looked upon by men as a penalty and a 
 grievance. This is true even of men whom nature has placed 
 upon the most rugged and barren soil. The Swiss peasant, 
 who lives amidst the everlasting snows of the Upper Alps, 
 who sees no form of beauty in nature except her grandest and 
 most austere and rugged proportions, yet so dearly loves his 
 arid mountain-home, that it is heart-breaking to him to be 
 banished from it, even though he were placed to spend his 
 exile in the choicest and most delicious quarters of the earth. 
 Much more does the pain of exile rest upon the children of a 
 race, at once the most generous, the most kind-hearted, and 
 the most loving in the world. Much more does it rest upon 
 the children of a race who look back to the mother-land as to 
 a fan- and beautiful land ; a climate temperate and delicious ; 
 soil fruitful and abundant ; scenery, now rising into th« glory 
 of magnificence, now sinking into the tenderest jigstora) 
 beauty ; a history the grandest of all the nations of the earth ; 
 associations the tenderest, because the most Christian and the 
 purest. And all these, and more, aggravate the misery and 
 
THE EXILES OP EBIN. 211 
 
 enhance the pain which the Irishman, of all other men, feels 
 when he is exiled from his native land. 
 
 And yet, my friends, amongst the destinies of the nations, 
 the destiny of the Irish race, from the earliest time, has been 
 that of voluntary and involuntary exile. Two great features 
 distinguish the history of our race and our people. The first 
 of those is that we are a warrior and warlike race — quick, 
 impulsive, generous, fraternal, and fond of a fight for the sake 
 of a figlit. Indeed, the student of history must see that 
 wherever the Celtic blood is, there is a taste for military 
 organization and for war. Whilst the Teuton and the Saxon 
 are contented with their prosperity, and very often attain to the 
 end of their aims more directly and more successfully by 
 negotiations, the Celt, wherever he is, is always ready to 
 resent an insult or an injury, and to create one for the sake of 
 resenting it, very often when it is not intended. How 
 strangely has not this great fact been brought out in relation to 
 the great Celtic nation of Prance — France, which is of the same 
 race, the same stock, and the same blood as Ireland— France, 
 to whom in weal or woe the heart of Ireland has always 
 throbbed sympathetically ; exulting in her joys, or lamenting 
 or weeping over her sorrows. Hundreds of years of history lie 
 before us ; and this French Celtic race has always been 
 engaged, in every age and every time, in war with their more 
 prudent and more cold-blooded neighbours ai'ound them. Now, 
 if you look through history, you will invariably find that 
 France (or the Celt) was always the first to fling down the 
 glove, or draw the sword and cry out " War ' " Even in the 
 late fatal war, things were so managed and so arranged that, 
 while Bismarck was smiling and shrugging his shoulders, and 
 " invisibly washing his hands in imperceptible water," th( 
 French, the moment they saw that war was possible, that 
 moment, unprepared as they were — not stopping to calculate 
 or reflect — they rushed to the front. They are trodden in the 
 earth to-day ; but that gallant flag of France has gone down 
 without dishonour, as long as it was upheld by the heroic 
 hands of the Celt. 
 
 As it was with our French cousins, so, for good or for bad 
 luck, as you will, has it been with ourselves. From the day 
 that the Dane landed in Ireland, at the close of the eighth 
 century, down ta this blessed day, at the close of the nineteenth 
 
212 LECTtrSES AND SERMONS. 
 
 century, for the last eleven hundred years, Ireland has been 
 fighting ! War ! war ! incessant war ! War with the Dane 
 for three hundred years ; war with the Saxon for eight hundred 
 years. And, unfortunately for Ireland, if we had not the Dane 
 and the Saxon to fight with, we picked quarrels and fought 
 with one another. 
 
 Now the second great feature of our destiny, as traced in 
 our history, is that it was the will of God and our fate that a 
 large portion of our people should be constantly either driven 
 from the Irish shore or obliged by the course of circumstances, 
 or apparently of their own free will, to leave. The Irish Exile 
 is a name recognized in history. The Irish Exile is not a being 
 of yesterday or of last year. We turn over these honoured 
 pages of history ; we come to the very brightest pages of the 
 national records, and still we find, emblazoned upon the annals 
 of every nation of the earth, the grand and the most honoured 
 names of the Exiles of Erin. It is therefore to this theme 
 that I invite your attention this evening. And why ? Because^ 
 my friends, I hold, as an Irishman, that, next to the Gospel ] 
 preach and to the religion that I love, come the- gospel and th« 
 religion of my love for Ireland and my glory in her. Bverj 
 point in her history that is a record of glory, brings a joy to 
 your heart and to mine. The argument that builds up the 
 temple of Irish fame upon the foundations of religion and 
 valour, every argument, I say, is an argument to induce in your 
 hearts and mine the strong, stormy feeling of pride for our native 
 land. Why should we not be proud of her ? Has she ever in 
 that long record of our history — has she ever wronged or 
 oppressed any people? Never! Has she ever attempted 
 to plunder from any people their sacred birth-vight of 
 liberty? Never! Has she ever refused, upoa the in- 
 vitation of the Church and her own conscience, to undo 
 the chains and to strike them off the limbs of the slave? 
 Never ! Has she ever drawn that sword, which she has 
 wielded for centuries, in an unjust or doubtful cause ? Never ! 
 Blood has stained the sword of Ireland for ages : that blood 
 has dripped from the national sword ; but never did Ireland's 
 sword shed a drop of blood unjustly, but only in the defence of 
 the highest and holiest and best of causes — the altar of God, 
 and the altar of the nation. 
 
 And now, my friends, commg to consider the " Exiles of 
 
THE EXILES OF EEIN. 213 
 
 Btin," I find three great epochs are marked in the history of 
 Ireland, with the sign of the exodus and exile of her children 
 upon them The first of these goes back for nearly fourteen 
 hundred years, in the year 432, Patrick, coming from Eome, 
 preached the Catholic faith to Ireland ; and the Irish, mind and 
 the Irish heart sprang to that faith, took it and embraced it, 
 and put it into her blood, and into the lives of her children ; 
 and she became Catholic under the very hand of an Apostle 
 such as no nation on the earth ever did, or ever will know, 
 until the end of time. At once the land became a land, not 
 only of Christians, but of saints. Wise and holy kings ruled 
 and governed in Tara. Wise and saintly counsellors guided 
 them ; every law was obeyed so perfectly and so implicitly, 
 that, in the records of our national annals, it is told that, under 
 the golden reign of the great King Brian, a young and unpro- 
 tected female could walk from one end of the land to the other, 
 laden with golden treasure ; and no man would insult her 
 virtue, or bring a blush to her virgin cheek ; nor attempt to 
 rob her of the rich and valuable things that she wore. Then 
 the Irish heart, enlarged and expanded by the new element of 
 Christian charity, which was infused in the nation with its 
 religion — the Irish mind, before so cultivated in all pagan 
 literature, now enlightened with the higher and more glorious 
 rays of faith — this heart and mind of Ireland looked out with 
 pity upon the nations who were around them .sitting in darkness, 
 in barbarism, and in the shade of death. From the Irish 
 monasteries, in the sixth and seventh centuries, began the 
 urst great exodus, or exile from Ireland, which I call the 
 exodus, or going forth of faith. Revelling in all the beauty of 
 her grandeur, enjoying the blessings of peace, the light of 
 divine truth, the warmth of holy charity, enjoying that learning, 
 until she became the great school-house and university of the 
 world — all the nations around sent their youth to Ireland to be 
 instructed. Then, these Irish and saintly masters of all human 
 and divine knowledge found, by the accounts given by those 
 youthful scholars, that there was neither religion, nor faith, nor 
 learning in the countries around them. England, now in the 
 possession of the Anglo-Saxons, was still in paganism. The 
 ancient Britons (now called the Welsh) had their Christianity, 
 but they kept it to themselves. In their hatred to thek Saxon 
 invaders, these British blslvips, priests, and mopts took the 
 
214 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 most cruel form of vengeance that ever waa known to be exer- 
 cised against a nation. They actually refused to preach the 
 Gospel to the Saxons, for fear the Saxous might be saved, and 
 get into heaven veith themselves Ireland, evaiig-elized ; Ire- 
 land, enlightened; Ireland, warmed v?ith the rays of divine 
 charity, cast a pitying look upon the neighbour countr3'; and in 
 the sixth and seventh centuries, numbers of Irish monks went 
 forth and travelled into Scotland and through the laud of Bug- 
 land, and everywhere preached the Gospel of Christ, spreading 
 from the north of England to the remote north of Scotland. 
 We find them in every laud of Europe. We find them, for in- 
 stance, in the valleys of Switzerland, which were evangelized by 
 the Irish St. Gall, whose name still marks a town in that coun- 
 try, whose name is still held in veneration even by those who 
 scarcely know the land of his birth. We find another Irish 
 saiut of that time, Fridolene or Pridolind ; he went through the 
 length and breadth of Europe, until he was known to all men 
 for the greatness of his learning and the power of his preaching, 
 and for the wonderful sanctity of his life. He was called 
 " Fridolene the Traveller," for he went about from nation to 
 nation evangelizing the name of Christ. We find Oolumbanus 
 going forth in that seveuth century, penetrating into tlie heart 
 of France, preaching the Gospel to the people of Burgundy ; 
 thence passing over the Alps he descended into the plains of 
 Lombardy. In that very land where St. Ambrose and other 
 lights of the Church had shone, Oolumbanus preached the Gos- 
 pel, and appeared as a uew vision of sanctity and goodness 
 before the Italian people, who were converted by the sound 
 of his voice. At the same time St. Killian peuetrated 
 into Germany, and evangelized Pranconia. But the greatest 
 of all these saints and Irish exiles of the seventh century was 
 the man whose name is famiUar to you all — whose name is 
 enshrined amongst the very highest saints of the Church's 
 calendar — whose name and whose history has furnished the 
 material for the Count Moutalembert, the greatest writer of 
 our age, who found in the name of the Irish St. Columba, or 
 Columbkille, the theme for the very highest and grandest 
 piece of history that our age has produced. The history 
 of this saint is striking for his extraordinary sanctity, 
 and yet brings out fully, forcibly, and wonderfully, the 
 strength as well as weakness of the Irish character. St. 
 
THE EXlLtlS Of ERIN. 215 
 
 Colnmbkille was a descendant of Nial of the Nine Hostages, 
 who founded in Ulster the royal house of O'Neill. His 
 name was O'Neill, and he was a near relation to the 
 King of Ulster. He consecrated himself to God in nis 
 youth, and became a monk. Speedily he arose in the fame 
 of his learning and his sanctity. He studied in Armagh, in 
 Mungret, near Limerick, on the Shannon ; and went at last to 
 the Island of Arran, outside of Galway Bay ; and there, as he 
 himself tells us, he passed years of his life in prayer and study. 
 Well, as you are aware, at this earlj' period, there were no 
 books, because there was no art of printing ; and every book 
 had to be written out patiently in manuscript. Books were 
 then of such value that the price of a copy of the Scriptures 
 would purchase a large estate. At this time a celebrated Irish 
 saint, yt. Finnian, had a precious copy of the Book of 
 Psalms, written out in goodly characters upon leaves of parch- 
 ment. St, Columba wanted a copy of tliis book for himself ; 
 and he went to St. Finnian and begged the privilege of the 
 book to take a copy of it. He was refused ; the book was too 
 precious to be trusted to him. Then he aslced at least to be 
 allowed to go into the church where the book was deposited ; 
 and there he spent night after night, privately writing out a 
 clean copy of it. By the time St. Columbkille had finished his 
 copy, somebody, who had watched him at the work, went and 
 told St. Finnian that the young man had made a copy of his 
 psalter. The moment St. Finnian heard of it, he laid claim to 
 this copy as belonging to him. St. Columbkille refused to give 
 it up ; and appealed to King Dermott, the Ard-righ, at Tara. 
 The king called his counsellors together ; they considered the 
 matter, and passed a decree that St. Columbkille should give up 
 the copy; because, the original belonging to St. Finnian, the 
 copy was only borrowed from it, and should go with it ; and the 
 Irish decree began with the words, " Every cow has a right to 
 her own calf." Now, mark the action of Columbkille ; a saint, 
 a man devoted to prayer and fasting all the days of his life ; a 
 man gifted with miraculous powers ; and yet, under all that, as 
 thorough-bred an Irishman as ever lived. The moment he heard 
 that the king had resolved on giving back his precious book 
 he reproached him, saying : " I am a cousm of yours ; an.d 
 there you went agamst me!" He put the clanship— the 
 " sheanachus " — upon him. The king said he could not help 
 
216 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 it. What- did St. Columbkille do ? He took his book iindei 
 his arm and went away to Ulster to raise the clan of the 
 O'Neills. He was himself the son of their king ; they were a 
 powerful dan in the country ; and the moment they heard their 
 kinsman's voire they rose as one man ; for who ever asked a 
 lot of Irishmen to get up a row and was disappointed? They 
 arose ; they followed their glorious, heroic monk do^vn into 
 Westraeath, There they met the king and his army ; and, I 
 regret to say, a battle was the consequence, in which hundreds 
 of men were slain, and the fair plains of the country were 
 flooded with blood. It was only then that St. Columbkille 
 perceived the terrible mistake he had made. Like an Irishman, 
 he first had the fight out, and then he began to reflect on it 
 afterward. In penance for that great crime, his confessor, a 
 holy monk named Manuel, condemned him to go out of Ireland 
 and exile himself, and never again to return to the land of his 
 bu'th and of his love. Nothing is more beautiful or more 
 tender than the letter St. Columbkille wrote to his kinsmen in 
 Ulster. " My fate is sealed," he says, " my doom is sealed. 
 A man told me that I must exile mj'self from Ireland; and 
 that man I recognize as an angel of God ; and I must go." 
 With breaking heart and weeping eyes he bade a last farewell 
 to the green " Island of Saints," and went to an island among 
 the Hebrides, on the northein coast of Scotland. There, in the 
 mist and storms of that inhospitable region, there, upon a bare 
 rock, out from the mainland, he built a monastery, and there 
 did he found the far-famed school of lona. That school, 
 founded under the ej'es and tujder the influence of St. Columb- 
 kille, became the great mother and fountain-head of the grand 
 monasticism which was destined to evangelize so many nations, 
 and to Christianize all Scotland and the northern parts of 
 England. We shall return to St. Columbkille again, in the 
 course of the lecture, when I come to gather up the three great 
 periods of exile, in speaking of the one love which characterized 
 them all. ; 
 
 The next century following, the Irish monk, St. Cataldus, 
 penetrated through the length and breadth of Italy, preaching 
 everywhere ; until at length the Pope of Home made him 
 Bishop of Sarento, in the south of Ital^. Another Irish monk, 
 Romauld, went out in the eighth century and evangelized 
 Brabant and the Low Countries. Two Irish monks, Clement 
 
THE EXILES OF EEIN. 21? 
 
 aud Albiiius, were so celebrated throughout the schools oi 
 Europe iu the eiglith tviituvy, that they were known by the 
 name of the " Dissemiiuitors of AVisdom," or the " Philoso- 
 phers/' Iu a word, the Iiish monks of the seventh, eighth, 
 and uinth centuries were the greatest evangelists, and the 
 greatest apostles, and the most learned meu>that the world 
 tlien possessed. They gave to their island home the strange 
 title among the nations of the " Island of Saints ; " and the 
 sauctity that made Ireland the bright glory of Christendom, 
 they poured abroad upon their apostolic labours, until they 
 brought that message which sanctified Ireland home to every 
 people iu the then known world. 
 
 For two hundred years after Ireland's Catholicity was 
 preached to her by St. Patrick, no Catholic missionary was 
 ever heard to preach the name of Christ to the Saxons of 
 England. St. Patrick came to Ireland in the year 432. St. 
 Augustine came to England, for the first time, to jjreach to the 
 Saxons, in the year 596. Nearly two hundred years inter- 
 vened ; during which time St. Columbkille and his children 
 had evangelized the Scots and Picts of the north ; and when 
 the Roman monk, St. Augustine, and his Benedictines came, 
 they landed in the south of England. England was then 
 divided into seven kingdoms, under the Saxons ; and thirty- 
 six years after the death of St. Augustine, we find that the 
 Benedictine monks, who came from Rome, had only preached 
 to one nation out of the seven, what is now the county of 
 Kent — whilst the Irish monks had evangelized and preached the 
 Gospel to all of the other kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy. 
 Therefore, I claim that from Ireland, and Ireland's monasticism, 
 many of the nations of Europe, and more especially the Scots 
 and the kingdom of Northumbria (comprising all England north 
 of the Humber), lit their lamps, and entered into the glorious 
 light of Christ. Then the light that was in Ireland shone forth 
 from her. A.s when the clouds part and let the strong rays of 
 the noonday sun flood the darkened world, filling it with light 
 and joy and worship, so the clouds of ignorance and paganism 
 parted, and forth from the pure, ardent Ught of Ireland's 
 Catholicity came the faith which illumined, and brightened, 
 and evangelized, and saved all the surrounding countries during 
 that first great exodus of Ireland's faith. 
 
 Is there anything in all this to be ashamed of 1 There ar« 
 
218 LEOttJftFS ANi) SEBMONS. 
 
 nations in the world that must go up to the fountain-head of 
 their history, and touch, not heroes, not saints, but robbers and 
 the vilest men of the earth. It is worthy of remark, that 
 nearly every nation, when it goes up to the fountain-head of its 
 history, has to be very quiet and very humble, indeed. The 
 Romans, for'4ustance, who conquered the whole world, when 
 they trace their history to its fountain-head, come to a day 
 when the foundations of Rome were laid by Romulus and 
 Remus; and we find that the first inhabitants of Rome were 
 the banditti and robbers who escaped from the neighbouring 
 cities, and came for refuge into Rome — the offscourings of 
 Tuscany and Latium, and all the surrounding countries. We 
 find, when it was a question of propagating the Roman people, 
 the very first thing these robbers did was an act wortliy of 
 them : they rushed out, and, by force and violence, took the 
 wives and daughters of their peaceable neighbours. We find 
 that Romulus, the founder of Rome, with his own hand, shed 
 his brother's blood, as Cain did that of Abel. As it was in the 
 first days of Roman history, so it is with nearly every nation. 
 What is English history ? It takes us back to the time whec 
 troops of half-naked barbarians roamed over the hills and 
 valleys. Then came the Saxon, to take every liberty from 
 them, to rob the ancient Briton of his country, and his land of 
 freedom. What is this but the fountain-head of history traced 
 up to its barbarism and injustice. But trace up the far more 
 ancient history of Ireland. No man, even the noblest of all on 
 the earth, can point to such an ancestry as ours. Trace up 
 that history to the days when the Druids stood in Tara ; when 
 the crowned monarch on the throne, with the Brehons, sat to 
 administer justice — and listen to the glories of their song. 
 Trace it up to the very fountain-head, and you will find civili- 
 zation, and law, and power, and virtue, and glory Come 
 down but a day from out those pagan recesses of our earliest 
 history — come down but a day on the road of time, and you 
 step into the full light of Ireland's Christian holiness and glory, 
 Vhen she was the light of the world and the glory of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 Now, my friends, we pass to the second exodu's ; and here, 
 ftlas ! it is not the voluntary exile going forth from his native 
 land, reluctantly and regretfully, yet impelled by the high and 
 celestial motives that animate the heart of the Apostle and the 
 
THE EXILES OF EEIN. 21» 
 
 missionary ; it is not tlie saint looking bacls with teartul eyes 
 upon tlie land which he sacrifices and abandons for the posses- 
 sion of higher aims— the souls of men on earth and the higlier 
 place in heaven. No! the second exodus in Ireland was one 
 of the most terrible in her liistory. We know that from the 
 days when the English invasion took shape and form — we 
 know that in proportion as the English got firm hold of the land 
 — in proportion as they divided and consequently defeated 
 chieftain after chieftain, king after king — that in proportion as 
 they encroached upon the Irish soul, there was, at last, no 
 room upon that soil for a man who loved his native land. And 
 this, my friends, is one of the worst consequences of national 
 conquest ; this is one of the most terrible consequences of a 
 nation being subdued and enslaved : for, the moment the 
 foi'eigner or the invader sets his foot firmly on the soil, that 
 moment one of the highest aims and virtues — namely, the 
 virtue of patriotism — becomes treason and a crime. But, 
 ye.^terday, the people of Alsace and Lorraine gloried in the 
 name and in the glorj' of their beloved France. To-day, if 
 the man of Alsace or Lorraine only lifts his hat to the statue 
 of Prance, or says in public " Long live ancio.it and glorious 
 France," he is taken and put into prison, and tried as a male- 
 factor and arraigned as a traitor before the tribunals of the 
 country. And why ? Because the curse of a foreign invasion 
 and an unjust occupation is on the laud. If Germany, instead 
 of being the couqueror, were the conquered land, and the 
 French unjustly and wickedly took possession of the provinces 
 within the 1' iipire, thou the Gorman would not be able to love 
 his native land, or to express the emotions of his heart without 
 treason. So it is in Ireland; patriotism became a crime in 
 proportion as the English po\\-er advanced, and the words of 
 the poet aro 'iifortunately verilieii : 
 
 •' Unprized are her sons till they've learned tu betray, 
 
 UndistiiiguislieJ llioy live, if they shame not their sires ; 
 And the torch that would light them to dignity's way _ 
 Must be caught from the pile where their coiiutry expires. ' 
 
 What wonder then, that we find a people, naturally warlike, 
 naturally high-spirited, a people whose spirit was never crushed, 
 nor never knew how to bend, even under centuries of oppres- 
 sion and persecution— never ; " the spirit of Ireland," says Tom 
 
220 LEOTUEES AND 8EEM0NS. 
 
 Moore, ■' may be brokeu, but never wonld bend ; " what won- 
 «ier, I sa}-, that this people, this warlike population, with its 
 ligh-miiidedand time-honoured nobility, when they found that 
 tbey could not love their country at home, where there was in- 
 terminable and everlasting battles ; that tliey tui'ned their faces 
 to other lands, and sought elsewhere the distinction and military 
 glory which their nationality and religion deprived them of in 
 their native land ? So we find that, as early as Elizabeth's time, 
 and even in that of Henry VIII., Irishmen had begun to emi- 
 gi'ate ; and the armies of Spain, and Austria, and France were 
 glad to receive them ; for they well knew that wherever the 
 Irish soldier stood in the post of danger, that post was secure 
 until the enemy walked over the corpses of those who de- 
 fended it. 
 
