Lv* PRINCETON. N. 1. Purchased by the Mrs. Robert Lenox Kennedy Church History Fund. BX 5500 .B766 1878 Brooke, Richard Sinclair. Recollections of the Irish church RECOLLECTIONS OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofi00broo_1 RECOLLECTIONS..^g^:grQra FEB In 1915 THE IRISH CHURCH RICHARD SINCLAIR BROOKE, D.D., LATE RECTOR OF WYTON, HUNTS, Author of " Christ in Shadow," being Twelve Sermons on Isaiah L. ; Poems i and " The Stoty of Parson Annaily," Sfc. "Si rite audita recorhor." SECOND SERIES. Jnblin : HODGES, FOSTER, AND FIGGIS. 1878. [TAe Bight of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved,] DUBLIN PORTEOUS AND GIBBS PRINTERS 18 WICKLOW STREET "There be two kinds of Cliriatian Righteousness," the one, without us, which we have by imputation ; the other in us, which consisteth of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and other Christian virtues ; and St. James doth prove that Abraham had not only the one, because the thing believed was imputed unto him for Righteousness, but also the other, because he offered up his son : God givetli us both — the one justice, and the other ; the one, by accepting us for Righteous in Christ, the other, by working Christian Righteousness in us. For — " Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever, it is our comfort and our wisdom ; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered ; that God hath made himself the Son of Man, and that men are made the Righteousness of God." — From Mr. Richard Hooker's Discourse on Justification,. KECOLLECTIONS OF THE IRISH CHURCH. CHAPTER I. Tkavellers in Africa tell us that when through design or accident, one of the large ant nests which are found on the banks of the Senegal River is destroyed, the animals immediately commence to construct another on the same spot, and such is their spirit of industry, that in a brief time the " hill," which had been once their habitation, is almost reproduced, and at once occupied again by the little architects as their home. The same spirit appears among human beings ; witness the rapid re-edification of Chicago, and more recently that of Paris. And in like manner has our Irish Church acted 2 EECOLLECTIONS OF now for seven years, wisely and patiently building up her desolations, and if " Diruit" may express the svork of her opponents, she can meekly, yet determinately, assume as her motto the word " ^dificat," and act upon it with earnestness. Plutarch tells us, that when Alcibiades was con- demned to suffer death by the Athenians, he merely said, " I shall make them sensible that I am still alive ;" and this, also, our disestablished Irish Church, is acting out, but in an humbler spirit than that of the haughty Greek ; she exhi- bits proofs of undeniable vitality ; her funds, Ave trust, are increasing, though still very inadequate ; her machinery is certainly fast forming and fitting together ; her churches are well and sacredly served, and many new ones building ; her clergy are, in the main, thoroughly orthodox, attached to the doctrines which Ussher and Bedell preached, and for which Latimer and Hooper died ; and some of the most religious of her ministers, and most influential from character and learning, now Avear her mitres ; there is an increase of harmony between her clergy and her laity ; there is an in- crease of harmony between the clergy themselves ; witness the proceedings of the Synod of 1877, which resembled a happy sailing over a Pacific Ocean, terminating in an united anchorage in a port of peace. From the calm heights of her growing stability, she can look back on the day THE lEISH CHURCH. 3 of her deep trial with patience and good temper, yet with clear discrimination as to the merits and results of the whole transaction.^ At that time many arguments were advanced in favour of Dis- establishment and Disendowment, and all founded on what were called heavy " grievances," which were promised due consideration and redress. One of these grievances — surely a sentimental one — was, that the Established Church was to the Roman Catholic " a badge of conquest." If this were the fact, so would be the Queen's Viceroy at the Castle, the Queen's Soldiers in the Barracks, and the Queen's Ship of War in Kingstown Har- bour. During the debate, and when the public were discussing the subject, a lively Englishman said to an Irish carman, " Here is your fare — half a crown — I hope you wont consider the Queen's head on it as a ' badge of conquest.'" " Not a bit," was the answer, " and to show you my sincerity, if your honour has another half-crown in your pocket, I'll take it." It is a fact that thousands of Irish people ' In the conduct and bearing of the Irish clergy at present, we are reminded of the advice given to the Athenians by a Greek orator — " Hff 'TrXiiS-ova e'TTiOv/Miiv roiv "^'TrapovTuv nvi 'i^puy/Marui'." Lysias, Orat. 24. That as many as possible should be content with (or desire) things as they now are. 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF believed that the entire tithe rent-charge was to be swept away and extinguished by Mr, Glad- stone's Act. This would have been doubtless a relief to some, especially to the Roman Catholics, who pay of it £30,000^ a year ; but I need not say that this tithe tax, amounting to £600,000, is still exacted, and paid to the Government — being transferred to them from the clergy, whose here- ditary property it had been for centuries. Another grievance which the Bill was to re- dress, and one oft and pathetically declaimed on by Romanist and Radical in the House of Com- mons, was the Supremacy of the Irish Church over that of Rome. Now, has this grievance been redressed, and has the recent legislation had the effect of levelling up the Roman Catholic to an equal platform with the Irish Protestant Church ? We would deliberately say It has not. Truly, it is a delicate matter to discuss ; but it must be plain to every observer that the two Churches still remain immeasurably apart, and statesman- ship has failed to assimilate them ; no doubt, if " siller could do it," as the Laird o' Dumbiedikes said, it would have been done, for the Liberal Government has poured thousands into the Roman Catholic chests, to enable them to " level up," and Mr. Butt, the priests' friend and ally — " Oh qiiam mutatus ab illo Qui quondam." — ' Most unjustly, to my mind. THE IRISH CHURCH. is to ask for £800,000 more ! from Parliament to endow the new Catholic University, as if May- nooth had not gorged enough. But it is all in vain, the Church of Rome can never attain to the level of our Protestant Churches, /or her system weighs her down and degrades her. I protest I mean no disrespect personally to the Roman Catholic Body, among whom are to be found men interesting, learned, upright, accom- plished. Take the High Bench of Justice, always public, and under observation ; on that bench sit no more honourable and equitable men than our Roman Catholic judges — men who have kept the ermine on their robes as pure and as unspotted as the day on which they first put it on. We speak not of individuals, but of an ecclesiastical body representing the principles of and regulated by a foreign power hundreds of miles away from our country. We do not speak of the members of the Church of Rome ; they are our countrymen, and physically and rationally our equals ; it is the SYSTEM we protest against — a system which is assuredly not English, and most certainly, and we thank God for it, is not Irish, but is essentially Italian — a system which is a weight on the bosom of our noble green isle, which we all love so truly.^ ' O'Halloran, the Roman Catholic Historian of Ireland, says, that for nine hundred years — from the time of St. Patrick to the 6 EECOLLECTIONS OF We seldom now hear of the " grievances," espe- cially of that one connected with Disendowment, but we do hear objections raised against our Church even at the present time. " What have the Irish clergy done ? and what have they written ?" These two questions are asked in a review of the former volume of these " Recollections" in " The Academy." " What have they done ?" I answer to this : They have done much^ " in labours more abund- ant." Many of them had immense parishes — long distances to traverse, the blue mountain to scale, the brown bog to pass over, and often a poor and scattered Protestant population to visit ; one parish in West Galway, some years ago, contained forty square miles, and Conwall, in Donegal, of which I was once the curate, covered 45,000 acres. They did much, and suffered much, these men.' In 1847, during the prevalence of virulent fever, forty clergymen of the Irish Church died of dis- ease, contracted among the poor in the discharge of their duties ; one, an old school-fellow, came up from Galway to Kingstown to recruit his shattered twelfth centiiry — scarce a vestige can be traced of correspondence between the Church of Rome and Church of Ireland. The Council of Cashel united them ; ' ' and from the sitting of this Council in 1172," says O'DriscoU, " the lot of Ireland has been unmixed evil, and all her history a tale of woe." ' Vide a Pamphlet by Mr. George A.. Hamilton, M.P. ; published by Will. Mactintosh, London, 1868. THE IRISH CHURCH. 7 health, but died, as his doctor told me, "of sheer exhaustion, thoroughly worn out." During cholera, and fever, and famine times, these devoted men braved infection, brought sick- ness and death upon themselves and amidst their households, shared their money, their food, and their care with their own starving and dying flocks, as well as with the flocks^ of the priests, making no ditference, until generosity and hard labour passed down to impoverishment and physi- cal disability. And in times not long previous to these, be it remembered, many of their brethren had perished by the assassin's shot or bludgeon, or had been stoned to death, like the martyr Stephen, as was the case of the Rev. Irwin Whitty, one of the best and gentlest pastors of our Church. Furthermore, the greater part of the Irish clergy had to study much, in order to be made up in the Romish con- troversy, so as to hold their own in case the priest should be hostile or active in their parish ; and of this branch of ecclesiastical knowledge our bre- thren in England know but little ; would that they made it more their study, it would stay and hinder perversion. They did much, these men, I repeat, and have left the mark of their plough and their spade deep in the soil ; and in the very soul of the land where God had placed them, to this day after ' See Sullivan's "New Ireland," Vol I., page 137. 8 RECOLLECTIONS OF many years, the savour of the work which some of these obscure good clergymen effected by their teaching in parislies and neighbourhoods, remains as fresh as a ]\Iay-day garland. They farmed their allotments faithfully and well, stubbing out stones and weeds, and sowing sound Gospel seed, till in many places the wilderness blossomed, and whole counties in Ireland underwent gradually a moral change ; and where there had been little else but riotous living and hard drinking, now refinement sprung up, and one found family prayer in almost every house ; to the truth and reahty of this picture I can personally testify. The foregoing is a picture of something of what the Irish Church has done actively ; her negative work is of a higher import still, and characterizes her more distinctively as a true Church. For she has not introduced Romanizing habits or observances into the chaste ritual enjoined by her Book of Common Prayer. And she has not ever lent her aid in macada- mizing the road which leads to Rome, or building bridges for her clergy to cross the gulph which separates the two Churches. And finally, with the exception of one or two, she has not lost her clergy, but kept them w^ell and safely through long years, happy, contented, and useful ; secure from dissent on the one hand, and Romanism on the other ; and that amidst THE IRISH CHURCH. 9 long continued evil administration of the State, the hatred of her enemies, a good deal of misap- prehension from the stately sister across the water, and eventually the utter seizure and spoliation of her lawful and hereditary revenues by a Govern- ment styling itself Liberal ! — " 0 vine of Sibmah, I will weep for thee, thy plants are gone over the sea ; the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits and upon thy vintage." Jer. xlviii. 32. For all these foregoing reasons, her true sons love and honour the Irish Church ; they love her for their brethren's sake, who have passed away, who taught well, and suffered much, who toiled and died in her service ; they love her better than ever in this the day of her depression, and she is " more dear in her sorrow, her clouds, and her showers," than when she sat on the hills, and in the sunlight of her ascendancy. " Victrix causa Dies placuit, sed victa Catoni." We may apply this to the position of our Church. Her great enemies have prevailed, and are well pleased with their conquest ; it is painful, and yet almost ludicrous, to listen to their boasting ; but, as it was to the great Roman, so the " conquered cause" is dear, and even pleasant to her children, connected as it is with newer motives, and a more determined resolution on their part to advance and uphold her prosperity, and lift her high above the dust. 10 RECOLLECTIONS OF It is asked, too, But then " What did these men Avrite ?" I answer, some of them wrote well, and in the Appendix to this book, I have noted the names of a few of our Church authors during this century, which may serve to answer the ques- tion. That portion of our brethren wlio are hostile to us in England, accuses the Irish clergy of being puritanical in doctrine, and, perhaps, with a mea- sure of truth ; for though we cannot endorse some of the exaggerated Calvinism put forth by a por- tion of the Puritans, yet we agree in the honour they pay to the AVord of God, and in their general evangelism. Evangelical and puritanical convey the same idea to our opponents, and to what is conveyed under either term they are equally opposed, only the epithet puritanical,^ presents a much broader surface for the ignorant mind to cast mire on, than the word evangelical, which calls forth a certain degree of veneration, and has a sacred and scriptural meaning. Lord j\lacaulay, the beauty and brilliancy of whose historical narrative can scarcely atone for his omissions, and even, at times, his deviations from the exactitude ^ This is part of the new vocabulary among certain writers of the day. Gospel truth is denominated jiuritanism, and any attempt to introduce religion into a public meeting, or into private society, is styled sectarianism. It was a saying of good Archbishop Ussher's : " Oh, Iwiv hard it is to bring (the mention of) God into His own world." THE lEISH CHUECH. Jl orfact, when under the influence of personal dis- like or political prejudice, has done much to ridi- cule and degrade the Puritan Body, while else- where he lavishes high praise on them.^ On the other side, Mr. J. R, Green, although of the same political school as his lordship, in his charming " History of the English people," has rendered to the Puritan Body, not merely justice, but honour, placing them in a true light. Some years ago, I wrote as follows, after read- ing Macaulay's strictures in his essay on Milton. His lordship says of this body, that " they were not men of letters, that they had a contempt for human learning, a scorn of science ; that they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets ; were uncouth, awkward, and had a nasal twang !" Now, in order to show the unfairness of imput- ing to all the defects of a part, it is only necessary to state that among these men are to be found many names occupying the very highest position in learning and in literature, such as Edmund Spencer^ such as the profound Selden, and Johi Milton, and Sir Edward Leigh, an incomparable scholar ; and Andrew Marvel, poet and wit of the first water ; and Matthew Poole, author of the " Synopsis ;" and Thomas May, historian, wit, and ' See "Essay on Milton, pp. 24, 25. Edition, 1851. London : Longman, Brown, &c. 12 RECOLLECTIONS OF dramatist ; and Vincent Alsop, the lively satirist, called the "South of the dissenters;" and John Bunyan, world-honoured ; and acute metaphy- sicians like Richard Baxter'^ and Prynne^ a man of ubiquitous learning ; and accurate Hellenists like Doctor Gouge^ whose commentary is a Greek con- cordance of the text ; and profound thinkers like Stephen Charnock, Avhose pages exhibit a sustained chain of luminous oratory ; or men like Beynolds,^ of arranged erudition ; or like William Bridge, an incomparable exegetist of the Scriptures ; or Thomas Gataker, Hebraist and divine, the editor of " Marcus Antoninus," and " remarkable for his polite literature," says Mr. Eachard ; or Doctor 31ant072, with his robust commentary ; or Howe, with his sweet spirit ; or popular Flavel, the teacher for all time ; or Calamy, preacher and biographer. These men were all learned, most of them literary, many of them tasteful and elegant ; no foes were they to science, no despisers of philo- sophy, or contemners of poetry ; but they were accounted sour and morose, because they would not smile on the infamy of the court ; and they w^ere called hostile to mirth and pleasure, because they Avould not attend the theatre, where the grossest and most indecent plays were acted. And these Puritans were stigmatized as awkward and unfashionable, though they had among them such * Reynolds, afterwards Bishop. THE IRISH CHUECH. 13 gentlemen as Fairfax, and the Lord Essex, the "gentle Essex," and the Earl of 3{anchester, and Lords Berldey and Wharton, Brooke and Wil- loughby, and Sir John Harlopps, and Colonel Hutchinson, " Lucy's" husband ; and John Hamp- den, whose description is, that he was " of a person most commanding and elegant, of manners refined ; slender, and of the middling height ; his head was covered with a profusion of dark-brown hair, which fell gracefully upon his shoulders." And if we travel back into former reigns, we shall find some of the first gentlemen, and the foremost scholars, among those slandered Puritans. Such was Cartwright, an author of purest style ; as a divine, erudite ; as a preacher, unsurpassed ; the companion of Leicester and Walsingham, and the elegant Knollys, and the friend of Bacon and Burghley. Such was Sir Henry Mildmay, who founded Emmanuel College, at Cambridge ; and Chadderden, its first master ; also Henry Smith, "the silver-tongued," the most eloquent and finished preacher in Europe ; and Travers, Hooker's coad- jutor, but his superior in the pulpit of the Temple Church ; John Foxe, the martyrologist ; the beloved Hooper, saint and martyr ; noble Coverdale ; A insworth, the great Rabbinical scholar, who wrote the best and freshest commentary on the Penta- teuch ever published ; Peter Wentworth, the high- minded senator, who bearded the Lioness Elizabeth, 14 RECOLLECTIONS OF and prevailed against her arbitrary enactments ; and Arthur Hildersham, the queen's kinsman, a man of elegant manners, " great acquirements, and much beloved by all." Cum multis aliis. These men were all Puritans. They are but a few from the many, but suffi- cient to disprove the idea that the court party monopolised all the culture and the gentility, as unquestionably they did, the larger share of the vice of the times ; and that a Puritan could not, of possibility, be a good scholar, as well as an accomplished gentleman.-^ We have nothing to do with the acts of the Puritans ; I speak but of their divinity, with which it is the custom to associate much of the Irish clerical mind and preaching ; would that our clergy would copy them more in their excellen- cies, and leave their faults with them. For, many of these old divines were full of vivacity and life. Thomas Watson was a ready classic ; Thomas Adams, richly affluent in illus- tration ; Matthew Henry., replete with clear teach- ing, as well as with quips and cranks ; and Richard Baxter, whom I have before mentioned, startling and eloquent, though lately denominated by Mr. Mathew Arnold as "the King of Bores."^ ' See Univeksity Essays, No. IV. — The Life and Times of John Owen, D.D., in May number, 1859, of Dublin University Magazine, by the Author. ^ In an article on Falkland, in " Nineteenth Century," for March, 1877, page 154. THE lEISH CHURCH. 15 It would be most desirable that our brethren, the clergy of the Church of England, should better understand the Irish mind ; the two nations di- vided by a blue belt of ocean but sixty miles in breadth, are as diverse in temperament, perception of externals, and modes of acting, as if they were separated by so many thousand miles of sea water ; the difference can only be explained by the ques- tions of Race and Climate, matters which I believe philosophy has hitherto failed to solve. 1 much fear that with a certain portion of the English clergy our Irish Church, as a Disestab- lished and Disendowed Body, never can be popu- lar ; her revised liturgy will not render her more attractive in their eyes. For my own part, though I shall welcome our new Prayer Book, and esteem it in its revised form as a good work, yet I should have been content still to have used the old " Book of Common Prayer" in its unimpaired integrity. It is a human composition, and therefore neither inspired or infallible, and has its faults, but they are to its excellencies as one to twenty thousand. The Baptismal Service is a great rock ahead to numbers ; with my own views of pajdo-baptism — which, however, are utterly opposed to those of the High Church party — I can conscientiously read the service, and assent to its truth. Yet for the sake of the many thousands who are offended at its dogmatic declaration of regeneration, I should be 16 RECOLLECTIONS OF pleased to see the declaratory replaced by a preca- tory form. As for meddling or paltering with that grand and ancient symbol, the Athanasian Creed, I should as soon think of planting a cannon against one of the gray round towers of old Ireland, with the inten- tion of casting it to the ground in its beauty, as I should of doing or saying aught that might mar its entirety, or displace from its position the Athana- sian Creed. The experienced woodman would be slow to condemn to the axe an ancient tree, the king and glory of the forest, because one or two of the branches were distorted or exhibited decay. So this grand old creed, though open to censure where it is over dogmatic, and faulty in the strength of its threatenings, must, outside of these exceptions, ever be regarded by the faithful worshippers in our Church, as resembling " the unwedgeable and gnarled oak ; " admirable, and lofty, and beautiful, and thoroughly sound to its very heart of oak's core of orthodoxy. THE IRISH CHURCH. 17 CHAPTER 11. SOMETHING OF THE IRISH CHURCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. My memory brings me back to what I may con- sider my first connexion with the Irish Church, and after seventy years I feel I can still retain a vision of an old gentleman with a silvery wig, a shovel hat, and gold spectacles, who w^as much at my father's house, and who bent over my childish form, and called me grandson. This was old William Brooke, formerly a scholar of Trinity College, and at this time rector of the large union parish of Granard, Co. Longford, in which county he possessed a fair property in Ab- beylara, and a pretty residence entitled Firmount, within a few miles of Edgeworthstown. Of him, and of his family. Miss Maria Edgeworth thus writes, in the second volume, page 12, of the "Memoirs" of her father, Richard Lovell Edge- worth : — "In our immediate neighbourhood we, at this time, commenced an acquaintance with a friendly and ciiltivated family of the name of Brooke. C 18 EECOLLECTIONS OF ' ' The father, an okl, well-informed clergyman, was nearly related to the Mr. Brooke, who wrote the celebrated novel of The Fool of Quality, and the tragedy of Gustavus Vasa. He possessed a con- siderable share of his relation's original genius, enthusiasm, and simplicity of character, with much classical learning. He had an admiration for Homer, which he often expressed with a vehemence that appeared extravagant in the hearing of his common auditors, but in which my father most cordially sympathised. Mr. Brooke's daughter was married to Mr. Eyles Irwin,' the well-known traveller, so that by another author this family was connected with the literary world. " ^ So far the kind word of Maria Edge worth.* Of old William Brooke's professional character I had a rather homely account, which came on me unexpectedly and at haphazard, fully forty years after the good man had quitted earth. I was out on a circuit for our " Home Mission," about 1838, and on a summer evening arrived at Granard. I surveyed with a natural curiosity its church, and with admiration its stately mound which looks loftily down on the lawns and lakes of Longford ; and in the evening I found myself on the barristers' bench of the court-house, preaching to a small auditory of very poor people. Just be- neath me sat an old woman, whom I at once per- ceived to belong to the Methodist Body, from her frequent gesticulations, her cries of " Amen," and ' Governor of Madura and Tinnavilly, and Author of " Voyages up the Red Sea." ° See Life of Henry Brooke, in Dublin University Magazine~for February, 1852. ' Miss Maria Edgeworth — See Appendix. THE lEISH CHUECH. 19 repetition of our Saviour's name as a kind of ap- probatory inpriraatur to any sentiment she liked in my discourse. After service I sat down beside her, and we had some chat ; then she asked my name, and I told her. " Is it possible," she said, " that you are son to old Rector Brooke, who baptised rae seventy years ago ? " " No, but his grandson." She then made many inquiries after my father, and " the young ladies ! " my octogenarian aunts ! " Now," I said, " it is my turn, and you must answer me a question. How did your old rector preach, and of what kind were his sermons ? " But the woman, like many of the Irish peasantry, had a kindly and courteous tact, as she answered me, " Oh, my dear ! the Spirit was not poured out in those days." So I had little comfort from my questioning, and from all I heard, and could gather, I came to the conclusion that most of the teaching in Divine things which the peasantry had acquired, was de- rived from the mission of the Methodists, a body which I never can cease to respect. John Wesley first visited Ireland in 1747. It is certainly very difficult to determine at what degree of the religious thermometer the Christianity of the Irish Church stood in the last century ; the days of such holy men as Ussher and Bedell had passed by. Bishop Jeremy Taylor was a bright 20 RECOLLECTIONS OF intellectual star of the 17th century, but he could be hardly depended on in all points as a theologian, and scarcely ever shook off the trammels of his old patron. Archbishop Laud. The Irish Red Bench was peopled much from England in the 18th century ; many of the bishops had been tutors in the families of prime ministers or political partisans ; but certainly they did not deserve the humorous sarcasm of Swift, who ac- counted for what he considered their mal-adminis- tration, by describing them as highwaymen who had met the real prelates as they came from Lon- don on Hounslow Heath, robbed them of their credentials, assumed their habiliments, and passing over to Ireland, became bishops in their place ! This satire is in Swift's drollest Gulliverian vein, but is too absurdly overdrawn to contain much point. In sober truth this 18th century produced some estimable prelates, whom the judgment of even Swift, warped as it was by his fierce and watchful envy, might have respected. There Avas Arch- bishop King, one who had suffered much under King James' short-lived tyranny ; a sound Protes- tant,' and stout anti-Jacobite in perilous political ' Bishop EUicott, writing in Tlie Nineteenth Century Review, for March, 1877, says : — " The Irish Church had, and has a powerful and dominant church outside, wliich always keeps up the tempera- ture of its Protestantism." THE lEISH CHTJRCH. 