Part 3

To learn the purposes of God in the development of human events, to trace his hand in the complicated movements of society, to see him overruling and directing all to his own great ends, is one of the most sublime objects to which the study of history can be applied. Frequently, indeed, we may be unable fully to comprehend the designs of his providence in the moral, as in the physical world. Fancy, or pride, may easily have a great part in suggesting our theories. But, if we confine ourselves to certain facts and undoubted principles, we can often trace the design in both orders, and admire in it the wisdom, the power, the goodness—all the attributes of God. Nay, all these shine more brightly in the moral than in the physical order.

The history of his chosen people is an example of this. We find empires rising and falling, at one time to punish, at another time to try, at another to deliver his people. The good and the wicked, the weak and the strong, become in turn his instruments. The whole history of that people is but a record of the acts of his overruling providence, directing all things to the accomplishment of the designs which he had announced.

This is, indeed, so evident in this case that it may not be considered a fair instance to prove my general position. For it is admitted that God’s providence over the Jewish race was quite extraordinary. Still, it proves that God does so intervene in human affairs, and it illustrates many of the principles that must be kept in view in these investigations. It shows, for example, that many, unconscious of the fact—nay, with quite another object in view, acting perhaps from avarice, hatred, or ambition, are yet instruments in the hand of God for the accomplishment of his wise purposes. It shows how things, and persons, considered as of little or of no value, according to human views, may, in reality, be the pivots on which the destinies of vast empires turn, connected, as they may be, with the accomplishment of purposes which weigh more in the scales of Heaven than the mere temporal condition of all the empires of the Earth.

It is in this view that many Christian writers assert that the Roman empire obtained universal sway, that civilized nations being thus brought closely together, an easier way might be prepared for the spread of the Gospel. The generals and statesmen of Rome had no doubt a very low idea of the poor fishermen of Galilee, and of the tentmaker of Tharsus. It may be safely presumed that they did not even allow their names to divert their thoughts, for a moment, from the grand projects of conquest and government by which they were engrossed. Yet, in the designs of God, it was, most probably, to prepare a way for the work of those fishermen, and of that tentmaker, and their associates, that wisdom had been vouchsafed to their counsels and victory to their arms.

The endless invasions of the Roman empire by northern tribes is another instance of whole races being used by God for his own purposes, without their having any idea of the work in which they were employed. They came to punish those who had revelled in the blood of the saints, and to supply fresh material for the great work of the Church of God.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, an Italian sailor, led by some astronomical observations and some half understood, or rather misunderstood, tales of ancient travellers, to believe that there must be another continent far away beyond the western waters, wandered from court to court, in Europe, in search of means to fit up an expedition to discover it, and he finally succeeded in making known a new world. It requires little faith in divine Providence to believe that it was God who was impelling him thus to open a new outlet for the energies of the ancient world, which were then about being developed on a gigantic scale, and, still more, to prepare a field for a more extensive spread of the Gospel, in which the Church might repair the losses she was about to sustain in the religious convulsions impending in Europe.

Numberless similar instances might be quoted. These designs of God are sometimes manifest, sometimes hidden; sometimes they are far-reaching, sometimes limited. Ignorance and pride may mistake or pervert them. But they always prevail; they are always worthy of their Author; and let me add, that the salvation of men being the object most highly prized by God, it is not only rightfully considered the most noble, but it is that to which his other works may be justly accounted subordinate.

It is under the light of these principles that I undertake an investigation of the purposes of God regarding the Irish race. These purposes seem to me no longer matter of speculation; they may be pronounced manifest; for they are written in unmistakable characters in the development of events.

The history of Ireland is, in many respects, peculiar. Few nations received the faith so readily, and no other preserved it amidst similar struggles. St. Patrick first announced the Gospel to the assembled states of the realm at Tara. He received permission to preach it, unmolested, throughout the length and breadth of the land. By his indomitable zeal and heroic virtue, he succeeded in winning over the natives so effectually, that at his death few pagans remained in Ireland. Not a drop of blood was shed when Christianity was first announced. Heroism was displayed only by the exalted virtues of the Apostle and of the neophytes. Nowhere else did the Gospel take root so quickly and so firmly, and produce fruits so immediate and so abundant. Catholic Ireland soon became the home of the saints and sages of the Christian world. To many of the nations of the continent her apostles went forth, charged with the embassy of eternal truth. In every realm of Europe her children established sanctuaries of piety and learning; and to her own hospitable shores the natives of other lands flocked to receive education, and even support, from her gratuitous bounty. Homes of virtue dotted her hills and valleys; and thus were laid deep the roots of that strong attachment to the faith, which, later, was to be exposed to trials the most severe.