 Amongst many other risings, Ireland rose almost to a man 
 in the year 1641. The Confederation of Kilkenny was formed, 
 and the Catholics of Ireland, unable to bear longer the cruel, 
 heartless, and bloody persecution of Elizabeth and her succes- 
 sors, banded together as one man. All the ancient nobility of 
 Ireland, all the Catholic chieftains — the O'Neills, the O'Don- 
 nells, the McBermotts, in the North ; and McCarthy Mor, in 
 the South ; the O'Eeillys, in Cavan ; the Clanricarde Burkes of 
 Connaught ; the Geraldines of Leinster — in a word, all the Irish 
 chivaliy and nobility came together, and they formed a National 
 Confederation for the national defence. For eleven years this 
 war was continued. An Irishman who had attained to the 
 highest rank in the armies of Spain — who was the most dis- 
 tinguished, the gi'andest soldier of his age — came over — leaving 
 his post at the head of the Spanish army, then the bravest and 
 finest in Europe — and landed on the shores of Ireland. His 
 name was the immortal Owen Roe O'Neill. He rallied the Irish 
 forces, and met on many a well-fought field the armies of 
 England. Thanks be to God ! though they poisoned him, they 
 could not conquer him with the sword. Thanks be to God ! 
 
 there is one Irishman upon whose grave may be written 
 
 " Here lies a man who never drew the sword for Ireland on 
 the battle-field without scattering his enemies like chaff before 
 the wind." He met, at Benburb, on the banks of the Boyne, 
 the English General, Monroe, with a large and well-disciplined 
 army. O'Neill formed his men into one solid column, flanking 
 them witli his artillery, and giving the word to advance, 
 
THE EXILES OP EEIN. 221 
 
 Straight to the very heart of the English army he pierced like an 
 insm-mountable wedge. The columns of the English army 
 swarmed on every side ; from every quarter they came. Still 
 on the Irish went, until they gained the brow of Benburb Hill ; 
 nor was all the chivalry of England able to stand against them. 
 When they gained the brow of the hill, O'Neill, on looking 
 around, could see the enemy flying on every side, as from the 
 avenging angel of God. 
 
 On that day, Ireland rang with the name of O'Neill, and 
 was reminded of the great Hugh, who, at the famous " Yellow 
 Ford," met the English Field-Marshal Bageual, at the head of 
 a large army. He not only routed him, but exterminated his 
 army, and scarcely left a man to go home to their strongholds 
 around Dublin, to tell, with blanched lips, the tale that they 
 had been destroyed by the Irish. 
 
 Cromwell landed in Ireland ; and Owen Roe O'Neill, at 
 the head of his army, advanced from the North to measure 
 swords with the Roundhead of England. Ah ! well they knew 
 the mettle the man was made of ; and they sent a traitor into 
 his camp to put poison into the Irishman's wine ! 
 
 In the death of Owen Roe O'Neill, the great Confederation 
 of Ireland was broken ; so that, with divided counsels, they 
 scarcely knew whom to obey ; until, on the 12th of May, 1652, 
 eleven years after the Confederation was established, Galway, 
 the last stronghold of the Irish, had to yield. The cause was 
 lost — lost again ! and the Irish nobility, and the rank and file 
 of the Irish army, rather than remain at home and serve as 
 soldiers with Cromwell, went to France, Austria, and Spain, 
 and left their mark upon the history of Europe, as that history 
 is proud to record. 
 
 On the 27th of October, 1652, Limerick fell. Forty years 
 later, Ireland is in arms again. This time the English king is 
 at their head— King James the Second. I wish to God he had 
 been a braver man ; he would not then have deserved the name 
 of " Sheamus ahocka t " He was too fond of taking out his 
 handkerchief, and putting it to his eyes, and crying out to the 
 Irish soldiers—" Oh ! spare my English subjects ! " and when 
 the Irish dragoons were sweeping down upon Schomberg, on 
 the slopes of the Boyne— when the Irish dragoons would have 
 driven the Brunswickers into that river, and the history of 
 Ijeland would have taken from the beautiful Boyne the name 
 
 II 
 
'. ^2 LEOTtTRBS AND SEEMONS. 
 
 of reproach it has to this day — James was the first to give 
 orders, "Stop a Httle! don't let them make so desperate a 
 charge ! " Any mau that kuows the history of his country 
 knows that, if we study the actions and valour of the Irish 
 army at that very Boyne — at Athlone — at Aughrim — although 
 they lost the field, they did not lose their honour ; but they 
 crowned their loss with immortal glory. At length the cam- 
 paign drew to a close; and when 1691 came — forty years 
 after the former siege of Limerick — the heroic city is once 
 more surrounded by the flower of the English army ; while 
 within its walls were ten thousand Irishmen, with Patrick 
 Sarsfield, Earl of Lucau, at their head, A breach was made 
 in the walls ; three times the whole strength of the English 
 army was hurled against the defenders of the walls of Limerick. 
 Three times within that breach arose the wild shout of the 
 Irish soldiers ; and three times was the whole might of Orange 
 William's armiy swept away from that breach. In the third 
 of these assaults, combatants appeared who are not generally 
 Been, either on the battle-field or at the hustings in Ireland. 
 The Irish women are not what you call " Women's rights 
 people." The women of Ireland do not go in much for 
 " women's associations;" and they do not go in at all for " Free 
 Love;" but they "went for" the English in the last assault. 
 The brave, dark-eyed mothers and daughters of southern Ire- 
 land stood, shoulder to shoulder, with their brothers and 
 fathers. In the breach they stood ; and, whilst the men de- 
 fended Irish nationality, in that terrible hour, the women of 
 Ireland raised their strong hands in defeuce of Ireland's purity 
 and Ireland's right. A''ell they might! for never had woman- 
 hood a more sacred, pure, and honourable cause to defend, 
 than when the wonaen of Limerick opposed the base and evil- 
 minded invaders of their country. 
 
 Well, Limerick yielded. King William and his generals 
 found they could not take the city ; so they made terms with 
 S&rsfield and his men, to the effect, that the Irish army were 
 to go out with drums beating, colours flying, and with arms 
 in their hands ; free to stay in Ireland, if they wished ; or to 
 join the service of any foreign power they pleased. The 
 Treaty of Limerick granted the Catholics of Ireland aa much 
 religious liberty as they enjoyed under the Stuarts. That 
 tjeaty was won by the bravery of the Iri-sh soldiers within the 
 
THt fiXILES OF EBIN. 223 
 
 sLiittered walls of Limerick. The Treaty of Limerick granted 
 the Irish merchants the same privileges and the same rights as 
 the English merchants had. But, as soon as Sarsfield aiid his 
 thirty thousand soldiers were gone, before the ink wad dry 
 upon the treaty, it was broken. The Lord Justices that signec" 
 it returned to Dublin, and a certain Mr Dopping (he was the 
 Protestant Bishop of Meath) preached a sermon ; and thb 
 subject of that sermon was, on the sin of keeping their oaths 
 with the Catholics ! The treaty was broken ere the ink upon 
 it was scarce dry ; and a period of confiscation and misery 
 most terrible followed. 
 
 Meantime, Sarsfield and his poor companions took them- 
 selves to Prance. "Exiles of Hope," they went in the hope 
 that they would one day return with their brave French allies, 
 and sweep the Saxons from off the soil of Erin. By the time 
 Sarsfield arrived in Prance (1691), there were thirty thousand 
 Irishmen in the service of King Louis. There were, at the 
 same time, some ten thousand in the service of Spain, and an 
 equal number in the service of Austria ; and it is worthy of 
 notice that the Irishmen of Leinster and of Meath joined the 
 service of Austria, with their leaders, the Nugents and the 
 Ivavanaghs — names still perpetuated in the Austrian army. 
 1 myself knew a Pield-Marshal Nugent, of Irish descent, in 
 the Austrian army. The men of the North went to Spain. 
 under the O'Reillys and the O'Donnells. At that very timt 
 Austria and Spain were fighting against Prance. So that, 
 whilst there were thirty thousand Irishmen in the PrencL 
 army, there were nearly twenty thousand in the other armies 
 There the bone and sinew and the blood of Ireland were 
 engaged in the work — the unhappy work — of slanghterinL' 
 one another ! Oh, how sad to think that the bravest soldier.s 
 that ever stood — the bravest in the world — that they shotil.i 
 be thus employed, fighting for causes of which they kne\\ 
 nothing, and for monarchs who cared nothing about them : 
 and the hands whicii should have been joined for Ireland, iu 
 some glorious effort for Irish purposes, were actually imbrued in 
 their brothers' blood on many a battle-field in Europe. Sars- 
 field, shortly after his arrival with his Connaught men and Mu;i- 
 ster'men, took service with King Louis of Prance He fiisi 
 crossed swords with the English at the siege of a town of 
 Flanders. There he so behaved with his Irishmen, and sr 
 
•:24 LiiotuEtes AiJb sESitoNB, 
 
 thorouglily cleared the field, so completely swept away the 
 English that were opposed to him, bearing dowu upon them 
 when they first wavered, with the awful dash of Lord Clare's 
 dragoons^ that Sarsfield was created a Marshal of France. 
 ^Ve find him again at the Battle of Landen. He is at the head 
 of the Irish Brigade, and opposed to him is King William — 
 Orange William — whom he had often met upon many a field 
 before. Now the close of a hard-fought day is approaching. 
 The English, with their Dutch auxiliaries, are in full flight. 
 Sarsfield, with his sword in hand, was at the head of his troops ; 
 when suddenly a musket-ball struck that heroic breast, and he 
 falls upon the field of glory. When the film of death was 
 coming over his eyes, he placed his hand unconsciously to the 
 wound, and withdrawing it covered with his heart's blood, he 
 cried : " God, that this blood were shed for Ireland !" 
 
 The fortunes of the French were now in the ascendant, from 
 the year 1691 tc 1696. Then the powerful Duke of Marl- 
 liorough arose wiih Prince Eugene, at the head of the Austrian 
 army; and France began to suffer reverses. The star of 
 France began to go dovyi. Marlborough conquered on many 
 a glorious field, and with the English soldiers drove the French 
 before him, at Malplaquet, at Oudenard, at Ramillies, and other 
 jjlaces. But it is a singular thing, which history records, that 
 i:i every one of these battles, in which the French were defeated, 
 the English, often in the hour of their victory, had to fly 
 before the Irish Brigade. So the poet says: 
 
 " When on EamiUies' bloody field. 
 The baffled French were forced to yield, 
 The victor Saxons backward reeled, 
 Before the charge of Clare's Dragoons." 
 
 Yes, the French army on that day were routed ; but there was 
 one division of that army that retired from the field victorious, 
 and with the English standards which they had captured is 
 their hands. And this was the Irish Brigade. 
 
 Years followed years, but the strength of the exiles was 
 still kept up by the hope that they would one day return to 
 Ireland, and strike a blow for their dear old land. Years 
 followed years — Sarsfield was in his grave more than forty 
 years. Franc© was still playing a losing game in the war of 
 the Spanish succession. Marshal Saxe arose, and with King 
 Louis XIV. laid siege to Tonrnay, in Flanders. He had 
 
THE EXILES OP ERIN. 225 
 
 seventy-five thousand men under his command. Whilst he 
 was still besieging the city, the Duke of Cumberland, the son 
 of George II. — one of the most awful wretches that ever cursed 
 the face of the earth with his presence ; a man whose heart 
 knew no pity ; a man who mowed down the poor Highlanders 
 at CuUoden ; a man whose heart knew no love, whose passions 
 knew no restraint ; whose name to this day is spoken by 
 every Englishman in a whisper, as if he was ashamed of it- 
 he commanded fifty-five thousand men, mostly English, with 
 some Dutch auxiliaries ; and marched at the head of this 
 tremen-^ous army to raise the siege of Touriiay. When the 
 French king heard of the approach of the English he took 
 forty-five thousand men from the siege, and leaving eighteen 
 thousand to continue it, went on with the rest, including the 
 Irish Brigade, to meet the Duke of Cumberland. They met 
 him on the slopes of Fontenoy. The French general took his 
 position upon the village of Fontenoy. It was on the crowning 
 slope of this hill, which extended on every side, he stretched 
 his line, on one side, to the village called St. Antoiiie, on the 
 other side, through a wood called De Barri's wood ; and there 
 intrenched, and strongly established, he waited his English foe. 
 Cumberland arrived at the head of his English army, and the 
 whole day long assaulted the Fiench position, in vain. He 
 sent his Dutchmen to attack St. Antoine ; twice they attacked 
 the village, and the lines — and twice they were driven back 
 with slaughter. Three times the English themselves advanced 
 to the village of Fontenoy ; three times were they driven back 
 by the French. They tried to penetrate into De Barri's wood, 
 on the left, but the French artillery were massed within ; and 
 again and again were they driven back ; until, when the evening 
 was coming, the Duke of Cumberland, seeing the day was going 
 against him, assembled all the veteran and tried soldiers of his 
 ai-my, and formed a massive column of six thousand men, six 
 pieces of cannon in front of them, and six on either side of them. 
 They were placed under command of Lord John Hay ; and 
 he adopted the same tactics which Owen Roe O'Neill adopted 
 at Benburb Forming the six thousand men in a solid column, 
 ho gave orders lo march right through the village of Fontenoy 
 
 right through the centre of the French— until they got into 
 
 their rear and thea to turn and sweep them off the field. 
 
 The word was given to march; and this I will sav— Irishman 
 
226 LEOTUBBS AND SEEMONS. 
 
 as I am to the heart's core — I have read as much of the world's 
 history as the majority of men ; and I must say that, never in 
 the annals of history have I read of anything more glorious 
 than the heroism of these six thousand Englishmen that day. 
 The French closed in around them; they battered tho head of 
 the column with cannon ; but that column marched oii like a 
 wall of iror These English marched through the Frecch lines; 
 their men fell on every side, but as soon as a man fell, another 
 stepped into his place. On they marched like a wall of iron, 
 penetrating into the French lines. In vain the French 
 tirailleurs hung upon their flanks; in vain did the French 
 army oppose them ; they penetrated it like a wedge ; in vain 
 did the King's Household Cavalry charge upon them ; they were 
 scattered by the English fire; until at length, King Louis 
 (taught in the school of misfortune) turned his rein to fly. 
 Marshal Saxe stopped him. "Not yet, my liege," he said. 
 "Come up. Lord Glare, with your Irish. Jag an bcalat, 
 clear the way!" Oh! to hear the wild cheer with which the 
 Irish Brigade rushed into the fight that day ! This glorious 
 victory is thus recorded by one of Ireland's greatest poets, the 
 illustrious and immortal Thomas Davis : 
 
 " Thrice, at the huts of Fontenoy, the English column failecl. 
 And, twice, the lines of Saint Antoine, the Dutch in vain. assailed; 
 For town and slope were filled with fort and flanking batterf , 
 And well they swept the English ranks, and Dutch auxiliary. 
 As vainly through De Barn's wood the British soldiers burst. 
 The French artillery drove them back, diminished and dispersed. 
 The blooily Duke of Cumberland beheld with anxious eye, 
 And ordered up his last reserve, his latest chance to try: 
 On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, how fast his Generals ride ! 
 And mustering come his chosen troops, like clouds at eventide- 
 Six thousand English veterans in stately column tread, 
 Their cannon blaze in front and flank; Lord Hay is at their head; 
 Steady they step adown the slope— steady they climb the hill; 
 Steady they load — steady they fire, moving right onward s*Ul. 
 Betwixt the wood and Fontenoy, as through a furnace blast, 
 Through rampart, trench, and palisade, and buUets showeruig fast; 
 And on the open plain above they rose, and kept their course, 
 With ready fire and grim resolve, that mocked at hostile force; 
 Past Fontenoy, past Fontenoy, Avhile thinner grew their ranks — 
 They break, as broke the Zuyder Zee through Holland's ocean banka. 
 
 More idly than the -'ummer flies, French tirailleurs rush round; 
 As stubble to the lava tide, French squadrons strew the groond; 
 
THE EXILES OP EBIN. 227 
 
 Bomb-ahell, and grape, and round-shot tore; still on they marched and 
 
 fired — 
 Fast, from each volley, grenadier and voltigeur retired. 
 ' Push on, my household cavalry ! ' King Louia madly cried; 
 To death they rush, but rude their shock— not unavenged they died 
 On through the camp the column trod — Kiug Louis turns hia rein; 
 ' Not yet, my liege," Saxe interposed, 'the Irish troops remain.' 
 And Fontonoy, famed Fontenoy, had been a Waterloo, 
 Were not these exiles ready then, fresh, vehement, and true. 
 
 'Lord Clare,' he saya, 'you have your wish — there are your .'^axon 
 
 foes!' 
 The Marshal almost smiles to see, so furiously he goes ! 
 How fierce the look these exUes wear, who're wont to be so gay — 
 The treasured wrongs of fifty years are in their hearts to-<lay— 
 The treaty broken, ere the ink wherewith 'twas writ could dry ; 
 Their plundered homes, their ruined shrines, their women's parting cry; 
 Their pritsthood hunted down like wolves, their country overthrown; — 
 £ach looks, as if revenge for all were staked on him alone. 
 On Fonteiioy, on Fontenoy, nor ever yet elsewhere, 
 Rushed on to fight a nobler band than those proud exiles were, 
 
 O'Brien's voiop is hoarse with joy, as, halting, he commands, 
 
 ' Fix bay 'nets ' — ' Charge ! ' Like mountain storm rush on these fiery 
 
 banas . 
 Thin is the English column now, and faint their volleys grow, 
 STet must'ring all the strength they have, they make a gallant show. 
 They dreas their lanks upon the hill to face that battle wind — 
 Their bayonets the breakers' foam; like rocks the men behind ! 
 One volley crashes from their line, when, through the surging smoke, 
 With empty guns clutched in their hands, the headlong Irish broke. 
 On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, hark to that fierce huzza! 
 "Revenge: remember Limerick ! dash down the Sassanaoh I " 
 
 Like lion» leaping at a fold when mad with hunger's pang. 
 
 Right up asjainst the Engli-^h line the Irish exiles sprang : 
 
 Bright was their bteel, 'tis bloody now; their guns are filled with gore j 
 
 Through shattered ranks, and severed files, and trampled flags they tore. 
 
 The English strove with desperate strength; paused, rallied, staggered, 
 
 fled - 
 The green hill-side is matted close with dying and with dead. 
 Across the plain, and far away passed on that hideous wrack, 
 WhOe ca^.'^lier and fantassin dash in upon their track. 
 On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, like eagles in the sun, 
 With bUxsiy plumes the Irish stand— the field is fought and won ! " 
 
 So they fought, sci-viog in France, in Spain, and in Austria i 
 but the hope that Irept th^ni up was never realized. 
 