21 times ; a steady and continuous builder of churches, and one who ruled his great arch-diocese so well as to call forth from Swift himself commendations which he afterwards retracted/ There was Weten- hall, Bishop of Cork, and afterwards of Kilmore, a bold and powerful preacher against the Popish Heresy ; a zealous promoter of giving the Gospel in Irish to the natives ; ^ a lover of extemporary prayer and sermons, and a good and active bishop ; he died 1718. There was Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford, a man w^ho for thirty-five years, with the exception of a few months, resided in his diocese, a lover of education, a sincere Protestant, a man, according to Bishop Mant's testimony, "of the most simple innocent mind," yet of large heart and open hand, bequeathing much money to charit- able objects in his two dioceses ; he died 1779. He was ancestor, maternally, to our present Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix Trench, one who seems to have inherited much of his simple and gentle characteristics, but strengthened by pro- found and accurate scholarship, a thoughtful philosopher, a sweet poet, an instructive Divine, inclining to High Churchism, but an unassuming and venerated ETria-KOTro^. There was Dr. Barnard, Bishop of Killaloe, the friend of Samuel Johnson and of Oliver Goldsmith. ' See Mant's History, vol. ii., page 499. » See Rev. Robert Daly's Letter to Archbishop Whately, 1836. 22 RECOLLECTIONS OF His eulogium is in " Retaliation," as Dean of Derry, and is thus expressed : — " Here lies our good Dean re-united to earth, Who mixed reason with j^leasure, and wisdom with mirth. If he had any faults he has left us in doubt, At least, in six weeks, I could not find them out." Etc., etc. and on him the great Doctor condescended to write a charade, which is as follows : — " My first shuts out thieves from your house or your room, My second expresses a Syrian perfume. My whole is a man in whose converse is shared The strength of a Bar, and the sweetness of Nard." The warmth of the compliment can scarce atone for the weakness of the Doctor's doggrels. I cannot but think that the desire on the part of some of the bishops of this century to give the Bible to the native population in their own loved tongue, was a great evidence of their clerical worth and value. In the preceding century Dr. Thomas Price, who had been ordained by Bedell, and Avas then Archbishop of Cashel, united with Dr. Narcis- sus Marsh, afterwards Primate of Ireland, and Jones, Bishop of Meath, in conjunction Avith the Hon. Robert Boyle, and had Bedell's MS. of the Bible printed in the Irish tongue. There were high authorities against the perpetuation of the Irish language, for example, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his time, and Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, and THE IRISH CHURCH. 23 subsequently, Dean Jonathan Swift ; but Dr. John- son was an advocate for preserving the language, and the great George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne,^ 1750, argued strongly in favour of a people having a right to the Bible in their own language. The Irish Church has reason to be proud of this illus- trious thinker, philosopher, and writer, of whom Pope said, that he would grant "to Berkeley every virtue under heaven ; " he died in 1753, and Avas succeeded by James Stopford, of whose " learning, modesty, and worth," Swift repeatedly testifies. Afterwards came Bishop Woodward to Cloyne, who was a man of letters ; he founded in 1773 " The Dublin House of Industry ; " he was a strong Li- beral, " the Whately of his day." Time would fail me to speak of Boulter and Robinson, both magnificent primates in their liberal gifts and splen- did endowments ; or of energetic Bishop O'Beirne, who built fifty churches^ in his Diocese of Meath, and whose life had been a pictured romance ; literary Percy eulogised by Dr. Johnson ; Edward Synge, the good Archbishop of Tuam ; James Story, Bishop of Kilmore, " whose work on the Priesthood evinces deep erudition ;" Peter Brown, ' See his Tract, " The Querist" (Nvimber 260). It is a favoiirite argument with the DisestabHshment Party that all the churches and glebe-houses were taken from the Roman Catho- lics at the time of the Reformation. T]iis is utterly untrue, as I have shown from time to time. In tliis arch-diocese of Dublin and Glen- dalough alone, forty churches have been built since 1800. 24 KECOLLECTIONS OF Bishop of Cork, 1713, an eccentric writer, but a dignified and most respected prelate, with many others. The exceptions to the excellency of the episco- pate during this century, were Bishop Rundle, of Derry, 1735, " whose orthodoxy was very question- able." Law, of Clonfert, who was a great eccen- tric ; Clayton, of Clogher, an Arian ; and Lord Bristol, Bishop of Derry, who was little less than a lunatic. Passing by the last four mentioned, the rest of these prelates, if not always eminent Divines, were amiable and accomplished men. The beginning of the century exhibited a better class of bishops than the latter end ; and, on the whole, the Epis- copal Bench was deservedly worthy of more re- spect than the body of the inferior clergy (of course, with a few exceptions). For to give one or two illustrations, surely, " the Dean " himself was anything but spiritually minded : his sermons * were what Andrew Fairservice would denominate " a cold clatter o' morality ; he wrote verses vilely indecent, and full of gross swearing;^ and cor- responded openly with George 11. 's mistress, the Countess of Suffolk. His friend. Dr. Delany, was more of a good-natured epicurean than a Divine. True, he published sermons, but it may justly be ' Swift said of himself that he " preached pamphlets ! " ' See his " Lines on Hamilton's Bawn." THE IRISH CHURCH. 25 pronounced that few ever read thein.^ Dr. Thomas Sheridan, another friend and contemporary of Dean Swift's, was a finished classical scholar, and a man of genius, but he made no pretensions to theology ; and a third friend, was the amiable Dr. Parnell, author of " The Hermit," over the evening of whose life a cloud rested, inducing habits disqualifying him from being counted as a Divine. The truth was, that in both countries, the pulpit was almost mute, or, if vocal, gave but an uncer- certain sound. Kichardson's novels were openly recommended by the preacher as vade mecums to regulate our daily walk by, especially " Pamela" (a book full of the grossest scenes, though written with a good intent). This book, Dr. Slocock, of Christ's Church, Surrey, in a pulpit oration, and no doubt, with all the sincerity of ignorance, ad- vised his congregation to peruse as a " manual of morality;" and in Ireland, in 1757, the Rev. Dr. Brett preached in St. Anne's Church, Dublin, his famous sermon 2 on "Conjugal Love and Duty," 'He wi'ote fifteen sermons on the " Social Duties," and then published five more on the opposite vices. At the age of sixty he gave to the world his sermon on " The Divine Origin of Tithes ! " taking for his text the Tenth Commandment, " Thou shalt not covet ! " How to reconcile text and sermon surely would require some ingenuity ! 2 The doctor was nearly seventy years of age when he preached and wrote thus, from wliich cii'cumstance we may charitably hope 26 EECOLLECTIONS OF taking his text from Heb. xiii. 4, " Marriage is honourable," &c., with a dedication to the Lady Caroline Russell, asserting the Prerogative of Beauty, and vindicating the privileges of the Fair Sex ! " Again, we have it recorded how in the begin- ning of this eighteenth century the Rev. Nicholas Brown, rector of the parishes of Dromore and Rossossory, in Fermanagh, and a " perfect master of the Irish tongue," and wonderfully loved for his great kindness by the natives, used to preach and pray all through their cottages for years ; while, at the same time, the Rev. AYalter Atkins, rector of Middleton, in Cloyne Diocese, ministered in Irish to the peasantry " with singular accep- tance." Both these men were remarkable for their goodness and practice of charity among the poor. Now, once more to reverse the picture, and that painfully. At the close of this century the Kil- kenny hunt could number six clerical Nimrods among its members,^ while the archdeacon of a northern diocese actually kept a pack of harriers, which ran yelping musically, at each " meet," over his handsome lawn. He had a very idle curate, but, he was doting ! He was chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Bedford. lOnly premising that they should wear black collars to their red coats, out of respect for their religion ! THE lEISH CHURCH. 27 like Yorick, a " fellow of infinite jest of endless humour." This man neglected the parish, and on being remonstrated with by his rector, the follow- ing characteristic colloquy ensued : — Archdeacon — "I regret to hear so poor an account of your work, sir. I am afraid you are very careless of your duties — very careless in- deed ; something like a Gallio, I fear. Yes, sir, I repeat it, a Gal-li-o ! " Curate (indignant) — " A Gallio ! sir. Well, at all events, I 'm thankful to say I am not like you, sir, a Tally-ho !" Had disestablishment and disendowment taken place at this period of the Irish Church's inertness,- and neglect of her mission, it would almost have seemed Retribution ; but to smite her when she was up and doing — when her loins were girded and her lights burning — this was, like the dagger- stab of Brutus, " The unkindest cut of all," and unworthy of the great mind of the minister who planned and perfected the spoliation. I confess to having had a strong desire to eli- minate the real truth as regards the position of the Irish Church in the last century, and that in so doing I have been much puzzled at the changeful and differing features it presents, the era being full of contradictory elements hard to be recon- ciled. 28 RECOLLECTIONS OF My friend, Mr. Denny Urlin, in 1870 thus writes of John Wesley's visit in 1 747 : — " The Irish Church, which is now said to have failed in its duty, appears to have made a singularly favour- able impression on this acute observer."^ This agrees Avith some few facts I have touched upon, but is not in accordance with my general impres- sion of the ministry and their flocks. Then, again, the history of the bishops about that time varies much in the narrative of different writers. Mr. Froude tells us what bitter persecutors of the Presbyterian Church all the Tory High Church bishops Avere, with good Archbishop King at their head, until Queen Anne's death in 1714, and Dr. Killen,2 of Belfast, is equally strong in his record of the anti-liberal spirit of these prelates towards their dissenting brethren, nor does he hesitate to disclose and dwell on what he considers the faults of their character. In Bishop Mant's " History of the Church of Ireland" we find the prelates much panegyrized for learning and piety. Now, considering, as we must do, the great body 'See "John Wesley's place in Church History." Rivingtons, 1870. By Denny Urlin, Esq. See " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland." Macmillan. 1875. A work of accurate and exhaustive information, but not particu- larly friendly to our Church. TPIE IRISH CHURCH. 29 of the clergy as made up of fallible beings, yet capable of much good, no doubt a very large amount of truth, though " A gem that loves the deep," may be found and brought out from these con- flicting narrations ; yet so perplexing are they to a mind like mine, desirous of coming to a fixed conclusion, that I feel irresistibly inclined to be- take myself, with my pen, to a green and quiet secluded knoll, where there is certain light, and unquestionable truth, and content myself in the following chapter with a few sketches of a family who, among the middle ranks of Irish life in the last century, did adorn the religion they professed and the Church they belonged to, by the piety and consistency of their lives. 30 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER III. A FAMILY EECORD. Old "William Brooke, the Granard rector of whom I have spoken in the beginning of the last chapter, had two uncles, who held each of them very large benefices in the same united diocese with himself, namely, that of Kilmore and Ardagh.^ They had been Scholars in Trinity College, Dublin, and I believe were both pious and cultured clergymen. Henry Brooke was Rector of Kinawlcy, County Fermanagh, and of him I know but little, but that little is good ; his eldest son attained to rank and wealth in India,^ and their descendants have now lived in Bath for nearly a century. William Brooke, the elder brother, was Rector of Mullagh, Killinkere, Moybolgue and Liscowie, in Cavan, circiter 1695 ; he was Chaplain to King W^illiam, a friend of good Bishop Wetenhall's, and ' Since 1G40, there have been nine rectors in the Irish Church of this family and name. * He was a " Member of Council" at Madi'as, and was afterwards Govemo;- of Fort St. George. THE IRISH CHUECH. 31 roember of the proposed Convocation of 1703, and a Avorthy working minister ; his character is to be found in Vol. I., page 2, of " Brookiana," a little work once extremely popular, and written by Mr. C. H. Wilson,^ son to the Rector of Bailieborough. Brooke had married Lettice Digby, daughter of Dr. Simon Digby, Bishop of Elphin, and Eliza- beth Westenra, his wife, and granddaughter to the heroic Lady Digby Baroness Offaly, a noble Geral- dine, who defended her Castle of Geashill against a swarm of Rebels, in 1641, successfully.^ Mrs, Brooke inherited much of her sense, spirit, and dignity. Swift liked her society, and was occa- sionally entertained at Rantavan House, when on his way to visit Dr. Sheridan, at Quilea ; here he was ever an honoured guest, and it was said that "he stood more in awe of 'Madame Brooke,'^ than of most country ladies." This worthy couple had two children, Henry ' This gentleman, though now forgotten, was a notable in his day, and the author of many fugitive pieces ; he is good-humour- edly rallied by the late Rev. Charles Kingsley, for the discursive- ness displayed in " Brookiana," which, however, is a book pleasant to read, and has some good scholarly matter on its leaves. Mr. Kingsley's remarks are in his biography of Henry Brooke, prefixed to the seventh edition of "The Fool of Quality." — London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1859. There is a notice of Wilson in Dublin TJnimrdty Magazine for June, 1862. " See Lodge's Peerage on " Earl Digby." ' See Life of Henry Brooke, in Dublin University Magazine for February, 1852. 32 RECOLLECTIONS OF and Robert, both religious men, and inclined to Methodism. Henry's peculiar tenets may be traced all through his " Fool of Quality," a book which John Wesley edited, and prefaced with a glowing eulogium. Brooke's Methodism Avas tinged with the mystic flights of Madam Guion, of whom he was an admirer, and etherealized with the wild philosophy of Jacob Behmen,^ and no broad Churchman of the present day ever enlarged the circle of redemption more widely than Brooke, for not only did he include all mankind among the saved, but even Satan and his rebellious legions were in a body to submit to the Redeemer, and to be admitted into the heavenly Paradise at last.^ In the year 1859, I edited a new edition of this once popular book, on which occasion the Rev. Charles Kingsley, one of England's greatest, most gifted, and noblest sons, agreed to write a biogra- phical preface to the work, making it, hoAvever, a condition with me that I should not " alter or diminish from aught of Brooke's Philosoph}^ or Theology," which condition I religiously observed. (I have alluded to this preface at page 31.) Whatever Brooke's religious eccentricities might have been, he was a thoroughly sound Protestant, and held the glorious doctrine of the God-man ' See Coleridge's "Aids to Reflection," page 298. ^ Henry, in politics, was an ardent Williamite Whig, a noble species, but, I fear, almost extinct. THE IRISH CHUECH. 33 atoning by blood, and suffering on the Cross of Calvary in its fullest and most evangelical mean- ing ; and his walk and ways were so evidential of his goodness and his faith, that on one occasion when the Rector of Mullagh was prevented by an accident from attending his church, and the Sun- day congregation had waited a full hour for his appearance, they unanimously invited and pre- vailed rn Brooke to ascend the pulpit, and when Mr. Cosby came in some twenty minutes after- wards, " he found the whole assemblage drowned in tears." Robert Brooke, the second brother, Avas a Metho- dist also ; all Henry's numerous sons and daughters had died save Charlotte ;^ she was also a truly pious woman. Robert's descendants followed his faith, and were more or less attached to Method- ism, yet continued in the Church. Henry, the eldest son, living in closest intimacy with the Rev. John William Fletcher, Rector of Madeley, in Shropshire, who was the patriarch of the Wes- leyan Body ; and in the year 1783, this good and saintly man and his wife came to Dublin on Brooke's invitation, where he charmed all who heard him with his preaching and his gracious and simple piety. Another son of Robert Brooke was Governor ' Authoress of "JReliques of Irish Poetry," or Translations from the Irish. 34 EECOLLECTIONS OF of St. Helena, a distinguished officer, and a colonel in the army, he died in Bath 1810; he, too, ap- pears to have been a religious man, as well as his brother, Thomas Digby, the author of the beauti- ful hymn (which he composed when on his death- bed) beginning with " To the haven of Thy breast 0 Son of Man I fly." Etc., etc. Perhaps I may have spoken too much of those of my own name, and not sufficiently considered what utterly little interest the public may take in these Brookes, but in truth I have only selected them as a specimen of a religious provincial family taken from the middle classes of society, who were members of the Irish Church in the last century, which church they certainly graced by the piety and purity of their lives, during the lapse of many years. They had a legend among them which was early embodied in a family manuscript of very ancient standing. I had it from Mrs. C. Wolseley, wife of the late Archdeacon of Glendalough, whose mother Avas a Brooke, and grandniece to the author of the " Fool of Quality." I now subjoin it here in a somewhat abbreviated form, considering it as a good illustration of matters ecclesiastical, as they were in this country during a crisis which took place at the end of the reign of Charles I. Thus THE IRISH CHUKCH. 35 the narrative is altogether cognate to my subject, inasmuch as it is a 1 Recollection, or rather Record, of the Irish Church of that day. A. TRUE ROMANCE, CONNECTED WITH THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1641. Nearly at Christmas time in the year 1641 — it being St. Ignatius's Day — the cruel Irish Rebellion broke out, under the leadership of Sir Phelim O'Neal. Here in the North we were sorely ha- rassed, and thousands of the English and Scotch settlers lost both life and property. Doctor Ussher, the great and good Archbishop, being in England, dared not to return to his See-house :^ the Rebels burned his furniture, but they spared his books. William Bedell also, the Apostolic Bishop of Kil- more, suffered grievous loss ; and being confined in the dreary Castle of Cloughoughter, on his liberation from thence, died of the hardships he had there endured. Many of the Church Clergy fled to Dublin, or into England ; waiting till such time as the storm would blow by. Among these was a Mr. Brooke : he was an Englishman, and from the County of Cheshire ; he is called, in the old manuscript from which this narrative is ex- tracted, a " Royal Chaplain ; " but more probably he had only a Government Living, which appears ' In Drogheda. 36 EECOLLECTIONS OF to have been near Kells, on the borders of the County of Cavan, where the rebellion raged most fiercely. He had married a beautiful Irish lady some years previous to the beginning of these troubles ; and now being absent in London on urgent business, his wife wrote to him supplicating that he " should not venture home, his life being in peril." She made little of her own danger : she " was a woman, and feared not but that the Insur- gents would regard her sex." Besides this, she was effectually debarred from travelling, her confine- ment being close at hand : however she suffered nought from fear ; she was patient, pious, and brave, and calmly abode in her house, having no one with her but an old Irish nurse, Avho waited on her and her only child — a little girl of four years of age. So matters went on quietly for some days, till one evening a lad, who was nephew to the nurse, came running to the hall door, with the announce- ment that " Black Mulmore, or Miles O'Reilly," was passing up from Kells that night at ten o'clock, and that he had sworn an oath that he would "sack the English Parson's homestead, and not leave a feather or an egg in his nest." This was an anxious hearing to the poor lady, who, knowing the violent character of Mulmore, at once decided how to act. Horse or vehicle had she none ; and her nurse was too old to accompany THE IRISH CHURCH. 37 her : so, making up a small parcel of clothes, together with a little money, she set out for a friend's house at some distance, where she knew there was a guard of soldiers : her old nurse blest her with tears, as she passed the threshold with her child in her hand. Keeping oif the high road, she pursued her way through the fields, by the light of the moon, till on passing out of a wood she found herself on the banks of a broad but shallow river, on which the moonlight was streaming in silver. The bridge was to the right, about two hundred yards off, but on advancing to it, she saw it was occupied by a body of the Rebel Cavalry, whom she recognised by their wild accoutrements. Immediately she retreated again into her shelter, but not so quickly but that she was seen by a young Leader of the Band, who suffered her to gain the heart of the Avood, and coming up, ac- costed her. He spoke in Irish, which, happily for her safety, she perfectly understood. " Who are you ? Whence do you come ? Where do you go ? What's your name ? " She told him all, answer- ing each question simply and faithfully, with a calm voice and untroubled look. " Ha," he said, "you are wife to the English Parson whose house Miles O'Reilly is to sack and burn to-night ; you are a hive of Heretics, all of you, and we will sweep you out of the land before the new year comes ; you speak Irish, too ; who has taught you 38 RECOLLECTIONS OF our tongue ? Come, come, why am I wasting words ? you must prepare to die." She looked at him fixedly ; he was youthful and comely, and there was something almost noble in the cast of his features, that reminded her of her own young brother. She then said calmly, " You will not surely kill me, sir — you could not be so cruel— so cowardly — I am about to become a mother — have you, sir, a mother ? and what would she say to such an action '? " He drew a naked skeane, or long dagger, from his belt as she spoke, and the glitter of it in the cold moonlight made the blood bound from her heart. " I must kill you," he said — " Vv'e are sworn to it — you must die, as well as the child by your side, and also the Heretic you are carrying in your womb : come, say your last prayer, and prepare for death." She looked at him steadily, and mournfully, and said — " I have been praying to God, and He has told me that I am not to die by your hand ; no, you dare not do it, God will not suffer you." Three times he brandished his skeane, and pointed it at her heart ; and three times she lifted her hands and face to heaven, and said — " No — God will not suffer youy Dashing his weapon on the grass, he cried, " you are right, God will not suffer me ; you are a brave woman, and I was going to be a coward, but you would not let me ; but come, you are in great danger here ; will you trust to my honour, and let me THE IRISH CHURCH. 39 guide you to a place of safety?" "With all my heart," she answered, putting her arm within his, " I will trust to your honour." He then took her low-er down to a ford in the river, which she crossed on stepping-stones nearly dryshod, and on ascending the bank, he pointed out to her the road which led to her friend's house, and prepared to leave her, when she addressed him solemnly, and said, " I cannot find language to express my joy at my escape, or my grateful sense of the conduct of my generous enemy ; but if God gives me the baby I am carrying — whether it be male or female — it shall surely be called Honor, in remembrance of your honourable conduct to a weak and deso- late woman ; now, farewell." She offered him her hand, which he took respectfully, uncovering his head from his Barrad cap ; then he turned, and ran swiftly and lightly away. But, alas for the poor lady, her hour was come all too soon ; and almost fainting with pain and apprehension, she knocked at a farm-house door : it was opened by the mistress, who at once recog- nized who she was, but positively refused to let her enter. " God knows, JMadam, I would gladly do so, for you were ever good to me, and to all your neighbours ; but O'Reilly's Bands are on the road, and are certain to call for food and fodder, and were they to find you here under my roof, they are that hard-hearted that they would sack, 40 EECOLLECTIONS OF cut, burn, and slay all in the house — but, alas ! alas ! good lady, you are fainting — you are dying: — here, John — Phemie — Bridget — for God's sake, carry her into the haggard : there is two feet depth of hay pulled down between the stacks, and plenty of shelter : bring her a pillow and a blanket from my own bed ; make haste, make haste, the boys are on the road :" and so this sweet lady was laid on the soft hay, and there with the kind stars looking down, and smiling on her with their golden eyes ; and One kinder and brighter still regarding her, and sending her help from a loftier heaven, she gave birth to a little girl, whom the good woman of the house swathed and cared, till a vehicle arrived in the morning from her friend's house with an escort of soldiers, and with great difficulty, and at some risk, con- veyed her, her little daughter, and the infant to a safe and comfortable shelter. This infant was in due time baptized Honor ^ and the name, as well as the narrative, has been handed down and re- peated among Mrs. Brooke's female descendants, through six generations, even unto this day. The old MS. says nothing more of the lady, which is unsatisfactory : but there is at the end of it rather a piquant anecdote of her husband — who, far away from all this tumult, seems to have been — good easy man — earning his bread by writing for London booksellers. " Black Mul- THE IRISH CHURCH. 