We thus find God preparing Ireland for a future, then hidden to all but Himself. For the day of trial came at last. She was reposing in peace, under the shadow of the Gospel, when the barbaric invasion, that swept before it every vestige of learning and religion in many parts of Europe, reached her shores. Ireland was the only country that rolled back its wave. But she did this at the cost of her life’s blood. For two centuries the Dane trampled her sons under foot. His cruelties yet re-echo in the national traditions. But the Irish race at last arose in its might, and drove the barbarian from its shores. The churches of the country had been pillaged, its monasteries plundered, its institutions of learning destroyed—everything that the sword could smite, or fire consume, had perished; but the Irish race came out of the ordeal preserving its own integrity, and the jewel which it prized above all else—its glorious faith.

Not long after this deliverance, and before Ireland had succeeded in obliterating the traces of Danish cruelty, another invader set his foot on her shores. Availing himself of the discords naturally arising from the disorganized state of society, he succeeded in gaining a foothold. By fanning these discords, he kept possession and gained strength. The rule of the Saxon became thus almost as severe a calamity as had been the oppression of the Dane. To the hatred, which is generally greater in the oppressor than in the oppressed, were added, in time, religious fanaticism and the desire of plunder, which became its associate and assumed its garb. The _mere_ Irishman, who was hated under any circumstances on account of his race, was now hunted in his own country as if he were a wild beast. The property of the Catholic people was confiscated, and most stringent laws were enacted to prevent its renewed acquisitions. Priests, wherever found, were put to death, and the severest penalties were inflicted on those who would harbour any that escaped detection. Extermination by fire and sword was ordered in so many words, and was attempted. When this failed, a system of penal laws was established, which were in full force until lately, and which a Protestant writer of deservedly high repute (Burke) calls a “machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man”. Upon the partial abandonment of this form of oppression, a system of proselytism was adopted, and is yet in full vigour (for it has become an institution, and the best supported institution in Ireland), which, by bribes to the high and the low, appeals to every base instinct to draw men away from the faith.

Yet neither confiscation of property, nor famine, nor disgrace, nor death in its most hideous forms, could make Ireland waver in that faith which our forefathers received from St. Patrick. There were, of course, from time to time, and there are, a few exceptions. Did not these occur, the Irish must have been more than men. But, as a general rule, the places that could not be procured or retained, except by apostacy, were resigned. The rich allowed their property to be torn from them, and they willingly became poor; the poor bore hunger and all other consequences of wretched poverty; and though every Earthly good was arrayed temptingly before them, they scorned to purchase comfort at the price of apostacy. During the four years from 1846 to 1850, nearly two millions either perished from hunger or its attendant pestilence, or were forced to leave their native land to escape both. In the midst of the dead and the dying, proselytisers showed themselves everywhere, well provided with food and money, and Bibles, and every one of the sufferers felt, and was made to feel, that all his sufferings might have been spared had he been willing to barter his faith for bread. Yet the masses could bear hunger and face pestilence, or fly from their native land; but they would not eat the bread of apostacy. They died, or they fled; but they clung to their faith.

In vain, I think, will history be searched for another example of such vast numbers, generation after generation, calmly, silently facing an unhonoured death, without any support on earth but the approving voice of conscience.

This fidelity can be predicated with truth of the whole Irish race, notwithstanding the numbers of those in Ireland who are not Catholics. For these, besides being a minority of the inhabitants, are but an exotic, planted in Ireland by the sword. They were imported, being already, and because they were, of another faith, for the purpose of supplanting that of the inhabitants. Many of them adopted the faith of the old race, so that the names that indicate their origin are not a certain test of their religion. But so steadily has the old stock adhered to its faith, that an Irish “O”, or “Mac”, or any other old Celtic name, is almost sure to designate a Catholic. Indeed, such names are usually called “Catholic names”. Whenever an exception is found, it is so rare an occurrence that the party is considered a renegade from his race as well as from his religion.

It would, however, be not only unfounded to flatter ourselves that this stability in the faith is the result of anything peculiar in the Irish nature, but it would be, I may say, a blasphemy to assert it. God alone can preserve any one in the paths of truth and virtue; how much more must we attribute to Him the fidelity of a whole race, under the trying circumstances here enumerated?