 The French Revolution came, and the Irish TJiigade was 
 dis-solved. The French Revolution opened the way for tht» 
 
228 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 third exodus from Ireland. The Irish got a ray of hope when 
 the wilJ cry of freedom resounded on the battle-fields of 
 Europe The fever of the French Revolution spread to Ire- 
 land, and created the insurrection of '98. '98, and the men of 
 '98, were extinguished in blood. Bravely they fought, and well ; 
 and had Sarsfield himself, or the heroic Lord Clare, been at 
 New Ross, or at the foot of Tara's Hill, on the banks of the 
 Boyne, when the ninety Wexford men fought a regiment of 
 British dragoons, they would not have been ashamed of their 
 countrymen. 
 
 The year 1800 saw Ireland deprived of her Parliament; 
 and from that day every honest Irishman, who loved his 
 country, had an additional argument to turn his ej'es to some 
 other land. The making of our laws was passed over to the 
 English. They knew nothing about us; they had no regard 
 for us ; they wished, as their acts proved, to destroy the 
 industry of Ireland ; and some of the very first acts of the 
 United Parliament, when it was transferred to England, were 
 for the destruction of the commerce and trade of Ireland. 
 Some of the first things they did were to repeal the acts of the 
 glorious epoch of 1782, when the " Irish Volunteers," with 
 arms in their hands, were able to exact justice from the 
 Government of England. 
 
 But now, Ireland turned vith wistful eyes. From her 
 western slopes she looked across the ocean ; and, far away in 
 the west, she beheld a mighty country springing up, where 
 the exile might find a home, where freemen might find air to 
 breathe, and where the lover of his country might find a 
 country worthy of his love. We may say that the emig-ration 
 to America took shape and form from the day Ireland lost her 
 legislative independence, by the transfer of her Parliament to 
 England ; for, next to the privilege of loving his country, the 
 dearest privilege any man can have is that of having a voice 
 in the government and the making of his own laws. By the 
 Act of Union, a debased, corrupted, aud perjured Protestant 
 Irish Parliament declared, in the face of the world, that Irish- 
 men did not know how to make laws for themselves ; and if 
 they did not, no man can blame Castlereagh for taking them at 
 their own word. He was an Irishman, and he took the 
 legislative assembly from Dublin and transferred it to London ; 
 but if he did, it was that very assembly itself that voted iat 
 
THE EXILES OF ERIK. 229 
 
 its owu transfer aud its own destruction. In vain did Grattan 
 rise — the immortal Henry Grattan ; in vaiu did he thunder 
 forth in the cause of justice and of Irish nationality. In 
 vain did every honest man lift up his voice. The corrupt 
 legislature played into the hands of Pitt and Castlereagh, and 
 Castlereagh carried his measure ; and went on rejoicing under 
 his titles and honours, and increasing in power, and dignity, 
 and wealth ; until, one fine morning, he tried the keen edge of 
 a razor on his own throat. He cut his jugular artery, and 
 inflicted on himself a tremendous inconvenience. Whatever 
 things he had to fear in this world, I am greatly afraid he did 
 not. improve his position by hurrying into the other. But 
 what was so inconvenient to Castlereagh, was a great blessing 
 to Ireland, to England, and to the whole world; for it is a 
 great blessing to this world when any scoundrel makes his 
 bow and goes out of it. 
 
 Well, my friends, it is of these early exiles — the exiles of 
 '98 — the exiles who went in the preceding years, under 
 William's persecutions — the exiles who were banished by 
 Cromwell, when one hundred thousand men — and among them 
 four hundred and fifty priests of my own Order — were sent as 
 slaves to the Barbadoes, and there died in the sugar planta- 
 tions ; it was of these exiles that the Scottish poet, Campbell, 
 wrote his famous verses on the " Exile of Erin." The Unes of 
 this famous poem are of a time anterior to our own. He 
 speaks of the Irish exile as one who was playing upon a harp. 
 Now, up to about seventy years ago, the harp was a common 
 instrument in Ireland ; and the ancient harpers lived down to 
 the days of Carolan, who died a few years before the troubles 
 of '98 began. We can, therefore, enter into the sentiment of 
 the poet, who thus describes our unfortunate countryman, 
 driven by force and oppression from all that he loved and 
 cherished on this earth : 
 
 " There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin, 
 The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill; 
 
 For hie country he sighed, when at twilight repairing 
 To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill. 
 
 But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion, 
 
 For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean ; 
 
 Where once, in the fire of his youthful devotion. 
 He sang the bold anthem of Erin go Bragh. 
 
230 lBOTURES A.l'iD SEBMONS. 
 
 Oh, sad 13 my fate, said the heart-broken stranger, 
 
 The wild- deer ami wolf to a covert can flee ; 
 But I have no refuge from famine and danger • 
 
 A home and a country remain not for m( 
 Ah ! never again in the green shady bower! 
 Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend tjie sweet 
 Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers, 
 
 And strike the sweet num' ers of Erin go Bragh. 
 
 Erin ! my country, though sad and forsaken, 
 
 In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore ; 
 But, alas ! in a far foreign laud I awaken. 
 
 And sigh for the frieuds that can meet me no more 
 Oh, cruel fate, wilt thou never replace me 
 In a mansion of peace, where no perils can chase me ; 
 Ah ! never again shall my brothers embrace me ! 
 
 They died to defend me, or liv» to deplore. 
 
 Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wUd wood ? 
 
 Sisters and sire, did ye weep for its fall ? 
 Where is the mother that looked on my childhood ? 
 
 And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all ? 
 Ah, my sad heart, long abandoned by pleasure, 
 Why did it doat on a fast-fading treasure ? 
 Tears, like the rain-drops, may fall without measure, 
 
 But rapture and beauty they cannot recall. 
 
 But yet, all fond recollections suppressing, 
 
 One dying wish my lone bosom shall draw : 
 BIrin, an exile bequeathes thee his blessing, 
 
 Land of my forefathers Erin go Bi'agh ! 
 Buried and cold, when my heart stills its motion, 
 Green be thy fields , sweetest isle of the ocean ; 
 And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotioo 
 
 Erin mavcurneen, Erin go Bragh ! " 
 
 As the first of these exiles was tliat of faith, thai: that faith 
 might be dissemiuated throughout the earth ; aud as the second 
 emigration was that of the warrior, going forth full of hope — a 
 hope that was never realized — so, the last emigiation from Ire- 
 land was the emigration of love. It was the tearing of loving 
 hearts from all that they cherished, all that they loved in this 
 world ; the injustice and the tyranny of the laud possessors of 
 Ireland., the injustice of the wicked government of England, 
 gloating over the work of the " Crowbar brigade ; " the people 
 taken from their homesteads and flung into the ditches to die 
 like dogs ; no law protecting them ; no rights of their own to 
 he asserted ; no rights, save the right to suffer ; to be evicted 
 
THE EXILES OF EEIN. 281 
 
 »nd to die. Ah, who amongst us has ever seen the parting of 
 the old man from his sons and daughters ; who amongst us has 
 ever heai^d the heart-broken cry go forth when those loving 
 hearts were separated; who amongst us, that has seen 
 and hearJ, can ever forget those things ! No ; the youth of 
 Ireland, the bone and sinew, fled. Many aged men and women 
 remained in the land, and sat down upon their family graves to 
 weep, and to die with broken hearts. But one emotion, one 
 glorious passion ruled the emigrant of faith of fourteen hundred 
 years ago, the emigrant warrior of two hundred years ago, and 
 the emigTaut of love of the present day ; one glorious feeling, 
 one absorbing passion, and that was, their love for Ireland. 
 Hear the lament of St. Columbkille, one of Ireland's greatest 
 saints, greatest poets, and greatest sons, who banished himself, 
 in penance, to the far-distant island of lona. He tells us that, 
 when he wished to calm the sorrow of his heart, he generally 
 sat upon the high rocks of the island, and turned his eyes to 
 catch a glimpse of the faint outline of the shore of Ireland. 
 " Death," he exclaimed, in one of his poems — " Death in fault- 
 less Ireland is better than life without end, in Albin." 
 
 " Death, in faultless Ireland, is better than life without end, in Albin ; 
 
 What j')y to fly upon the white-crested sea, and watch the waves break 
 upon the Irish shore ! 
 
 What joy to row in my little boat, and land upon the whitening foam 
 ox the Irish shore ! 
 
 Ah ! how my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my Irish oak- 
 groves ; 
 
 But the noble sea now carries me to Albin, the laud of the raven. 
 
 My foot is in my little boat, but my sad heart bleeds ; and there is k 
 gray eye which ever turns to Erin. 
 
 Never, in *.his sad life, shall I see Erin, or her sons and daughters again. 
 
 From tlia high prow I look over the ocean ; great tears are in my gray 
 eyes, *3 I turn to Erin ; where the song of the birds is so sweet ; 
 whetti the monks sing like the birds ; where the young are so gentle, 
 and the old so wise ; where the men are so noble to look at, and the 
 women so fair to wed. " 
 
 " Young traveller," he says to one of his disciples, a noble 
 youth, returning to Ireland — 
 
 «' Young traveller, take my heart with thee, and my blessing ; earry 
 
 them to Comghaill of eternal light. 
 Carry my hear* to Ireland— seven times mav she be blessed— my body 
 
 to Albin. — 
 
J8f LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 Cany my blessing across the sea ; carry it to the Irish My heart U 
 
 broken in my bosom. 
 If death should come upon me suddenly, it will be because of my great 
 
 love of the Gael." 
 
 One consolation vouchsafed to him was, that he .had two 
 visions from God. He foretold that, many hundred years after 
 his death, his body should be carried back to Ireland, to rest 
 forever in the soil that he loved. This prophecy he himself 
 announced in these words: " They shall bury me first at loua; 
 but by the will of the living God it is in Down that I shall rest 
 in my grave, with Patrick and Bridget the immaculate — three 
 bodies in one grave." And so, in the tenth century, when the 
 Danes swept over lona, the monks took St. Columbkille's 
 venerated body, and brought it to Ireland, and laid it in the 
 Cathedral in Downpatrick, with Patrick and Bridget; and 
 there, as the old poem tells us — 
 
 " Three saints one grave do fill, 
 Patrick, Bridget, and ColumbkiUe." 
 
 The love he had for Ireland was a spirit common to all Irish 
 gflints. Whilst they were crowned with the highest dignities 
 of the Church in foreign lands, still, as we have the record in 
 the history of St. Aidan, the first Archbishop of Northumbria, 
 the founder of the famous Lindisfarne, whenever they wished 
 to enjoy themselves a little, they came together and celebrated 
 ill the Irish language, with sweetest verse, to the sound of the 
 +imbrel and the haip, the praises of their native land. 
 
 Nor less was the love which the brave exiles of 1691 bore 
 to Ireland. We see that, when the cry of battle came forth; 
 when, with the shock of arms, they met upon the battle-field, 
 never was the stout heart of the Saxon enemy smitten with 
 fear within him, until he heard, ringing forth in the Irish 
 tongue, " Remember Limerick, and dash down the Sassenaghl" 
 And well they loved their native laud — these noble chieftains 
 and brave soldiers of Ireland. Their love is commemorated in 
 tt^ poet's verse : 
 
 " The mess- tent s full, and the glasses are set, 
 And the gaUant Count Thorn ond is president yet ; 
 The vet'ran arose, like an uplifted lance. 
 Crying — ' Comrades, a health to the Monarch of France J 
 With bumpers and cheers they have done as he bade^ 
 £er King Louis is loved by The Irish Brigada 
 
THE EXILES OE ERm. 283 
 
 •A health to King James,' and they bent as they qnaffecl i 
 'Here's to George the Elector,' and fiercely they laughed ; 
 ' Good luck to the girls we wooed long ago. 
 Where Shannon, and Barrow, and Blackwater flow 5 ' 
 ' God prosper Old Ireland,'— you'd think them afraid. 
 So pale grew the chiefs of The Irish Brigade. 
 
 ' But, surely, that light cannot come from our lamp ? 
 And that noise — are they aW getting drunk in the camp? 
 ' Hurrah ! boys, the morning of battle is come, 
 And the genemk's beating on many a drum.' 
 So they rush from the revel to join the parade ; 
 For the van is the right of The Irish Brigade. 
 
 They fought as they revelled, fast, fiery, and true, 
 And, though victors, they left on the field not a few ; 
 And they, who survived, fought and di'ank as of yore. 
 But the land of their heart's hope they nevr saw more ; 
 For in far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade, 
 Lie the soldiers and chiefs of The Irish Brigade. " 
 
 Nor is the Irishman of to-day — ,/hether a voluntary or an 
 involuntary exile from the dear green island of the ocean — 
 ashamed of the love of the warrior for Ireland. It is not, per- 
 haps, the beauties of the land that we remember; it is not, 
 perhaps, the green hill-aides, crowned with the Irish oak, made 
 BO beautiful in their clothing of the Irish fern, that rise before 
 our eyes, and excite the tenderest emotions of our souls ; it 
 was not the beauties of Avoca that captivated the poet when he 
 
 « t; 
 
 Yet it was not that Nature had shed o'er the scene 
 Her purest of crystal, and brightest of green ; 
 'Twas not the soft magic of streamlet or rill— 
 Oh, no ! — it was something more exquisite still. 
 
 'Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom were near, 
 Who made ev'ry dear scene of enchantment more dear ; 
 And who felt how the best charms of nature improve,^ 
 When we see them reflected from looks that we love." 
 
 So, perhaps, it is not the material beauty of Ireland— the 
 green hill-side, or the pastoral beauty of glade or of valley;— 
 it is not, perhaps, the running brook, the mill-pond, the gieen 
 field, the mossgrown old abbey, around which we played m oui 
 youth— not so much these that command our love; but it is the 
 holy tender associations of all that we first learned to love, 
 that we first learned to venerate; the pure-minded, holy, gentle, 
 loving mother, the wise, strong, and considerate father; the 
 tender friend upon w^iom ve leaned, and whose friendship was 
 
234 LEOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 to US the earliest joy of our life : the venerable priest, whose 
 smile we sought as we bowed our youthful heads for his bless- 
 ing. These, and such as these, are the motives of our love for 
 Ireland. A.nd that love is as keen, as strong, in the heart of 
 the Irishman, far away from his native land to-day, as it was 
 in the heart of St. Columbkille ; as it was in the valour of the 
 Irish Brigade man as he rose to toast his heroic motherland. Well 
 is the emigrant of to-day, the Irish Exile, described and depicted 
 in the beautiful verses which recall his leaviug hia native land : 
 
 " Adieu ! — the snowy sail 
 Swells her bosom to the gale, 
 And our barque from Inuisfail 
 
 Bounds away. 
 While we gaze upon thy shore, 
 That we never shall see more. 
 And the blinding tears flow o'er, 
 
 We pray : 
 
 Mavourneen ! be thou long 
 In peace the queen of song — 
 In battle proud and strong 
 
 As the sea 1 
 Be saints thine oifspring still — 
 True heroes guard each hiU, 
 And harps by ev'ry rill 
 
 Sound free ! 
 
 Tho' round her Indian bowers, 
 The hand of nature showers 
 The brightest-blooming flowers 
 
 Of our sphere j 
 Yet, not the richest rose 
 In an alien clime that blows, 
 Like the brier at home that grows, 
 
 Is dear. 
 • ***•< 
 
 When I slumber in the gloom, 
 Of a nameless foreign tomb, 
 By a distant ocean's boom, 
 
 lunisfail I 
 Around thy em'rald shore. 
 May the clasping sea adore. 
 And each wave in thunder roar, 
 
 'iillhaUl' 
 
 And when the final sigh. 
 Shall bear my soul on high, 
 And on chainless wing I fly 
 
 'Thro' the bla% 
 
THE EXILES Of ERIJ^. 235 
 
 Earth's latest thought shall be, 
 As I soar above the sea — 
 ' Green Erin, dear, to thee — 
 Adieu ! ' " 
 
 Yes : if there be one passion that has outlived every other 
 ill the heart of the true Irishman, it is the inboru love for 
 Ireland, for Ireland's greatness, and for Ireland's glory. Our 
 fathers loved it, and knew how to prize it, to hold it — the glory 
 of the faith that has never been tarnished ; the glory of the 
 national honour that has never bowed down to acknowledge 
 itself a slave. And, my friends, the burden and the responsi- 
 bility of that glory is yours and mine to-night. The glory of 
 Ireland's priesthood ; the glory of St. Columba ; the glories of 
 lona and of Lindisfarne weigh upon me with a tremendous 
 responsibility, to be of all other men what the Irish priest and 
 monk must be, because of that glorious history ; the glory of 
 the battle that has been so long fighting and is not yet closed ; 
 the glory of that faith that has been so long and so well 
 defended and guarded ; the glory of that national virtue that 
 has made Ireland's men the bravest and Ireland's women the 
 purest in the world — that glory is your inheritance and your 
 responsibility this night. I and you, men, feel as Irishmen, 
 and as Catholics, that you and I to-night are bound to show 
 the world what Irishmen and Catholics have been in the ages 
 before us, and what they intend to be in the ages to come — a 
 nation and a Church that has never allowed a stain to be fixed 
 upon the national banner nor upon the national altar — a nation 
 and a Church who, in spite of its hard fate and its misfortunes, 
 can still look the world in the face ; for on Ireland's virgin 
 brow no stain of dishonour or perfidy has ever been placed. 
 In sobriety, in industry, in manly self-respect, in honest pride 
 of everything that an honest man ought to be proud of — in all 
 these, and in respect for the laws of this mighty country lie 
 the secret of your honour and of your national power and 
 purity , Mark my words ! Let Ireland in America be faithful, 
 be Catholic, be practical, be temperate, be industrious, be 
 obedient to the laws ; and the day will dawn, with the blessing 
 of God yet upon you and me, so that when returning to visit 
 for a time the shores from which we came, we shall land upon 
 the shores of a free and glorious and unfettered nation. 
 
8S(j tEOTUBES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THE TRUE 
 EMANCIPATOR. 
 
 ilY Dear Friends : I am come before you this evening to 
 assert a proposition which would require no proof, if all men 
 were of one mind regarding the claims of the Catholic Church 
 to be the Church of Christ. I assert for the Catholic Church 
 that she is the true emancipator of the slave ; and I say again, 
 that if men were of one mind touching her claims to be the 
 true Christian Church, this proposition would require no proof ; 
 for, any man who believes in the agency of Christ as per- 
 petuated in His Church, must at once conclude that one of the 
 highest and greatest of the duties of that Church is the duty 
 which her divine founder, Himself, came to accompUsh — viz. : 
 the work of emancipation. He came and found, not this race, 
 or that, not this class or order of men, or that, but all mankind, 
 and all races of men, enslaved in the direst form of slavery ; a 
 slavery that entered into their very souls ; a slavery that not 
 only destroyed their freedom of will, but also clouded, and 
 thereby destroyed, the clearness of their intelligence ; a slavery 
 that bound them helpless at the feet of the most cruel of all 
 masters, for that master was no other than the devil, the prince 
 and ruler of all mankind, the enslaver of the intellect, of the 
 will, and of the soul of man. The prophet of old had fore- 
 told of our divine Lord and Redeemer, that He came to break 
 the chains of man's slavery, to emancipate him, to take him 
 from out that deep and terrible servitude into which he was 
 fallen, and to endow him once more Tith "the freedom 
 of the glory of the children of God." Therefore He came, 
 ^ongst all the other titles that belonged to Him is that pre- 
 eminently of the emancipator of an enslaved and a fallen race. 
 And if His action is to continue in the Church, if His graces 
 are to flow on through that Church, and His light is to come 
 forth, pure, and bright, and radiant in the Church which He 
 founded, all we have to do is to find that Church ; and, bound 
 to her brows, we shall find the crown of the emancipator of 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUECH THE TRUE EMANOIPATOE. 237 
 
 the huraau race. That Church we Catholics kuow and believe 
 to be the mother that has " begotten us unto God, through 
 the Gospel." ^ 
 
 Now, my friends, how did Christ effect the work of His 
 emancipation ? I answer, that He emancipated or freed the 
 intelligence of man from the slavery of the intellect, which is 
 error ; and that He emancipated the will of man from the 
 slavery of the will, which is sin. And he carefully defined 
 what manner of freedom He came to found and confer, when 
 He said to a benighted race, whom He enlightened : '' You 
 shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
 And, to a degraded and corrupt race, He said : " I am come 
 that, where sin hath abounded, grace might abound still 
 more ;" and, in the abundance of His grace He called us unto 
 the freedom of the children of God. 
 