41 more," true to his threats, had phmdered and burned his house, and destroyed much of his property, sparing the old nurse as an Irishwoman and a Romanist. So Mr. Brooke was now depend- ing on his literary powers to support himself. One morning, when standing in the shop of the bookseller who employed his pen, a bishop came in to make some purchases ; the old MS. calls him " the Bishop of London ;" if so, it must have been Juxon, who attended Charles I. at the block ; and seeing a gentle-looking person in a clerical garb standing at the counter, he inquired of the book- seller who he was. The man answered that he was " one of the Refugee Irish Clergy." The bishop then went over to Mr. Brooke and made many inquiries, and heard of his house being burnt, &c., &c., when he bluntly said, "then I suppose you are very poor, Sir." " Extremely so, my lord." " And would not object to receiving an alms ?" " Not in the least, my lord." " Then, Sir," said the bishop, drawing out a long silk purse very slowly, which was heavy with gold pieces, and opening it — " here is a shilling for you." " Many thanks, my lord," said Brooke, accepting and pocketing the coin ; " it is a most suitable gift, for the truth is, I have had no breakfast to-day, and your lordship's kind con- tribution is just enough to enable me to procure 42 EECOLLECTIONS OF and pay for one :" then lifting his hat, he bowed low, and left the shop. Now the story goes on to say that this prelate was so pleased with the good sense, temper, and tact of the man, and at his standing the trial he had subjected him to so good humouredly, that he became his steady friend, gave him the true Bar- mecide feast, after having mocked him with the fictitious repast, and was instrumental in helping him back to his parish in Ireland, when that un- happy land had assumed a somewhat quieter aspect. And so ends the "True Romance of Mrs. Brooke." The lady whose escape is here recorded, is sup- posed to have been a Miss Sheridan, whose family were afterwards of Quilca, and with whom and tlie Brookes there was an ancient cousinhood^ and friendship. • Vide "Life of Mrs. Sheridan," by Alicia Lefanue, page 104. THE IRISH CHUECH. 43 CHAPTER lY. DONEGAL. In the former volume of these " Recollections," I have written much concerning Donegal, and Church matters connected with that interesting, but little known locality ; and after I had relin- quished my curacy there, in the year 1833, and during my incumbency of Kingstown Church, which extended over a quarter of a century, I had revisited the north four or five times, and gone back amidst the scenes of this grand old territory, where I had spent so considerable a portion of my youthful clerical life. Truth to say, at Kingstown, I had little time for holidays ; our church was opened five or six times in the week, and our services, schools, classes, and prayer-meetings, took up time and at- tention, not to speak of the constant demands for visiting, especially among the sick, of whom we had always a heavy staff to attend daily. I should say, on an average sixteen or eighteen all the year round, and many a patient sent to us by a Dublin 44 RECOLLECTIONS OF or a provincial physician for the perfecting of their recovery, found Kingstown not a convales- cent home, but a portico to the churchyard. Thus my opportunities for an excursion were exceedingly rare ; once I got to Germany, and once I revelled amidst the Scotch Highlands, but still the most attractive spot of all was Donegal ; and, like my countryman. Goldsmith, I might say of it :— " Whatever realms I see, My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee." Perhaps it was, that early in life I had here secured my best and dearest blessing, or, perhaps, the wild and solitary scenery of these grand high- lands and stupendous cliiFs may have fascinated my fancy ;^ but I found no air so elastic, or so exhilarating, as the breezes that blew over the old " Horn,"2 and no sight of scenic grandeur to com- pete with the majesty of Slieve League, as spring- ing from the sea, it towers near 2000 perpendi- cular feet, and opens to the gaze of the sun, and the rush of the Atlantic, its smooth and giant ' "St. Bernard, a man whom the Church of Ireland has no reason to admire, loved a variety of landscape," as saith the old Hexa- meter, " Bernardhus valles montes benedictus amabat." ' The CliflF of Horn Head, 800 feet high. See " Natural History of Ireland," 1851, by William Thompson, Esq., of Belfast ; an ad- mirable book, full of interest and great beauty. See Vol. III., p. 223, for an account of the Horn. THE lEISH CHURCH. 45 surface glowing with a hundred varied and vivid colourings. I have always considered that my pastoral labours in Donegal were much lightened and brightened by my admiration of the scenery which lies amidst the 45,000 acres, of which our parish was composed ; for every variety of land- scape was there — hill, valley, mountain, waterfall, brown-bog, lake, wild-wood, precipice, and river. A great part of these solitudes are untraversed, save by the hill-fox, and unseen, but by the eye of the eagle. We had outlying schools at the remote extremi- ties of the parish, where I held stated lectures. Some of these stations were reached by rude moun- tain passes, and while traversing them, I often lost my way, but was brought up by my knowledge of the bearings of the country, which the mountains gave me. Lough Salt, on the east, Arigle, on the north, and the Glendoen range, on the western coast, were sure landmarks to steer my way home by ; yet, on one occasion, these great sign-posts utterly failed me ; it was on this wise : — On a fine November day, I had ridden to Traintagh, a wild townland, where my rector had a school, and after my lecture was over, I was detained for nearly two hours, that I might decide a controversy between our schoolmaster Mortimer, a good Methodist man, but frightfully 46 RECOLLECTIONS OF pompous, and dearly loving a " wrangle on the Scripter," and a young fellow who was a Cove- nanter or Cameronian, and a fierce Doctrinalist. The point in dispute was Romans xi. 29. " For the gifts and callings of God are without repentance; " and on this the Covenanter asserted that the text ignored all necessity for repentance or change of life on the sinner's part, and that God saved us absolutely of His OAvn free will by " a gift and a call," requiring nothing from us of change of heart and life. The schoolmaster took the opposite view, re- ferring the words, " without repentance" to God and His unchangeableness of action, indeed His sovereignty of purpose. This view I endorsed ; the Covenanter expressing himself "not content" in a scornful fashion, while his adversary, with uplifted chin, " praised the Maker, that he had the best of the eargument, as indeed he always had in every wrangle over the Word ! " Both the disputants had been extremely long- winded, and I did not get away till late in the afternoon. I was recommended to try a new route home, but like most short cuts it proved the longer way. It was three o'clock, and my mare, a lively half-bred chestnut, but exceedingl}' nervous, trotted on briskly for three or four miles, when the way terminated in two roads : the air was dark with a coming storm ; and looking up, I THL IRISH CHURCH. 47 could see no mountains, their peaks were fast covering, so I gave my mare her choice of way, and she went to the right one, which was the wrong one ! I noAV saw that a great snow-cloud was drifting over the sky ; in a moment it came down, covering the whole landscape with white flakes, and in ten minutes obliterating almost every feature of path, or ditch, or hedge — not a house in sight— all a dead snow level. These tremendous icy clouds, which sail over the Atlan- tic, discharge their white and blinding con- tents copiously, and with something like absolute fury. Still I rode on, but the mare's concave hoofs had balled, and were full of frozen snow — she was literally skating, and liable to fall, and had become frightened, snorting and shaking her head. I dismounted and put her into a shallow ditch which ran along the road side, hardly dis- cernible, where were ice and water, and pulled her along by the bridle, she trembling with nervous- ness and excitement, and becoming so violent and restless, that I scarce could hold her with my numb and frozen fingers ; still if I let her go, I should lose my sole hope of rescue, and my only companion, and I felt I should be alone in that solitary snow desert, and black night fast coming. We struggled on together for about a mile, and I was just then straining up a short steep hill, when 1 heard the laugh of a child at the other side. 48 RECOLLECTIONS OF "Oh ! sweet music — thank God ao-ain and again." I then perceived what seemed to be a tall black pole towering in the gloom — this was the steeple of Letterkenny Church. I had approached this town by a back and long disused road, the mare had chosen the wrong one : and never did I feel more grateful to God — for darkness, and frost, and despair had been curdling round my heart, and I had begun to consider myself as one "Lost in the Snow." The Covenanters are a sect, as my reader may know, founded by Richard Cameron, in Scotland, in the time of Charles II. Cameron himself was slain by the king's troops most barbarously, at a field meeting, his only crime Avas his resistance to episcopacy being forced on his nation, and his ad- herence to the solemn league and covenant, which Charles himself had taken and sworn to observe, when he was in Edinburgh, in 1650, but after- wards forsook and broke. We find the pictures of these men vividly drawn in Sir Walter Scott's tales. Intensified in Balfour of Burley, carica- tured in j\Iause Headrigg, and faithfully limned in Douce Davie Deans, and his good and gentle daughter, Jeanie. The sect' was strong in our parish ; many of them were most respectable in every way ; they stood rather apart from other sects, and they delighted in very high doctrine. 1 recollect one of the body, a young farmer, THE IRISH CHURCH. 49 coming to my lending library on a market-day, and asking me for " a ged (good) book." Being a j little mischievously inclined, I handed him " Bax- ' ter's Call to the Unconverted." He had never heard of the work, but liked the title ; on that day week he brought the volume to me, and flung it on the table. " Take it back," he cried, " it is a felthy Armennian book." He was actually pale with excitement, and though I begged he " would compose himself," yet, like Naaman the Syrian, he turned and went away in a rage, and never came again to my little shop. Baxter, being thoroughly practical, disgusted this young zealot, who, I have no doubt, became wiser with the advance of years. Another of these men, but very superior to our Anti-Baxterian, inasmuch as he had larger views, and a touch of poetry in him, a rare gift in a Donegal farmer, was often an applicant to me for books ; I enjoyed conversing with this man, whose name was Douthwit, or Duthit ;^ he had a striking presence, and was original and enthusiastic in his theological views. In a curious way he influenced my after profes- sional life ; he was standing in the library one ' I find a person of this uncommon name as Thane, or Earl, in Cadzou, in the very early annals of Scottish history, reign of Mal- colm III. £ 50 RECOLLECTIONS OF day, when I accosted him : " Stephen, why do I never see you in church ?" Stephen. — " Because I attend my own church ; I don't approve of yours." Myself. — "Why don't you come and hear me preach ?" Stephen. — " Me ! hear you., oh that would never do, Sir." Myself. — " And why not, my good friend, you might do a worse thing ?" Stephen. — " Why man, your hearers say that you read your sermons from a book ; my oh ! but that must be the queer preaching." Myself. — Stephen, do you come next Sunday to my church, and, God willing, you shall hear a sermon from me without any book but the Bible ; now, I shall expect to see you." Stephen. — " Well, well, perhaps I may go, but I am not sure." I accordingly prepared my first uuAvritten ser- mon, and it cost me more labour and more prayer than ever I had given to a manuscript discourse. It was on Zech. ix. 12, "Turn you to the strong- hold," &c., and I felt happy and at ease when delivering it. Stephen was not there, but I have been obliged to him ever since, and to his con- tempt, which stung me into being an extemporary preacher. These events took place just forty-five years ago ; I could fill a volume with the conver- THE IRISH CHURCH. 51 sation and peculiarities of these northerns, as I sat in my lending library on a market-day, doling out books of every shade of doctrine according to the taste of my customers, from the " God's Sove- reignty" of " Elijah Cole's," down to the " Tom White, the Postillion," of Mrs. Hannah More ! Calvinist and Arminian equally regarded and served. " Tros Tyrius-ve mihi nullo discrimine agetur." The Covenanters were happy in their minister at this time in Letterkenny. I believe he was a good man, if we can excuse his heavy hatred to our Church, and her two dark blots ; the cautious Roman cried, " Faenum habet in cornu hunc tu Romane caveto." But these men regarded our Church as a beast, exhibiting not one, but two horns, namely, Episcopalianism and Erastianism, and each equally destructive of souls. I have spoken of the great snow-clouds which come sailing over the Atlantic, but there is an- other elemental enemy peculiar to Donegal, and called by the natives a Smirrh^ Moore, the poet, speaks of " Erin's weeping skies," but had he been exposed to a Donegal smirrh, he would have reckoned his epithet far too feeble to express the driving nature of this pitiless, soaking, steeping, all-pervading, thick, wetting mist, which assails ' Smirrh, etymology obscure ; perhaps from lucrgo, Lat. to irn- merge. 52 EECOLLECTIONS OF you at once from every point — north, south, east, and west — running down your back and breast, getting up your waistcoat into your sleeves, then through your pockets down into your boots, re- ducing your hat in ten minutes to mere pulp, and never leaving you till it has converted you into something like an animated sponge. My first trial of this assailant was on the occa- sion of a very distant sick call. A farm servant brought the summons to church on a Sunday — Joe Bovaird was "lying verra donny" at Booragh, six or seven miles from the rectory, and I was to see him on Monday. The road was frightfully hilly, and the heavens very dark, and as I mounted my steed, the old groom, Robin, counselled me thus : — " If you are going to Booragh, you mun, just tak the meare (mare) caulm and quiet ; if you trot her up the hills, you may break her wind, and if you go ower fast down the brae, she may break her knees ; and be sure to get your cloak tight about you, for it's just going to be awfu' droughy^ weather." Though I could not say with Tam o' Shanter, " I did na care the storm a whistle," yet enveloped and swathed in India-rubber, cloaked and coated, and gambadoed as to legs, I pricked forth man- fully on my ride, and in half an hour met the 1 Proughy or Droighty, etymology manifest ; from A^>o/ r?j, Gr. , a bathing tub ! Meo periculo. THE IRISH CHURCH. 53 "smirrh" descending from Lough Salt, like one of Ossian's ghosts, enrobed in a grey mist. Vain was coat, vain gambado, Indian-rubber was a dream, useless were wrap and shawl, the water- proof cloak warranted ! was water-logged in twenty minutes, lucus a non lucendo — the smirrh all soaking, and subduing prevailed — and so I rode on thoroughly wet, till a sudden gust of air took the mist away, and the sun came out on the hills bright and warm, and the tinkle of a hundred tiny waterfalls was heard singing as they came down in their runnels from the uplands. I then got down from the saddle to shake oif the wet, and pursued my way on foot, and in half an hour I was opposite Booragh, I had walked myself nearly dry. It was a hamlet on a hill, when what a sight met my eyes ! There was Joe Bovaird, my patient, the sick man ! plying a lively spade, " putting in his potatoes" on the sloping furrow ! In a moment he had seen me, and running quickly under the hedge, with a bent body, he got into his house quietly, fully ten minutes before I had overcome the steepness of the " boreen," or bridle-path, which led up to it. His brother came to the door to take my mare. " Well, how is Joe ?" "Very donny, your Reverence; I'm doubting but it's a fayver that has tuck him." " Let me see him." I pushed past him, he being anxious to stay my progress. 54 RECOLLECTIONS OF I got to his room, he groaning and sighing and moving nnder the counterpane, as if in pain. " Don't come nigh me — there's danger with me from the sickness, your Reverence ; I'm feered it's fayver that is on me." " Nonsense, man, give me your wrist. Why, your pulse is as steady as that of a man who has been planting potatoes all morning, and your hand is cool and moist. Come, get out of that bed, and tell me what all this humbug means ? " He arose sorely abashed ; he said, " I did na expact you, the weather was so saft"^ — and at that moment the cry of a recently born child was heard from an adjoining room. " Oh I see," I said, " you have brought me all this long Avay just to baptize your baby, and you have done so by the lie of feigning yourself sick, and requiring to see a clergyman." He had now tumbled out of bed fully dressed, except his shoes — he apologized whiningly, pleading the long road to the church — the wee chie? being puny, sae was its mither," and his having no car. However, before baptizing the baby, I administered a good lecture to the family on the sin of deceit, and left the house, the mother exhorting me " not to forget to put the bairn's name on the church books." They have a legend in this country of some ' A soft day is a wet day. " Wee cliiel— that is little cluld. THE IRISH CHURCH. 55 property having been recovered from a name being found in the Baptismal Registry, and this, I much fear, produces their manifest anxiety to have their babies baptized — and registered. As I rode down the Boreen there was Lough Salt^ on my right — " Its gray peak glittering in the solemn sky," about four miles away, and the evening now being most lovely, the temptation was irresistible ; so leaving my cumbrous mufflings — gambados and all — at Barrack Schoolhouse, away we went, my steed and I. Soon gained Kilmacrenan, or " the Church of the Sons of Enan," who, as Colgan says (and the song after him), were " first cousins German" to St. Columba ; crossed the wild bridge, through whose arches the black and torn waters of the Leanan tumble, after battling with a thousand rocks and boulders, which are strewed along its broken channel : then slowly toiled up the broad causeway made by William Wray/ the great squire of Ards, a century ago, and which goes straight up the mountain for 900 feet, then the sudden turn into the crater, ' Lough Salt is a mountain more than 1,000 feet high ; near the summit is what is thought to be an old crater, containing the deep lake which gives a name to the mountain — else the appellation may be criticised as a geographical bull ! More Hibemico. * See Sir. B. Burke's " Vicissitudes of Families" on "WUliam Wray, of Ards." 56 RECOLLECTIONS OF where sleeps the lake 200 feet deep and a mile long, and riding along its stony margin I listened to " The ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag," making music in that solitary spot. Now, as I proceed, the walls of the crater dip on the left, and far away over tracks of sand appears the mag- nificent Atlantic, breaking on low-lying strands, or creaming round the black bases of the Torry Cliffs far out from the shore, and sending up such exquisite air, so fresh, so brilliant, so life-giving. I sat in my saddle for ten minutes, silent and admiring, and inhaling that pure bouquet of great Nature, then turned and rode slowly down the steep incline. " Old Willie" made this grand road suis impensis,^ at his own proper cost — his men often working by torchlight, so great was his zeal to have it finished. Ha ! here is a milestone ! It is seven feet high. VVray had them erected all the way to Ards ; now this alone remains " Like a brotherless hermit, the last of his race," and I believe has fallen, since I saw it. All this Lough Salt scenery has been brilliantly painted by the genius of the Rev. Caesar Otway in his "Sketches of Donegal;" he was well ac- ' He also made the straight steep road over Mongarry Mountain, near Raphoe. THE lEISH CHUKCH. 57 quainted with the vicinity, for his wife's brother lived in the shadow of the great mountain. He was the Rev. Anthony Hastings, Rector of Kil- macrenan, a kindly and popular clerg}^man. He was of the noble house of Huntingdon, and had married T.ady Anne M'Neil, the widow of Colonel M'Neil, of Colonsay, N.B., and sister of Lord Granard. Her son, the Rev. George M'Neil, we were inti- mate with ; he was curate of Convoy, and was deservedly popular with all classes for his devo- tion to his profession, his activity among the poor of his parish, and his general bearing. He now resides in England. 58 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER V. THE queen's county. On leaving Donegal in 1833, we passed into the Queen's County, I having accepted the curacy of Abbeyleix, The ancient name of this shire was Leix, but assumed its present title in compliment to Queen Mary, of fire and faggot memory, as the neighbouring district of OfFaly was converted into the King's County, to do honour to her Spanish husband, whose associations, it is sad to say, were equally igneous and atrocious when a Protestant was concerned. Until the time of Queen Elizabeth this county was mostly held by the great chiefs who re- presented the O'Mores, the O'Connors, the O'Dwynnes, and O'Dempsies. The ancient prin- cipality of Upper Ossory was for long centuries possessed by the FitzPatricks,^ who, however, were seldom found but in alliance with the English ^ Represented at present by Lord Castletown, of Upper Ossory, according to Horace Walpole, one of the oldest families in Europe THE IRISH CHUECH. 59 Crown. During the 1 6th century this county was constantly engaged in a war most disastrous to the Irish. O'More's territory was again and again invaded and ravaged by Kildare, by Surrey, and by Bellingham ; and the O'Mores finally, and most cruelly, conquered, and almost extirpated by Sussex, the chief's wife slain, and his large pro- pertyi handed over to Thomas Butler, tenth Earl of Ormond, whom Queen Elizabeth called her "Black Husband," from his dark complexion. The other Celtic families suffered in like manner, but I find the Dunnes of Brittas retaining their position, and much of their property, up to this day. To fill up the gaps made by all this ruthless slaughter of men and rapacious seizure of land, her virgin Majesty planted the Queen's County with English Protestants. Then there settled on the land '■'■the Seven Tribes of England" y\z.: — Cosbys, Hartpoles, Bo wens, Barringtons, Hetheringtons, Hovendens, and Huishs, most of whom are still in the county, and hold property. In the same reign Sir Richard Graham, Knight,^ of The Mote, or Netherby, Cumberland, who had won the Vallary Crown in Desmond's Wars, was first High-sheriff of the Queen's County, and Governor of Mary- ' From the Ormond family this property passed through the Muschamps to the Viscounts de Vesci. » His grandson, Hector Graham, purchased the Castle of Lets and the lands appertaining thereto. 60 RECOLLECTIONS OF borough Castle, with powers against the "meere Irish," but especially against the hapless remnant of the O'Mores, as absolute and unmeasured as those of a Persian Satrap.^ In the same reign the Coote family obtained great estates in the southern side of the county, and were followed afterwards by the Staples, Stubbors, Chetwodes, and Alloways, all leading families, and of the Protestant faith, and members of the Church of England. The Dawsons also sprung from an opulent army clothier, settled at Portarlington, from which town they afterwards had their title. The Digbys, Warburtons, and Pigotts were also settlers. Thus this county has been for nearly three cen- turies, singularly rich in Protestantism ; and could the illustrious lady from whom it derived its royal appellation, have lifted her head from her tomb, she would have blushed, as only ghosts can blush, to see a plantation of heretics flourishing and blossoming on the soil which bore her queenly title. But further, as if ^ ' ' Adding its sum of more to that which has too much," Charles II. bestowed the property of Portarlington, in 1662, on Lord Arlington, being the confiscated 'Sir Richard Graham's property, of Rahenderry, near Athy, passed, by purchase, to an ancestor of Sir Anthony Weldon, Bart., circiter 1661. THE IBISH CHURCH. 61 estate of Lewis O'Dempsie, Viscount Clanmalier. Then it passed by purchase to Sir Patrick Trant, who, fighting at the Boyne on the losing side, was attainted, and his lands escheated to the Crown, whereupon William, of Glorious Memory (without even asking the permission of his Parliament, for which act they called him up strictly afterwards) bestowed the whole property on his favourite Huguenot General, Henry de Massue, Marquis de Rouvigney, who gave it to his countrymen and followers, almost all of whom had escaped, in 1685, from the persecution of Louis XIV. (one of the cruellest old bigots that ever disgraced the throne of a fine nation), on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz. Into the Queen's County, then, at this time, appear to have come Champagnes, Des Vceuxs, alias Bacquencourt ; Vignolles, Sandes, Fleurys, Fouberts, Greniers, De la Cours, Durants, Mechin- ettes, Tabuteaux, Tibeaudos, Le Grands, Blancs, &c.