Such grace may have been given, as many believe, in reward of the readiness and the fulness with which our ancestors first received the faith of the Gospel, and it is hoped that God will to the end grant the same grace of fidelity to their descendants. Our great Apostle is said to have asked this favour from God for the nation which so readily responded to his call. Let us unite our prayers with his, and, like Solomon, ask for our race not riches, nor power, but true wisdom, which is, above all and before all, allegiance to the true faith. This was the prayer, no doubt, which the millions of our martyred ancestors poured out. They themselves sacrificed property and liberty; they gave up everything that man could take away, that they might preserve this precious jewel. They believed that in doing this they were following the dictates of true wisdom, and, in their fondest love for their remotest posterity, they wished and prayed that similar wisdom might be displayed by them. May their prayer be heard to the end.

This prayer has been heard, or at least this grace has been granted, up to the present. When the sons of Ireland on this day return in thought to the homes of their fathers, they may indeed look back upon a land inferior to many in the elements of material greatness. They may behold her castles and rich domains in the possession of the stranger. They may view the masses of their race with scarcely a foothold in the land of their fathers, liable to be ejected from the farm, and driven out on the public highways, and from the highways into the crowded town, and from the hovels of the crowded town into the poorhouse, and even at the poorhouse denied the right of admission. But amidst all the miseries of those who yet dwell in the old land—in spite of the wiles of unscrupulous governments, and heartless and tyrannical landlords, and hypocritical proselytizers—in spite of open violence and covert bribes, their undying attachment to the faith remains unaltered, unshaken—a monument of national virtue more honourable than any which wealth or power could erect, or flattery devise.

But all this is a grace, a great grace of God. It reveals a purpose of Heaven more bountiful in regard to this people than if he had raised them to the highest place in material power amongst the nations of the Earth.

Temporal prosperity, in its various forms, though a favour from God, is not his most precious blessing. He himself selected the way of the Cross. In abjection and suffering he came into the world; he lived in it despised and persecuted, he died amidst excruciating torments. To those whom he loved in a special manner, he says, “Can you drink the chalice which I am to drink, and be baptized with the baptism with which I shall be baptized?” and when they reply, they can, the promise that this shall be fulfilled, his leading them to follow him in the way of the Cross, his calling them to suffer for righteousness, is the best pledge of his greatest love.

This grace he has given to Ireland. Her children have received and accepted the call; they have reaped the reward. Indeed, I have found the opinion entertained by many clergymen of extensive experience, that there is not probably a people on this Earth of whom more, in proportion to their number, leave this world with well grounded hopes of a happy eternity. They do not, it is true, display a boastful assurance that they are about to ascend at once into Heaven. But vast masses serve God with humble fidelity in life, and, at death, acknowledging and sorry for their sins, doing all they can to comply with his requirements, they throw themselves, with resignation to his will, into the arms of his mercy.

Were nothing else apparent in the purposes of God, we might stop here. We would find a great and worthy object for all that Ireland has suffered, and cause to thank the Almighty Ruler for having given her the grace to suffer in union with and for the sake of his Son.

But God’s graces are often given for ulterior purposes; and it may be asked whether the extraordinary preservation of this nation’s faith has not another object in his wise and merciful counsels.

It appears to me that this is now clear in the case of Ireland. But, to understand it properly, we must reflect more closely on her connection with England, and on the condition of this latter country.

In the sixteenth century England abandoned the faith to which she had adhered for a thousand years. Her apostacy, though consummated by degrees, may be said to have become at last complete. The blood of her best sons flowed at Tyburn. The priests that were not of the number were banished, or forced to seek safety in hiding places. The same price was put on the head of a priest as on that of a wolf. The property of Catholics was confiscated, their children were taken from them, and educated in the religion of the establishment. These and analogous measures produced their effect at last. Were it not for these things, a great part of that nation, if not a majority, would be Catholic to-day. Though they desired no share in the plunder of the Church, and had no fancy for the new theories of the Reformers, they were weak enough to yield to a pressure, under which compromise first, and then apostacy, afforded the only means of escaping confiscation and the loss of every social advantage, frequently the only means of escaping death. The old faith stamped, indeed, its mark on the institutions of the kingdom in a manner that could not be blotted out. It left its memorials everywhere throughout the land. The noble universities, the gorgeous cathedrals, and the splendid ruins scattered over the surface of the country, are witnesses of its departed power; but it is itself effectually blotted out from the hearts of the people. Though the most noble kings and princes of the land had delighted in honouring Catholicity, though England had sent her apostles and her saints into many a clime, though her hills and valleys had re-echoed for centuries with the sweet songs of Catholic devotion, her people now know nothing more hateful than the faith under the auspices of which their fathers were civilized. They nickname it “Popery”, and the name expresses that which is to them most hateful.