 Behold, then, the elements of emancipation, as found in the 
 actions and in the words of the Son of God, the Redeemer, the 
 Saviour, and the Emancipator. Truth ; truth broadly diffused ; 
 truth borne upon the wings of knowledge unto every mind. 
 Not speculation, but truth ; not opinion, but knowledge ; not 
 study of the truth, but possession of the truth. There, says 
 the Son of God, lies the secret of your intellectual freedom. 
 Therefore He lifted up His voice ; He flung abroad the banner 
 of His eternal truth ; He called all men to bear the sound of 
 His voice, and to rally round the standard of His truth and of 
 His knowledge. And the word which He spoke was borne upon 
 the wings of the angels for all future time, unto the farthest 
 ends of the earth, upon the lips of the preaching and infallible 
 Church which He founded. I say the " preaching Church " 
 which He founded, for " Faith comes by hearing ;" and the know- 
 ledge which emancipates the intelligence must come by a living 
 voice But, I add, as no other knowledge save that of the pure 
 truth as it is in the mind of Jesus Christ, thus delivered bj"- a liv- 
 ing voice, can emancipate the intelligence of man, therefore the 
 voice which He commanded to teach the world, must bear the 
 unfailing, and infallible, and unmixed message of the truth of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. For, if that voice can admit the 
 slightest blending of error, if that voice can falter in the de- 
 livery of the truth — or mix up the slightest distortion of error 
 with that truth — it ceases to be the voice of Jesus Christ, and 
 it only, in its teachings, substitutes one form of slavery for 
 
238 LBCTUKBS AND SKfiMONS. 
 
 tinother. Oh, if the men of our day would only understand 
 this J If the men who boast of their civilization would only 
 understand this : that whatever is not the truth is not the 
 voice nor the message of God ; whatever, by any possibility, 
 can be untrue, cannot be the voice of God ; if men would only 
 understand this : that there is no greater insult that we can 
 offer to a God of truth, than to take a religious lie — a distorted 
 view, a false idea — put it into our minds, and say : This is the 
 trutli of God; this is religious truth! But, no! We boast 
 to-day of our liberalitj' ; we boast to-day of the multitudes of 
 our sects, and of our religious institutions ; we boast to-day 
 of au open Bible, from which every man draws — not the 
 Word of God, for I deny that it is the Word of God — it is the 
 Word of God only when it is taken from that page as it liea 
 in the mind of God — we boast to-day that the Bible is open tc 
 every man to look iu it for the canonization of his own error, 
 lying in his distorted meaning given to that divinely inspired 
 page ; and then, we pretend that all this is the mark of religion ; 
 and the man who would indignantly resent a lie, told him in 
 the ordinary avocations and social duties of life ; the man who 
 would resent, as a deep injury, being taken in in a matter of 
 business, in the furnishing of an account, or any such traiisi- 
 torj' thing, is precisely the man that is most indifferent, and 
 careless, and most easily reconciled, when it is a matter that 
 lies between him and the God of trnth. whether he possesses 
 that truth or not. Yet, I say again, it is a disreputable thing 
 to be taken in by a lie, to believe a lie It is a mark of intel- 
 lectual and moral imbecility to cling to a lie, and uphold it as 
 the truth. And remember that, when it is a matter between 
 us and God — the interpretation of the message of God — the 
 tone that the voice of God takes in falling upon our ear ; re- 
 member that whatever is not true as God, is the worst form 
 of untruth, for it is a lie involviijg insult to God and destruc- 
 tion to man, and that the truth of God is declared to be, by the 
 Saviour of the world, the essential, primary element of that 
 emancipation with which Jesus Christ came down to free us. 
 
 But, dear friends, grand and magnificent as is the posses- 
 sion of that truth, luminous as the light is which is poured 
 into the soul from the Almighty God, through the eyes of the 
 mind, opening to divine truth, it is not enough to accomplish 
 the freedom of man. The soul of freedom lies not only in the 
 
THE OATHOLIO CHURCH THE TEUE EMANCIPATOR. 2S9 
 
 mind possessing truth, and thus shakiug off the chains of 
 intellectual slavery, which is error ; but it also lies in the will, 
 sanctified, strengthened, and purified by the divine grace of 
 Jesus Christ. Of what avail to you, my fellow-mea, or to 
 me, that we should know all knowledge — if a man is a slave 
 to his own passions — ^if every degrading passion and inclination, 
 of a base or an inferior nature, has only to ci'y out imperiously 
 to be instantly served and gratified, at the expense of the soul's 
 nobility and life, and at the expense of God's friendship and His 
 grace? Of what avail is knowledge to a man if that man be im- 
 pure"? Of what avail are the soundest principles or examples, 
 moral or divine, to that man who, holding them, does not act up 
 to them, but is dishonest ? And, therefore, tliere is another 
 and a more terrible slavery, even, than that of the intellect ; 
 and that is, the slavery of the will. Now, to meet this, Christ, 
 our Lord, the divine healer, the divine physician of our souls, 
 established certain means by which His grace. His strength, 
 His purity, was to be communicated to us, to our wills, just 
 as, by the preaching of the Gospel in the Church, her light is 
 communicated to our intelligence. And these means are, the 
 sacred morality of the Church's laws ; the sacred barriers 
 that she uproars between the soul and sin ; the sacramental 
 graces that she pours forth to heal the soul, and purify it, and 
 cleanse it again, if it be tainted and sullied by sin ; the agencies 
 that she holds in her hands to preserve that soul from a re- 
 lapse into sin, strengthening it so that it is able to command 
 all its passions, to repress all undue and corrupting inclinations, 
 to give a triumph to the spirit over matter — to the soul over 
 the body — until the Lord Jesus Christ, who was not only the 
 fountain of all truth, but the creator of all holiness, and its 
 representative, be reproduced again in the souls of all His 
 children, and a perfect people be reared up in sanctity to God. 
 Without this grace of the heart and the will, there is no 
 freedom. Without the agency of the Church, I say, as a rnle, 
 there can be no grace. Without her sacraments, the will of 
 
 man the will of man, which may be enslaved — the will of 
 
 man, which is enslaved whenever man 'is in sin — can never be 
 touched; for the sacramental hand of the Church alone can 
 touch it. And here, again, as the word of the Church's teach- 
 ing must be no other than the word of Jesus Christ himself— 
 pot only as it is written in tho inspired volumes, but as it Im 
 
240 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 in the mind of God, and, therefore, the Church is bound to ex- 
 plain it ; so, also, the graces of the Church, and the agency 
 that she has in her hands to touch the will, must be no 
 other than the very power, the very action, the very grace 
 of Jesus Christ. No other hand but His, no other power 
 but His, no other influence but His — the Lord, the Redeemer, 
 the Saviour — coming home to every individual man, can purify 
 that man's soul, and strengthen him to gain the victory which 
 conquereth the world, the flesh, and the devil ; the victory of 
 divine faith ! For, of what avail to me, I ask yon, of what 
 avail to me is it that a priest should lift up his hand iiid say, 
 " I absolve thee from thy sin," unless that word, that grace, 
 that power to do it, come to that priest from Jesus Christ? Of 
 what avail to me that a man pour water on my head, and say, 
 •' I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Grhost," unless that baptism, that water, had sacramental influ 
 ence, instituted by the Lord, endowed with a peculiar power 
 f«r this purpose — the cleansing of the soul — and be tinged, 
 mystically, with the saving blood of the Redeemer ? Of what 
 avail to me if I come to this altar, open my mouth, and receive 
 what appears to be a morsel of bread, unless the Redeemer of 
 the world had said, " Without me you can do nothing. And 
 now, I will come to you. Take ye, and eat of this ; for tnis is 
 my body and my blood 1 " Therefore, it is the action of Jesus 
 Christ that must remain as powerful, as pure, as merciful, in 
 the dispensation of the Church's grace — as her words must be 
 pure from error, and unmixed with error, upon the lips of the 
 Church's preaching. Behold the two great elements of man's 
 emancipation. Wherever these are not, there is a slavery. 
 He that believes a lie — and, above all, a religious untrnth — is 
 a slave. He that commits sin, is the slave of sin. What 
 avails it tLat you emancipate a man — strike the chains off his 
 hands^-send him forth, in name, a free man ; send him forth 
 with every constitutional right and civic privilege upon him ; 
 send him forth glorying in his freedom, without understanding 
 it, and, perhaps, unprepared to use it properly ? If you leave 
 that man's intelligence under the gloom of ignorance — if you 
 leave that man's will under the dominion of sin and of his own 
 passions, have you made him a free man ? You call him a free 
 man. But, God in heaven, and, unfortunately, the d^yil in 
 hell, laughs and spoffs at vow idpa of freedoip. 
 
THE OATHOLIO CHUEOH THE TRUE EMANOIPATOB. 241 
 
 And now, my fiietids, this being the mission, declared and 
 avowed by our Divine Lord— this, consequently, being the 
 mission handed into the hands of the Church to be fulfilled by 
 her, let us turn to the Church's history and see whether she 
 has been faithful to her duty in thus applying the elements of 
 Bmancipation to man. It is an historical question, and one that 
 I must deal with, principally, historically. Now, in order to 
 understand it, we are, first of all, to consider, what was the 
 state of the world when the Church began her mission ? How 
 did she find society? Was it barbarous or civilized? I 
 answer that the Church's mission, when she first opened her 
 lips to preach the Gospel, was to a most civilized and highly 
 intellectual people. Augustus was in his grave, but the 
 Augustan era, the prondest, the highest, and most civilized, 
 yet shed its influence over the world. All the wisdom of the 
 ancients, all the learning of Pagan philosophy — was repre- 
 sented in that august assembly before which, upon the hill of 
 Athens, Paul, the Apostle, stood up to preach the " Resur- 
 rection and the Life." All the light of ancient philosophy 
 was there. All the glory of art was there in its highest 
 perfection. All the resources then attained to in science 
 were there. Men were glorying in that dny, as tliey 
 are in this, in their material progress and in theii ideas, lint 
 how was this Society constituted with I'egard to slavery 1 Why, 
 my friends, in that ancient Pagao world, we read that, at the 
 time when there were sixty thousand inhabitants in the city of 
 Athens, the capital of Greece, there were forty thousand 
 slaves and only twenty thousand freemen. We read how, in 
 the society of Sparta, another city of Greece, the slaves had so 
 multiplied that the masters lived in constant fear lest their ser- 
 vants — their bondsmen — should rise up in their power and 
 destroy them. We read of Rome, that the slaves were in such 
 numbers, that when it was proposed in the Senate that they 
 should wear a distinct dress, it was immediately opposed on the 
 ground that if they wore a distinct dress they would come to 
 recognize their own numbers and strength, and would rise and 
 sweep the freemen from the soil. So much for the civili:xd 
 nations. What do we know of the barbarous nations ? Why, 
 Herodotus, the historian, tells us, that, on one occasion, a 
 nation of Scythians went forth and invaded Media ; and, when 
 they returned after a sHOcesaful war. flushed with triumnh and 
 
242 LEOT0BES AND SERMONS. 
 
 with victory, such Was tlie number of the slaves that they had 
 enslaved, from the misfortuaes of war and other causes, that, 
 actually, when they leturned in all their might, they found 
 that, in theii absence, their slaves had revolted, and they 
 were chased by their own servants — their own slaves— from 
 their own country. How were these slaves treated ? They 
 were treated thus. We read that when a certain Pretect of 
 Rome, Pedanius Secundus, was murdered by one of his slaves, 
 as a matter of course, following the law, there were four 
 hundred of that man's bondsmen taken, and they were all put 
 to death without mercy, without pity — four hundred innocent 
 men for the fault and the crime of one. Had the slave any 
 rights? None whatever. Had the slave any privilege or 
 recognition of any kind ? None whatever. His life and his 
 blood were accounted as of no value; and, what was still 
 worse, the highest philosophers of ancient Greece a?id Rome, 
 writing on this subject, laid down as a principle, that these 
 men were created by the gods, as they called them, for the 
 purpose of slavery ; that they came into this world for no other 
 purpose ; that they had no souls capable of appreciating any- 
 thing spiritual ; no feelings to be respected, no eternal nor even 
 temporal interests to be consulted; so that a man who had 
 the misfortune to fall into slavery, found himself not only 
 enslaved but degraded. 
 
 Such was the state of the world when the Catholic Church 
 began her mission. And now, what was the first principle 
 that the Church preached and laid down ? The first emancipat- 
 ing principle that the Catholic Church announced was this ; 
 She proclaimed that slavery was no degradation ; that a man 
 might be enslaved and yet not be degraded. This was the first 
 principle by which the Church of God recognized the nobility of 
 the soul of man — no matter from what race he sprang; no 
 matter what misfortune may have fallen upon him— that he 
 might be enslaved, nay, more, that his very slavery might 
 bring Us own specific duties upon him j but that slavery, in 
 itself, was no degradation. You may say to me, perhaps, thia 
 was a false principle. I answer, No ; it is not a false principle. 
 I am a slave, yet I am not a degraded man ; I 3,m a slave, for 
 many yeais age, I swore away, at the foot of the altar, my 
 liberty, my freedom, my will, and gave them up to God. Am 
 I. therefora degraded ? No. We are all slaves in thia sense— 
 
THE OATHOLIO CHUBOH THE TKUE EMANOIPATOH. 241; 
 
 that the Scriptures tells us that we have been bought at a great 
 price by our Lord Jesus Christ ; aud, therefore, that we are 
 the servants aud bondsmen of Him who bought us. But who 
 will say that such slavery as this is degradation 1 ^o, mj 
 friends. You may, perhaps, say to me, But we all admit our 
 servitude to God. Well, this is precisely the point ; and St. 
 Paul, proclaiming the first elements of the Church's laws and 
 doctrines touching slavery, declared that even a man who was 
 enslaved by his fellow-man was no longer a slave— that is, in 
 the sense of a degraded slave ; because Almighty God, through 
 His Church, recognized that man's soul — recognized his feel- 
 ings — and commanded him to be faithful, even as a slave — not 
 to the master, as to a man, but to the master, for the sake of 
 Jesus Christ, and as reflecting authority and power over him. 
 These are the express words of the Apostle ; and maik how 
 clearly they bring out this principle. He says : " Whosoever 
 are servants under the yol«, let them account their masters 
 worthy of all honour, lest the name of the Lord and His 
 doctrines be blasphemed." He goes on to say : " You, slaves, 
 obey those that are your masters according to the flesh, with 
 fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your hearts, as to Jesus 
 Christ Himself, not serving to the eye, as it were pleasing 
 tne.'i, but as the servants of Christ, doing tlie will of God from 
 the heart, with a good will, serving as to the Lord, not to man." 
 
 This was the first grand element of the Cliurch's emancipa- 
 tion She removed from the slave the degradation of his 
 slavery, by admitting that, slave as he was, lie could, in obey- 
 ing his master, obej' God — transfer his allegiance, as it were, 
 from the man to the principle of God's authority reflected in 
 that man; and thus serve, not as to the eye of man, but to the 
 eye of Jesus Christ 
 
 Secondly, the Apostle declares that slavery ceased to be a 
 degradation when tne master and the owner was as much a 
 slave as his bondsman. And this he declares in this principle : 
 "And you, masters," he says, "do the same thing as your 
 slaves, forbearing threatening, knowing that the Lord, both of 
 them aud of you, is iu heaven, and that there is no respect of 
 persons with Jim." "Masters," he adds, "do to your 
 servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you, also, 
 have a Master who is in heaven." The Pagan idea was that 
 the master was the absolute governor and ruler of his slave— 
 
244 LBOTUKES AND SERMONS. 
 
 the lord of life and death — and that that slave was created to 
 do his will ; and that for his treatment of his servant he was 
 not responsible before God. The Apostle, in the name of the 
 Church, imposes upon the master and the slave the common 
 servitude to the one God ; and then he lays down the third 
 great elemeut, by which he relieves slavery of its degradation, 
 when he says : " There is, in Christ, neither bondsman nor 
 freeman, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither barbarian nor Scyth- 
 ian, but Christ, the Lord, in all ; and ye are all one in Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 These, my friends, were the first words of consolation, of 
 hope, of manly sympathy with his fellow-men in slavery, that 
 ever came from the lips of a teacher, religious or otherwise, 
 from the world's creation. And these came from the lips of 
 the Catholic Church, speaking through her divinely inspired 
 Apostle. Therefore, I claim for her, that, in the beginning, 
 she was faithful to her mission, and that she proclaimed that 
 she came to console the afflicted in his slavery, and to lift from 
 him the weight of the degradation which was upon him. Then, 
 the history of the Church began. You all know, my dear 
 friends, how, five centuries after the Church was established, 
 the barbarians — the Goths, the Vandals, the Alans, and all 
 these terrible nations from the North, swept down over the 
 Roman empire, and destroyed everything ; broke up society ; 
 .educed it to its first chaotic elements ; and slavery was the 
 universal institution all the world over. Every nation had it. 
 The captive that was taken in war lost his liberty, not for a 
 day, but for ever. The man who was oppressed with debt was 
 taken for his debt, and sold into slavery. The Church of God 
 iilone was able to meet these barbarians, to confront them, and 
 to evangelize to them her gosp»el of liberation ; and to soften, 
 nnd gradually to diminish ^Tjntil at length, she all but destroyed 
 the existence of this unjust slavery. The Church of God — the 
 Catholic Church, was the only power that these barbaric 
 nations would respect. The Pope of Eome was the great 
 \ipholder of the principles of liberty; because liberty means 
 nothing more nor less than the assertion of right for every 
 man, and the omnipotence of the law, which insures him his 
 light, and defines that right. And how did the Pope act ; and 
 how did the Church carry out her mission i My friends, we 
 6nd that from the fifth century — from the very time that the 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUEOH THE TBUE EMANOIPATOB. 245 
 
 Church began to be known and had commenced to make her 
 influence felt among the nations— among the very first ordi- 
 nances that she made, were some for the relief of the slave. 
 She commanded, for instance, under the pain of censure, that 
 no inaster was to put his slave to death ; and you may 
 imagine under what depths of misery society was plutIged^ 
 and from what a state of things the Catholic Church has 
 saved the world— when I tell you that one of the ordinances 
 of a council in the sixth centuiy was, that if any lady (now 
 just imagine this to yourselves !) — being offended by any of 
 her slaves, or vexed by them, put the slave to death, that she 
 was to undergo several long years of public penance for the 
 crime that she had committed. What a state of society it was, 
 when a delicate lady, arraying herself, perhaps, for an evening 
 meeting — a ball, or a party — with her maiden slaves around 
 her, dressing her, adding ornament to ornament — that if one 
 of them made a slight mistake, the delicate lady was able to 
 turn round — as we read in the Pagan historians, and as Roman 
 ladies did — and thrust her ivory-hilted dagger into the heart 
 of her poor slave, striking her dead at her feet. The only 
 power that was recognized on the earth, to make that lady 
 responsible — the only power that she would listen to — the only 
 representative of the law that was thus to fling its protection 
 over the unhappy slave, was the power of the mighty Church, 
 that told that lady, that if she committed herself to such 
 actions as these, outside the Church's gates she should kneel, 
 in sackcloth and ashes ; that she should kneel far away from 
 the altar and the sacrifice ; that she should kneel there until, 
 after long years of weeping and penitence, as a public penitent, 
 she was to be permitted to crawl into the church, and take the 
 place of the penitent nearest the door. 
 
 And so, in like manner, we find the Church, in the progress 
 of ages, making laws, that if any slave offended his master, 
 and if the master wished to punish him, then and there, by 
 some terrible form of aggravated punishment, and if that slave 
 fled from his master, there was only one place where he could 
 find security, and that was the Church. For the Church 
 declared that the moment a slave crossed her door and entered 
 into her sanctuary, that moment the master's hand was stayed, 
 and the slave was out of his power, until the case was 
 fairly tried, and proportionate and just punishment imposed, 
 
246 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 as would be imposed on any other man who committed the 
 same offence. 
 
 Again, we find the same Church, in the course of ages, 
 imposing a threat of excommunication upon any man who should 
 capture a manumitted or emancipated slave, and reduce him to 
 slavery again. Further on, we find the same Church making 
 a law that when a bishop, or a cardinal, or a great ecclesiastic 
 died, all those in servitude to him should be immediately freed. 
 These were the freedmen of the Church, as they were called. 
 