^ These families were all deeply and radically attached to the Protestant faith. Many of them settled, and erected handsome houses in Port- arlington, with stately gardens, which remain to this day. Rouvigny, then Lord Galway, built ' I had these names from Foubert, a cottager near Portarlington, in 1850. His ancestor had escaped by crossing from Calais in a email boat, and was the first settler in Portarlington. He after- wards was an officer in King William's army. 62 EECOLLECTIONS OF them a commodious church, where I have often preached, and to which Caroline, Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen to George II., added, in 1715, a handsome and massy service of communion plate, and a great church bell. I have a little book by me, entitled "Les Plaintes des Protestans cruellement opprimez (sic) dans la Royaume de France," printed at Cologne, by Pierre Marteau, 1686. It was the property of Rene de Letablere, oi Picardy, an officer in Ginckell's army, and the immediate ancestor maternally of the respectable Irish families of Gabbett and Litton. An ancient list before me, from this book, classifies the emigres who settled in Ire- land as follows : — Clergymen. — Dean Brocas, Dr. Chenevix, Dr. Champagne, Saurin, Beaufort, Pellessier, Mercier, St. Paul, Sandes, Duberdieu, Grueber, Des Voeux, Dabsac, Chaigneau, Maturin, Le Fanu, Fleury, Viridet, Caillard, &c., &c. Officers. — Vignolles, Desbrisay, Mangin, Labil- liere, Corneille, Bessonette, Le Grand, Le Barth, Adlecorn, Le Tabliere, &c., &c. Merchants. — La Touche, D'Olier, Boileau, Du- betat, Battier, Perrier, La Nauze, Paget, Cromie, Maziere, Racine, Erck, Vashen, Lunel, Bere, &c. &c. To which we may add the honoured families of Lefroy and Trench, whose naturalization, how- ever, in Ireland was previous to William's time, THE IRISH CHURCH. 63 and immediately subsequent to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew ; and if it should be asked what has induced me to furnish this long list of forgot- ten worthies, I answer that my motive for so doing was two-fold, and deliberate. First, that the public should still be reminded ^ that, from a large pro- portion of these brave, honest, noble French Pro- testants, who preferred poverty, expatriation, and liberty of conscience to the adoption of a false creed, so many of our very best and most eminent Irish citizens have sprung ; men who have adorned and do adorn professional and private life, and that in the highest degree, by their talents, their integ- rity, and their success. For among them we find pious and learned bishops, and other exemplary Church dignitaries, acute and eminent legal func- tionaries, gallant soldiers, opulent and influential bankers, clever and renowned literateurs, upright merchants, and respectable citizens. Many of them are at present wealthy landholders in this country, and have married among the oldest and noblest of our Irish families. My second motive I shall briefly speak on, feel- ing most acutely as I do the decadency among the educated classes of a sound and brave Protestant- ism, and how unfashionable the word is, as well with the High Church, as the Broad Church Party ; how it is " seldom mentioned to ears polite" in the ' As they have been in Mr. Smile's book on " The Huguenots." 64 RECOLLECTIONS OF House of Lords, and if spoken to the Commons, would be received with a sneer by three-fourths of that honourable assembly, among whom the word Protestant is almost as unpopular as it is in the Vatican. Feeling all this, I should desire in this my evening of life, to raise up a feeble monument to the honour of this noble army of Protestant martyrs, or rather, like " Old Mortality," among the tombs of the Covenanters, to cut more deeply and incisively, if I could, into the grey old tablets on which history has engraved the names and actions of these men, and which the weeds of neglect, and the breath of two centuries have obscured, and nearly obliterated. This is my wish ; I cannot say with what success it may be attended. When I first undertook clerical duty at Abbey- leix, the Queen's County belonged to the United Diocese of Leighlin and Ferns ; but on the death of Dr. Thomas Elrington, last Bishop of Ferns, these dioceses were united to that of Ossory. Of the clergy of this district I have spoken much in my previous volume, but I passed over unwillingly one or two names of men who ought not to be forgotten for the light they shed, and the good they did in their generation. In 1805, died at the palace, Hugh Hamilton, Lord Bishop of Ossory, a good Christian prelate, THE IRISH CHURCH. 65 nnd a profound and able scholar. He was born in 1729, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, at the early age of twenty-tAvo. In 1753, he was admitted as F.R.S., London, and in 1758, he published a scientific treatise entitled " De Sectionibus Conicis in the year after, he be- came Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural Philo- sophy ; five years subsequently he passed into the wilds of Donegal, and became Rector of Kilma- crenan, and from thence he assumed successively the Rectory of St. Anne's, Dublin, the Deanery of Armagh, and the Bishopric of Clonfert. Finally, in his old age, he wore the mitre of Ossory, in which diocese he set a bright example of evangeli- cal earnestness, adorned with great but modest learning. His collected works have been published in London, in 18U9, in two volumes, octavo. His fourth son, the Rev. George Hamilton, " one of the best Hebrew scholars and Biblical critics of his day," was rector of Killermogh,^ in the Queen's County, in 1809, which living he ht-kl until his death, in 1830. In his twenty-eighth year, he published his " General Introduction to the Study ' " These ' Conic Sections' were regarded as a beautiful and com- plete specimen of geometrical reasoning, and formed a very leading l)art of the mathematical portion of the Fellowship Examination of our Trinity College in. the olden time; they are now quite super- seded (even for Under-Graduates) by the more comprehensive methods of Analysis." ' Near Rathdowney ; the living was in the gift of Fitzpatrick, Earl of Upper Ossory. F 66 KECOLLECTIONS OF of the Hebrew Scriptures, with a Critical History of the Greek and Latin version of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and of the Chaldee Paraphrase," 1813, octavo. This was followed in eight years by " Codex Criticus of the Hebrew Bible," of which Mr. Horne, author of the " Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures," says, " A standard text of the Books of the Old Testament is still a desideratum in sacred literature, which Mr. Hamilton's Work is an able and successful attempt to supply." Many Avere the works, learned and theological, which Mr. Hamilton gave to the public, while all the time he fulfilled the office of a busy and effi- cient pastor. He is thus characterized by his friend and neighbour, the Rev. Peter Roe, of Kilkenny, " A lover of the Bible, a friend of truth, an enemy to, and exposer of false doctrine, an advocate of free inquiry, and of the right of pri- vate judgment ; he brought to the pulpit, to the platform, and into society, a comprehensive mind, well stored with facts, not with speculations ; ex- tensive and diversified information, an intimate acquaintance with the Hebrew Scriptures, a me- mory that scarcely ever failed, an eloquence most convincing, a collectedness in spirit and manner that was proof against taunts and captiousness, and a fearlessness that no aggression could daunt ; he was an able minister of the New Testament, he THE IKISH CHUECH. 67 walked with God, and he confessed the Lord Jesus Christ before men." Of this family, also, was the late Right Honour- able George Alexander Hamilton, of Hampton Hall, Co. Dublin ; he was son of the Rev. George Hamilton, whose father was a Baron of the Irish Exchequer, and brother to the Bishop of Ossory, mentioned above. Mr. Hamilton was born in the year 1801 ; he was educated at Rugby, and at Trinity College, Oxford, which University he left about the time of his coming of age, Avhen the Right Honourable George Canning, who had been a friend of his father's, offered him a seat in the House of Commons, subject, however, to certain binding conditions ; this compliment was respect- fully declined by Mr. Hamilton ; though so young a man, he was too independent to enter Parlia- ment, save as a perfectly unshackled member ; afterwards, he represented the City of Dublin, and was subsequently Member for our University for seventeen years. After that, he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury in London, and, at the time of his death, was one of the Irish Church Commissioners. He was a man of great weight and worth, of strong sense and, calm temper, with a singular clearness of mind, which, being combined with extensive knowledge, rendered him a perfect master in tlie transacting of business, always listened to G8 RECOLLECTIONS OF Avith respect and attention in the House of Com- mons ; always in social life enjo}dng the affection of friends and relatives ; he had a " manner" which O'Connell, his political adversary, declared to be " perfect." His views of evangelical truth were sound and decided, and by them his life Avas regu- lated ; yet his piety, though deep, was generally reserved, and always unostentatious, and both in his public and private walk, he was ever the same modest, unassuming, and high-bred gentleman. I had tlie pleasure of knowing him well ; he was a warm friend of the Irish Church, and a defender of her clergy. Like the great Roman, " his life was gentle," and he closed its long and useful career, as entirely relying on the atoning merits of a dying Redeemer, he entered through the gate of death into life, and fell asleep in Jesus, at the house of his excellent sister, Mrs. Joseph Swan, at Kingstown, on Sep- tember 17th, 1871, in the 70th year of his age. Of this immediate family are three clergymen, brothers, now living — the Ven. G. H. Hamilton, Archdeacon of Lindisfarn ; the Rev. Hugh Hamil- ton, of Dublin ; and the Rev. Alfred Hamilton, Rector of Taney, and Chaplain to the Lord Lieu- tenant of Ireland. In the parish of Attannagh, in its rectory in the year 1865, lived a man of great worth and emi- nence, and well known in the world of letters — THE IRISH CHURCH. 69 the Rev. James Wills, D.D. He was of a good old house in Roscommon, now represented by his kinsman, Mr. Wills Sandford, of Castlerea. He exhibited an early passion for two very different paths of intellectuality — philosophy and poetry. He was an able critic, and reviewed searchingly one of the most singular and unpardonable books in modern literature—" O'Brien's Round Towers." He edited the Dublin University Magazine for a short time, and wrote much good poetry, among which was The Disembodied, " and " The Idola. tress." His "Philosophy of Unbelief" is a mas- terly and unanswerable treatise against scepticism. He was the friend of Anster, Casar Otway, Mortimer O'SuUivan, Charles Wolfe, and Pro- fessor M'CuUagh. His " Illustrious Irishmen" is a classic of merit. His lady was a niece of Charles Kendal Bushe, the great Chief Justice, and was thus nearly connected with the families of Cramp- ton, Coghill, Plunket, Bushe, Martin, Fox, and Smyly, certainly the most brilliant domestic coterie in Ireland for natural wit, literary ac- complishment, and conversational agreeableness. See Appendix : Amidst this circle I frequently met Mr. Wills, and occasionally his gifted son Mr. W. Wills, of London, the author of "Medea," " King Charles I.," " Jane Shore," &c., and a painter of rising celebrity. The Rev. James Wills died in 1868. 70 EECOLLECTIONS OF In the next county, and the same diocese, in 1812, was born William Archer Butler, an emi- nent Irishman. His mother was a Roman Catho- lic lady, w^hich faith her son held till he was sixteen years old, when he calmly examined the controversy, and became a Protestant on convic- tion. At twenty-three years he obtained first ethical moderatorship in our University, in which he was afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy. The College gave him the living of Clondahorka, where, amidst lofty mountains, white sea strands, and the roar and music of the great Atlantic, he had time and occasion to cultivate a very fine and vivid poetic taste ; and his contributions of verse to Blackwood, and the Dublin University Maga- zine were of the first order. At thirty he was rector of Rahy, a large and important parish. In 1845, John Henry Newman of Oxford, pub- lished his "Theory of Development;" he was answered by Archer Butler, in his " Letters on Romanism," a work of eminent and complete success, and of which the British Quarterly^ January, 1855, thus testifies: — "There are works which become so rich in genius as to possess a permanent value ; the book before us is of that class." Mr. Butler also published two sets of sermons — doctrinal and practical — on which the best Re- THE IRISH CHURCH. 71 views pronounced that they were "original, vigor- ous, devotional, and beautiful." His two sermons also in favour of the Church Education Society of Ireland, are unanswerable for the cogency of their argument.^ As a preacher, he was passionate without rant, affluent in illustration ; as a philo- sopher, sound and brilliant. He died of fever in 1848, too young for the good of the world which he adorned, and the Church he loved. His works were published in five vols., and of him and of them the Edinburgh Beview thus speaks : — " A man of glowing genius, and diversified accom- plishments, whose remains fill these five brilliant volumes." " PARALiroMENON" is the name the editors of the Douay Bible give to the two Books of Chronicles, which title they take from the Sep- tuagint version of the Holy Scriptures. The word is Greek, and means "left aside," or as the Baron of Bradwardine would call it, in his pleasant pedantry, "pretermitted." I have been blamed by a friendly critic for passing over some Irish worthies whose talents ' It is but due to truth to add, that Mr. Butler's biographer, the Rev. Thomas Woodward, tells us that his sentiments on the ques- tion of education in Ireland, had of late undergone an important alteration." " Tlie noble principles contamed in these sermons he retained unaltered to the last, but considered them inconsistent vdth the Regulations of the Commissioners of National Education." Memoirs and Sermons of Rev. W. A. Butler," vol. 1, page xlvii. Whether this admission may not fairly be considered as a censure on the National Board, the reader must determine for himself 1 72 RECOLLECTIONS OF and worth shed a lustre on the Irish Church. I accept the blame as deserved, and have endea- voured to repair my error in the case of the Kev. Archer Butler. Another great name I had for- borne to mention is that of Mr. Alexander Knox. He could, however, scarce be said to come within the category of my " Recollections," inasmuch as I never saw him. Plis correspondence with Bishop Jebb is on my bookshelves, and I confess I have failed to find in it much of what I looked for and expected from so great and so gifted a mind. His Greek criti- cisms did not interest me, and the account which he and the bishop mutually impart of their recep- tion by the magnates of London Society, reminded me of Tom Moore's running diary of West End acquaintances, so sapiently recorded by Lord John Russell. That Mr. Knox was a " Theologian of unusual breadth and power" can scarce be admitted ; and on so narrow a ground as that of his " having anticipated Dr. Pusey and the Oxford Tracts by fifteen years ! " that he was a "brilliant original thinker and philosopher" is at once conceded.^ Hear a description of him from one of the shrewdest and best of our Irish clergy : — "I sat* ' See note to Bishop O'Brien's Ten Sermons. * See a Letter from Rev. Robert Daly to Archbishop Whately, quoted in " Life of Bishop Daly," page 34. THE IRISH CHURCH. 73 long at the feet of the same Gamaliel — I loved that uncommon character as a friend ; I admired him for his talents, and I honoured him for his deep tone of personal piety, but I feel very thank- ful that I was delivered from the erroneous doc- trines of his school. If there was one feature above another to be observed and lamented in that school, it was a determined aversion to all religious activity, and a standing off from those whose love for a Saviour led them rather to active exertions in His cause, than to the quietism of contemplative devotion." I was very intimately connected with a charming old lady, who in days of 3'ore had been Mr. Knox's favourite pupil, and her mind had imbibed and adopted many of his tenets. She lived with us for some years, and died at my English rectory, in 1868. From her we had glowing pictures of his wondrous conversational power, his skill in argu- ment, and his polished wit, which, keen but gentle, "ne'er carried a heart stain away on its blade." She told us of many of his epithets and definitions, which, though always spicy and clever, were gene- rally incorrect. Evangelical activity he would de- nominate as " Busy Benevolence " — a keen conviction of sin, as " contented slaverj^, " and " assurance of salvation in Christ," as " satisfied selfishness." This old lady would herself express, on her own part, many of his views, and on one 74 RECOLLECTIONS OF occasion made us all smile. It was when con- versing Avith a young and very earnest minister on the necessity of holiness. " Alas, Madame," said he, ' I am not holy, if I got my deserving this moment, hell would be my lot and doom." "Fie, fie," she exclaimed half mockingly. "Shock- ing ! shocking ! shock — ing ! Where are the police ? Send for the police at once. Oh sir, you are a terrible man." In these Recollections I should be unwilling to pass by the Rev. William de Burgh, a good and gifted minister of the Irish Church. He was a younger brother of the Dean of Cloyne, mentioned before. He was a ripe and accurate Hebrew scholar, and an original thinker on the subject of Scripture Prophecy. His published lectures on the Apocalypse became a deservedly popular book ; his vicAVS were all of a Futurist stamp, and he explains the events portrayed in the Revelation, as about to be unfolded only at the end of the world, and in a literal sense. He afterwards published a treatise entitled " Christ our Life," in which he essays to prove that immortality is only for such as have believed on Christ. Mr. de Burgh had many devoted admirers and followers, and died rector of Sandymount in the diocese of Dublin. THE IRISH CHURCH. 75 CHAPTER VI. HOW OUR CHURCH WAS BUILT. In 1837, my Kingstown Church was rising above the granite rocks on which it now stands, and out of whose substance it was to be constructed, not springing quickly as Pallas from the brain of Zeus, but slowly and in tortoise-like fashion, as stone by stone it emerged into height and shape. One of the trustees, whose pleasure it was to regulate the builders, had sublime as well as pro- phetical notions. He insisted on the necessity of its loftiness ; the walls from their base to their top were fully forty-eight feet high ; and, looking for- ward to the size of future congregations, he deter- mined that the church should be extra large, saying that they " were not building a cage for a tomtit but for an eagle." Unlike the Temple of Solomon, which rose silently and without noise, the building of our Kingstown temple was attended with a prodigious clatter of blasting rocks, and the cutting and ham- 76 RECOLLECTIONS OF inering of stones, and everlasting sawing of planks of timber. In the meanwhile, the immaterial temple was fast forming, the only difficulty being where were we to bring together the " living stones" on a Sunday. First, by the kindness of our harbour-master, we held our service in a large sail loft by the water side — a long dark room, attainable by a ladder, and marvellously redolent of oakum and tar. Hither the people flocked in numbers, from week to week, till, like the case of the large knight in the Castle of Otranto, the house became too small to hold them, and we adjourned to the parish infant-school, a spacious and airy building, which Archdeacon Lindsay, the rector of the parish, permitted us to use until our church should be, in nautical language, all right and ship- shape. Here we had much assistance from brother ministers. The Rev. Mr. MahatFy, father to our gifted Trinity College Fellow, Professor J. P. Mahafly, was actively kind; but the brother we valued most, and loved best to hear, was William Lawrenson, the late rector of Howth. Oxford-bred, though Irish-born, this man com- bined the impulsiveness of the Celt with the finish and restrainedness of the Englishman. His mind and body were perhaps both too finely strung, and he poured forth a stream of evangelical truth, and THE IRISH CHURCH. 77 oftentimes passionate eloquence, with a tremulous, yet taking, attractiveness. Mr. Lawrenson was at Oxford with our great archbishop, by whom he was, some time after this, promoted to the living of Howth, where he died in 1877. By degrees we moved into the unfinished church; it was the only way to hasten its lagging comple- tion. One of the trustees was a great obstruc- tionist, and disliked progress, unless the train ran on his own rail ; so there was nothing for it but to ignore this good man, and keep moving on. The floor had now been all laid down in the church, which was a great matter. Truly, it was a goodly building ; the great window was unglazed and bare ; we hung a huge sail over it, which flapped to the sound of our psalmody. The roof was but half covered in ; we stretched an awning over it, at the risk of our necks (for we all lent a hand to the work), and the people sat beneath it, often suff"ering from cold and draughts of air most enduringly. Pulpit, so to speak, we had none, but the car- penter nailed together a few deal boards, and manufactured a temporary one. We reared a desk before it, and wrapped the Union Jack around it, and here were our pulpit and cushion. We held our Sunday School in a long vestibule, also unfinished, with a draught of wind sweeping 78 RECOLLECTIONS OF through it, which would have turned half a dozen of such windmills as the Knight of La Mancha had encountered. Yet, all amidst these mishaps and annoyances, nothing could equal the zeal and love of the flock ; the minister's heart burned within him in kindly response ; every ordinance — Sunday or week- day — was numerously attended ; the enthusiasm was boundless ; scores of collecting cards were taken by the young people, in order to obtain money to finish the church, for much remained to be done. To be sure, the glass was now in the windows, and the roof was covered in, but there was a serious difficulty about the position of the pulpit, so as to produce good hearing in the large area of the church. There was a distressing echo, and the Rev. Charles Fleury, an eminent preacher, and for gift of voice and intonation almost equal to Homeric Nearwp, rjSi^eTrrja UvXitov a^'^Tjrrja," complained that every third sentence of his ser- mon came back and boxed him on both sides of the head. He said also that, more or less, he was not heard.i This difficulty was happily solved by Dr. Edward Stopford, the Bishop of Meath, who had come to spend the day with us. He was very mechanical, and rather skilled in that difficult department of science — acoustics. I think he said ' The best cure for an echo is to furnish your church, and the best furnishing is a large congregation. THE lEISH CHUKCH. 79 that in every great building there was " an arc of sound," out of Avhich a voice proceeding was sure to be audible, and not come back, like a boome- rang, and smite the caster on the head. He said that the old monks knew this " trick of the build- ing," and so in the huge continental churches a little man, with ever so puny a voice, was well heard from a pulpit placed on this principle. " But how shall we discover this arc of sound," we inquired. " By trying," he answered. " Get together a few carpenters, put your temporary pulpit on wheels, and I will come down and fix it for you." We did so next day with complete success. It cost us some patience, and two hours' time. Spot after spot was tried, the kind bishop sitting in judgment at the end of the church. At length, after I had at one time read a verse of a psalm, he said, " That is thoroughly audible, and there is scarce any echo." Then we tried in the transcept, and the result was the same. The bishop then took a large gimblet, and screwed it up to the handle in the floor. " Now," said he ; " there is the tap-root of the tree of your future pulpit." And there that pulpit stood for thirty years afterwards, and the minister who spoke from it was well heard in every part of the church, and the pulpit had the character of being easy and pleasant to preach from during that time. 80 REQOLLECTIONS OF Some years after my leaving Kingstown the church was re-pewed and restored. Then the pulpit was moved some feet to one side, and off " the taip- root!^^ and the hearing is not as it v.as. Then, on the occasion of a change in the church, we had " the great ceiling controversy." Some of the authori- ties wished that the ceiling should be groined; others declared for it being coved (like the Ble- fuscan controversy on their eggs — big ends or small ends) ; and the congregation, who furnished the money, desired that it should be flat^ which cost the smallest sum, and certainly was the least ornamental in design ; our obstructionist trustee, of course, opposing us, and even after the work had been accomplished, and handsomely done too, shaking his huge, green cotton umbrella, in a threatening fashion up at the ceiling, and saying, Had I six hundred pounds to spare, I would tear down that ugly tea-tray !" This individual was a good man, but over fond " Of a duel in the form of a debate," which the gentle CoAvper " did dread and hate," and really he recognized no project or perform- ances to be of the smallest value, save the chickens, or rather the wild geese, which his own brains had hatched. However, among his co-trustees were wise men, and so in our next great fight we had some to THE IRISH CHURCH. 81 take our part. This was the occasion of the con- gregation being desirous of putting up galleries to supply with accommodation the rapidly increasing^ numbers who flocked to the church. After a good deal of opposition, the trustees allowed us to erect strong and spacious galleries, and permitted us to pay the cost of their erection to the amount of £700. Then we wished to have the church licensed, but to this our rector. Archdeacon Lindsay, wholly objected ; oppositions would somehow always rise, but we seemed to thrive upon them ; this good man would hear of nothing but that the church should be formally and solemnly consecrated by the Archbishop, and in this I am sure he was quite right. But we had no tenure of the ground on which the church stood, and it required to be held in fee-simple to fit it for consecration, and there was a tortuosity in the lease that nothing but an Act of Parliament could overcome. And this we finally obtained by a private act : one of the congrega- tion — a legal gentleman — going to London, and working the Bill through the House. At last all things canle right, and were in train for the consecration, and I waited on the Arch- bishop to engage his services. 