Yet this England, this Catholic-hating England, has become one of the greatest nations of the Earth in the material order. Her fleets are mirrored in every sea; her banner floats on every continent. It has been truly said that the sound of her drums, calling her soldiers from slumber, goes before and greets the rising sun in its circuit around the globe.

But what is most remarkable, and certainly not without some great purpose in the order of divine Providence, England has become in our day the great hive from which colonies go out to people islands and continents in distant parts of the world; lands which were before vast wastes, tenanted only by the wild beast, or by the savage scarcely less ferocious. Indeed, she is the only nation in our day that seems to have received such a mission.

And is it then to an apostate nation exclusively that God has given the mission to fill up these wastes? Is it a corrupted faith only which is to be borne to these savage nations, and to be planted in those vast regions, which God has made known to civilized man in these latter days? Were this the case, we might tremble, though we should adore it as one of the inscrutable judgments of God, dealing with nations in his _great_ wrath.

But is such the fact? It would indeed be the fact were it not for faithful Ireland. But, united as England is with Ireland, the result is quite otherwise. The very ambition and desire for gain which impel England to extend her power and plant her colonies in the most distant countries of the globe, become the instruments for carrying also the undying faith of Ireland to the regions which England has conquered.

Saul went to seek Samuel, thinking only of finding his father’s asses. God was sending him to be anointed king over his people. England sends her ships all over the world, thinking only of markets for the produce of her forges and her looms. God is sending her that she may spread everywhere the faith of the Irish people.

Under the “Union Jack”, on which the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew are blended, but so blended as to prevent any Christian symbol being recognized (a fit emblem of the effect of the union of jarring sects, each professing to proclaim Christianity, but between them only obscuring and obstructing it)—the Irishman, too, is borne to the distant colony. He goes, probably, before the mast or in the forecastle, but he bears with him the true faith; and when he lands he hastens to raise its symbol. This may be at first over a rude chapel. But it is a signal to other way-farers, and they gather under its shade to offer up the sacred mysteries. As soon as his means permit, even before he can build a good dwelling for himself, he takes care that the house of God be, in every possible degree, worthy of its sacred character. And so the Church creeps on and grows, and regions that sat in darkness are now blessed by the offering of the Adorable Sacrifice and the announcement of the true faith.

The Irishman, generally speaking, did not leave home through ambition, or for conquest. He departed with sorrow from the shade of that hawthorn around which the dearest memories of childhood clustered. He would have remained content with the humble lot of his father had he been allowed to dwell there in peace. But the bailiff came, and, to make wider pastures for sheep and bullocks, his humble cottage was levelled, and he himself sent to wander through the world in search of a home. But in his wanderings he carries his faith with him, and he becomes the means of spreading everywhere the true Church of God.

It is thus that the tempest, which seems but to destroy the flower, catches up its seeds and scatters them far and near, and these seeds produce other flowers as beautiful as that from which they were torn, so that some fair spot of the prairie, when despoiled of its loveliness, but affords the means of covering the vast expanse with new and variegated beauties.

It is thus that the famine, and the pestilence, and the inhuman evictions of Irish landlords, have spread the faith of Christ far and near, and planted it in new colonies, which, when they shall have grown out of their tutelage, will look back to the departed power of England and the undying faith of Ireland as, in the hands of Providence, the combined causes of their greatness and their orthodoxy. Macaulay’s traveller from New Zealand, who will, on some future day, “from a broken arch of London Bridge, take a sketch of the ruins of St. Paul’s”, may be some Irish “O’” or “Mac” on a pilgrimage to the Eternal City, who passes that way—having first landed on the shores from which his ancestors were driven by the “crowbar brigade”, and visited with reverence the hallowed graves under whose humble sod lie the bones of his martyred forefathers.

It is thus that the Catholic faith is being planted in the British colonies of North America; it is thus it is carried to India, and to Australia, and to the islands of the South Sea. Thus are laid the foundations of flourishing churches, which promise, at no distant day, to renew, and even to surpass, the work done by Ireland in the palmiest days of faith, when her sons planted the Cross, and caused Christ to be adored, as he wished to be adored, in the most distant regions of the earth.