 But, you may ask, why didn't she abolish slavery at once ? 
 And this is the accusation that is made against the Catholic 
 Church, even by such a man as Guizot, the great French 
 statesman and philosopher ; who indeed admits that the 
 Catholic Church, in her action, in her genius, always tried to 
 preach the subject of emancipation ; but why did she not do it 
 at once ? I answer, the Church of God is the only power upon 
 earth which at all times has known how to do good, and to do 
 it wisely and justly. It is not enough to do a good thing be- 
 cause it is good ; it must be well done ; it must be wisely 
 done ; there must be no injury accompanying the doing of it ; 
 nor no injustice staining the act. The Church of God could 
 not, from the very beginning, have emancipated, without doing 
 a grave injustice to the society which she would disturb, to the 
 owners of these slaves, against whom she might be accused of 
 robbery ; but the greatest injustice of all to the poor slaves 
 themselves, who were not prepared for the gift of freedom. 
 And therefore, taking her own time, proclaiming her principles, 
 acting upon them strongly, yet sweetly, and drawing to her 
 every interest ; conciliating men's minds ; creating public 
 opinion amongst society ; trying to save every man from in- 
 justice ; and, in the meantime, preparing mankind by faith 
 and by sanctity for the gift of freedom — she laboured slowly, 
 patiently, but most efficaciously in the great work of emanci- 
 pation. For, my friends, there are two injustices, and grave 
 injustices, which maj' accompany this great act of emancipa- 
 tion. There is the injustice which may affect the whole of 
 society, may break up public order, may ruin interests ; and 
 that is the injustice which a sudden and rash emancipation 
 inflicts upon the society upon which it falls, For instance, 
 as in Europe, in the early middle ages, slaves who, according 
 to St. Augustine, were enslaved, not from any inherent right of 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUBOH TUB TRUE EMANOIPATOB. 247 
 
 man over his fellow-raaa, but in punishment for their own sins 
 — these slaves formed a great portion of the public property. 
 Nearly one-half of mankind were enslaved to the other. The 
 consequence was that the disposition of property was affected 
 by them ; that the tillage and cultivation of the land depended 
 upon them ; that, in fact, the status and condition of the half 
 who owned the slaves would be affected ; so that by a sudden 
 and rash emancipation, the freeman of to-day would become a 
 slave, in the poverty and in the unexpected privation and 
 misery that would come upon him by the loss of all that he 
 possessed in this world. Was that injustice to be done ? No, 
 because it would defeat its own end. The end of all society is 
 peace and happiness. The end of all society is concord and 
 mutual straining to one end — each man helping his fellow- 
 man ; and the Church was too wise to throw such an element 
 of universal discord amongst all the other dissensions that 
 were tearing the heart of the world in those days, to throw in 
 the element of dissension, aud, to set one half (he world 
 against the other. 
 
 But far greater is the injustice which is done to the poor 
 slave himself, by a sudden, an unexpected, and a sweeping 
 emancipation. For, my friends, next to Divine grace and faith, 
 the highest gift of God to man is freedom. Freedom ! sacred 
 liberty ! — sacred liberty ! within these consecrated walls — even 
 as a priest I say, that sacred freedom is a high gift of God ; 
 but the history of our race tells us that it is a gift that has at 
 all times been most fatally abused ; and the poet says, with 
 bitter trath, that at an early age he was left 
 
 " Lord of himself —that heritage of woe.^ 
 
 Liberty — lordship over oneself — unfettered freedom is, in most 
 cases, a " heritage of woe," and especially when a man does 
 not understand what it means, and is not prepared for its 
 legitimate exercise. What is liberty? that sacred word, so 
 often used, so frequently abused, so little understood. Ah, my 
 friends, what is liberty 1 In our days men fall into two most 
 fatal errors ; they have a false idea of religious liberty, and they 
 have a false idea of civil libertj The false idea of rehgious 
 liberty is, that it consists in unfettered freedom for every man 
 to believe whatever he likes, and the false idea of civil liberty 
 is that it consists in unfettered freedom for every man to do 
 
248 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 as he likes. A nation is said to have religious liberty when 
 every man believes whatever notion of religion comes into 
 his head ; and consequently there are as many sects as there 
 are religions. Men say, " Grand ! glorious ! this is religious 
 liberty ! " But yesterday there was only one faith in Italy, for 
 instance ; to-day we hear men boasting : " Thirty thousand 
 hearers, ten thousand preachers," of the new evangelical Church 
 of Italy, and so on ; and in twenty years time, if this goes on, 
 we shall have Italy broken up into Quakers, and Shakers, and 
 Baptists, and Anabaptists, and all sorts of religious sects. Is 
 this religious liberty ? Men say it is. Well, if this be religious 
 liberty, all I can say is that the definition that Christ, our 
 Lord, gave of religious libertj' is wrong, for He said : " You 
 shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It 
 will follow from this that the more any nation or people ap- 
 proach to unity of thought, the more they approach to liberty, 
 provided that one thought represent the truth of Jesus Christ. 
 Civil liberty is also misunderstood. Many imagine, uow-a- 
 days, that the essence of civil liberty is the power to rise up at 
 any time and create a revolution — rise up against the rulers 
 and governors — against the fixed form of constitutional law — 
 and upset everything. That is the idea, for instance — the 
 popular idea, unfortunately — now in the minds of many in 
 Europe. In France, for example, nearly every man that knows 
 how to read and write has a copy of a constitution in his pocket, 
 which he has drawn out himself, to be the future constitution 
 of France ; and he is prepared to go out and stand on the 
 barricades and fight for his constitution, and kill his neighbour 
 for it. The idea of liberty, too, which has taken possession 
 of the minds of many, seems to lie in this — that every man 
 can do as he likes, and what he likes. Ah ! if this were 
 brought home to us ; if it were brought home to us that every 
 man could do as he liked ; that we could be assaulted and 
 assaHed at every hand's turn ; that every man should go out 
 with his life in his hand ; that there was no protection for a 
 man against his •"leighbour who was stronger ; and any man 
 who, boasting of his power, says : " I want your money — I 
 want your means — I am able to take it, and I am at liberty 
 to take it ; because liberty consists in every man doing as he 
 likes ;" how would you like this liberty, my friends ? No ; 
 the essence of liberty lies here ; the essence of liberty lies in 
 
tHE OATHOLIO OHUROa THE TRUE EMANOIPATOE. 249 
 
 recognizing aud defiiiiug every man's right, no matter what he 
 is, from the highest to the lowest in the state. Let every 
 inan liuow his own rights, be they great or small, be they 
 limited or otherwise ; let every man have the rights that are 
 just and reasonable ; let him know his rights ; don't keep him 
 b ignorance of them ; define them for him by law, no matter 
 what position he holds in society ; and when every man's 
 rights are defined and recognized, and incorporated in law, let 
 that law be put up on high ; put it, if you will, upon the very 
 altar ; aud let every man in the state — president, king, em- 
 peror, general, soldier, civilian — let every man, high or low, 
 bow down before the omnipotence and the supremacy of that 
 law. Let that law be there to define every man's rights, and 
 to secure them to him, aud let every man know that as long as 
 he keeps himself within the exercise of his own rights, as 
 defined by law, no power can touch him, no man can infringe 
 apon him. Leave him free in the exercise of these rights ; 
 that is liberty, the supremacy of the law, the omnipotence of 
 law, the law which is the expression of matured I'eason and of 
 authority, respecting aud defining every man's rights. Far 
 more free is the man who is only able to do this thing or that, 
 but knows that he can do them — that knows that these are his 
 rights, and no man can prevent him from exercising them — 
 than the man who has an undefined freedom, which is not pre- 
 served or secured to him by any form of defined law. 
 
 This is civil liberty. And so it is as great a mistake to say, 
 " I can do what I like, therefore I am free ; I have civil liberty ;" 
 as to say, " I can believe what I like, therefore I have religious 
 liberty." No, it is not true. Dogma, the truth of God, does 
 not leave us at liberty. It appeals to us, and we are bound to 
 open our minds to let into our intelligence the truth of God. 
 Any man who refuses it commits a sin. We are not at liberty 
 to refuse it. The law appeals to us, we are not at liberty to 
 disobey it. The quintessence of civil freedom lies in obeying 
 the law ; the quintessence of religious freedom lies in acknow- 
 ledging the truth. 
 
 And now, my friends, this being the case, I ask you what 
 greater injustice can you do to a man than to give him that 
 liberty, that unlimited freedom, without first telling him his 
 rights, defining his rights, establishing those rights by law, 
 and without teaching that man that he must respect the law 
 
260 tiECttTEES AND SEBMOiTS. 
 
 that protects him, that he must move withiu the sphere or 
 circle of his rights, and content himself in this 1 _ What greater 
 injustice can you do to society or to a man himself, than to 
 give him freedom without defining what his rights are? In 
 other words, is not the gift of liberty itself a misnomer ? Is 
 it not simply an absurdity to say to a man, " You are free I " 
 when that man does not know what is meant by the word 
 freedom ? Look at the history of emancipation, and will you 
 not find this to be the case °? The States have emancipated 
 just as the Church has emancipated ; but with this difference 
 — that the Church prepared the slave before she gave him 
 freedom; taught him his rights, taught him his responsibilities, 
 taught him his duties; and then, taking the chains off hi« 
 hands, said : " You are a free man. Respect your rights, 
 move in the sphere of your duties, and bow down before the 
 law that has made you free." The State has not said this. 
 A few years ago England emancipated the black population of 
 Jamaica; a sweeping emancipation. The negroes were not 
 prepared for it, they did not understand it. . What was the 
 Brst use they made of their liberty 1 The first use that they 
 made of their liberty was to fling aside the hoe, the sickle, the 
 spade, every implement of labour, and sit down idly, to famish 
 and starve in the land. 
 
 Now, amongst the duties of man, defined by every law, the 
 first duty is labour — work. The only respectable man in this 
 world is the man who works. The idler is not a respectable 
 man. If he were seated upon great Caesar's throne, and there 
 he would be an idler, I would have no respect, but only con- 
 tempt for him This was the first use that the negro popula- 
 tion of Jamaica made of their freedom. What was the con- 
 sequence? That their state to-day, after many years of 
 emancipation, is one of absolute misery ; whilst, during the 
 time they were slaves they were living in comparative comfort. 
 Because, small as the circle of their rights was, strictly defined 
 as it was, still it had its duties ; they knew their duties ; they 
 knew the law ; they were protected in the exercise of their 
 duties ; and the consequence was they were a thriving people. 
 Look to the Southern States of this Union. You have eman- 
 cipated your negro population with one sweeping act of eman- 
 cipation. I need not tell you that by so doing (I do not wish 
 to speak politics ; I do not wish to enter upon this question w 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHUROH THE TKUE EMANOIPATOE. 251 
 
 any way that would be, perhaps, insolent in a stranger — but 
 this I do say) — that in that sweeping emancipation, though 
 you did what the world may call a graud and a glorious thing, 
 you know well, gentlemen, how many you deprived of the very 
 means of subsistence by it, and what misery and poverty you 
 brought upon many families by it, and how completely, for a 
 time, you shattered the framework of society by it. Have you 
 benefited r.he slave population by it 1 — by this gift of freedom — 
 a glorious gift, a grand gift, provided that the man who receives 
 it knows what it is ; provided the man who receives it is pre- 
 pared to receive it, and use it as he ought. But, either to the 
 white man or the coloured man the gift of freedom is a fatal 
 gift unless he knows how to use it. Did you prepare these 
 men for that freedom before you gave it to them ? Did you 
 tell them that they should be as laborious as they were in 
 slavery 1 that labour was the first duty of every man ? Did 
 you tell them that they were to respect the rights of their 
 fellow-men, to whom, slaves yesterday, they are made equals 
 to day? Did you tell them that they were not to indulge in 
 vain, idle dreams of becoming a privileged class in the land 
 — governors and rulers of their fellow-men, to whom the law 
 only made them constitutionally and politically equal? Did 
 you tell them that they were not to attempt instantly, for- 
 cibly, to overstep certain barriers that the God of nature 
 set between them; but that they were to respect the rac» 
 that manumitted and emancipated them? I fear you did 
 not. I have had evidence of it. What use have they made 
 of this gift of freedom ? Ah ! children as they were, though 
 growa into the fulness of material manhood — children as 
 they were, without education, without knowledge— what use 
 could they make of their freedom ! What use do you and I 
 make of our freedom?— we who are born free, we whose 
 education and everything surrounding us, from our infancy, 
 dll tend to make us respect and use well that freedom. Is 
 there that purity, that self-respect, that manly restraint over 
 a man's passions— is there that assertion of the dommion of 
 the soul over the inferior nature stamped upon the Christian 
 
 \Vdt my frrends, still they are there before us The dreams 
 
252 LECTUBES AND SERMONS. 
 
 of the political economist will not teach them to use theu 
 freedom. The vain, ambitious, and, I will add, impious pur- 
 poses and theories propounded by those that would insinuate 
 that the coloured man was emancipated for the purpose of a 
 commingling of races, will not teach them to use their freedom, 
 the ambitious hopes held out of ascendancy before them will 
 not teach them to use their freedom. The political parties that 
 would make use of them for their own ends will never teach 
 them to use their freedom. You have emancipated them ; and 
 I deny that they ar« free. I say that they are slaves. You 
 have emancipated them. Tell me, what religious freedom have 
 you given them ? You have put an open Bible into the hand 
 of a man who only learned to read yesterday, and you have 
 told him, with bitter sarcasm, to go and find the truth of God 
 in a book that has puzzled the greatest and wisest of earth's 
 philosophers. You have sent him in search of religion in a 
 book that has been quoted by every false teacher from the 
 day that it was written, by prostituting that sacred inspired 
 word, and twisting it to lend a colour to his arguments. You 
 have sent teachers to them, teachers who began their lesson, 
 began their teaching, by declaring that, after they had laboured 
 all day, they might have been mistaken all through ; and that 
 they had no fixed, immutable truths to give to the poor 
 emancipated mind. You know it. What religious freedom 
 have you given them ? Have you touched their hearts with 
 grace ? You have given them, indeed, forms of religion, which 
 you boast are suited to them, because you allow these over- 
 grown, simple children to bellow and to cry out what seems to 
 be the word of praise and of faith. Ah, my friends, it is not 
 this corporeal exercise that will purify their hearts, strengthen 
 their souls, subdue their passions, and make them, first of all, 
 respect themselves, and then respect their fellow-citizens in the 
 land. You have emancipated them, but you have not freed 
 them. They shall be free only in the day when these poor 
 darkened intelligences shall have been led into the full light 
 of God's knowledge, and when the strong animal passions of 
 a race that, from whatever cause it be, seems to have more of 
 the animal than many other races of mankind ; when their 
 strong passions are subdued, their hearts purified, their souls 
 cleansed, graces received to be prized and to be retained — then, 
 and only then, will you have ewancipated the negro. You 
 
THE OATHOLIO OHTJECH THE TBtTE EMAKOIPATOB, 253 
 
 have not done it as yet. But it is the Church's work to do it. 
 It is her mission and her duty. She knows that He who came 
 and died upon the cross, died not only for you, but for these 
 children of the mid-day siui. She knows that every soul of 
 these coloured people is as dear to the heart of God as the 
 proudest and the best, the most learned and the most refined 
 amongst you. She knows that Lf she can only make a truly 
 faithful Catholic Christian out of the humblest of these 
 children of the desert, that she will have made something 
 more noble — grander and greater — than the best among you, 
 if you be sinners ; and she, therefore, sends to them her 
 clergy, her consecrated children — priests and nuns. She says 
 to the noblest and best in the laud : " Arise, go forth from 
 house and home, from father and friends ; go, seek a strange 
 land and strange people ; go in amongst them ; go, seek the 
 toil and the burning heat and the burden of the day; go, seek 
 the man whom many men despise ; kneel down at his feet and 
 offer him Jesus Christ." We have been told by a high 
 authority that this is an act of justice which England offers— 
 an act of reparation which Catholic England offers to America ; 
 for, great as has been the crisis of the late war, the slavery 
 which was in America — the highest ecclesiastical authority in 
 England tells us, sanctioned by the voice of history — has not 
 been your creation, my American friends ; it was England's 
 creation. It was forced upon you ; and from having begun 
 it became a necessity. And therefore England to-day 
 sends her children ; and they come with humility, but with 
 earnestness and zeal, and they say to you — to you, Catholica 
 — to you, many amongst you — perhaps a vast majority 
 amongst you — of Irish parentage or Irish descent — she 
 says to you, " Children of a faithful nation, children of a race 
 that has always been intellectual enough to recognize the one 
 truth, keen enough to know its value, energetic enough to 
 grasp it with a firm hand— lovers as you have been of freedom, 
 worshippers at the shrine of your religious and your national 
 Uberty— she asks you, children of a race of doctors, of martyrs, 
 of apostles, to lend a helping hand to the Catholic Church to- 
 day, and to aid her to emancipate truly those who have obtamed 
 only freedom in name, and to complete that work which cau 
 •nly be done by a touch of the hand of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Your presence Uere this evening expresses your sympathy 
 
 I 
 
254 LEOTUKES AND SERMONS. 
 
 with the high and noble purpose that has brought these chil- 
 dren, the consecrated ones of the Church of God, to this country ; 
 and they appeal to you, through me — and they have a right to 
 appeal to you, through me, and I have a right to speak to you 
 in this cause of freedom ; for, my brethren, I wear the habit 
 of the venerable and holy Bartholomew Las Casas, the first 
 Dominican that ever landed in America, in the very train of Chris- 
 topher Columbus himself — the first man that raised his voice 
 to proclaim for the poor Indian the birthright of that higher 
 freedom that consists in the knowledge and the grace of Jesus 
 Christ. We only ask you to help us to diffuse that knowledge 
 and that grace — ^that knowledge which is the freedom of the 
 intellect — that grace which is the freedom of the will, and 
 without which double freedom there is no emancipation ; for 
 the chains may fall from the hand, but the chain is still riveted 
 upon the soul. Freedom is a sacred thing; but like every 
 sacred thing, it must be seated in the soul of man Bodily free- 
 dom is as nothing unless the soul be emancipated 6y the holy 
 Church of God. Your presence here this evening attests your 
 sympathy with this great work ; and, my friends, as you 
 have contributed materially, I ask you to contribute also intel- 
 lectually and spiritually- -intellectually, by the sympathy of 
 your intelligence with the labour of those holy priests, and 
 (piritually, by praying to God, Who came to emancipate the 
 world, that He might make perfect the weak and inefficient 
 action of mankind and of the State, by pouring forth His Spirit 
 of light and grace amongst these poor children and strangers 
 who are in the land 
 
THE IKISH PEOPLE IN BELATION tO OATHOLIOITT. 256 
 
 THE IRISH PEOPLE IN THEIR RELATION TO 
 CATHOLICITY. 
 
 My Peiends : the subject on which I have the honour to 
 address you this evening is one of the most interesting that can 
 occupy your attention or mine. It is 
 
 CHBISTIANITY, OK THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS REFLECTED 
 IN THE NATfONAL CHARAOTEE OF THE IRISH RACE AND 
 PEOPLE. 
 
 1 say this subject is interesting, for nothing that can offer 
 itself to the consideration of the thoughtful mind, or to the 
 philosopher, can possibly be more interesting than the study of 
 the character and the genius of a people. It is the grandest 
 question of a human kind that could occupy the attention of a 
 man. The whole race comes under a meutal review ; the 
 history of that race is to be ascertained ; the antecedents of 
 that people have to be studied in order to account for the 
 national character, as it represents itself to-day amongst the 
 nations of the earth ! Every nation, every people under 
 heaven, has its own peculiar national character. The nation — 
 the race — ^is made up of thousands and millions of individual 
 men and women. Whatever the individual is, that the nation 
 is found to be in the aggregate. Whatever influences the indi- 
 vidual was subjected to in forming his character, establishing 
 a certain tone of thought, certain sympathies, antipathies, 
 likings or dislikings ; whatever, I say, forms the individual 
 character in all these particulars, the same forms the nation an> 1 
 the race, because the nation is but an assemblage of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 Now, I ask you, amongst all the influences that can be 
 brought to bear upon the individual man, to form his character ; 
 to make him either good or bad ; to give tone to his thoughts ; 
 to string his soul and to tune it ; to make him adhere to God 
 or abandon him ; to produce all tiiis which is called character 
 
2o6 LEOTUEES AND SEEMONfe. 
 
 —is it not perfectly true that the most powerful influence iB 
 that man's religion ? It is not so much his education ; for 
 men may be equally educated— one just as well as the other — 
 yet they may be different from each other as day from night. 
 But when religion comes in and fills the mind with a certain 
 taowledge ; fills the soul with certain principles ; elevates the 
 man to a recognition and acknowledgment of certain truths ; 
 imposes upon him certain duties and the most sacred of all 
 obligations, namely, the obligation of eternal salvation — when 
 this principle comes in, it immediately forms the man's character, 
 determines what manner of man he shall be, gives a moral tone 
 to the man's whole life. And so it is with nations, Amongst 
 the influences that forni a nation's character — that give to a 
 people the stamp of their national and original individuality — ■ 
 the most potent of all is the nation's religion. If that religion 
 be gloomy ; if it be a fatalistic doctrine, telling every man he 
 was created to be damned, you at once induce upon the people 
 or the nation that profess it a miserable, melancholy feeling 
 that makes them go through life like some of our New England 
 Calvinists, sniffling, and sighing, and lifting up their eyes, 
 telling everybody that if they look crooked, looking either to 
 the right or the left, they will go to hell. You know the 
 propensity of some people to be always damning one another. 
 If, on the other hand, the religion be bright, if it open a glimpse 
 of heaven, founded upon an intellectual principle ; if it lifts up 
 a man's hopes ; teUs him in all his adversities and his misfor- 
 tunes to look up ; gives him a well-founded hope that the God 
 that made him is waiting to crown him with glory, you will 
 have a bright, cheerful, brave, and courageous people. 
 