1 found him stand- ing on his hearth-stone conversing with his clerical stafl;'; I think I recognized Dr. Dickinson, aftcr- G 82 RECOLLECTIONS OF wards Bishop of Meath ; Dr. Hinds, afterwards Bishop of Norwich ; Dr. Sadlier, Dr. West pre- sent Dean of St. Patrick's ; and other dii minores, all listening to his Grace, who was eloquent on the subject of — marbles ! not those which Lord Elgin brought from Athens, but such as schoolboys love and shoot with. The great prelate evidently had mastered the method of the fabrication of Taws, and was now instructing his clerical auditory in the same, with much vivacity. I had not often been in company with his Grace, but on every occasion when I had that pleasure, I was sure to hear something piquant, eccentric, or instructive from his lips. For example, before dinner one day, he put a question to a large body of clergy, among whom I happened to be. " What English words would best express the folly of the people of Cologne leaving a workman's crane on the cathedral roof?" All gave it up. Then his Grace pronounced the answer — Incongruity. Grus is the Latin for a crane, a bird. Yet this eminent divine and philosopher, whose mind often travelled in flights as odd and as eccentric as the orbits of the boomerang, with which he was occa- sionally seen amusing himself within the rails of St. Stephen's Green, could go forth in self-con- tained and simple and most godly fashion, as in THE IRISH CHURCH. 83 the instance of that beautiful hymn composed by him — " Thou to whom all power is given." It is a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, and there is no hymn more fervent, or more holy, or more delightful to sing or repeat. On the occasion of my waiting on him to engage him for the consecration of my church, he at once named a coming Sunday. I do not think he was an admirer of the principle on which churches such as mine were built and carried on. He said to me, " How many trustees have 3'ou over your church ?" I answered, " I think at present there are nine.'* " Well, tell me whether would you rather have nine bishops over you or one ?" " Unquestionably one, your Grace." I have given a brief sketch of what befell at the consecration of the church in the first part of these Recollections. As success and prosperity gathered round us, we determined to get up schools attached to the church. And so in a very short time we had built our schools in Glasthule,^ which was a part of our ' These Glasthule Schools, built almost entirely by me, and from funds obtained through my congregation, have now been trans- ferred to a neighbouring clergyman. 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF parochial district, and metamorphosing a large stable into a boarded room, we created an airy- infant school, which was well attended and looked after. These schools were feeders to our great Sunday Schools. The last act towards the completion of our church before I went to England, was the getting up by the congregation of a very beautiful organ ; this was bought and erected, and Ave then pre- sented it as a gift to the trustees. This instrument was built by Messrs. Telford, of Dublin, and turned out well, and our organist, Mr. Henry Quin, whether as a teacher or musi- cian, was all that we could desire ; his voluntaries during the taking up of the offertory, were most brilliant and charming. 1 had a call to England in 1862. 1 was overworked, else I should not have obeyed it. I was in truth sighing for rest, my congregation was enormous, and the work in- creasing, and no increase of strength from coming age to meet, to combat with, and conquer it ; and so I left Kingstown in the summer of 1862, for the parish of Wyton, near Cambridge, and was suc- ceeded by the Rev. Allen AVindle, an English clergyman from Derbyshire ; this gentleman, in conjunction with his curate, the Rev. Mervyn Archdall Clare, a most kind and popular pastor, and a very eloquent preacher, has done good ser- THE IRISH CHURCH. 85 vice in the parish ; these two men, working cor- dially and continuously together, have now for thirteen years, kept the congregations, and institu- tions, &c., in the highest possible order, systema- tizing and arranging the church and its many dependencies; they both adorn the pulpit, and both declare a free and full Gospel in Christ the Lord. Mr. Win die is a very original preacher. During his time, the exterior of the church was handsomely finished ; its pinnacles are now pointed and stately, its tall grey steeple lifts its head to the skies, while its deep-mouthed brazen bell booms o'er the water, or along the shore, to summon sailor and landsman to the worship of God. The interior wood-work of the church has all undergone a tasteful renovation, at the sole cost of Mrs. William Crowe, widow of the honest artizan who built the church, and was with it from the beginning, a most skilful and energetic superin- tendent ; Mrs. Crowe has re-pewed the whole body of the aisle with considerable judgment. I believe the building of the Kingstown Church from first to last had cost £14,000. I sat on the raised dais before the Communion rails on a Sunday evening last year, and looked on that large and beautiful house of God, and on those who with me sat therein. The red light of the dying day was filling the church with its sombre hue, toning down and 86 RECOLLECTIONS OF sobering the bright silver flame of the upleaping gas-lamps which were just being lighted. The Service had not begun, the congregation fast pour- ing in and filling the seats. I thought of all the toil and anxiety this church had cost, as it struggled onward to its full development during a term of twenty years, and I blessed God for tlie success which His hand had crowned it with, the great beauty of the building, and its present freedom from all debt. I thought hoAV these walls had now for fully forty years re-echoed but to purest Gospel truth ; how Jesus Christ, God in the Flesh, the only Saviour, the sinner's hope, the saint's help, had been proclaimed, honoured, and offered to all ; His life for their righteousness. His death for their atonement, His Holy Spirit for their teacher, and His " Father's House" for their sweet home and heaven at last. And as I thus mused, the Service commenced ; and when I saw the immense crowds which filled every seat in that great church, when I observed the devotion and reverent attention of the people, the earnest simplicity of the Service, the sweetness of the Psalmody, and finally, heard from the pre- sent incumbent, the Rev. William E. Burroughs, a sermon replete with sound evangelical matter, mostly exegetical, yet in many parts highly sug- gestive and original. I could not but bless God THE IRISH CHURCH. 87 and take courage, and pray that our dear Irish Church, now that the dark day of her depression is passing away, might have a similar glory of success granted to her by her Heavenly Father — thus typified by this her daughter — distress and difficulty in the beginning, but prosperity opening up and accompanying progress, and a reasonable hope of sunlight and blessedness for the future. 88 EECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER yir. EAISING CHURCH FUNDS. I MUST now go back and speak of some past transactions. After our church had been for- mally opened for Divine Service in 1838, there still remained a heavy debt upon the building. I had written a personal letter, enclosing a printed statement of funds, trustees' names, requirements, &c., ail surmounted by a vignette of our large ugly church at top, to the Sailor King, William lY., and his Majesty at once responded most gra- ciously, and sent me through his privy purse one hundred pounds. Still the outlay for finishing far exceeded the incomings, and the trustees were sore straitened to meet their responsibilities. Then the congregation selected a managing com- mittee out of their own body, for the purpose of gathering funds, and by them it was proposed that I should be asked to visit England, and there per- sonally, or on platform, or in pulpit, plead for money to finish the Kingstown Church.^ ^ It may justly be asked what claim had we to seek for funds from England to build an Irish church ? The answer is, that our church was for British seamen, and that THE IRISH CHURCH. 89 Now, nothing could be more repulsive to my taste than a plan like this. I could " dig," but " to beg" I was ever " ashamed." Nevertheless, for the love 1 bore to my church and congregation, I consented, commencing my work in the beautiful Church of Birkenhead, of which my old friend and kinsman, Andrew Knox, was Rector. Mr. Knox is, perhaps, the oldest evangelical minister in England. Here I met all kindness, and the place itself, which I remembered in 1820 as a succession of green banks, solitary meadows, bushes, and red rock wetted by the waters of the rushing Mersey, was now replete Avith houses, streets, and squares, and vocal with the hum of humanity. From thence I hied me across the river to old Liverpool, where I preached in the Rev. Fielding Quid's Church, Islington, a huge edifice, contain- ing two regular galleries, constructed not on artistic principles, but economically designed to hold many; yet, for all its two galleries, well packed with listeners, my gains were of the minutest description, the congregation being stony of heart ! Mr. Ould was an Irishman, and after- wards obtained well merited promotion in the county parts of Cheshire. fully ninety per cent, of the sailors who came to it were Englishmen, from Queen's ships, gentlemen's yachts, steam-packets, colliers, waterguards, Devon or Cornish fishing smacks. In this respect the church was a national one. We received from England from first to last about £340. 90 RECOLLECTIONS OF From Liverpool I went down to the County of Worcester, and had a friendly reception from the Archdeacon of that diocese, at his rectory of Hales-Owen. Mr. Hone was a good man, and an accomplished literateur, having written much religious biogra- phy. He could not offer me a pulpit, his church, a fine old structure, being under repair. The parsonage was close at hand, and at dinner I was greatly delighted at the striking up of the grand bells from the tower. " Swinging slow with solemn roar. " There had been a death among the church offi- cials, and the bells were half muffled, and the effect was solemn, thrilling, yet soothing beyond description. How much we miss these ecclesiasti- cal adornments in Ireland, and how poor our churches are in structure, and in association com- pared with those in England. Beautiful, lovely, spirit moving Fanes ! I know many of you well, and have sought you out with an eager and ad- miring desire, and many and many a gratuity have I paid to guard or coachman in the old stage-coach days for a delay of " only ten minutes" beyond the time for changing horses, during which interval I would rush down, wake up the torpid sexton with the jingle of a shilling, get into the church, roam through it, drinking in its beauties. THE IRISH CHURCH. 91 and then return, quam citissime to my coachman, in whose estimation I probably ranked little higher than that of an idiot. Thus I have seen Wrexham with its giant tower ; Melton Mowbray, with its height and light ; Winchelsea, with its grand window ; Dudley and Trowbridge, exqui- sitely modern ; Swannage, with its aisles ; Ciren- cester, with its chapels. Then the cathedrals — Wells, with its opulence of carving ; Gloucester, with its crypts ; Chichester, with its screens ; Wor- cester, with its Royal tomb, and its " miserrimus" stone ; Salisbury, with its steeple ; Winchester, among its trees ; most noble and imposing York- minster, and Glastonbury, with its sublime arch and ruins. All these were visited, and many more with great delight during my wanderings. If Ireland could boast of such churches as Eng. land possesses, so grand or so picturesque, so hal- lowed by antiquity, or so associated with piety, or with history, or with poetry or romance, the effect would be to surround her Church with a threefold measure of interest and respect. The calm sweet church-yards of England are a poem traced on the soil, like a succession of stanzas in a broad-paged book, each lovely in itself, but making up an aggregate of poetical entirety ; few such are to be found in Ireland, our churches are comparatively modern, most of them built since the Reforma- tion, and even these old structures have not been 92 RECOLLECTIONS OF well preserved. Archbishop Magee erected many- churches ; they are to be recognized by their long slender windows, and their coved ceilings, and their massive roofs. His Grace, in conjunc- tion with his architect, Mr. Semple, constructed them on strong Protestant principles, and made them bomb-proof in the event of a Popish rising ! This is — however strange — a positive fact. The recently built churches have mostly the red, meat- safe tower, which is perfectly hideous, more culinary than canonical, and suggestive rather of the kitchen than the Church. Dublin has few handsome churches, Avith the exception of St. George's, built by the late Mr. Johnston. It is a magnificent edifice, though the architecture is faulty, being mixed Gothic and Grecian. The Rev Dr. Neligan has a handsome church^ in Leeson Park, and all who know his zeal and his influence must feel that he will make it handsomer still. But Trinity Church, which the Rev. John Gregg so many years made famous with his teach- ing and his eloquence, is plain even to homeli- ness, and Baggot Street Episcopal Chapel, where Hamilton Verschoyle laboured so successfully, is distressingly ugly ; while St. Matthias', the church of good Maurice Day, now Bishop of Cashel, and after him of Achilles Daunt, a man of boundless influence, of Apostolic type in face, voice, and • This church was built by the late Rev. Charles M. Fleury. THE IRISH CHURCH. 93 maimer, and of wonderful attractiveness, has little to recommend it in architecture. The Presbyterians have built a really handsome church in Rutland square; but the Roman Catho- lics surpass us altogether in the fine taste and splendid beauty of their chapels. The generosity of their friends, the English Liberals of the late Government, as well as the vast^ sums they re- ceive from dying devotees to pray their souls out of purgatorial fires, enabling them to deal with first-rate architects and material, and thus pro- duce buildings which would adorn any city in the world. I passed into Norfolk on my taking leave of Hales-Owen, and was the guest, for a few days, of an accomplished clergyman, the Rev. Patrick Law, and had the use of his pulpit at North Repps. A very interesting member of his congregation was Miss Gurney, sister, I think, of the excellent Mrs. Fry. Miss Gurney's cottage was on the road to Cromer, and stood in a flower-decked lawn, lovely to behold, in which were pet animals of many ' The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Armagh, recently built, cost £60,000 ; that of Kilkenny, £25,000 ; and that of Killarney, £20,000. An estimate made with care represents the amount of propei'ty acquired during Archbishop) Murray's R. C. Episcopate as exceeding a million of money, and during this century the Church of Rome in Ireland has expended in ecclesiastical buildings, more than five millions and a half. See Dr. Killen's " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland," 1875, vol. ii., page 542, note. 94 EECOLLECTIONS OF kinds — doves, and pigeons, and rabbits, and deer, if I remember right. This lady herself had a strong heart for good, beating within a body unfitted for action, her health was delicate ; when we dined with her, she was confined to her chair, which was upon wheels, and so admirably constructed, that she could obey the volition of her rapid mind, by making it carry her flyingly to any corner of the room in pursuit of a book or paper. When the nights were stormy, and the fierce, strong east winds were driving the cruel tumbling waves of the German Ocean in upon the crumb- ling^ beach of Cromer, this heroic lady would be lifted into her carriage, despising the elements, and accompanied by her servants bearing ropes, and rockets, and other apparatus, together with cloth- ing and refreshments, would drive down to the edge of the water, and thus rescued many a life from shipwreck, or its consequences. She was very literary, and at dinner, being taken with my name, she asked me much about Henry Brooke, the author of the " Fool of Quality," whose writings she admired and loved, and my being his kinsman, procured me favour in this kind lady's eyes. From thence I went to Oxford ; I had two or ' The sea at this time was encroaching alarmingly on the beach of Cromer, and part of an old church-yard was actually in the sea. TTTE IRISH CHURCH. 95 three letters to the heads of houses there, but I did not deliver them, my stay being so short, besides, 1 felt 1 could not beg in Oxford. I know not why, but so it was. I was introduced to an Under- Graduate, a nice lad, with a mind cultured and classical, and by him I was agreeably piloted through the colleges, and saw much in " the sweet city with its dreaming spires," to awaken the live- liest admiration : the stately street, the grand grey old buildings lining it on either side, the gothic arch, the silent quadrangle, the close shaven grass, the small square windows, the carved eaves, the twitter of the swallow, or " temple-haunting mart- let," alone breaking the academic silence ; the ex- quisite tout ensemble, so solemn, so sweet, yet so peculiar, and thoroughly sui generis, and histori- cally suggestive ; the figures of King Alfred, and "VYilliam of Wickham, and Wolsey, and his Royal Master, and Queen Elizabeth, looming through the mists of thought and of memory. I attended a tea party in B College ; the guests were chiefly men of a serious type, nice, kind, and gentlemanl}- young fellows ; I believe they were mostly Divinity Students ; educated as I had been, in a Protestant and Church of Eng- land school, I found it hard from my stand-point of theological feeling to sympathize in some things I heard, especially in the expression of intense reverence, and almost idolatry for the persons, and 96 RECOLLECTIONS OF the " great lioliness" of certain leaders of religious thought at that day in Oxford. Two of these celebrities have since leaped " ultra claustra" — one has incurred the public censure of his own University, the other has certainly lowered himself by becoming a priest of the apostate Church of Kome. I was sorry to leave beautiful Oxford, yet rather glad to make my adieux to its *' Angel Hotel ;" and I could not help thinking, while paying my extravagant bill for second-rate accommodation, how inapt was the denomination of the house, so I think on my next visit I shall put up at " The Mitre." I next proceeded to Portsmouth ; here was a place very unlike Oxford, yet not without its special attractions. The Rector of Portsea was Mr. Dewdney ; I had introductory letters to him, and on my presenting them, he received me in rather a brusque fashion, and questioned me straitly concerning my church, its services, its funds, and accommodation for the seamen and poor, then wound up all by saying, " Well, call at twelve, to-morrow, and I'll see what can be done for you." I did call, and found this man the kindest and most active friend to me and to my cause. I preached several times in his church, and received much money for my own ; his church, from its construction, I suppose, was diffi- THE IRISH CHURCH. 97 cult to fill with the voice, so they formed the pulpit on acoustic principles, with a canopy and hexagonal back, to serve as a sounding-board ; they called it a shell, the preacher standing in, and not stirring from a certain angle or focus, from which if he deviated in anywise, his voice would return to him brokenly. I confess the machine suited not with the mobility of my Irish nature, and many a box on the ear I had from my own sermons. I preached in Portsmouth Church — a very old and interesting building — to a congregation com- posed of naval officers, their families, and many sailors ; Dr. Richardson, and Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic navigators, were in the pew beneath me ; the same evening I drove out to Fareham, and preached in Sir Henry Thompson's exquisite little church, to a congregation of snow-white frocked Hampshire labourers. On the next Sun- day, I preached in the Church of Gosport ; the good old rector, Mr. Bingham, was there ; I be- lieve he was descended from the author of " Church Antiquities." After preaching, he thanked me for my sermon, " yet to tell you the truth," he said laughingly, " I did not expect much from you." " Why so, dear sir ? " " Because you were in such a hurry to com- mence, that you went up the pulpit stairs two at a time." H 98 EECOLLECTIONS OF This acrobatic feat I never repeated. Before I left Portsmouth I had stood by the grave of Legh Richmond's " Young Cottager," in Brading Churchyard, Isle of Wight. My corn- pan ion was a dear friend, an Irish lady, the wife of the Colonel then commanding the — th Regiment, at Portsmouth. She had but one child, a little daughter — she was beautiful, intelligent, and so endearing, that at her death there was scarcely a dry eye among the soldiers on parade. She was the darling of the regiment, and of all who knew her, and had been early taught to love her Saviour by her excellent mother. The soldiers carried her to her grave ; and now it was a touching sight to see the young mother shedding her quiet tears over the modest stone which marked where her dear one slept, and which lay in the grass, side by side with that of Little Jane, " The Young Cottager." I had a profitable descent upon Brighton, where I had friends, and from Brighton I turned my face towards Cheltenham, where I preached several times in Mr. Close's church. I felt almost ashamed of depriving his people of the utterly superior gratification of hearing their own pastor. To me his sermons brought the greatest delight — clear, bold, rapid, yet full of sound dogma and practical exhortation. I thought him the first and best of English preachers ; and it is pleasant now to see a man once a great power in this eminent THE IRISH CHURCH. 99 watering place, still a great power in the Church of Christ, and championing her rights and her truth with voice and pen, almost as vigorously, and surely as vigilantly, as he did in his younger days. Old Priam still dons his armour, but casts no im- helle telum. My last stage was London, where I was hospit- ably entertained by old friends who had rented Argyle House, in Argyle place. I think the man- sion is now a large shop or office. Much of the handsome old furniture which had adorned the rooms in ducal days remained, large bottomed chairs and heavy sofas upholstered in glossy green satin and rich gilding. I could not help thinking — ridiculous as the association was — of Jenny Deans and John the Great Duke, and "Little Mary turning Tory" while laughingly chaffing her father about the uncertain issue of his fight at Sherifi" Muir. I called on the Rev. Baptist Noel, and Avas greatly struck with his gentle and Christiam de- meanour, and his noble presence. In his separa- tion from our communion afterwards, the Church of England lost one of her most influential and holiest ministers. I afterwards dined at Dr. Thorpe's, at the other side of London ; here I met Robert J. M'Ghee. Thorpe was an Irishman, and minister of Belgrave Chapel, now held by Marcus Rainsford, a good and 100 EECOLLECTIONS OF popular man. Mr. Thorpe had married the Countess Pomfret, and kept a hospitable house. I walked home in the soft summer night with old Arthur Guinness, the great Dublin merchant, a man whose purse was long and large, but whose heart was larger and broader still — for a very- prince in all his money dealings was noble old Arthur Guinness. We parted under the park gas- lights on the Piccadilly flag-way, and as he said " good-night, " he gave me for myself his blessing, and for my church a cheque for twenty guineas. I had much kindness from the Rev. Weldon Champneys, afterward Dean of Lichfield. He was then Rector of Whitechapel, a parish containing 30,000 souls, and I preached twice in the Thames Floating Ship Chapel, opposite the Tower, which is in Whitechapel parish. On the first Sunday our congregation was small, about twenty seamen. 1 gave them a short sermon. Sailors don't admire long yarns, and I told them that, God willing, I should come- again on the following Sunday and finish my discourse. I did so, and the chapel was crowded with blue-jackets to the very door. I afterwards dined at the Sailors' Home in W^ells- Street with Captain, afterwards Admiral, Eliot. I believe this was among the first of these excellent homes which have sprang up along the English seabord for our valiant seamen. An old friend of mine has been wonderful!}' successful in the work. THE IRISH CHURCH. 101 I allude to Admiral Sir William H. Hall, K.C.B., a brave and noble sailor. Thus ended my raid on England, and I think I brought home for my church two hundred pounds, which rejoiced the hearts of the managing com- mittee. 102 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER VIII. THE OLD "ranger." Our new ecclesiastical structure at Kingstown, although bearing the name of the Mariners' Church, was actually a district Chapel of Ease in Monkstown parish, and was reared not only to give accommodation to a rapidly increasing popu- lation, but specially for the British Seamen fre- quenting the Royal Harbour of Kingstown, and for whom particular provision was made in the church, two to three hundred sittings being always reserved in the best part of the building for their use. Here, the air being brilliant and bracing, the sea always attractive, and the neighbouring scenery picturesque, with a back-ground of waving woods, green hills, and mountains, it was no wonder that the place became so popular and so populous, and that terraces, houses, and hotels, sprang up with an alacrity almost equal to that of the fabulous palace of Aladdin, which the Genii reared in one night ! THE IRISH CHURCH. 103 The seamen population was of an amphibious nature, part lived on land, part on the water. Her Majesty had generally a great ship of war riding in the harbour, and manned by a large crew ; but they had their own chaplain and service on board, and seldom were permitted to come on shore on Sundays, except on special leave ; other queen's ships, such as surveying steamers, revenue cruisers, gun-boats, and tenders on men-of-war, furnished an ample contingent to the congregation, and gentlemen's yachts sent their crews, together with those from the Holyhead steam-packets, Newcastle colliers, and such stray vessels as were at moor- ings in the harbour, detained by stress of weather. The seamen on shore were almost entirely, with the exception of the water-guard, composed of Devonshire trawlers. About twenty-nine families of these men had colonized in Kingstown, having good boats and strong nets to sweep the Irish seas, thus doing what our own countrymen would not, or perhaps could^ not do. Now I confess that I found it very difficult to maintain the attendance of these sailors at my church. Some of the causes were patent enough, others proceeded probably from my own want of activity among them, others originated in the peculiar organization of the men themselves, for they are a shy race, and often prove as immov- ' For lack of boats or fishing gear, or money to buy them. 104 RECOLLECTIONS OF able on shore, as they are quick and lively at sea ; at all events, their attendance at the Sunday Ser- vices was utterly incommensurate to the accom- modation provided for them ; I therefore determined to act on the teaching of the adage of " Mahomet and the Mountain," and solicit the Government for a disused ship, which when moored in the har- bour, I could fit up in simple fashion for Divine Worship, and hold therein Sunday and Weekly Services, and thus, on the principle aforesaid, go to them^ if they would not come to me. In this emergency, I had need of a powerful friend, and I found one who proved amply suffi- cient for all I needed. At this time I had occasionally in my church the late Right Honourable James AVhiteside, who died as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, in 1876, amidst the lament of a sorrowing nation ; he, no doubt, was often glad to exchange the gloom and gross air of the city for the breathing of our reviv- ing atmosphere, and the sparkle of the Kingstown wave, and Sunday after Sunday would see him in our church. On these occasions, he often was the guest of Colonel Ward Drewe, a noble-looking and gallant old Artillery officer, who had seen much service, and had received many wounds, and who, with his lady, occupied a very handsome villa in Kings- town. THE IRISH CHURCH. 105 The colonel's pew was in the front of the gallery, and it was a picture to see his military and erect form standing during the Psalmody side by side with the tall, lithe, and 'graceful figure of Mr. Whiteside ; the face of the veteran embrowned and worn with the hue of foreign clime and ser- vice, while the pale features and lofty brow of his companion, spoke of intellectual toil, and thought, and eloquence in repose. Both men had their honours, though in very differing degrees, and different walks of life. — " Tam Marti quam Mer- curio." At this time I scarcely knew Mr. Whiteside, but the occasion for testing his kindness having arrived, I applied to him, and found him a man on whom I could entirely depend^ and a good friend to the Irish Church, and the cause of the seamen. I think he was then the Member for our Uni-. versity, and he must have had powerful friends in the Government, for in a few weeks, through his zeal and kindness, the old " Ranger," a disused frigate, lying in the Hamoaze at Plymouth, was granted for my use by the Admiralty ; I was then in Devonshire, and immediately went down to see and secure my prize, and on presenting the order which Mr. Whiteside had sent me, at the office in Plymouth Dock-yard, the clerk sent me up the river in a small tug-steamer to where the " Ranger'' was moored, nearly under the bridge. I steamed 106 EECOLLECTIONS OF twice round her, examining, I fear with unnautical eyes, all her points, even as a man Avould do in the buying of a horse ; she was an ugly tub-like craft enough, riding high in the water, but large and strong, and seemingly well suited for my purpose ; but now the thought arose, how was I to get her over so many miles of watery waste, from Ply- mouth to Kingstown ? The Conservative Govern- ment, too, was just then in a very shaky condition, and when I reached home, the Whig flag was fly- ing triumphant from the chimney-tops of Downing Street. I was almost in despair ; but I laid it all before Mr. Whiteside, and so much did his weight of character prevail with both parties, that in a very brief time, my ship was towed across the Channel by a Government steamer, whose captain delivered the " Ranger" by a formal deed from the Admiralty, into my hands and custody, and for the uses I had proposed. And all this was effected through Mr. White- side's influence, exercised without any display or profession on his part, but in the simplest form of two brief notes. Since that time I occasionally met him in society, of which he was a true orna- ment, being most agreeable, genial, and a brilliant converser. I travelled with him once to Fer- managh in the train ; it was just after a very hard term in which he had been severely worked. He was like a schoolboy let loose, wild with ani- THE IRISH CHURCH. 107 mal spirits and real Irish wit ; he kept us all alive during an otherwise tedious journey. His last speech in the House, in re decadentis ecclesice, was to ray mind the finest he had ever de- livered. He knew the Irish Church well, and loved her dearly ; but his speech, pregnant with argument and rich with historical record, fell on listless ears, one-third of his hearers was hostile, one third ignorant or indifferent, and the residue hopeless. He was a sound Evangelical churchman, and for some years previous to his death, he had at- tended with great delight the ministration of the Rev. Frederick Dowling, of the Bethesda Church, one of the ablest preachers of the day, a rare scholar, and a master of scriptural exegesis, and one singularly suited to meet the requirements of an acute lawyer's mind. Mr. Whiteside was a man of considerable lite- rary attainment ; witness his book on Italy, a work full of exhaustive information, and enlivened with a pleasant flow of gentle sarcasm, or rather wit, there being much to provoke and elicit both in some of his subjects. He also wrote a short life of Oliver Goldsmith, in which he exposes Macaulay's clumsy criticism on "The Deserted Village," adroitly contrasting some of the jingling lines in the "Lays of Ancient Rome" with the deep and dignified beauty of Goldsmith's verse and measure. 108 RECOLLECTIONS OF Mr. Whiteside was a natural orator. In his speeches he would frequently exhibit " those glo- rious bursts of triumph" — words which a Scotch^ critic applied to the eloquence of his countryman, the Rev. Nicholas Armstrong, and his thoughts that were formed in the head came warmed from the heart. He was brother-in-law to the ex-Lord Chan- cellor, Sir Joseph Napier, Bart., an eminent and learned lawyer, and a steady friend and supporter of the Irish Church. Mr. Whiteside was a genuine Erigena, a true son of Erin, loving his country, her soil, and her sons, admiring her national traits, jealous of her honour, and delighting in her humour, her scenery, and her song, and warmly interested in her progress and improvement ; yet all the while steadily attached to British connexion, and re- joicing to live under the free banner of England's ancient and glorious constitution. There are thousands and tens of thousands of Irishmen holding similar principles, though not, perhaps, of equal attainments, and these men, and such as they, are the True Representatives of the honour, the position, the Educated Intellect — for the most part the wealth — and certainly the loyalty of Ireland. Some of those gentlemen in the House of Commons, who so often claim to be leaders of the people, can scarcely be said to repre- ' See first part of these " Recollections." Appendix, page 199. THE IRISH CHURCH. 109 sent even the uneducated masses, inasmuch as many of them have neither position nor property in the country, and are in general the nominees of the clergy of the Koman Catholic Church — which is foreign in its rule and its constitution. • We had, truth to say, no end of trouble with the dear old " Ranger." After we had got her well scrubbed, and her seams caulked, we tied her fore and aft to the deep-set granite pillars of the Eastern Pier, two immense iron cables held her fast, a long wooden stair connected her with the land. !She rode high in the water, having no bal- last on board, and so, on windy nights, especially when a little sea had got up in the harbour, the groaning and creaking of the long steps and the iron chains was the most woeful and melancholy sound I think I ever heard in all my life — such as Dante or Virgil might have painted as sound- ing midst the infernal horrors they delineate. " Hinc exaudiri gemitus, et sseva sonari Verbera, turn stridor ferri, tractseque catenaj." I ministered every Sunday morning at ten o'clock at the " Ranger," and had short service and ser- mon ; but the attendance was not good on the part of the landfolk, a few of whom only came, a north-east wind blowing rather fresh sent the waves into the harbour, and caused the old ship to " wabble'' a little, which speedily produced the evacuation of my landfolk. My marine popula- 110 RECOLLECTIONS OF tion, also, were very slack in coming to this ser- vice, especially got up to suit their convenience ; we had warned them and invited them every way, by visit, by note, and by handbill. " By land, by water, we renew the charge." Yet few came, some fifteen or twenty ; our good and noble sailor. Captain Hutchinson, R.N., the Harbour Master, always in the van when the sailors' prosperity was concerned, was a most con- stant attendant ; but the thing was a failure, though I still kept on, and was anxious to utilize it further by inviting the crews of the New- castle colliers to come in the week, and hold prayer-meetings in the cabin of the " Ranger." I met them once or twice, and headed their meet- ing ; they were mostly Wesley ans, and I heard very Scriptural prayers from the mouths of these rough but pious mariners. I also invited the crews of the Holyhead steam-packets, w^ho were almost all of them native Welshmen, to use the cabin of the old " Ranger" for any godly occasion, and often six or seven of them would assemble and hold a prayer-meeting, using their own lan- guage with wonderful fluency and apparent elo- quence. Finally, I procured a Scripture-reader from my friend, the Rev. Theobald Walrond, the London Secretary of the " Missions to Seamen Society ;" THE lEISH CHURCH. Ill this person was an Eniijlishman, a pious and steady- man ; we purchased a boat, and painted it royal blue, and in this tiny skiff our Scripture-reader went from ship to ship through the week, navigat- ing the harbour, distributing Bibles, Testaments, and nicely bound Tracts, and invited the captain and his crew to come to the Sunday Service. All this was attended with heavy expense, but it was readily met by the voluntary offerings of one of the most generous congregations that ever a minister was blest with, and very much good resulted to the seamen from the labours of this our reader. These dear Welsh sailors I found it very hard to keep my hold upon ; I have said they were mostly Wesleyans, yet many of them came to my church whenever they were not coaling^ and were off duty, and I greatly valued their attendance ; they were kind and simple-hearted fellows, and even after I had quitted Kingstown for an English living, whenever I crossed from Holyhead or Kingstown, they would come round me in the packet, shaking hands with me cordially, and say- ing, "Well, I am glad to see you," and every attention to me and my family during the voyage they were in the habit of offering. I should be the most ungrateful of men and of ministers, if I omitted here to record the skill, zeal, and industry of the ladies of my congrega- 112 EECOLLECTIONS OF tion, in binding thousands and tens of thousands of tracts, especially during the few weeks previous to the Crimean war, in which time, regiment after regiment embarked in large transport ships, and sailed from Kingstown for the East. Each regi- ment was plentifully supplied Avith some hundreds of these little volumes, tastefully bound, and each containing five or six tracts. I always made it a point to deliver the parcels myself to the colonel, and on every occasion they were received with the greatest courtesy and thankfulness. What has be- come of all these volumes ? their history must be a curious one. All the convict ships sailing from Kingstown were supplied by us in like manner, and by the same means, and, indeed, all the vessels were like- wise so furnished, besides Bibles and Testaments, without limit, supplied by the liberality of the Hibernian Bible Society, as the tracts were by the tract shops of London and Dublin. I frequently preached on board the convict ships to the small portion of criminals who were Protestants. I should say about four in a hundred, and many Roman Catholics, on these occasions, would draw nigh to hear. THE IRISH CHURCH. 113 CHAPTER IX. SOMETHING OF ROMANISM. As the Church of Rome is the great antagonistic power to our church in this country, I should like to make a few observations touching it, as I was first brought into a closer contact with it in my Donegal curacy. We had rather a remarkable man a neighbour there, who, we had reason to believe, had exercised a kindly influence in allaying the political heat which existed in 1832 among the peasantry during the tithe agitation ; this was the llight Reverend Dr. Patrick M'Gettigan, Roman Catholic Bishop of Raphoe. He was a short and corpulent man — " Totus, teres, atque rotundus " — with a countenance gracious and genial, and eyes twinkling with humour, but his port and demean- our Avere grave and solemn, and his speech slow and measured, as befitting his high office, and as a necessary restriction on the natural good humour and drollery which played round his mouth, and radiated from his eye, and which, no doubt, he I 114 RECOLLECTIONS OF had some difficulty to restrain and keep in order. He spoke with a strong Irish accent. This gentle- man, I believe, was a sincere lover of peace, and enacted the part of an episcopal Neptune to still the " motos fluctus" in our parish, and no man could more truly show to the vexed masses the " placidum caput," or pleasant countenance, than the little bishop. And so, although we had something to alarm us, and a few depredations about the place, yet we had no bloodshed, and our beautiful glen was un- (lefiled with any of the atrocious murders which took place at this time among the clergy in Tip- perary, Kilkenny, &c. Once, when riding home at night from tlie rectory to Letterkenny, I was chased by a set of wild Glenswilly men ; horse-dealers they were, and coming from a fair, each man of them like Juve- nal's tipsy hero, no doubt — " Ebrius, ac petulans, qui nullum forte cecidit." I was riding a fleet mare, and had some one hundred and fifty yards' start, so I gave them a good gallop from the rectory gate, and passed the old church-yard of Conwall where the ancient twisted thorn-trees looked weird and ghastly in the moonlight, and when I arrived at the foot of the awfully steep hill of Ballymacool, I jumped off the mare, and ran with her, bridle in hand, up the ascent, my pursuers stopping at the bottom to THE IRISH CHURCH. 115 breathe their nags, which were blown ; and thus I got home safely, having, like John Gilpin, won the race, and escaped what I think would not have been more than a good ducking in the Swilly, at the hands of these wild legislators/ I afterwards learned that the bishop had heard of and expressed his strong disapprobation of the conduct of these men, who were, of course, members of his flock. The bishop dined at the rectory one day; we had one or two Roman Catholic servants, and the worship he received from them was beyond all measure and all description. At dinner he was very agreeable and amusing, giving us a graphic account of the share he took in the installation of a nun in Dublin the previous week, the costly and comfortable breakfast before the ceremony, and how he enjoyed it ; the nun designate was a " charming young lady, with a beautiful — black — black" (eye^ we all thought would follow), but no, it was " black head." Then turning round to the young lady of the house, he advised her to take the veil, and become a nun, " better far than trust your happiness to some ill-tempered, cantankerous husband !" at which we all laughed. ' See an account of this Glenswilly Legislation, at page G2 of "Recollections of the Irish Church," vol. i. " "Glazed o'er her eye the beautiful— the black— Oh, to possess such lustre, and then luck." Byeon. 116 KECOLLECTIOXS OF We drank tea in the study, and the bishop tak- ing down a volume of St. Augustine, read to us some lines from the " De civitate Dei," giving the Latin a French pronounciation, which sounded strange in our ears. The bishop seemed to be a good Latin Scholar. At getting into his gig to go away, the Roman Catholic servants again pressed round him, as if expecting some peculiar blessing from the parting contact, especially our large cook, who, like Sterne's " fat scullion," nearly blubbered in the excess of her ecclesiastical sensibilities, all which attention he received most quietly, and as his due, and an accustomed thing; and took his leave of the party as they stood on the hall-door steps, waving his forefinger and thumb, which I was iven to under- stand by the large culinary official above men- tioned, intimated " his lordship's blessing which he left behind him to us, poor craythurs !" After leaving Donegal I never met Bishop ^I'Gettigan but twice. On the last occasion our meeting was on Kingstown Pier, when I was ac- companied by my son Stopford, then a young lad in Trinity College, and whom I introduced to the Bishop as one born in Donegal in his own neigh- bourhood. The old man looked at him kindly, but keenly, and, shaking him by the hand, said — "Well, I am proud of you, for you are nothing less than a real Glenswilly boy." THE miSH CHURCH. 117 The influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood over their people is, indubitably, of a wonderful extent ; but is there not a strange partiality in the way it is exercised ? for, while on all subjects more directly connected with their Church, im- plicit obedience is demanded and cheerfully ren- dered ; yet in matters of civil or social life the same obedience appears not to be exacted, else murder would not so oft have bared her arm in our country, or the vile Ribbon system have been so long unchecked. I should be slow to suggest a reason for this anomaly, but the priesthood ought to explain it to the public, for they only can. The exemption from atrocities in our parish resulted, I doubt not, from Bishop M'Gettigan's pacific influences. He died about 1861, and his- nephew, Dr. Daniel M'Gettigan, is now Roman Catholic Primate, and lives in Armagh, and has the character of being a man of talent, education, and culture. We had visits at Kingstown at stated intervals from the " Redemptorist Fathers" — a class of priests who seem to be sent on a mission of inves- tigation to see how the Churcli of Rome was doing its work, and to animate and stir up the lifeless and the lagging, if such could be found among her sons. I remember accurately some of the occurrences 118 EECOLLECTIONS OP wliich took place at one of these forays about the year 1854. A short time before this, the Irish Church Mission had been more than usually busy among the Roman Catholics: some conversions had taken place, and a number of copies of the Scriptures had been distributed ; but on the arrival of these P'athers, almost all of the Bibles were brought back and publicly burned. A bonfire was made in the open chapel-yard, which formed a side of the Forty-Foot Road, the most frequented thorough- fare in Kingstown, and there, amidst the shoutings of boys and of beggars, the Bibles were consigned to the flames — a kind of auto da fe of dead here- tics — and their ashes kicked about the yard and into the street ! I saw one which had been rescued by a passer-by: all the Pentateuch and Revelation were burnt away, and the Avhole little volume pre- senting a charred appearance, and bearing the smell of fire. Neither priest nor police, the Church force or the civil, interfered to stop this outrage, but many of the more decent Roman Catholics, shopkeepers of the town, expressed their hearty dislike to so indecent a proceeding. At this time, and within a few yards of where the bonfire had blazed, a plain cross of wood was erected, and every hour of the day some ardent Religionist might be seen by the passers-by in the street, on bended knees worshipping before it. THE IRISH CHURCH 119 Our good Kingstown Romanists were greatly excited by the visit of these fathers. I received more than one threatening anonymous letter, but, as I did not deserve it, I did not regard it. How- ever, on one Sunday forenoon, when my curate was reading the Litany, a tall woman rushed up the aisle, armed with a long stick, with which she struck at him violently, shouting out, "you have no conmiission, sir ; show me your commission." Mr. M stepped quickly to one side, and the blow descended on the velvet cushion of the read- ing desk, and the churchwardens coming up, put the poor creature into the street ; she was evi- dently insane. I think the aggressive form in which the excel- lent Irish Church Missions carried on their con- troversy awakened a violent and natural spirit of resistance among the priests and their people, the open attack by placard or handbill, either glaring from the walls, or thrust into the hand in a train, was, no doubt, manly warfare. Cannon-ball prac- tice ! and very unlike the gentle and noiseless pro- cedure which characterised the work of the old " Irish Society." Which was the wiser, is still a questio vexata, and to be determined by Tiuie, the arbiter. I never enjoyed controversial work, although I had studiously and carefully read up the subject as every Irish clergyman must of necessity do ; but it did not suit me, and was not 120 RECOLLECTIONS OF congenial to my mental temperament. Neverthe- less, quietly and noiselessly, a great many Roman Catholics dropped into my church from time to time, and became steady and attached worshippers there. I might mention many of these among the well-born and educated classes, and the means Avhich wrought this great change in their views ; but my doing so would be a delicate and a diffi- cult task, as some of them are alive at this present day. Therefore, I shall speak but of one, and chiefly because the conversion of this man was entirely produced by the simple hearing of the Word of God. His name was John White, and he was poor and blind; he happened to lodge in the same house where was a sick Protestant, and he, through a thin partition, had heard a good lady read the Scriptures to this person day after day. The lady was quite unconscious of her auditor, but White listened, and was delighted. One day she read that divine chapter, the 14th of St. John's Gospel, " Let not your heart be troubled." " Oh, my God,'' said the poor man, " hut them is beautiful words!'' Thus the Lord unlocked the doors of his soul with the key of His own Word, and very soon he ojDenly, though gently, renounced Romanism to the consternation of his wdfe, from whom he en- dured a great fight of domestic afflictions to the end of his life. THE IKISH CHURCH. 121 Morning, mid-day, and evening, was blind White to be seen groping his Avay from Mount- town to attend the Services, or Sunday School of Kingstown Church, undeterred by rain, or cold, or fast advancing years, or worst of all, by the ravings of his household Xantippe. He is now gone to rest, and was faithful, gentle, and patient to the last. We knew much of him, for after Morning Service on Sunday, my children would — latterly — go for him, and lead him into our house, where he would be refreshed and rested between the church hours. And these " beautiful words," so full of love, and joy, and peace — these words spoken by the Great Master Himself — almost His dying words — words that He wished all should hear, and be blessed in the hearing of — oh, why are they kept from the knowledge of so many millions of our poor Roman Catholic countrymen? This is the darkest blot in the priests' scutcheon — the with- holding even their own Bible^ from their flocks. Perhaps they do so more advisedly, knowing how intensely the poor people would enjoy it. Beyond all question they do so knowing full well that the light which flashes along the lines of inspiration would disclose none of their leading doctrines^ ' Their own Bible is excellent in many ways ; its chief fault is in its notes, which are beyond measure, weak, slovenly, and un- scholarly. 122 RECOLLECTIONS OF neither Purgatory, or Priestly Absolution, nor Divine A\^orship to saint, to angel, or to image, nor Immaculate Conception, nor Papal Infalli- bility; these are not in the Bible, Protestant or Douay, nor have they the shadow of a standing in the records of God. The quick Irish mind would look for them, and when not found would begin to doubt the teachings of a Church which sets forward so many things as essentials which are not even mentioned in the Bible, and is silent on so many matters which are strictly en- joined therein. A remarkable fact occurred at Kingscourt, in the Diocese of Meath, in the year 1835, strongly bearing upon the foregoing views. The old " Irish Society" had much work doing in the large district of which Kingscourt was the head, and where the Rev. Robert Winning, an ex- tremely active Presbyterian minister, was the honorary superintendent. Under him were hun- dreds of Irish-speaking teachers, who, assembling the peasantry all through the adjoining counties, in cabin, or barn, or midst the brown bog, or on the hill side, as the occasion might be, taught them to read Irish in the Irish Bible,i for doing ' Translated from the Authorised Version, by Dr. William Bedell, an Englishman, Bishop of Kilmore, a.d. 1640. This emi- nently holy prelate, at the age of sixty, learned the Celtic language, to enable him to make the translation, in which he was assisted by THE IRISH CHURCH. 123 which they were paid by the Irish Society at a rate regulated by the number and progress of their pupils. From this body of teachers and their pupils issued, at this time, a singular manifesto, signed by 375 persons, all adherents of the Papacy, in which the subscribers declared for themselves, and up- wards of 5,000 of their adult brethren, their right to read the Scriptures^ as Christians and Roman Catholics !"^ At the same time, about one hundred of the teachers were anxious to receive the Holy Sacra- ment in the Church of England, at Kingscourt; Bishop Daly, Mr. Cleaver, and Archdeacon Pack- enham attended, and examined them, and on Sunday admitted as communicants a large portion of these men, enlightened and converted solely by reading the word of God. The Kev. Mr. Win- ning afterwards, on leaving the Presbyterian Church, was presented to the living of Kingscourt by Dr. Stopford, at that time Bishop of Meath. Denis O'Sheridan, one of the Bishop's own converts from Romanism. He had been a friar, and was the direct ancestor of all the gifted Sheridans. ' See Dr. Killen's "Ecclesiastical History of Ireland," vol. ii., page 428. 