 Now, such a religion is the Christianity that Christ rounded 
 upon this earth. I assert, that if that religion of Christ be a 
 true religion— as we know it to be— that there is not upon this 
 earth a race whose national character has been so thoroughly 
 moulded and formed by that divine religion as the Irish race, to 
 which I belong. It is easy, my friends, to make assertions ; it 
 :s not so easy to prove them. I am not come here to-night to 
 (latter you, or to make crude assertions ; but I am come here to 
 lay down the principle which is just enunciated, and to 
 prove it. 
 
 What is the Christian character ? What character does 
 Uhnstiamty form in a man? What does It make of a man? 
 
ikE IRISH PEOPLE IN EBLATION +0 OAl'MOtlOlTY. 257 
 
 Men are born into this world more or less alike. It is true that 
 the Chinaman has no bridge to his nose, and that his eyes turn 
 inwards, as if both were occupied watching where the bridge 
 ought to be ; but that is an immaterial thing. Intellectually, 
 and even morally, all men are mostly born alike. The world 
 takes them in hand, and turns out a certain class of man equal 
 to its own requirements, and tries to make him everything that 
 it wants him to be God also takes him ia hand. God makes 
 him to be not only what the world expects of him, but alsc 
 what God and heaven expect of him. That is the difference 
 between the two classes of men ; the man whose character is 
 mostly worldly — who is not a Christian — and the man whose 
 character is formed by the Divine religion of Christ. What 
 does the world expect and try to make of the child? Well, it 
 will try to make him an honest man ; and this is a good thing ; 
 the world says it is " the noble.'^t work of God." Without 
 going so far as to say this, I say that an honest man is very 
 nearly the noblest work of God. The man who is equal to all 
 his engagements ; the man who is not a thief or a robber (the 
 world dues not like that) ; the man who is commercially honest 
 and fair in his dealings with his fellowmen — that is a valuable 
 man. The world expects him to be an industrious man ; a 
 man who minds his business, and tries, as we say in Ireland, 
 " to make a penny of money." Tliat is a very good thing. I 
 hope you will all attend to it. I shall be gladdened and 
 delighted, if ever I should come to America again — I will be 
 overjoyed — to hear if any one comes to me and says in truth — 
 "Why, Father Burke, all these Irishmen you saw in New 
 York, when you were here before, have become wealthy, and 
 are at the top of the wheel." Nothing could give me more 
 cheer. The world expects a man to be industrious and tem- 
 perate ; because if a man is not industrious, is not temperate, 
 he never goes ahead ; he does no good for society, his country, 
 or anybody. Therefore, this is also a good thing. But when 
 tlie world has made a truth-telling man, an honest man, an 
 industrious and a temperate man, the world is satisfied. The 
 ".vorld says : " I have done enough ; that is all I want." The 
 man makes a fortune, the man establishes a name, and the 
 world at once — society around him — offer him the incense of 
 their praise. They say : " There was a splendid man. He 
 left his mark upon society." And they come together and put 
 
'258 tEOTUEES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 in a subscription to erect a statue for him in the Central 
 Park. But they have not made a Christian. _ All those are 
 human virtues— excellent and necessary. Don't imagine that 
 I want to say a word against them. They are necessary 
 virtues. No man can be a true Christian unless he have them. 
 But the Christian has a great deal more. He is perfectly dis- 
 tinctive in his character from the honest, ;i-uth-telliug, thrifty, 
 and temperate man that the world makes. The Christian 
 character is founded upon all these human vuiues, for it sup- 
 poses them all, and then, when it has laid the foundation of 
 all this — the foundation of nature — it follows up with the 
 magnificent super-edifice of grace, and the Christian character 
 is founded in man by the three virtues — faith, hope, and love 
 Therefore, St. Paul, speaking to the early Christians, said to 
 them : Now, my frieuds and brethren, you are honest, you are 
 sober, you are industrious, you have all these virtues, and I 
 praise you for them ; but I tell you, " now there remain unto 
 you faith, hope, and charity ; these three." For these three 
 are the formation of the Christian character. Let us examine 
 what these three virtues mean. First of all, my friends, these 
 three virtues are distinguished from all the human virtues in 
 this : that the human virtues — honesty, sobriety, temperauce, 
 truthfulness, fidelity, and so on — establish a man in his proper 
 relations to his fellowmen and to himself. They hav© nothing 
 to say to God dii-ectly, but only indirectly. If I am an honest 
 man, it means that I pay my debts. To whom do I pay these 
 debts ? To the people I owe money to — to my butcher, my 
 baker, my tailor, etc. ; I meet then- bills and pay them. I 
 owe no man anything, and people say I am an honest man ; 
 that means that I have done my duty to my fellowmen. It is 
 DO direct homage to God. It is only homage to God when 
 that honesty springs from the supernatural and divine motive 
 of faith. If I am a temperate man, it means, especially to 
 the Irishman, that I am a loving father, a good husband, a 
 good son. An Irishman is all this as long as he is temperate; 
 but remember that the wife, the chUd, the father, and the 
 mother are not God. Temperance makes him all right in rela 
 tion to himself and his family around him. If I am a truth 
 telling- man, the meaning is, I am " on thi square," as thet 
 say, with my neighbours ; but my neighbours are not God 
 But the moment I am actuated by faith, hope, and charity 
 
THE lEISH PEOPLE IN KELATION TO OATHOLIOITT. 259 
 
 that moment I am elevated towards God. My faith tells me 
 there is a God. If that God has spoken to me, that God has 
 told me things which I cannot understand and yet I am bound 
 to believe. Faith is the virtue that realizes Almighty God and 
 all the things of God as they are known by divine revelation. 
 
 There are two worlds — the visible and the invisible ; the 
 world that we see, and the world we do not see The world 
 that we see is our native country, our families, our friends, our 
 business, our stores, our ships, our bales of cotton, our churches, 
 our Sunday for amusement, our pleasant evenings, and so on. 
 All these things make up the visible world that we see. But 
 there is another world, that "eye hath not seen, ear hath not 
 heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive," 
 and that world is the world revealed to us by faith. It is far 
 more real, far more lasting, far more substantial than the visible 
 world. We say in the Creed, " I believe in God, the Father 
 Almighty, Creator of all things, visible and invisible." Now, 
 ill that invisible world, first of all, is the God that created and 
 redeemed us. We have not seen Him, yet we know that He 
 exists. In that invisible world are the angels and saints. We 
 have not seen them, yet we know they exist. In that invisible 
 world are all the friends that we loved who have beea taken 
 from us by the hand of death ; those, the very sound of whose 
 name brings the tear to our eyes and the prayer of suffrage to 
 our lips. We see them no longer ; but we know that they stiU 
 live in that invisible world that " eye hath not seea ; " and, 
 therefore, we are " not unmindful of our dead, like others who 
 have no hope." Now, the virtue of faith, in the Christian 
 character, is the power that God gives, by divine grace to a 
 man to realize that invisible world, to realize it so that He 
 makes it more substantial to him than the world around him ; 
 that he realizes more about it, and is more interested in it, and 
 almost knows more about it, than the world around him. The 
 virtue of faith is that power of God by which a man is enabled 
 to reaUze the invisible, for the object of faith is invisible. Qui 
 Lord says to Thomas, the Apostle, " Because thou hast seen 
 thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have not seen and 
 have believed." 
 
 This is the first feature of the Christian character — the 
 power of realizing the unseen, the power of knowing it, the 
 power of feeling it, the power of substantiating it to the soul 
 
260 LECTURES AND SERMONS, 
 
 and to the mind ; until, out of that substantiation of the m- 
 visible, comes the engrossing, ardent desire of a man to make 
 that invisible surround him by its influences in time, that he 
 may enjoy its possession in eternity. This is faith. Conse- 
 quently, the man of faith, in addition to being honest, indus- 
 trious, temperate, truthful, and having all these human virtues, 
 is a firm believut It costs him no effort to believe in a mystery 
 because he cannot comprehend it, because he has never seen it. 
 He knows it is true ; he admits that truth ; he stakes his own 
 life upon the issue of that divine truth which he has appre- 
 hended by the act of the intelligence, and not by the senses. 
 
 The next great feature of the Christian charactei-, is the 
 virtue of hope. The Christian man is confident in his hope. 
 Grod has made certain promises. God has said, that neither in 
 this world, nor in the world to come, will He abandon the just 
 man. He may try him with poverty ; He may try him with 
 sickness; He may demand whatever sacrifice He will; but He 
 never will abandon him. Thus saith the Lord. Now, the 
 virtue of hope is that which enables the Christian man to rest 
 with perfect security, with unfailing, undying confidence, in 
 every promise of God, as long as the man himself fulfils the 
 jonditions of these promises. The consequence is, that the 
 Christian man, by virtue of this hope that is in him, is lifted 
 up beyond all the miseries and sorrows of this world, and he 
 looks upon them all in their true light. If poverty comes upon 
 him, he remembers the poverty of Jesus Christ, and he says, 
 in his hope, "Well, the Lord passed through the ways of 
 poverty into the rest of His glory, so shall I rest as He did, I 
 hope for it." If sickness or sorrow come upon him, he looks 
 upon the trials and sorrows of our Lord, and unites his own 
 sorrows to those of the Son of God. If difficulties rise in his 
 path, he never despairs in himself, for he has the promise of 
 God that these difficulties are only trials sent by God, and, 
 sooner or later, he will triumph over them ; perhaps in time, 
 but certainly in eternity. 
 
 Finally, the third great feature of the Christian character ia 
 the virtue of love. It is the active virtue that is in a man, 
 forcing him to love his God, to be faithful to his God ; to love 
 his religion, to be faithful to that religion, and quick, zealous, 
 and self-sacrificing in promoting its influence and its glory ; 
 to love his neighbour as he lovoo him.self ; especially to love 
 
tHE IttlSH tfiOPLE IN KBLATlON 10 CATHOLIOITIT. 261 
 
 those who have the first claim upoii him ; the father and mother 
 that bore him, to whom he is bouud to give honour as well as 
 love ; then the wife of his bosom, and the children that God 
 has given him, to whom he is bound to give support and 
 susteuauce, as well as love ; his very enemies — he must have 
 no enemy — no personal desire for revenge at all ; but, if there 
 be a good cause, he must defead that cause, even though he 
 smite his enemy — the enemy not of him, personally, but of 
 his cause ; but always be ready to show mercy and to exhibit 
 love, even to his enemies. This is the Christian man ; how 
 different from the mere man of the world! The Christian 
 man's faith acknowledges the claims of God ; his hope strains 
 after God ; his love lays hold of God ; he makes God his own. 
 
 Now, my friends, this being the Christian character, I ask 
 you to consider the second part of my proposition, namely, 
 that the Irish people have received especial grace from God ; 
 that no people upon the face of the earth have been so 
 thoroughly formed into their national character as the Irish, 
 by the divine principles of the Holy Catholic religion of Jesus 
 Chrisc. 
 
 How are we to know the national character ? Well, my 
 friends, we have two great clues or means of knowing. First 
 v>f all, we have the past history of our race, and the tale that 
 it tells us. Secondly, we have our observation of the men of 
 to-day (wherever the Irishman exists), wherever they assemble 
 together and form society — and the tale that that society tells 
 us to-day. 
 
 Let us first consider briefly ttie past of our nation, of our 
 race, and then we will consider the Irishman of to-day. Let 
 us consider the past of our history as a race, as a nation, the 
 history of faith, hope, and love foi» God. Is it pre-eminently 
 such a history? Is it such a history of Christianity, faith, 
 Aope, and love that no other nation on the face of the earth 
 can equal it ? If so, I have proved my proposition. Now, 
 exactly one thousand and sixty years before America was dis- 
 covered by Columbus, Patrick the Apostle landed in Ireland. 
 The nation to which he came was a most ancient race; derived 
 from one of the primeval races that peopled the earth — from 
 the great Phoenician family of the East. They landed in the 
 remote mists of prehistoric times upon a green isle in the 
 Western ocean. They peopled it ; they colonized it, they eatab- 
 
262 LECTURES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 lished laws, they opened schools ; they had their philosophy, 
 their learning, their science and art, equal, probably, to that of 
 any other civilization of the day. They were a people well- 
 known, in their Pagan days, to the ancient Egyptians and the 
 ancient Greeks. The name of the island— the name by which 
 we call it to-day — Erin, was only a name that came after the 
 more ancient name. For, by the Greeks and tht people of 
 old, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, our Ireland 
 was called by the name of Ogygia, or " the most ancient land." 
 It was spoken of by the most remote authors of antiquity ; 
 the most ancient Greek writers and other authors now extant 
 spoke of Ireland as the far-distant ocean island ; spoke of it as 
 a place of wonderful beauty, as a place of ineffable charm; 
 spoke of it as something like that high Elysium of the poet's 
 dream, an island rising out of the sea, the fairest and most 
 beautiful of all the sea's productions. 
 
 We know that our ancestors at a most remote period received 
 another colony from Spain. We know that the Milesians 
 landed in an island they called Innisfail, their " land of destiny." 
 We know that they came from the fair Southern sunny land, 
 bringing with them high valour, mighty hope, generous aspira- 
 tions, and au advanced degree of civilization; and the original 
 inhabitants of Ireland intermingled their race with the Milesians. 
 In that intermingling was formed the Celtic constitution which 
 divided Ireland into four kingdoms, all united under a high 
 monarch and universal king (Ard-rigfa) — the High King of Ire- 
 land. The palace of Ireland's king, as fitting, was built almost 
 in the centre of the island, two miles from the fatal Boyne. 
 The traveller comes through a beautiful, undulated land towards 
 the hill-top, rich in verdure, abundant and fruitful, crowned 
 with lovely wood on every sidfa. ft is the plain o* *' royal 
 Meath." He arrives at the foot of the hill— the summit of 
 that hill for centuries was crowned with the palace of Ireland's 
 
 kings. It was called in the language of the people " Tara" 
 
 the place of the kings. There, on Easter Sunday morning, i\ 
 the year 432, early in the fifth century of the Christian era, a 
 most singular sight presented itself. Ireland's monarch sat 
 upon his throne, m high council ; around him were the sove- 
 reign kings and chieftains of the nation ; around him again in 
 their ranks were the Pagan priests— the druids of the old fire- 
 worship ; around hun again, on either sides, on thrones, as if 
 
THE IRISH PEOPLE IN RELATIOK TO OATHOLIOITT. 263 
 
 they were monarchs, sat the magnificent ancient minstrela of 
 Ireland, with snow-white flowing beards — their harps upon 
 their knees — filling all the air with the glorious melody of 
 Ireland's music, while they poured out upon the wings of song 
 the time-honomed story of Ireland's heroes and her glorious 
 kings. Suddenly a shadow fell upon the threshold, a man 
 appeared — with mitre on head, cope on shoulders, and a crozier 
 in his hand, with the cross of Christ upon it. A-nd this was 
 Patrick, who came from Rome, to preach Christianity to the 
 Irish kings, chieftains, and people. They received him as 
 hecame a civilized and enlightened people. They did not stand, 
 like other nations, in a wild hubbub of barbarism, to denounce 
 the truth, as soon as they heard it, and to put the truth-teller 
 and the messenger to death , but they sat down — these kings, 
 these minstrels, these judges of the land — these most learned 
 philosophers — they disputed with Patrick; they brought the 
 keen weapons of human wisdom and of human intellect to 
 bear- against that sword which he wielded. Oh ! it was the 
 Bword of the spirit — the word of God — the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 And when, at length, that king and chieftains, all these druids 
 and bards, found that Patrick preached a reasonable religion ; 
 that Patrick proved his religion and brought conviction unto 
 their minds ; up rose at length the head of all the bards, and 
 of Ireland's minstrels — the man next in authority to the king 
 — ^the sainted Dubhac, the Archminstrel of the royal monarch 
 of Tara — up rose this man in the might of his intellect, in the 
 glory of his voice and his presence, and lifting up his harp in 
 his hand he said : " Hear me, oh high king and chieftains of 
 the land ! I now declare that this man, who comes to us, 
 speaks from God — that he brings a message from God. I bow 
 before Patrick's God. He is the true God, and as long as I 
 live this harp of mine shall never sound again save to the 
 praises of Christianity and its God." And the king and chief- 
 tains and bards and warriors and Judges and people alike rose 
 promptly ; and never in the history of the world — never was 
 there a people that so embraced the light and took it into their 
 minds, took into their hearts and put into their blood the light 
 of Christianity and its grace, as Ireland did in the day of her 
 conversion. She did not ask her Apostle to shed one tear of 
 sorrow. She rose up, put her hands in his, like a friend ; took 
 the message from his lips, surrounded him with honour and 
 
264 i-E<!vrrKE8 and SEimoNa 
 
 the popular veneration of all tlie people : and before he_ died, 
 he received the singular grace— distinct from all other saints— 
 that he alone, among all the other Apostles that ever preached 
 the Gospel, found a people entirely Pagan and left them 
 entirely Christian. 
 
 And now began that wonderful agency of Christian faith, 
 Christian hope, and Christian love, which I claim to have 
 formed the national character of my race as revealed in their 
 history. They took the faith from Patrick ; they rose at once 
 into the full perfection of that divine faith. They became a 
 nation of priests, bishops, monks, and nuns, in the very day of 
 the first dawning of their Christianity. The very men whom 
 Patrick ordaiiied priests, and whom he consecrated bishops, 
 were the men whom he found Pagans in the land to which lie 
 preached Christianity ; the very women whom he consecrated 
 to the divine service — putting veils upon their heads— the very 
 women that rose at once under his hand to be the light and 
 glory of Ireland — as Ireland's womanhood has been from that 
 day to this — were the maidens and mothers of the Irish race, 
 who first heard the name of Jesus Christ from the lips of St. 
 Patrick. 
 
 Well, I need not tell you the thrice-told tale how the epoch 
 of our national history seems to run in cycles of three hundred 
 years. For three hundred years after Patrick preached the 
 Gospel, Ireland was the holiest, most learned, most enlightened, 
 most glorious country in Christendom. From all the ends of 
 the earth students came to study in those Irish schools ; they 
 came, not by thousands, but by tens of thousands. They 
 k-ought back to every nation in Europe the wondrous tale of 
 Ireland's sanctity, of Ireland's glory, of Ireland's peace, of 
 Ireland's melody, of the holiness of her people, and the devo- 
 tion of her priesthood, the immaculate purity and wonderful 
 beauty of the womanhood of Ireland. 
 