124 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER X. EOMANISM. {Continued.) The whole machinery of the Roman Catholic system is so admirably devised as to working effi- ciently, and so noiselessly carried on, that the public are seldom aware of the unbending rigidity with which its edicts are still enforced, even in the light and the liberality which are claimed for this advanced nineteenth century. I know personally of two cases of marriage during this year, at- tempted to be broken through by a ruthless threat of heavy excommunication from the clergy of the Roman Catholic party. In one instance the threat succeeded ; in the latter the lady leaped beyond the border, and followed her " own sweet will," and I dare say is very happy with her Protestant husband, although the clerical thunder may be pealing around her head — innocuously. But the priest, at times, can, beyond doubt, act terribly. Many years ago an instance came before THE IRISH CHURCH. 125 I me in a very remote curacy, for the truth of I which I can sincerely vouch. It was on this a\ ise : — A handsome, stalwart young farmer fell in love with a beautiful girl, of the Roman Catholic j^ersuasion, by whom the feeling Avas warmly reciprocated. The man was a rigid Protestant, and of a stiff and resolute temper, but he had a fair character, and was ex- tre»rely well-to-do as regarded worldly matters. He proposed, and was at once accepted. While outpouring his feelings, he declared to the girl that she must in future go to his Church, and become a convert to his faith, to which she will- ingly consented, being constrained by her affec- tion for her lover, and the more than common worldly advantages of the match. I never heard how her friends felt or acted on tlie occasion, but her priest was most indig- nant. He solemnly and most vehemently cursed her, from the chapel altar, publicly and on Sun- day, by her name, imprecating woe upon her wedded life, and praying that God would blast and wither the fruit of her womb, and that it might never reach maturity. This, however terrible, is a fact.^ The poor girl ' Our Laureate, Mr. Tennyson, in his drama, " Harold," appears to understand the nature of these ecclesiastical maledictions. Harold says — ' ' We bide the doom of God." Margot (a monk) replies — " Hear it tlirough me. The Realm for which tliou art forsworn is cursed, 126 RECOLLECTIONS OF felt this most keenly. She married, and had a numerous family — fair and nice and blooming young creatures — but they all died before they had reached twenty years, except the eldest son, who attained to a vigorous manhood, and is but lately deceased. As a minister, I attended thfee of the death-beds of this family — two girls and one young man. They were all marked with true devotion, and were conspicuous for faith, and joy in our blessed Saviour. One of the girls was a lovely creature: she had often led the sing- ing in the Sunday-school, and now on her dying bed, in the wandering of her " sweet senses," she would feebly warble such heavenly hymns as "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds," moving her fair head from side to side of the pillow, or playing with the counterpane with her long, white fingers. The Babe enwombed and at thy breast is cursed, The Corpse thou whelmest with the earth is cursed, The Soul who fightest on thy side is cursed, The Seed thou sowest in thy field is cursed, The Steer wherewith thou plowest thy field is cursed, The Fowl that flieth o'er thy field is cursed, And thou — Usurper — Liar " Harold — " Out, beast monk ! " Leofwin — " He has blown himself as red as fire with curses." This is presumed, as a fact, to have taken place a.d. 1066 ; and what a fearful compound arithmetic of cursing, for eight hundred years, has the Church of Rome to reckon since then ! " THE IRISH CHURCH. 127 The father standing by her, like an old storm- beaten cliff — complaining of God ; the mother, too, but always silent, save for the mute anguish which declared itself on her brow. The Romanist neighbours attributed their deaths to the curse of the clergyman, but were staggered in their faith by the health of the eldest son, and so had to be content with but a partial fulfilment of the anathema. The plain truth of the matter was, that there was and had been deep-rooted consumption in the fathers family} His brother's children died of this fell disease, almost as rapidly as his own, only they were not so numerous. I never was much either in connexion or col. lision with the Roman Catholic priests. I saw most of them during the famine and the cholera, when I can testify, as I have already done in the first volume of this book,^ to their zealous and manly efforts while performing their duty among the sick poor, and never flinching from it, espe- cially at times of heavy visitation, when cholera or virulent infectious fever prevailed. In truth, it must be allowed that the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church have a hard part to enact, unable at all times to exhibit their own better feelings, and in trammels to the will and orders of their ' Probably the priest knew this fact. " "Recollections of Irish Church," vol. i., p. 102. 128 EECOLLECTIONS OF ecclesiastical superiors ; and I am quite sure that there are kind, and nice, and good fellows among them, as undoubtedly there are very clever men and most eloquent preachers. On one occasion 1 travelled with the Rqjanan Catholic Bishop of M , and Avhen landing at the terminus of a populous town, two large ladies, flaming in silks and satin, rushed at the poor gentleman, and dropping on their knees on the wooden platform before him, and in the sight of all people, seized each a hand, and repeatedly kissed it, crying, " Oh, my lord, my lord ! " Truly, it seemed a most unwelcome accolade, for I never saw discomfiture more manifest, or annoyance more visible than that which clouded the pale and gentle face of the prelate, at the violence and publicity of this very feminine de- monstration. It should be an anxious question to every philanthropist, to every ])olitician, and to every Christian, to ascertain if all this outpour of gold into the colFers of the Church of Rome in Ireland, all these endowments and costly educational ad- vantages, all this favouritism and homage to Roman Catholics, when their archbishop was placed at the Liberal Vice-Regal table above Ireland's Duke, the old Geraldine, and a crimson cloth laid down on this occasion from his carriage step to the Castle door, lest he should sully with THE IRISH CHURCH. 129 dust his sacred shoes, or speck his scarlet stock- ings ! Whether all this flattery and these favours on the part of the Liberals have been productive of any good result to the " faith and morals," as they themselves express it, of the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and whether they are better taught by their Church and her pastors in these three things, among others, viz, : — An increasing respect for human Ufe^ a love of truth, and a hatred of concealed crime. To these questions one fact will give the sad answer — In this very summer of 1877 in which I write, in broad noon-day light, on his own avenue, at Harristown, near Castlerea, County of Roscom- mon, Mr. James Young, J. P., is shot down and murdered. The cowardly villain who killed him came behind, and fired twice ; one shot entered his brain, the other broke his spine. The cause of his assassination no one can guess at. He was a humane landlord — this was pub- licly acknowledged, and never denied. He farmed most of his own land, and gave much emplov- ment — a most quiet, inoff"ensive person, a friend to the poor, and an eminently happy domestic character. He was my kinsman, and I knew him from his childhood Yet this man's doom was well known in all the neighbourhood many hours K 130 EECOLLECTIONS OF before he was shot, and in his avenue (which Avas always thronged on market-days as a short cut to the train) there was not a person to be seen on that fatal day, previous to the deed of dea^h being done. So much was he regarded that a reward of £1,700 has been offered for the murderer's appre- hension, but though many know, no man will speak ; and their clergy, who can hear and learn all things, sub sigillo confessionis, prefer preserving the strictness of a Church rule to the promoting of practical morality, and the helping forward of law and justice. And to such a pass has this county of Roscommon come, that at the close of the last assizes, an eminent judge, himself a Roman Catholic, said to one of the grand jurors on parting at the train, " There is not a man in the county whose life is safe from assassination except the man in the dock." In England, if a man kills his neighbour, the whole country is stirred up to apprehend the murderer. In parts of Ireland the exact reverse takes place, as in this case of Mr. Young. The English principle is the result of honest Christian Protestantism.^ The Irish action is the deadly fruit of what Mr. Gladstone is beginning to perceive is the true " upas tree" which ovcr- ' See the conduct of the Londoners on the condemnation of the Penge murderers. — Daily News, September 26, 1877. THE IRISH CHURCH. 131 shadows Ireland and darkens and degrades the minds of her Roman Catholic population. This murderer, whoever he may be, is perfectly aware that on a due confession to his priest, and submission to any measure of penance his Church may appoint, his crime will be forgiven, and never rise against him at the Judgment Day — this is his Jirm belief; and it is an awful doctrine, and pro- ductive of the very worst and most destructive results to the soul of man, as well as to the safety of society at large. The confessional is the cause of this, a darker fruit than even what our Church might reasonably apprehend were such vile manuals as " The Priest in Absolution," and "The Priest's Prayer Book" suffered to circulate among us. The two Doctrines, so upheld among Romanists and Ritualists, are those which most audaciously would rob God of His glory, and the Lord Jesus Christ of His prerogative and power. These are the sacrifice of the Mass, and Priestly Absolu- tion. The abomination of these dogmas is best illus- trated by the saying of a Spanish confessor to his king, who had someway seemed to underrate his power — " Look at me, sir, and remember what I am, and what I can do. I hold your God in my hand, and your wife is at my feet! " 132 EECOLLECTIONS OF Surely God working through the growth of liberty, and increase of educated iliberality, will never suflPer such a degrading chain as this to fetter the free limbs of our National Churches of England or Ireland. "We have the Tkuth, and the Truth will make us free. "We have the spirit, which this foreign Church of Rome has no right or pretension to, and where the spirit of the Lord is, THEEE IS Liberty. The Church of Rome, as regards Ireland is truly and historically, an alien Church. She has not the doctrine of St. Patrick, who introduced Christianity to the nation. Our Irish Church represents in her faith and teaching what that great saint believed and taught, and his hymn and prayer, which are genuine documents, could be repeated in church or chamber by the most ortho- dox member of a Protestant Church. The epithet Catholic is a manifest misnomer ; if we regard the Romanists as a sect, they are far outnumbered by the Buddhists and Mohamedans ; and, as a Church, they do not come up to in numbers the aggregate of non-Roman Catholic Churches scattered through Europe, America, and the Colonies. Why she dislikes the word Roman, the seat and origin of her faiih, her discipline and her government, it is hard to understand. And why are her children angry if called Papists? THE IRISH CHURCH. 138 One would suppose the filial feeling would make them proud of a term which reminds them of their venerable and infallible Father, the Pope. Truly our Transalpine sister has many incon- gruities to exhibit and to — explain. 134 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER XL MY NOTE BOOK. After my ordination to the ministry, which was close on fifty years ago, I commenced keeping a journal in Avhich, with other things, I noted down any professional case which seemed to me to possess a peculiar interest. I shall transcribe the substance of a very few of these notes into this chapter, in the hope that some of my younger brethren may be taught and encouraged by the recital, and may be led to use the simple means which I, with rare exceptions, ever employed to overcome difficulties — namely, the reading of the Word of God and the invoca- tion of the Holy Spirit by prayer in Jesus' name. " Oh, Heavenly Father, send down Thy Holy Spirit, for Jesus Christ's sake. — Amen." This was ever Mr. Dallas's prayer which he taught his Irish converts. I have no dread of giving offence in stating these cases. They took place long ago, and in different localities, and the parties impli- cated have all passed off this scene of life, and the THE IRISH CHURCH. 135 facts attending our intercourse were known but to few, or have been since forgotten. I shall pre- fix a title to each case to make it more distinc- tive. THE TRIUMPH OF GOd's WORD. In a large drawing-room, stretched on a couch beside a window, lay Miss H , Her face was haggard, and perfectly white, save where a round, bright spot burned on either cheek. The coun- tenance expressed thoughtfulness, but was dark and defiant. She looked vexed and angry. She had only recently been told that consumption was doing its work on her frame, and she was striving in every way she could to ignore and disbelieve the bitter tidings. My reception was therefore anything but cordial, in fact it was frigid even to a lack of courtesy. I commenced the conversation by hoping that she had not been fatigued by her journey. She said, "Not the least." "Do you think you are better ? " " Much better. I have nothing the matter with me but a heavy cold, and shall soon be quite well." Would you object to my reading to you ? " " What would you read, sir ? " "A few verses of the New Testament." " Oh, as for that, I hope to be in church on Sunday. I shall hear reading there ; besides, I am not sick, sir ; you have been misinformed." Here a rack- 136 RECOLLECTIONS OF ing cough came on, threatening the very dissolu- tion of her poor frame from its violence. During the paroxysm, I had taken out my Bible, and when the cough had ceased, I said quietly, " Now, I Avill soothe you by reading a few verses from the Word of Life." She lay back upon her pillows quite exhausted, and looked coldly upon me, as I read a few com- mencing verses of the fifth of Romans, briefly and simply explaining each verse as I went on, and concluding by a short prayer. She heard me with apparent indifference ; still I thought I could perceive a softening of the cold, grey eye during my ministration ; yet, when I asked for leave to call again, she apologised for not being able to receive me for a few days, as her cousins were coming to visit her. Her doctors ordered her off to milder air the next morning, and I never again saw Miss H , and her case had nearly passed from my mind, when the lady, who had first sent me to her, called to announce her death. It appears that her sudden removal had dissi- pated her hopes of recovery, and for two or three days she was silent, and looked unhappy ; on the fourth day these clouds began to break, for God had been working in her soul. Suddenly she asked her sister to read to her. " AVhat book shall I read ?" THE IRISH CHUECH. 137 " God's Book, the only Book to teach and help a dying sinner." Her sister sat down and opened the volume. " Now, dear A., what part shall I read ?" " The fifth of Romans." She then repeated the first three or four verses. " I have never forgotten them," she said ; " even when vexed, and grieved to leave life, and my heart rebelling against God, those verses would come back and haunt me day and night. At first I did not like them, but gradually I learned to welcome and love them ; and I do think I see their meaning and their comfort now, and I am sure that God is teaching me, for I am content to die, and surrender my own will to His ; so, dear sister, read me more and more of that blessed Book, and tell me more of that Saviour, who ' when we were without strength, died for the ungodly.' " From that to the hour of her dissolution, her soul's food was the Word of God ; her happiness was great, her peace unclouded, her patience under a trying and exhaustive disease, was mar- vellous, and when death came, she met him with joy and fortitude, not as a victim, but a conqueror. And so she feU asleep in Jesus. Here was the pure triumph of the Word ; for " the law of the TiOrd is perfect, converting the soul." 138 RECOLLECTIONS OF The next case is totally dissimilar. I shall call it— H Mvia /ilSdaKei; OE, THE TEACHING OF THE FLY. While staying for a few days at K ., in the King's County, the curate wished me to visit a young man dying of consumption, whom he re- presented as a thorough infidel, ignorant and self- opinionated, I found him lying on an old sofa beneath an open window, through which the hot evening sun was shining ; he was in an irritable mood, the flies were teazing him, he called them " nature's plagues," and would probably have served them as the Emperor Doniitian did, had he been able to rise and use his fingers ; he very civilly, but determinately, declined my ofi'er of reading the Bible to him, saying, " 1 don't believe in that Book." So we talked in a kindly way on indiiFerent things, and I found him much as the little curate had represented him : he was one- third educated, he had been shop-boy to a German chymist in Birmingham, where he had picked up some opinions of an infidel tendency, and the poor fellow was as absurdly pompous as he was super- ficial. " Gravitation," he said, " was discovered by Newton, and is the king and motive-power of the universe ; it is a self-created law ; keeping all THE IRISH CHURCH. 139 things in order, we understand it, but can't go beyond it ; but we do not understand God or His relations to us." He went on talking in this strain, as he lay on his back, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. " Are you looking at your enemy ?" said T. " What enemy ?" Why, that large blue-bottle fly, which was buzzing over your face as I came in ; he is quiet enough now, and is probably going to sleep just over you ; but why does he not obey the law of gravitation, and tumble on your nose, for you see he is a heavy fellow ?" " I protest, sir," said he, " I cannot tell." I then explained to him the wondrous machinery with which God the Creator had furnished the foot of the fly to enable it to fasten itself to a wall or ceiling, as if glued there, even in sleep, and out of the reach of almost all its enemies. " You see here," I said, " the provision a loving Creator has made for the meanest of His crea- tures ; the great law of gravitation is counteracted in their case, in order to give security and ease to to a fly !" He was silent for a few minutes, and then said rather humbly : — " I do think that there must be some ordering mind above mere matter." His doctor now came in, and we were forced to leave. 140 RECOLLECTIONS OF I returned to Dublin that night, and heard nothing more of our poor philosopher, or of the ultimate condition of a mind, into which, by God's help, we contrived to get, at all events, one wedge securely driven. YOUNG HERBERT. In 184 — , I had a note from a Miss M., asking me to visit her nephew, a lad of thirteen years, "who was threatened with consumption." Alas, it was more than a mere threatening, as I saw by the first glance : the bright expanded eyes, the pink cheek, the hot hand, the long white fingers, the sunken chest, the sharp jerky cough and quick breathing, all declared that the dreadful lung-foe had fixed his fangs in the constitution of that poor boy. He was a wonderfully handsome little fellow, the image of his fair, dead mother, whom, as a schoolboy, I had worshipped years before, so I felt attracted to him, and the more so, as I knew I should so soon lose him, and that he was indeed a " blossom gathered for the tomb." But of this he was thoroughly unconscious ; like all consumptive patients, he made light of his ill- ness, and felt confident of a speedy recovery ; the fever which was wasting his life gave him this false sense of vitality ; he wanted to ride, to drive, to boat in the harbour, and even sent for " Jemmy," THE IRISH CHURCH. 141 an old boatman from the quay, to arrange a fishing excursion " when he would be a little stronger." Now and then on a sunny day he did seem better, and then his animal spirits, always high, became exuberant ; but there was no cessation of the burning heats at night, followed at early morn- ing by drenching perspirations, so violent, that his nurse had to wring the water from his long silken hair into a towel, before she dressed him for the day. His aunt came to see him ; she was a pious woman, but wanted the courage to tell young Herbert that he was dying, and finally, requested me to do so. It was difficult to do, the little fellow was so happy and so hopeful, and full of bright dreams of coming life ; and it seemed so cruel to quench all these lights with the extinguisher of cold reality. Nevertheless, I essayed the task on the following day ; but, whether he was heedless, or I made the communication awkwardly, I cannot say, but certainly he did not understand me ; so in the prayer I offered up afterwards, I asked of God to support him in the hour of his approaching death. When I rose from my knees, our eyes met, and I saw his face was ashen white. " What do you mean ?" he cried. " Am I dy- ing ? Oh, my God ! am I dying ? Aunt, speak to me, tell me am I dying ?" 142 RECOLLECTIONS OF " Alas, dear Herbert, I fear it is too true ; it is God's will. Oh, may Jesus Christ, your loving Saviour, who died on the cross to wash your sins away, may He give you grace and patience to bear all !" she went on tenderly, teaching and try- ing to comfort the poor lad ; he had covered his face with his hands, and the next minute he broke into a loud and passionate fit of weeping, most grievous to witness, during which I retired, anxious to escape from so very mournful a scene. This was one of the most painful actions of my whole life, yet I felt it was right so to do ; on my next visit his face and manner presented an appearance of calmness which I thought curious, but satisfac- tory. I visited him up to his death, which was sudden, through the breaking of a blood-vessel, and he received my ministrations affectionately, but with reserve, never speaking of death, but always giving me the idea that his thoughts were beyond earth ; and, professing a simple faith in his Saviour, he passed away, a fair flower gathered from the frosts and storms of this Avorld to blossom in God's Eden for ever. OUT OF THE FETTERS INTO FREEDOM. At one period of a long ministry of nearly fifty years, I knew a man — I need not speak his naii.e, nor tell where I met him, or how I had known THE IRISH CHURCH. 143 him before as a boy — but will merely say that he derived from birth most worldly advantages, while possessing many attractive physical and social gifts from nature. But he was a very wicked man, indeed, I had never read of anyone so absolutely licentious ; from his own testimony, he had trod every depth of sin ; a bondsman to his passions, and to his poor body, now replete with disease, and trembling on the precipices of death. Is this picture dark ? It surely was of the gloomiest Rembrandt school ; that great Fleming has usually three deep shadows on his canvas ; this dreary portraiture of a sadly immoral life had more than twice that number. Yet it pleased God to reveal Himself to this man during an illness rendered terrible by bodily pain, great distress, and frequent surgical opera- tions ; so that in the light which heaven now lent him, he was taught to loathe himself and his sin, and often to cry mightily with groaning and weep- ing to his Saviour for forgivenness. He would say, " Oh, if there be mercy for such as I, pardon my past offences, and, oh, take me to Thyself, lest, were I restored to health, I might again begin to love the sin which now I hate." Such supplications I often listened to from his lips. God heard these repeated prayers, and he 144 RECOLLECTIONS OF died in a childlike, yet eager clinging to the cross of an atoning Jesus. I do not think that under the pressure of tre- mendous bodily pain his mind was able to reason much, or explain his new feeling, or, indeed, to cope with the higher doctrines of Christian truth ; but he thoroughly felt and mourned for his sin, clearly saw his own impotency to save his own soul, and relied absolutely on his Saviour's blood to bring him into heaven. And the instrumentality God used in this matter— for He ever acts by means, which are generally recognizable, both in the kingdom of creation and of grace — was the simple reading of the Bible, and prayer made many times at the sick man's bedside by one who had been his schoolfellow in former days ; and it was thus the " valleys were filled up and the mountains brought low." THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE. I find in my journal the following entry : — " Called to see a family from the country. The father, a fine and thoroughly gentlemanlike man, seems rather delicate ; his lady and daughters charming and graceful people. My reception by them was most courteous. We had some mutual friends to speak about ; but when I introduced the subject of heavenly things the gentleman's THE IRISH CHURCH. 145 manner altered, and he chilled me by his extreme coldness and reserve, and I thought I never had met a person more opposed to the subject of religion, and I left the house without any ex- pectation of doing good there ; yet I had heard on all sides the very highest character of this man, both in social and domestic life." M}' memory now takes up the narrative. My next visit was paid some months afterwards, during which time the gentleman had been on the Continent. In the interim his health had utterly failed, but God had been busy in his heart. He received me cordially, and asked me to read the Bible and to pray for him. His reserve had all fled, and he appeared to be an eager learner, and most desirous to sit humbly at his Saviour's feet; indeed, I never witnessed such a quick burst of divine life, or such a rapid acquisition of Scrip- ture knowledge. He was now very ill, and con- fined to his bed. 1 visited him from day to day. His delight in the largeness and the fitness of the Gospel scheme was unbounded, and his great study was in the doctrinal chapters of the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. 1 was puzzled by this over-quick acquisition of knowledge, which many earnest students only succeed in mastering iifter long application. " Can it be real ? " I asked myself ; so one day at his bedside I said, " Now, } ou shall explain to me some of the seventh of L 146 RECOLLECTIONS OF Romans, and I will read it to you verse by verse." I did so, and his running comment, as I went on, was sound, simple, and clear. As his strength waned his faith increased, and his happiness in Christ and his hopes of heaven were so bright }jnd rejoicing, that on a Sunday evening, after a day of exhaustive labour, I used to betake me for refreshment to his bedside, as to a spring in the desert, and listen to his joyous anticipations of coming glory, and look on his sweet face, worn and gray with sickness and with sutFering, but all kindling in every feature with the fire his feelings imparted, and the love which his Saviour inspired. In other happy Christian death-beds I have seen Peace to be the predominating grace, but his sickness and final passing away was all along marked with Joy — that Avas his strength. God works by means ; and prayer, even in its weakness, is mighty. This gentleman had among his family a daughter; she was a ripe Christian, and a woman of fervent prayer. This was " The Angel in the House," and I do believe that God gave to her her father's soul " for her hire." She did not long survive him, and now is happy with ]^im where he is. One case more, and I have done. It was a peculiar one, and I shall entitle it THE IKISH CHURCH. 147 THE DESERTED ONE. AVe meet the subject of spiritual desertion very often in the writings of the old Divines of the seventeenth century. It seldom is treated of in modern theology ; but it was my lot during a long ministry to meet with many cases of this peculiar manifestation — one of which I shall recount here. That any child of God should be deserted of his Heavenly Father is against the whole testi- mony of the Gospel ; yet, beyond all doubt there are passages in the Bible which intimate such a condition. Job xxiii. 1-9 ; Isaiah 1. 10 The truth of the matter is that it is not desertion, but the sense of desertion which takes place. The cords of union can never be broken, but the cords of communion have been often slack- ened or entangled. In the summer of 1838, a gentleman and his lady came to reside near us. They had been married about ten years, and seemed greatly attached, but were childless, having lost a little daughter shortly after its birth, through some misconduct of the infant's nurse. The father had been a successful planter in Ceylon, and was yet a young man ; the lady was a beautiful woman, and a thoughtful and well- 148 KECOLLECTIONS OF iiifonned Christian. On one occasion, when I was absent in England, she had been indisposed and low-spirited for some weeks, during which she had amused her mind by the study of some of the New England and American Divines — Shep- herd, the two Mathers, and Jonathan Edwards, and such like. I then visited her, at her hus- band's request, and found her looking ill and ghostly. She was most unhappy. She rejected my proposal to read the Scripture to her, saying " the Bible was never intended for her." Despair occupied her mind, and she sat in bitter judgment against' herself, and her sentence was that she had so sinned against God as to be utterly beyond the bounds or possibility of salvation. What this sin w^as she could not define ; it was something un- speakably dreadful against God. Then, again, she would couple it with the death of her baby. Now she would hint that she married her husband merely for love, knowing him to be a man of careless views on religion ; and thus, as she said, dishonouring her profession and disobeying her God. On a subject so delicate as this latter I discouraged her to speak, merely saying that if she had sinned as darkly as her own conscience adjudged her to have done, that there was ample forgiveness with God through Christ. 1 did not combat her idea of the enormity of her sin ; but allowing it, I pointed to the greatness of the THE IRISH CHURCH. 149 remedy, and tliat where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. She dissented from this ; her morbid mind had an acidulating faculty, and turned all the sweet promises of the Gospel to gall and bitterness ; and with a perverted ingenuity she would try to prove the largest and most loving invitations of her Saviour to contain a sentence of death against her own peculiar case. I repeated to her the first line of that noblest hymn, " Rock of Ages, cleft for me," and would have gone on, but she stopped me short, saying, " That cleft Rock crushes me." She then said, " [ defy you to deny that the Bible speaks of an unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost ; that is my sin — my sin — and it is dragging me down to hell." I gave her my views of that text, Mark iii. 29, and tried to convince her that she had never "blasphemed" against that Divine Person, and that her present sorrowful agony under the conviction of that supposed sin was an evidence of her belief in His divinit3^ She was silent. Then I said, " May I pray with you ? '' " It is useless ; it would be a mockery. Oh, sir what can you do for me ? what can I do ? I am so miserable ! " We knelt in prayer, and afterwards I said, " You have asked me what can you do ? I answer, Pray witliout ceasing, and wait upon the KECOLLECTIONS OF Lord." I then marked for her in her Bible the tenth verse of the fiftieth chapter of Isaiah, and she appeared a little comforted. I saw this lady frequently afterwards, and I do not think her disease was much alleviated. Her health, at length, beginning to give way, her excellent and anxious husband took her off in his yacht to the Mediterranean, and I knew nothing of them till at the end of ten years I met them in the refreshment-room of the station of Scar- ])orough, the lady apparently in perfect health of mind and body, looking blooming, happy, and gay, and accompanied by her husband and four or five high-spirited and handsome children, who hung round her, and hailed her as their mother. See Appendix. THE IllISH CHURCH. 151 CHAPTER XII. THE CHUECH A.ND FINANCE. A GOOD-HUMOURED critic, writing concerning the former volume of this work, facetiously suggests the extreme likelihood of its author now rejoicing^ at the " cold bath" which the Irish Church sus- tained in the debate of 1869, and how "restora- tive" in its bracing effects it must have proved to the " fainting woman," as evidenced by her present well-to-do condition, &c. But if our Church is prospering, we have to thank God, and not man, and look, surely not to the hand which smote her, but to that which sus- tained her ; we have forgiven the spoilers, but the spoliation is an historical act, and cannot be for- gotten. God can bring good out of evil, and ' Perhaps our great dramatist gives tlie wisest counsel to our Irish clergy at this crisis — " Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lamentest : Time is the nurse and breeder of all good." Two Gentlemen of Vebon-^. 152 EEOOLLECTIONS OF right from wrong, and He has been doing so before, and ever since Sampson propounded his riddle, " Out of the eater came forth meat." But the favour of the Lord does not excuse the un- righteousness of man, and the depredation of the Irish Church must ever remain a black and inef- faceable blot on the fair pages of the history of England's noble Parliament.^ But now most truly and heartily we have to thank God for our deliverance from Governmental patronage ; not Balfour of Burley, in his strictest anti-erastian mood, could more disapprove of State authority in Church matters, than the great majo- rity of Irish clergymen did, of necessity, during the long one-sided and most illiberal reign of the so-called " Liberal" Government. Simply because though many good appointments were made from amongst their own party, yet from the mass of the ' To show how utterly misinformed the general mind is on Irish Church matters, a leading journal teUs us that " the whole of the Irish Church endowments were originally taken by the State from the Roman Catholic Church." — Edinburgh Scotsman. Now, one fact to answer this. Every rectory and glebe in the great Diocese of Meath was built or constituted since the Reforma- tion by Protestants, save one, which is now a cow-house. This is in part corroborated by what Mr. Godkin, truly an impartial witness, teUs us that Bishop O'Beirne of Meath, who died in 1823, built in twenty-five years fifty-seven churches, and seventy-two glebe-houses, in his diocese. See " Ireland and her Church," by James Godkin, 1867, page 246. THE IRISH CIIUI^CII. 153 clergy who stood for Scriptural education, no man was ever chosen for promotion. In that large class, numbering at least 1700 souls, no learning, nor pietj', nor wisdom, nor wit, nor worth, were ever recognised as qualifications for Viceregal favour, or as forming a claim for pro- motion ; the door of advancement was bolted fast against all but those who could boldly pronounce the required shibboleth, "1 believe in the National Board." Such were at once safely wafted across the river of preferment, while the hopes of the recusants were being slaughtered at the " passages of Jordan" by these Governmental Gileadites.' No doubt, some there were who spoke the word conscientiously, and to such no blame can be at- tached ; the bribe held out was strong, especially to the poor man, and to all the temptation was thoroughly unfair and unprincipled. Yet our clergy stood it manfully. Some few — very few — aposta- tized, and had their reward — a deanery, or better still, a bishopric : the mass stood to their colours, and were left out in the cold. Since the passing of the Act, in 1869, when the Church of Ireland bade an eternal adieu to her ' Of this Body, comprising nine-tenths of the learning, age, piety, and respectability of the Irish Church, a leading Liberal journal — Frazei-'s Magazine — thus wi-ites, in the year 1864 : — " These men are spaniels who will not cringe, but snap at the hand which feeds them, and who must be scourged or starved into submission." Comment on this were needless. 154 RECOLLECTIONS OF untrustworthy pilots, she has had the steering of her own ships, and her navigation amidst many difficulties, has been on the whole successful. Dur- ing that interval she has elected four bishops, the Rev. John Robert Darley to Kilmore, Maurice Fitzgerald Day to Cashel, Robert Samuel Gregg to (Jssory, and Lord Pluriket to Meath ; and a choice which has given more general satisfaction could not have been made. These men are the first-fruits of the Irish Episcopate, under the new and Republican form of her Church election ; and I cannot but regard them as typical men^ and re- presenting in their persons and character certain qualities essential and requisite for the further- ance and adornment of episcopal action ; they are all true Churchmen, and teachers of evangelical truth. The first of them in the foregoing order is a most saintly, large-hearted, and benevolent man, and a good and skilled scholar ; the second, in spirit and in manner is gentle as a summer flower, but in strong determination for the right, is as fixed and as unmovable as the iron foundations of the old " Rock" which gives him his episcopal title ; the third is a man of steady judgment and strong sense, at home among figures, and extremely able at organisation ; of the fourth I have already spoken in my former " Recollections," and can only further state that every anticipation of him THE IRISH CHURCH. 155 has been fully justified, and that his influence for good, and that of his family, extends not only through Meath, but likewise largely among the poor of Dublin. During this interval also, the Irish Church has appointed many incumbents to parishes with the approval of the general voice. Mistakes, no doubt, may have occurred, the electors being fallible men ; but on the whole, the choice has been made wisely and well, regarding the fitness of the individual for the position, and not looking to interest or favour. In regard of temporal matters, probably the great pressure of the Church's hour of poverty is more in the future than the present. The advantage of " commuting and compoimd- ing," which her rectors possess, and the life annuity granted to her curates, may act as blinds to screen her coming days of destitution. But how will it be when such advantages die out with this generation, to whom alone they are accorded, and how Avill the poor and sparse Protestant popu- lation in remote country districts bear the strain and the pressure on their resources in supporting their parochial ministers ? As things are now in a general way, we have cheering accounts through the diocesan synods that the Church is doing well — clerics and laymen come together as mutual members of the body; 156 RECOLLECTIONS OF bishops preside and lend their aid in the transac- tion of business ; counsel is given and taken, and rules framed and perfected amidst much harmony, and the true spirit of a new-born activity pervades the vv^hole. Probably a few evils may occasionally crop up, faulty p irts of the Church's late organi- zation, which may prove troublesome, as when a ship careers before the wind, the waves that follow are more apt to do mischief than those that foam around her prow. But time and management, with God's directing hand, will make all smooth ; let us hope, and fear not ! I had proposed to myself that I should give, in this chapter, a brief sketch of the monetary affairs of some of the dioceses, but have beeti deterred from doing so by the difficulty of obtaining returns, together with the probability of inaccura- cies, &c. So I shall content myself with a mere statement of the annual voluntary contributions received by the Representative Body,^ together with the mention of a few of the more liberal donors to the Irish Church Fund, which have, at this present time, come under my notice, and which I would here record merely as specimens^ of the generosity of my countrymen. The Daily J^ews (of London), Oct. 13, 1877, reports tliat a quarter of a million has been raised yearly in Ireland, and chiefly by the laity since ' See Report of Proceedings of Representative Body, &c., 1877. THE IRISH CHURCH. 157 the Act of Disestablishment ; this is above the mark, though in 1874, £257,000 Avere received by the Church Representative I>ody, Yet in other years the amount was less. From 1870 to 1876, being seven years, the contributions received amounted to £1,610,703 8s. 6d., being made up of subscriptions and donations. Sixty-five contributors gave each £1,000; over seventy gave £500. Sir Arthur Guinness and his brother Cecil, contributed £24,000 ; the late Bishop of Cashel, Robert Daly, £5,000; two noble- hearted brothers, John and Armar Dowry, gave £4,368 ; the Rev. J. J. Moutray, £3,933 ; Judge Dongfield, £3,400 ; and Charles Dunne, of Brittas, £3,200. The Daily News speaks disparagingly of England's " slender offerings," which is too true ; but a grand exception occurs in the case of an absentee nobleman, Lord Lecoufield, who has given £15,000 to the Church in Clare, and £5,000 to Limerick. Among the dioceses, that of Cork seems to prosper pre-eminently, their Sustentation Fund up to 1876 amounting to £159,144 12s. Od., and in addition to this, £78,000, raised by subscrip- tion for a new and beautiful Cathedral, besides much money for other local Church purposes. To the fund for erecting Cork Cathedral, two liirge-hearted gentlemen — merchants in Cork city — gave thirty thousand pounds ; Mr. Wise, 1.38 RECOLLECTIONS OF £20,000, and Mr. Crawford, £10,000. Such noble deeds ought to be recorded. In the city of Dublin, besides paying all costs on the magnificent restoration of Christ Church Cathedral, supposed to amount to over £100,000, j\[r. Henry Roe has built, and presented to the Church, a stately Synod Hall, and has given £10,000 additionally, as an endowment for the Cathedral. The voluntary contributions received by the Representative Body on behalf of the Irish Church, are as follows : — £229,753 14 2 214,709 8 4 248,445 1 8 230,179 11 0 257,021 2 1 218,499 3 8 212,095 7 7 Total received for seven years £1,610,703 8 6 In addition to this, the Church Commissionei-s receive on behalf of the Government, the old Tithe Rent Charge, formerly paid to the clergy, amounting to six hundred thousand pounds per annum, which, by-and-by, is to form The Sur- plus!" I am told that the voluntary contribution for 1877 is scarcely £200,000. A Radical friend lately remarked to me, " how During the year 18*0 1871 „ 1872 „ 1873 1874 „ 1875 „ 1876 THE IRISH CHURCH, 159 generous Mr. Gladstone had been in his manage- ment of the funds of the Irish Church." This he said with perfect seriousness. Now for facts. The former income paid to the Irish Church in Tithe Rent Charge, and since Disestahlishment paid to the Government every year, is £600,000. But the sum paid new to the Church Sustenta- tion Fund in voluntary annual subscriptions is little above £200,000, being only one-third of £600,000. Therefore the clergy of our Church are minus £400,000 per annum since the passing of the Act. This great receipt by the State at present is probably burthened with incumbrances and an- nuities ; but in a very few years the current of this golden Pactolus will run clear into the coffers of the Government, and fill them with treasure. " Spolia opiraa" indeed, as far as regards money value, yet so discreditably obtained, that I ques- tion if the great Leader of the Party could offer them at the shrine of Jupiter Feretrius — were that ancient deity resuscitated — without a blush ! In spite of much to discourage in what is stated in the foregoing, we may indulge a hope that our Church will, in time, be as independent in her monetary resources as she now is in her self- government. She will never be as rich as she once was, perhaps she ought not so to be; but 160 RECOLLECTIONS OF her reduced income will be more equally anc equitably divided. It is remarkable that what the English Govern- ■ ment are sturdily bent on denying politically to our so-called Irish patriots — namely, Repeal of the Union and Home Rule — they have granted eccle- siastically to us, and without even being asked, for they have of themselves repealed our union with the Church of England, and to our Irisli Church have accorded the liberty of Home Rule in its fullest sense. No doiibt, they felt they could trust us, a compliment they, perhaps, could not so safely extend to the other party. While admiring the generosity of my own countrymen in their voluntary support of a spoliated Church, one naturally looks to what what would be the result of a similar raid upon the sister Church of England. It seems to me that the great cities of England — the metropolis, the manufacturing towns, like Birmingham and Sheffield, the fashionable towns, such as Leamington, Bath, and Bournemouth — tliese will readily support their ministers, but the same can scarce be said of England's rural districts. Let us take one parish with which I am well acquainted. The rector's annual income, which was from land alone, was about £600, from which subtract, as outgoings, curate's stipend, schools, THE IRISH CHURCH. 161 taxes, poor-rates, church expenses, choir, Queen Anne's bounty, village treats, ahns, &c., societies, repairs, &c., in all fully £250. If, then, the State should appropriate the rec- torial income, who is to be liable for many of these expenses, and who ,is to pay the clergyman ? I put this question once to a very intelligent and wealthy land-owner in this parish, and a strong churchman — " If such things come to pass, what would be your voluntary contribution?" He answered, " Five pounds a year ! " A large farm was held by a rich Nonconformist in this parish. What possible equitable claim could a disendowed Church have upon him ? He has to support his own minister. M 162 KECOLLECTIONS OF CHAPTER XIII. PAKTING WORDS. In 1862 I left Kingstown, being appointed to the living of Wyton in Huntingdonshire, not far from Cambridge, of which ancient University, as well as of my native Dublin College, I am a Doctor of Divinity. But, though separated in professional action, the links of love which ^bound me to the Church of my dear native land were neither dimmed nor broken by my transition to England ; on the con- trary, absence seemed but to rivet them more fixedly, till like Goldsmith, in his wanderings from home, I seemed to "Drag at each remove a lengthening chain," and now, having resigned my English incumbency through age and illness, I am come baek to Ire- land, and gladly would once more fuse myself, however unworthy, among her clerical sons, and be as if I had never left her, or deserted them ^; and ' Surely I may say with tnie sympathy — '* Oh Socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum) Oh passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem." Virg. udEneid., Lib. i., p. 198-9. THE IRISH CHUECH 163 thus, as one of them, I should like to write a few- parting words — it may be of counsel or correc- tion, or it may be of comfort — as age and expe- rience have taught me ; and ere I close this little book, I can speak of, and possibly set right, some misapprehensions' of which our Irish Church has been accused. One is that she gives an extra importance to the sermon, to the depreciation of the service — and this I deny. " If it were so, it were a grievous fault." Surely God's blessing is upon both, and each in its place is excellent. The older we grow, the more does our Liturgy — its rich and heavenly spirituality, clothed in the lowly beauty of its simple Saxon — commend itself to our taste and to our affections, so that to us who love our Prayer-Book, nothing jars so rudely as to hear a clergyman, before or after preaching, piecing and patching some un- happy collect, as if his words or thoughts could add to its beauty or increase its spirituality. I can testify to the increasing desire on the part of the Irish clergy to perform the Church services as they should — solemnly, orderly, and attractively. Owing to a long residence in Eng- land, and much confinement from age and illness, I have not of late been a worshipper in many churches here, but I shall just mention one which, for the life, the sweetness, and the harmony of 164 EECOLLECTIONS OF its Sunday services, I never saw surpassed in England, or any other country. I allude to St. Anne's, Dublin, of which the Very Rev. Hercules Dickinson is the parish minister. Fact and experience both declare the import- ance of the pulpit work towards the success of a Church. When the preacher is sound and elo- quent, the Irish people do not merely go to church, but fioch and throng thither. "When the Rev. Achilles Daunt lately occupied St. Matthias' Church, the great marts poured forth their young men to hear him, and scores of them sat in rows on extemporized benches along the aisle, rapt in attention. It was a goodly sight to witness this power in Christ's Gospel, preached by a loving minister, to attract the young, among whom, doubtless, were many of the thoughtless and careless class. Now a few remarks on preaching. Some clergy- men in their sermons tell us of the succession of festivals and fasts in the Church of England, dully dilating thereon, and I have seen half-a- dozen large English farmers at a Harvest Festival Service fast asleep under this liturgical infliction. Some preach dry morality, and the same somno- lency ever is produced. Some are fiercely dogmatic, or altogether doc- trinal, omitting to inculcate the gracious work of the Spirit or His sweet fruits. I do think we THE IRISH CHURCH. 165 should ever keep in remembrance the Sermon on the Mount, and how our Lord there strongly and persuasively sets forward the Christian graces ; and we should ever place before us, as models to copy, the frame-work and plan of St. Paul's writ- ings, the beginning of each epistle showing a foundation of Doctrinal Truth ; the end display- ing an exhortation to the practice of holiness in every walk and department of life. There is a strong prejudice against high dogma and Calvinism in general in the world, and I found this existing vigorously even among the Baptists and Congregationalists in England, how much more amidst Church-folk. I suppose the Presbyterians who follow the rule of the Westminster Confession, are bound to up- hold its dicta, which are not in all cases strictly conformable to Holy Writ ; witness its declara- tions on reprobation, and its limitation of our Lord's atonement. Calvinism may have its faults and its mistakes, as every human system will show, but it is a very grand and noble old creed, and it is based on the truest as well as the most profound of Christian dogmata — " the Sovereignty of God." It is apt to engender exclusiveness and want of charity, yet during my long life I have seldom met more prac- tical or beneficent Christians than among its pro- fessors. 166 RECOLLECTIONS OP Some ministers fail simply from -want of earnest- ness, perhaps they do not feel what they say — "And the sweet words Of Christian promise, words that even yet Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached, Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim How flat and wearisome they feel their trade." ' It is recorded of the great actor, John Kemble, that on his first seeing Edmund Kean play Othello, he said to a friend, " He is terribly in earnest." This was his judgment of one who was acting a part ; how little in earnest are many of our preachers while sincerely declaring the truth. Fiction in an actor, puts on the aspect of reality, while fact in a minister's lips often becomes ques- tionable, because so coldly expressed ; and thus by being inefficient messengers, we are found dis- loyal to God. What is the remedy ? It is simple, and it is certain. Try to get to love your subject. Your subject is God in Christ, and His influence in the Church and world ; this you will gain by prayer, by study of God's Word, and by holy living ; these will all quicken your faith in Christ, and His love will be shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost given unto you. Then, whether you are fluent in the pulpit or * Coleridge. THE IRISH CHURCH. 167 formal, whether eloquent or slow, you will be earnest and in earnest, grace will accompany you, and good will be sure to follow. Some ministers do not succeed in the pulpit for want of preparation in the study ; there is a pre- paration of the heart which is from the Lord, and a preparation of the head which much depends on ourselves, and which is absolutely necessary for success. Would Lord Napier, or Sir Garnett Wolsely, ever have accomplished their glorious campaigns in Africa, but for careful and operose previous preparation ? If you are a ready extemporaneous speaker, your temptation to trust to the memory more than the mind is all the greater. If you are an enthusiastic man, you will probably rely on the impulse and fervour of the minute to carry you through your subject ; but flow is not fulness, and words without matter, are like smoke without flame ; the smoke only irritates, but the flame would warm and melt. Evangelical men are often led into this fault of unpreparedness, especially if they have the gift of fluency, for they always retain in their heads a large framework of dogma which they call the Gospel, and often substitute for preparation, forgetting that it is not enough to declare the Gospel, but it must be drawn out and applied earnestly, lovingly, and judiciously, 168 EECOLLECTIONS OF among the classes and individuals who compose the hearers. I do believe the most ignorant listener in the congregation can tell when a minister has prepared his sermon, and when not. Some preachers fail from want of the exercise of private prayer ; from my heart I believe that there is no greater help than this quiet intercourse with God, this