 After these three hundred years passed away began the 
 first great effort which proved that Catholic faith was the true 
 essence of the Irish character. The Danes invaded Ireland, 
 and for three hundred long years, every year saw fresh 
 arrivals ; fresh armies poured iu upon the land ; and for three 
 hundred years Ireland was challenged to fight in defence of 
 her faith, and to prove to the world, that until the Irish race 
 *nd the Irish character were utterly destroyed, that thia 
 
THE IRISH PEOPLE IK EELATIOK TO OATHOLIOITT. 265 
 
 Catholic faith never would cease to exist in the land. The 
 nation — for, thank God, in that day we were a nation ! — the 
 nation drew the nation's sword. Brightly it flashed from that 
 scabbard where it had rested for three hundred years in 
 Christian peace and holiness. Brightly did it flash from thp.t 
 scabbard in the day that the Dane landed in Ireland, and the 
 Celt crossed swords with him for country, for fatherland, and, 
 iiuch more, for the altar, for religion, and for God. The fight 
 jreut on. Every valley in the land tells its tale. There are 
 many amongst us who, like myself, have been born and 
 educated in the old country. What is more common, my 
 friends, than to see what is called the old " rath," or mound, 
 sometimes in the middle of the field, sometimes on the borders 
 of a bog, sometimes on the hill- side, to see a great mound 
 raised up. The people will tell you that it is a " lath," and 
 Ireland is full of them. Do you know what that means'? 
 When the day of battle was over, when the Danes weio 
 conquered, and their bodies were strewn in thousands on the 
 field, the Irish gathered them together, and made a big hole 
 into which they put them, and heaped them up into a great 
 mound, covered them with earth, and dug scraws or sods and 
 covered them. In every quarter of the land are they found. 
 What do they tell? They tell us, that until the day cf 
 judgment, until when all the sons of men shall be in the 
 Valley of Jehosophat, no man will be able to tell of the 
 thousands and the tens of thousands and the hundreds of 
 thousands of Danish invaders that came to Ireland only to finrl 
 a place for a grave 1 Ah, gracious God ! that we could say 
 Ihe same of every invader that ever polluted the virgin soil of 
 Erin. Well did Brian Boroimhe know how many inches of 
 Irish land it took to make a grave for the Dane. Well did 
 the heroic king of Meath — perhaps a greater character than 
 even Brian himself, Malachi the Second, of whom the poet 
 says — he " wore the collar of gold which he won from the 
 proud invader " — a man who with his own hand slew three of 
 the kings and leaders and warriors of the Danish army — well 
 did he know how many feet of Irish soil it took to bury a 
 Dane. For, in the Valley of Gleuamana, in Wicklow, on a 
 June morning, he found them, and he poured down from the 
 hill-tops with his Gaelic and Celtic army upon them. Before 
 the aun set over the Western ocean to America (then tindia- 
 
266 LECTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 covered) there were six thousand Danes stretched dead in the 
 valley. Well, my friends, three hundred years of war passed 
 away. Do you know what it means ? Can you realize it to 
 yourselves? There is no nation upon the face of the earth 
 that has not been ruined by war ; you had only four years of 
 war here in America and you know how much evil it did. 
 Just fancy three hundred years of war! War in every 
 county, every province, every valley of the land, war every- 
 where for three hundred years ! The Irishman had to sleep 
 with a drawn sword under his "pillow, the hilt ready to his 
 hand, and ready to spring up at a moment's warning, for the 
 honour of his wife, for the honour of his daughter, and the peace 
 of his household, and the sacred altar of Christ. And, yet, at 
 the end of three hundred years, two things survived. Ireland's 
 Catholic faith was as fresh as it ever was ; and Ireland's music 
 and minstrelsy was as luxuriant and flourishing in the land as 
 if the whole time had been a "rime of peace. How grand a 
 type is he of the faith and genius of our people, how magnifi- 
 cent a type of the Irish character. .<\ man of eighty-three yeary 
 of age, mounted on his noble horse, clad in his grand armour, 
 with a battle-axe in one uplifted hand, and the crucifix in the 
 other — the heroic figure of Brian Boroimhe, as he comes out on 
 the pages of Irish history and stands before us, animating his 
 Irish army at Clontarf, telling who i+ ivas that died for them, 
 and who it was they were to fight iv Before the evening sun 
 set, Ireland — like the man who shakes a reptile off his hand — 
 shook from her Christian bosom that Danish army into the sea, 
 and destroyed them. Yet O'Brien, the immortal monarch and 
 King of Ireland, was as skilled with the harp as he was with the 
 battle-axe ; and as in the rush and heat of the battle, no man 
 stood before him and Uved—that terrible mace came down upoL 
 him, and sent him either to heaven or hell — so in the halls of 
 Kincora, upon the banks of the Shannon, when all the minstrels 
 of Ireland gathered together to discuss the ancient melodies of 
 the land, there was no hand amongst them that could bring out 
 the thrill of the gold or silver cords with such skill as the aged 
 hand of the man who was so terrible on the battle-field— a 
 Christian warrior and minstrel— the very type of the Irish 
 character was that man that, after three hundred years of in- 
 cessant war, led the Irish forces upon the fieU of Clontarf, 
 from which they swept the Danes into the sea 
 
THE IBISH PEOPLE IN EELATION TO OATHOLIOITY. 267 
 
 Then came another three hundred years of invasion, and 
 Ireland again fights for her nationality — until the sixteenth 
 century, just three hundred years ago — and then she was told 
 that, aftei fighting for nearly four hundred years for her 
 nationalilj, she must begin and fight again, not only for that, 
 but for her altar and her ancient faith. The Danes came back, 
 they came to Ireland with the cry, " Down with the cvoss— 
 down trith the altar ! " Harry the Eighth came to Ireund, 
 with the same cry ; but the cross and the altar are up to-day 
 in Ireland, and Harry the Eighth, I am greatly afraid, is— 
 down. 
 
 Three hundred long years of incessant war, with foor 
 hundred years before of incessant war, making the Irish people 
 one thousand years engaged in actual warfare — seven hundred 
 years with the Saxon, and three hundred years before that 
 with the Dane. Where is the nation upon the face of the 
 earth that has fought for one thousand years T Why, one 
 would imagine that they should all be swept away ! How, in 
 the world, did they stand it? We have been fighting a 
 thousand years — the battle begun by our forefathers has been 
 continued down — well, down to the year before last. The 
 sword of Ireland, that was drawn a thousand years ago, at the 
 beginning of the ninth century, still remains out of the scab- 
 bard, and has not been sheathed down to the end of the nine- 
 teenth century. Did ever anybody hear the like ? And yet, 
 here we are, glory be to God! Here we are as fresh and 
 hearty as Erjan Boroimhe on the morning of Clontarf, or as 
 Hugh O'Neil was at ihe Yellow Ford, or as Owen Roe O'Neill 
 was at the field of Benburb, or as Patrick Sarsfield was in the 
 trenches of T/mierick, or as Robert Emmett in the dock at 
 Green Street 
 
 Now, my irieuds, let me ask you, what did the Irish people 
 fight for, for six hundred years? For three hundred years 
 they fought with the Dane ; for three hundred years they 
 fought with England. The Danes invaded and desolated the 
 whole land ; the English, three times since Harry the Eighth 
 
 taking it down to the present — landed in Ireland and spread 
 
 destruction and desolation upon it. This Irish people fought 
 for six hundred years ; what did they fight for ? They fought 
 for six hundred years for something they had never seen : 
 they never saw Christ, in the blessed Eucharist, because He 
 
268 LBOTtJBES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 was hiddea from them under the sacramental veils of bread 
 and wine ; they never saw the mother of the God of Heaven ; 
 they never saw the saints and angels of heaven ; they never 
 saw the Saviour upon the Cross ; and yet, for that Christ on 
 the Cross, for the Saviour in the tabernacle, and for the 
 iMother of Purity in heaven, and the angels and saints, they 
 fought these six hundred j'ears. They shed their blood until 
 every acre of land in Ireland was red with the blood of the 
 Irishman, that was shed for his religion and for his God. 
 What does this prove? Does it not prove that beyond all 
 other races and nations, the Irish character was able to realize 
 the Unseen, and so to substantiate the things of faith as to 
 make them of far greater importance than liberty, than pro- 
 perty, than land, than education, than life ? For any man 
 who goes out and says, " I am ready to give up every inch of 
 land I possess ; I am ready to go into exile ; I am ready to be 
 sold as a slave in Barbadoes ; I am ready to be trampled under 
 foot or to die for Jesus Christ, who is present here, though I 
 never saw Him ; " — that man is pre-eminently a man of faith 
 The Irish nation for six hundred years answered the Saxon and 
 the Dane thus : We will fight until we die for our God who is 
 upon our altars. Now, I ask you to find amongst the nations 
 of the earth any one nation that was ever asked to suffer 
 confiscation, and robbery and exile, and death, for their faith, 
 and who did it, like one man, for six hundred years 1 When 
 you have found that nation, when you are able to say to me 
 —such a people did that, and such another people did that, 
 and to prove it to me, I will give up what I have said — 
 namely, that the Irish are the most Christian in their character 
 and in their faith of any people in the world. As soon as you 
 are able to prove to me that any other people ever stood so 
 much for their faith, I stand corrected ; but until you prove it, 
 I hold that the Irish nation and race are the most Catholic on 
 the face of the earth. 
 
 Now, my friends, if I want any proof of the Irish faculty 
 of realizing the unseen, why, my goodness, we are always at 
 it. The Irish child, as soon as he arrives at the age of reason, 
 has an intimate faculty of realizing the unseen. When he 
 comes out of the back-door and looks into the field, he imagines 
 he sees a fairy in every bush. If he sees a butterfly upon a stalk 
 in the field, he thinks it is a Leprechawn. I remembfir. when 
 
THE IRISH PEOPLE IN RELATION TO OATHOLIOITT. 269 
 
 a boy growing up, studying Latin, having made up my mind 
 to be a priest — I was a grown lad; and yet there was a certaia 
 old archway in Bowling Green, in Galway, to which there was 
 attached a tradition ; I know there are some here that will 
 remember it. It was near tlie place where Lynch, the Mayor, 
 hanged his son, hundreds of years ago ; near the Protestant 
 churchyard also, and that gave it a bad name. At any rate, 
 grown as I was, learning Latin, knowing everything about the 
 catechism, and having made up my mind to be a priest — I 
 was never able to pass under that arch after nightfall without 
 running for dear life. This superstition, if you will — this Irish 
 superstition — is at least a proof of the faculty of realizing the 
 unseen. Remember that, wherever superstition — especially 
 of a spiritual character — exists, there is proof that there is a 
 character formed to realize the unseen. 
 
 Now, my friends, consider the next great impress of the 
 Christian character stamped upon the Irish people. The 
 Apostle says " we are saved by hope." The principle of hope 
 imposes confidence in the divine promises of God, in the 
 certainty of their fulfilment ; a confidence never shaken, that 
 imever loses itself, that never loosens its hold upon God, that 
 never, for an instant, yields to depression or despair. I ask 
 you if that virtue is found stamped upon our Irish character ? 
 Tell me, first of all, as I wish to prove it, during this thousand 
 years' fighting for Ireland, were there ever a daj' in the history 
 of our nation whea Ireland lost courage and struck her flag? 
 That flag was never pulled down ; it has been defeated on 
 many a field ; it has been dragged in the dust, in the dust 
 stained with the blood of Ireland's best and most faithful sons ; 
 it has been washed in the accursed waters of the Boyne ; but 
 never has the nation, for a single hour, hesitated to lift that 
 prostrate banner, and fling it out to the breeze of heaven, and 
 proclaim that Ireland was still full of hope. Scotland had as 
 glorious a banner as ours. The Scotch banner was hauled 
 down upon the plains of CuUoden, and the Scots, chivalrous as 
 their fathers were, never raised that flag to the mast-head 
 again ; it has disappeared It is no longer " England, Scot- 
 land, and Ireland," as it used to be ; it is " Great Britain and 
 Ireland.' Why is it " Great Britain and Ireland ? " Why is 
 it not simply " Great Britain T" Why is the sovereign called 
 the " Queen of Great Britain and Ireland 1 " Because Ireland 
 
270 LEOTUKES AKD SBBMONS. 
 
 refused to give up her hope; and never acknowledged that she 
 was ever anything else except a nation. Well, my friends, it 
 was that principle of hope that sustained our fathers during 
 those thousand years they kept their faith. And the word of 
 Scripture as recorded in the book of Tobias is this : when the 
 Jews were banished into Babylonish captivity — men said to 
 Tobias — to the man who " was mindful of the Lord with his 
 teart, and when all ate of the meats of the Gentiles, he kept 
 his soul, and never was defiled with their meats; " men, I say, 
 said to him, " Where is thy hope ?" Tobias answered, "Speak 
 not so ; for we are the children of saints, and look for that life 
 which God will give to those that never change their faith from 
 him." Tnis is the inspired language of Scripture ; and well 
 the Irish knew it ; and, therefore, as long as Irishmen kept 
 their faith to their God and their altar, so they wisely and very 
 constantly refused to lay down their hope. The Christian 
 character is made up of hope as well as of faith and of love. 
 If Ireland laid down her hope in despair, that high note of 
 Christian character would never be in her. The Irish people 
 never knew they were beaten. Year after year — one day out 
 and another day in — whilst the nations around were amazed at 
 the tenacity of that people with two ideas— namely, that they 
 were Catholic, and a Nation — Ireland never lost sight of her 
 hope. What followed from this ? What was the consequence 
 of this 1 Enshrined in the national heart and in the national 
 aims, there has been — wherever the Irishman exists— there has 
 been the glory upon his head of the man whose courage, in the 
 hour of danger, could be relied upon. Every nation in Europe 
 has had a taste of what Ireland's courage is. They fought iu 
 the armies of Germany — in those Austrian armies^ where ten 
 thousand Irishmen, for thirty years, were every day encamped 
 in the field. They fought in the armies of Spain ; ten thou- 
 sand Irishmen encamped in the field. They fought in the 
 armies— once so glorious— of Prance, thirty thousand Irishmen 
 with Patrick Sarsfield at their head. Did they ever turn their 
 backs and run away? Never. At the battle of Ramillies, 
 when the French were beaten, and they were flying before the 
 English, the English, in the heat of their pursuit, met a 
 division of the French army. Ah ! that division was the Irish 
 Brigade. They stopped them in the full tide of their victory 
 and they drove them back and took the colom-s out of their 
 
THE lEISH PEOPLE IN RELATION TO OATHOLIOITT. 271 
 
 hands, and marched off after the French army. If any of you 
 go to Europe, it will be 'worth your while to go to an old 
 Flemish town called Ypres. lu the cathedral you will see old 
 time-worn flags and bauuers. If you will ask the sexton to 
 explain these flags to you, he will come to one of these flags 
 and say : " That was the banner that the Irish took from the 
 BugUsh in the very hour of their victory at Raraillies." King 
 Louis was going to turn, and fly at the battle of Fontenoy ; but 
 Marshal Saxe told him to wait for five minutes until he should 
 see more. " Your Majesty, don't be in such a hurry ; wait a 
 minute ; it will be time enough to run away when the Irish 
 run." Calling out to Lord Clare, he said, " There are your 
 men and there are the Saxons." The next moment there was 
 a hurra heard over the field. In the Irish language they 
 cried out, " Remember Limerick and down with the Sasse- 
 nach ! " That column of Englishmen melted before the charge 
 of the Irish, just as the snow melts in the ditch when the sun 
 shines strongly upon it. When a man loses hope he loses 
 courage; he gives it up. " It is a bad job," he says ; " there 
 is no use going on any farther." But as long as he can keep 
 his courage up, with the lion in his heart, so long you may be 
 sure there is some grand principle of hope in him. Ours is a 
 race that has almost " hoped against hope." I say that comes 
 from our Catholic religion — the Catholic religion that tells us : 
 " You are down to-day ; don't be afraid ; hold on ; lean upon 
 your God. You will be up to-morrow." 
 
 The third grand feature of the Christian is love; a love 
 both strong and tender ; a love that first finds its vent in God, 
 with all of the energies of the spirit and the heart and soul 
 going straight for God ; crushing aside whatever is in its path 
 of the temptations of men ; and in faith and hope and love, 
 making straight for God. Trampling upon his passions, the 
 man of love goes straight towards God ; and, in that journey 
 to God, he will allow nothing to hinder him. No matter whal 
 sacrifice that God calls upon him to make, ne is ready to make 
 it ; for the principle of sacrifice is divine love. Most assuredly, 
 never did her God call upon Erin for a sacrifice that Erin did 
 not make it. God sent to Ireland the messenger of His wrath, 
 tfie wretched Elizabeth. She called upon Ireland for Ireland's 
 liberty and Ireland's land ; and the people gave up both rather 
 than forsake their God- God sent Ireland another curse Lu 
 
272 LECTURES AND SEEMONS. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell — a man upon whom I would not lay an 
 additional curse, for any coiisideratlqp ; because for a man to 
 lay an additional curse upon Oliver Cromwell would be like 
 throwing an additional drop of water on a drowned rat. 
 Cromwell culled upon the Irish people, and said, " Become 
 Protestant and you will have your land ; you will have your 
 [lossessions, your wealth. Remain Catholic, and take your 
 choice — ' Hell, or Connaught.' " Ireland made the sacrifice ; 
 and, on the 25th day of May, 1651, every Catholic supposed 
 to be in Ireland crossed the Shannon, and went into the wild 
 wastes of Connaught rather than give up their faith. William 
 of Orange came to Ireland ; and he called upon the Irish to 
 iciionnce their faith or submit to a new persecution — new penal 
 laws. Ireland said : " I will figlit against injustice as long as 
 I can ; but when the arm of the nation is paralyzed, and I can 
 no longer wield llie sword, one thing I will hold in spite of 
 death and hell, and that is my most glorious Catholic faith." 
 If they did not love their God would tl.ey have dune this? 
 Would they have suffered this ? If they ditl not prize that 
 faith, would they have preferred it to their liberty, their 
 wealth, and their very lives ? No, no ! Patrick sent the love 
 of God and the Virgin Mother deep into the hearts of the 
 Irish ; and in our Irish spirit, and in the blood of the nation, 
 it has remained to this day. Wherever an Irishman, true to his 
 country, true to his religion, exists, there do you find a lover 
 of Jesus Christ and of Mary. 
 
 More than this, their love for their neighbour shows this in 
 three magnificent ways— the fidelity of the Irish husband to the 
 Irish wife, and the Irish son to the Irish father and mother, and 
 of the Irish father to his children. Where is thei-e a nation In 
 whom these traits are more magnificently brought out ? • Eng- 
 land told Ireland, a few years ago, that the Irish husbands 
 might divorce their Irish wives. Nothing was heard from one 
 
 TL V ''"^*^ *° *^^ °*^-®'' ^^^ ^ ^o"'' shout of a laugh. 
 Oh, listen to that! So a man can sejiarate from his wife! 
 The curse of Cromwell on ye !" England told the fathers of 
 Ireland that it Tvas a felony to send their children to school 
 And yet never did the Irish fathers neglect that sacred duty of 
 education. VVhen it was found that a man was sending hi« 
 children to school, he was liable to a fine and imprisonment. 
 m 8pit« of the imprisonment and th« fine, the Irish people, who 
 
THE IBISH PEOPLE IN EELATION TO OATHOLICITT. 273 
 
 never have been serfs, refused to be the slaves of ignorance ; 
 and Ireland was always, an educated nation. In the worst day 
 of our persecution — in the worst day of our misery — there was 
 one man that was always respected in the land next to the 
 priest ; and that was the " poor scholar," with a few books 
 under his arm, going from one farm-house to the other, with a 
 " God save all here ! " He got the best of the house, the best 
 bed, the cosiest place in the straw-chair. And the children 
 were all called in from the neighbouring houses and from the 
 village. He could spend a week from one house to another. 
 Every house in Ireland was turned into a school house at one 
 time or another. Hence, I have known men, old men of my 
 own family, who remembered 1782. I have seen them, when 
 a child, in their old age, and these men, brought up in those 
 days of penal persecution and misery, with its enforced ignor- 
 ance, were first-class controversialists. They knew how to 
 read and write ; they knew Dr Gallagher's sermons by heart. 
 There was no Protestant bishop or Protestant minister in 
 Ireland that could hold his ground five minutes before tbem. 
 
 The nation's love, the people's love, for that wliich was next 
 to their God — the very next — is the love of a man for liis 
 country. Is there any land so loved as Ireland, by its peojile ? 
 Sarsfield, dying upon the plains of Landen, is only a fair type 
 of the ordinary Irishman. There was many as good a man, as 
 heroic a man, in the ranks of the Irish Brigade, that fell that 
 day, as Sarsfield, who, in full career of victory, at the head of 
 Lord Clare's dragoons, following the British army, as they fled 
 from him ; William of Orange in their ranks, flying and showing 
 the broad of his back to Sarsfield, as, sword in hand, gleaming 
 Uke the sword of God's justice, the Irish hero was in full chase, 
 when a musket-ball struck him to the heart, and he fell dying 
 from his horse. The blood was welling out hot from his \ery 
 heart ; he took the full of his hand of his heart's blood, and, 
 rsising his eyes to heaven, he cried : " Oh, that this was shed 
 for Ireland ! " A true Irishman ! Where was the nation that 
 was ever so loved ? In the three hundred years of persecution, 
 take the " Bhreathair," the old Irish Friar, the Dominicans, 
 and Franciscans, who were of the first families of the land — 
 the O'Neills, the Maguires, the McDonnells, the McDermotts ; 
 down in Gal way, the Frenches, the Lynches, the Blakes, and 
 ihe Burkes These fair youths used to be actually smuggled 
 
274 LECTURES AND SERMONS. 
 
 out by night, and sent off the coast of Ireland to Rome, to 
 France, and to Spain, to study there. Enjoying all the delicious 
 cliraaten pf those lovely countries, surrounded by honour, 
 leading easy lives, filling the time with the study and intellec- 
 tual pleasures of tbe priesthood, still every man felt uneasy. 
 To use the old, familiar phrase, " They were like a hen on a 
 hot griddle," as long as they were away from Ireland, although 
 they knew that in Ireland they were liable to be thrown into 
 prison, or be subjected to death : .during ages of persecution, if 
 one fell in the ranks, another stepped into his place. Of six 
 hundred Dominicans in Ireland, at the time of Queen Elizabeth, 
 there were only four remained after she passed her mild hand 
 over them Where did they come from? From out of the 
 love of Ireland, and the heart and the blood of her best sons. 
 They would not be satisfied with honours and dignities in other 
 lands. No. Their hearts were hungry until they caught sight 
 of the green soil, and stood amongst the shamrocks once more, 
 And, now, I say to you — and all the history of our nation 
 proves it — I say, that the Irish race to-day is not one bit 
 unlike the race of two or three hundred years ago. We are 
 the same people; and why should we not be? We have 
 their blood ; we have their names ; their faith, theh traditions, 
 their love. I ask you, is not the Irishman of to-day a 
 man of faith, hope, and love? Who built this beautiful 
 church? Who erected this magnificent altar? Who made 
 the place for Father Mooney's voice to resound, pleasantly 
 tinged with the old Irish roll and brogue? 3e has 
 a little touch of it, and he is not ashamed of it. I remem- 
 ber once when a lady in England said to me, " The moment 
 you spoke to me, Father, I at once perceived you were 
 an Irishman; you have got what they call the brogue." « Yes, 
 madame," said I, " my father had it, and my mother had it 
 but my grandfather and grandmother did not have it, because 
 they did not speak English at all. Yes," I said, " I have the 
 brogue ; and I am full of hope that when my soul comes to 
 heaven's gate, and I ask St. Peter to admit me, when he hears 
 the touch of the brogue on my tongue he wiU let me in the 
 more willingly." But, I asked, who built this church? who 
 has covered Annsnca with our glorious Catholic churches? All 
 credit and honour to every Catholic race. All honour and 
 credit to the Catholic Frenchman, and to the Catholic German 
 
THE IBISa PKOPLE IN KELATION TO CATHOLIOITT. 275 
 
 The Grermaiis of this country — those brave men-, those sons of 
 CathoUcs ; those descendants of the great Roman emperora 
 that upheld for so many centuries the sceptre in defence of 
 the altar, are worthy of their sires. They have done great 
 things in this country ; but, my friends, it is Ireland, after all, 
 that has done the lion's share of the work. What brought 
 the Irishman to America, so bright, so cheerful, so full of hope 
 The undying hope that was in him; the confidence that, where- 
 ever he went, as long as he was a true Catholic, and faithful 
 to the traditions of the Church to which he belongs, and to 
 the nation from which he sprang, that the hand of God would 
 helo him, and bring him up to the surface, sooner or later. 
 And the Irishman "* to-day, like his nation, is as hopeful as 
 any man in the past time. 
 
 Have we not a proof of their love ? Ah ! my friends, who 
 is it that remembers the old father and mother at home ? Who 
 is it among the emigrants and strangers coming to this land, 
 whose eye fills with the ready tear as soon as he hears the 
 familiar voice reminding him of those long in their graves? 
 Who is it that is only waiting to earn his first ten dollars, in 
 order to send it home to his aged father and mother 1 Who 
 is it that would as soon think of cutting out his tongue from 
 the roots, or to take the eyes out of his head, as abandon the 
 wife of 'lis bosom? The true Catholic Irishman. These 
 things are matters of observation and experience, just as the 
 past is a matter of history. And, therefore, I say that Irish- 
 men to-day are not unworthy of the men that are in their 
 graves, even though they lie in martyr graves. As we are 
 true to them, so shall our children be true to us. As -^e were 
 true to them, so we shall continue to be true to them. This ia 
 the secret of Ireland's power, the faith that has never changed, 
 the hope that never despairs, the love that is never extinguished; 
 dispersed and scattered as we are, that love that makes us all 
 meet as brethren ; that love that brings the tear to the eye at 
 the mention of the old soil ; that love that makes one little 
 word of Irish ring like music in our ears ; that love that makes 
 us treasure the traditions of our history ; that love makes us a 
 power, still — and we are a power, though divided by three 
 thousand miles of Atlantic ocean's waves rolling between 
 America and Ireland at home — but the Irishman in America 
 Imows that his brother at home looka to him with hope ; &ad 
 
iJ76 LECTUBES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 the Irishman iu Ireland knows that his brother in America is 
 only waiting to do what he can for the old land. What is it 
 you can do? — that is the question. I answer, be true to your 
 religion, be true to your fatherland, be true to your families 
 and to yoniselves, be true to the glorious Republic that opened 
 her arms to receive you and give you the rights of citizenship 
 Be true to America, She has already had a sample of what 
 kind of men she received when she opened her arms to the 
 Irish. They gave her a taste of it at Fredericksburg, fighting 
 her battles ; they gave her a sample of it all through those 
 terrible campaigns ; she knows what they are, and begins to 
 prize them. Fear not, when you do justice to your Irish brains 
 and intellect by education, and to your Irish minds by temper- 
 ance, and to your Irish hands by the spirit of industry and 
 self-respect, your holy religion will do the rest, and uniting 
 you like one man in faith, animating you in hope, inflaming 
 your hearts in charity, will make you a mighty influence in 
 this great laud — be men ; even in this land, I say, be Irish- 
 men. Then the day will come when this great Irish element 
 in America will enter largely into the council-chambers of this 
 mighty nation, and will shape her policy, will form her ideas 
 and her thoughts in a great measure, pressing them m the 
 strong mould of Catholicity and of justice. And when that 
 day comes to us, I would like to see who would lay a "wet 
 finger" on Ireland. This is what I mean when I tell you 
 what Ireland hopes from America. Ireland's bone and sinew 
 is in America ; and it is in the intelligence of her children in 
 America, in their religion and their love, in the influence which 
 that faith and enlightenment will assuredly bring them, that 
 Ireland hopes. 
 
 Suppose th.it for Ireland some coercion bill is going to pas^ 
 and some tyrant is going to trample upon the old nation. If 
 the Irishman knows the position of his countrymen iu America 
 he will say, " Hold on, my friend ; don't begin until you get a 
 despatch from Washington. Hold on, my friend; there are 
 Irish benators m the great Senate ; there are Irish Congress- 
 men in the great Congress; there are Irishmen in the Cabinet- 
 there are Irishmen behind the guns; there are Irishmen writing 
 out political warnings and protocols; there are Irish Ambassa- 
 <tors at the foreign courts; learn what they have to say before 
 you trample upon us." l^his is what I mean when I speak of 
 
THE miSH PEOPLE IN RELATION TO OATHOLIOITT. 275 
 
 what you can do for your mother-land, and what Ireland hopea 
 and expects from you. 
 
 And now, my friends, ym know that, whatever way a 
 priest may begin his lecture, when he goes through it he 
 always ends with a kind of exhortation. In the name of 
 God let us make a resolution here to-night to be all that I 
 have described to you — all an Irishman ought to be — and 
 leave the rest to God. 
 
278 XiiiCTDBES AND SEBMONS. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Faith, as we have seen, is an absolute, firm, immutable belie 
 in all that God )»as tf^ealed, of which the sole motive is the 
 truthfulness of God. i$eing such, it must, of necessity, as we 
 have seen, be simple, firm, universal, and courageous ; and in 
 this day's sermon I engaged to prove that the Holy Roman 
 Catholic Church was the only true messenger of God, in 
 that in her only do we find these four essential qualities of 
 true faith. 
 
 But it may be asked, Where is the necessity of a Church 
 at all 1 Have we not the Scriptures, in which God has given 
 Qs all that He has revealed T What do you mean by a Church 1 
 What are the duties and functions of a Church. What 
 grounds have you for calling on us to admit the existence and 
 authority of such an institution? All these questions must be 
 answered before you say a single word on the peculiar claims 
 or arguments of the Church Catholic. 
 
 First. What is the definition of a Church ? A Church is a 
 living body or congregation, united together by a common 
 belief in the same doctrines, by having the same rites and 
 usages, and by admitting the same government and authority 
 These three are necessary in the very idea of a Church. A 
 common belief, else there can be no real and interior union. 
 The same rites and usages, else there can be no exterior 
 union ; and one government and authority, without which no 
 society, human or divine, can possibly exist. The definition 
 of the Catholic Church is, "The congregation of all the 
 faithful — ^believing the same truths — having the same sacra- 
 ments and sacrifices, and under one and the same visible head." 
 
 Second. What are the duties and functions of a Church ? 
 They are, my brethren, principally to preserve ' unity of doc- 
 trine, that " all be of one mind ; " holiness and purity of doctrine, 
 " that with one mind and one mouth all may glorify God ; " 
 catholicity of doctrine, which means universality — ^by teach- 
 bg " all truth," and to all peoples, to Jew and Gentile, in 
 
THti oatJECH. 279 
 
 eveiy clime, from the rising of the sun unto the goiog dowji 
 thereof, making known the name of Jesus Christ, and apostol- 
 icity of doctrine, t.e., doctrine handed down from the Apostles 
 in an unbroken chain, and guaranteed by their power and 
 jurisdiction, equally and connectedly transmitted to their suc- 
 cessors. The duties and functions of a Christian Church, if 
 there be such an institution, are naturally and necessarily to 
 teach men what to believe and what to do ; whiit to practise 
 and what to avoid; to pre{)are them for heaven and for God ; 
 to make them in mind and in action. Christians — friends of 
 God, and worthy to be admitted into His kingdom. 
 
 Third. But it may be said, Where is the necessity of this 
 Church, or living teaching authority, as j'ou call it ? Have we 
 not the written law and word of God, preserving His revealed 
 word, and pointing out the path of holiness and salvation ; in a 
 word, doing the very things that you say fall within the duties 
 and functions of the Church? To this I answer, True, we 
 liave the written word of God. But no society is or ever ha- 
 been fonnded on a written code, without a living authoritative 
 voice to explain and enforce it. The written word does not 
 explain itself. If left to itself, it is interpreted according tc 
 the different judgments, whims, caprices of its readers ; and 
 being thus varied and changed, it practically ceases to be the 
 voice of God, which is unchangeable — the way of salvation, 
 which is one and not many — the rule of faith, which must be 
 firm and authoritative. God has, therefore, placed this written 
 revealed word in the hands of the Church, lest " the unlearned 
 and unstable wrest it to their own destruction." \gain, although 
 all that is iu the Scriptures is revealed trutu, still it is not the 
 whole truth. It pleased Almighty God to reveal many truths 
 to the Church which are not found expressly stated in the 
 Scriptures, lence, although the written word is the principal 
 portion of the Christian's rule of faith, it is not all the rule. 
 The true and entire rule of faith is the word of God revealed — 
 written and unwritten ; for we are told by the apostle (2 Thes^ 
 u. 14) that "we must stand fast, and hold the traditions which 
 we have learned, whether by word or by epistle," i.e., writing. 
 All that is written in Scripture is good and true, " profitable to 
 teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice ;" but nowhers 
 in the Scriptures do we find a single word to justify us iu assert- 
 ing that the Bible alone is the rule of faith. The existence of 
 
2g0 LEOTtJEES ANb SEEMOltS. 
 
 the Christian Church, therefore, is a necessity. First, to pre- 
 serve and interpret the written word, to teach meu its true 
 meaning, which is one, holy, nnchangeable as the mind of 
 God, which it expresses. Second, tlie Church is a necessity, to 
 preserve and teach us the revelation which we have received, 
 not by writing but by word ; to guard in all their purity those 
 sacred traditions and truths which slie received from Her Lord 
 and His Apostles, " which, if tliey were written, every one 
 (says St. John), the world, itself, I think, would not be able to 
 contain the books tliat shonld be written." For, as we are 
 told in the Acts of the Apostles, our Lord coiitiuued " for forty 
 days appearing to them and speaking of the Kingdom of God," 
 whereby is meant the Holy Church. 
 
 But if we had no other proof of the necessity of an authorita- 
 tive voice to explain the sacred text of Scripture, would not our 
 own experience show us this necessity? Behold the numberless 
 opinions, and religious sects, and absurd systems of belief and 
 practice which have sprung up wlierever the voice of the Churck 
 s not heard and received. So great is their number, so bitttf 
 their mutual hatred, so absurd their pretensions and practices, 
 'JO miserably vain and narrow-minded their spirit, that they 
 would bring Ciiristianity into contempt, if they were not con- 
 fronted by the True Church, the Mighty Catholic Mother of 
 the faithful, who upholds the divine word in all its unchanging 
 majesty of truth, and m all its beauty of holiness. 
 
 Having thus seen what a Church means, what are its duties 
 and functions, and what its necessity, we come to the grand 
 question. Is the existence of such a Church — One — Holy — Ca- 
 tholic — Apostolical — contemplated in Scripture, and where is 
 she to be found 1 I answer, that such a Church is clearly recog- 
 nized in Scripture, and that she is to be found only in that 
 congregation wJiich has never changed her faith nor failed in 
 doctrine, which leaches all righteousness, to the exclusion of 
 the least sin ; which is to be found everywhere, ^nd which 
 can. trace her power and jurisdiction to the Apostles ; that 
 is, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 The unity of the Church is recognized in Scripture, for, says 
 the Apostle, we have " one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one 
 God and Father of all ; " wherefore he commands them to pre- 
 serve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Here, St. 
 Paul compares the oneness of faith to that of God. and as God 
 
tSB oatJKOfi. 281 
 
 is iiecessarilj' and essentially one, so faith is also one. And in 
 the wonderfully beautiful aud touchiug prayer of Jesus Christ 
 for His Church, the first grace He asked of His Father was 
 this unity. " These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up His 
 eyes to heaven He said, , . . Holy Father, keep theiu in 
 My name whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as 
 we also are. ... I have giveu thein Thy word . . . 
 1 have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast 
 given Me . . . and they have kept Thy word. . , 
 
 Sanctify them in triith. Thy word is truth. As Thou hast 
 sent Me into the world, I also send them into the world. And 
 for them do I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified 
 in truth. Aud not for them only do I pray, but for them also 
 who through their word shall believe in Me. That they all 
 may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I iu Thee, that they 
 also may be one in us ; that the world may believe that Thou 
 has sent Me. Aud the glory which Thou hast given Me, I 
 have given to them, that they may be one, as we also are one." 
 (John xvii.) Now, it cannot be argued that Christ here prayed 
 only for the union of charity amongst all who profess Chris- 
 tianity, for He speaks of being one iu truth — i. e., in faith, 
 Elsewhere, the Apostle speaks of those who profess Christian- 
 ity, and yet are to be shunned. " Now, I beseech you, 
 brethren, to mark those who make dissensions and offences, 
 contrary to the doctrines which you have learnt, and to avoid 
 them," " for your obedience is published in every place. 1 
 rejoice, therefore, in you." Now, if we are told to avoid a 
 man, how can we be said to be one with him ? Nay, more, 
 the Apostle, in the same place, calls those heretics who, " by 
 pleasing speeclies and good words, seduce the hearts of the 
 innocent from the one doctrine, Satan ; for he says, " May the 
 God of Peace crush Satan under your feet speedily." But 
 are we to be one with Satan ? Certainly not. Therefore, I 
 conclude that, nlthough we are to hate no one — nay, we are 
 bound to love nil men as our neighbour, even though they 
 differ from us in faith — still, the charity which is to make us 
 one with them in God must be founded in the truth — i. «., in 
 the unity of the one true faith. Thus do we clearly see that 
 the Church recognized in Scripture has the mark of unity set 
 upon her, whereby men may know that she is from God. 
 The next great feature of the Christian Church, recognized 
 
282 LEOTUEES AND SERMONS. 
 
 iu Scripture, is holiness. Holiness is twofold— holiness of 
 doctrine, and holiness of life and practice. Both belong to 
 '••he Church. Her teaching must be iioly. Now, holiness of 
 sloctrine means, first, the exclusion of all that is sinful, even in 
 the least degree ; second, the inculcation and enforcing of all 
 that is most perfect m holiness.' The Church cannot tolerate, 
 much less teach, the least thing that is sinful, for Christ, says 
 the Apostle to the Ephesiaus, " loved the Church and delivered I 
 Himself up for it, that he might present it to Himself a glori- 1 
 ous Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but J 
 that it should be holy and without blemish ; " as was written^ 
 of this spouse of God, " Thou art all fair, oh, my beloved, and 
 there is no stain in thee." The Church must not only be free 
 from the least sinfulness in her doctrine, but she must also teach 
 and inculcate all that is most perfect in holiness. " Be ye per- 
 fect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect ; " for, says the 
 A-postle, " We preach, admonishing every man, and teaching 
 every man iu all wisdom, that we may present every man per- 
 fect in Christ Jesus." (Col. i.) No feature, therefore, of holiness, 
 can be neglected or put aside in the teaching of God's Church. 
 But that which she teaches she must also exhibit in her life, for 
 Christ our Lord describes her to us as the " salt of the earth and 
 the light of the world ; " and He continued: " A city seated on a 
 mountain cannot be hid, neither do men light a candle and put 
 it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to 
 all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, 
 that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who 
 is in heaven." (Matt, v.) The mark of holiness must therefore 
 be found, not only in the teaching of Christ's Church, but must 
 be also found embodied in her life, cherished in her, and made a 
 part of her visible self. She must be not only the preacher of 
 sanctity, but the mother of saints. All that is high and heroic 
 and most perfect must not only find a place in her teaching, but 
 must belong to her life and form her spirit She must " minis- 
 ter in her faith, vu-tue, and iu virtue, knowledge, and in know 
 ledge, abstinence, and in abstinence, patience, and in patience, 
 godliness, and in godliness, love of brotherhood, and in love of 
 brotherhood, charity" — " in all manner of conversation holy, 
 because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy." (Peter 
 L 16.) Thus do we behold how the Church of Christ niust be 
 holy in faith and iu **orals, iu doctrine and in life. 
 
THE CHUBOH. 
 
 !]Q>g Ghprch COTitemplated in Scriptrve amat, jnbre0'p«Ct'^' 
 niversah.^ The^wish Church was founded for a pjiftipalstr: 
 it blight^ called a national Church ^^ejittfteh of 
 
 a time7' The Church described by our' Lord. is 
 was a contrast to the Jewish Church inHbo^i' 
 It was to be universal as to place and perpeitj^,, , 
 O^niversal as to place. Its doctrines were forrts^ 
 " Arid this Gospel of the kingdom shall be predrelxedi^; 
 hole world, for a testimony to all nations." (Afett 
 ) " And He said to them', Go ye into the wh^. 
 d preach the gospfel to every creature." (Mark xvL) 
 . again, from St. Matthew, the Church's Catholicity — ^^'': 
 universality of doctrine: "And Jesus spoke to them, 
 aying, All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. 
 ij^^j therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the 
 ^jW- dtehejgl'ather and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost 
 tlma to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
 iandM'^On. And behold, I am with you all days, even to 
 e consuflitnation of the world." In these words of Jesus 
 hrist the Church is described as universal in place, in doctrine, 
 id in time. 
 
 Finally, the Church of Christ is described to us in Scripture 
 having power and jurisdiction. " As the Father sent me, 
 10 I sejnd you," says Jesus Christ ; but the Father sent Him 
 ith power : " the people were in admiration at His doctrine, 
 Ifor He was teaching them as one having power, and not 
 their Scribes and Pharisees;" therefore He also sent His 
 postles with power : " and having called His twelve disciples 
 gether, He gave them power ;" and St. Luke : " then calling 
 fogether the twelve Apostles, He gave them power and 
 rity." And what manner of power did He give them ? 
 His own power. My brethren, " the Son of Man hath 
 .to forgive sin ;" and to them He said, " Whose sins you 
 an forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins you shall 
 tain, they are retained." But, my brethren, power and 
 ithority are comnMssions from God. They must, therefore, 
 transmitted by the act of those who have received theoa 
 om God. There must, therefore, be in the Christian Church 
 clesu", living connection with the Apostles. The 
 ich the Son of God received from the Father, He 
 

 fUuTs iii'S 
 
 it is, therefore 
 
 Tlectubes and sermons. 
 
 fApostles for the salvation of men 
 ese Apoatles (else the work 
 lii^te^ipted and destroyed), but wi 
 th)^^ii^*l}dpsuccessors in the ministry, i 
 jhai«Si^l«^Jpf the Seripture (nptably fro: 
 lEpistlsijIo^imotby chapters iii. and iv.). 
 !„u„„i,^y necessary that the men who exercise that power aiM 
 Ction to-day, be able to prove to us that they are .tin 
 aate descendants of the Apostles ; that they come dpvi 
 them in unbroken line, of succession uninterrupted;' • 
 ptrine unchanged, of power always exercised, and jurisdiCtioi 
 vays claimed. If the line be broken, even in one. siugli 
 Point, the hidden spirit, the sacramental power, is gone^^jei 
 as the electric flash dies, and is lost for ever, when the ciSj 
 ducting wne is broken even in one smallest point ; if one li 
 in the chain of apostolical succession be wanting, heaven 
 earth are separate once more ; the man who teac; 
 is only a vain pretender ; he who says that he 
 is a blasphemer ; " the silver cord is broken, ai; 
 fillet shrinks back . . the dust returns ii _ 
 
 whence it was," powerless for all healing and divinS^purposes' 
 " and the spirit," once so fully and freely pomed out " retui- 
 to the God who gave it." 
 
 We thus clearly see that a Church, one, holy, CatMic, ai 
 Apostolic, is contemplated, recognized, and described to us 
 the Scriptures. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arV10537 
 
 Lectures and sermons. 
 
 3 1924 031 298 882 
 olin,anx