Another false test often applied to ascertain a child's piety, grows out of the sickly sentimentality which regards Christianity not so much as a preparation for life as for death. "Are you prepared to die?" "Would not you like to die and leave this naughty world?" are questions which, if answered in the affirmative, are accepted as evidence of conversion. Now there is nothing to correspond to this in the New Testament. We become Christians to live well; and if, in right living, death comes, we are prepared to die. Christianity is an armour in which to fight the battle of life, certain of the issue; not a back door by which we are to slink away, and escape the conflict. If a child is in health, life to him is a glorious reality; and, the best evidence of his piety is, not the expression of the morbid wish to get out of the world as soon as possible, but the desire to live a long and useful life.

But do not misunderstand me to teach that, while we must allow the naturalness of play to children, we are to expect to find nothing but levity and frivolity in them-that, while we do not insist upon the moment being recorded when conversion occurred, we do not expect any evidence of conversion whatsoever-that, while we do not demand that the children should be well read theologians, that we would have them grow up ignorant of the truths of Christianity-that, while we do not regard them as incapable of error, we would tolerate anything like wilful naughtiness-that, while we do not expect them to discourse upon their spiritual anatomy, we are never to hear the testimony of their lips to the preciousness of the Saviour and lastly, that, while we do not regard the desire to get out of the world as an evidence of grace, we discourage holy longings for the better land. My aim is to show that the false application of tests has led many to overlook real piety in little children. I would say to all who are brought into relation to children,. do not expect too much from them. If you see them trying to repress. an evil temper, and mourning over a departure from the truth: if the sight of vice is repulsive to them, and the sight of suffering touches the chords of sympathy: if they love to hear the story of the Cross, and find delight in prayer, be satisfied for the present. Their frail natures, under ordinary circumstances, are capable of little more. Theirs can be but the twilight of experience, at best; you must not anticipate the light of the noonday sun. The faintest germs of the new life can never perish. They may be cramped and overlaid by the rubbish of worldliness, but the dew of God's grace shall water them, the quickening beams of his Spirit shall shine upon them; and, by and by, the full-blown flower of Christian character shall appear: for "those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God."

Prayer.

T is worse to be heart-tied than tongue-tied in prayer; it is better to be

I restrained in expression than in feeling. If there be much of heart, it matters

not how little there be of art in prayer; for what some men admire most, God least regards, viz: volubility of tongue, variety of expression, and ready

utterance.

A heart without words is better than words without a heart-Ralph Venning.

IT

The Primitive Church of Ireland.

T is pleasant to believe that better days are in store for Ireland, whose hope, like that of France, lies in the gospel; for, assuredly, nothing short of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ will ever quell the angry and wicked passions, which yet estrange the Irish population from those who would fain be friendly and act handsomely. While the follies of departed generations continue to yield bitter fruits, few Englishmen, we suppose, are prepared to claim all the virtue for their own side, by denying that, in the past, Ireland has been badly governed and hardly used. Unjust laws, with monstrous penalties, have been enacted; and a dominant church, enforcing its tithes by the authority of the state, has until lately aided popery in tightening its hold on the benighted inhabitants. But Ireland's cloud of affliction has had a silver lining. Let us look for an auspicious future, and work to usher in the good times England is anxious to see, and willing to hasten by any reasonable sacrifice.

Here a certain legend will scarcely be out of place. According to an ancient chronicler, the virgin Brigid had the bad manners to fall asleep during a sermon of Saint Patrick; but, losing the discourse, she dreamed a very remarkable dream. She looked up and behold four ploughs were ploughing the whole of Ireland, while accompanying them there went sowers, who threw their seed over the broad extent of the country. The seed sprung up and brought forth fruit immediately, and rivers of milk flowed along the furrows. The sowers were clad in white garments, and altogether this was a pleasant sight. Anon, the sleeper again looked up, and behold other ploughmen and sowers were observed to be abroad. These, however, were ill looking, and they were arrayed in black garments. Their mission seemed to be one of desolation. With their rough shears they destroyed the good crops, threw tares about the desecrated land, and the flowing milk was suddenly superseded by muddy water. Troubled by this surprising vision, the virgin applied to Patrick for an interpretation, and received this answer: "We are the good ploughers, for we open the hearts of men with the four ploughs of the gospel, and we sow the word of God, and from us flow the rivers of Christian faith. But, at the end of the world, there shall come evil teachers, conspiring with evil men, who shall overturn our doctrine and seduce almost all men."

If this dream really occurred to the virgin Brigid, it has been strangely verified in the subsequent history of her native country. Time was when true religion found a home in Ireland, until the land might have been called the spiritual lighthonse of Europe. The faith took deep root in the affections of the people, and though there may have been much of mere profession-as when clans became nominally Christian by order of a chieftain-Ireland's early professors were zealous believers, and her primitive Church was pre-eminently a missionary institution. She rejoiced in possessing bishops and presbyters; the former being hard-working ecclesiastics without dioceses, and the latter ordinary

pastors. Then the unsettled state of society suggested the expediency of establishing religious foundations, usually called monasteries, but which, more correctly, were colleges. They were the only shelter from the rough outer world, where piety and learning could be properly cultivated.

Ireland, as a favourite seat of the ancient Church, during seven hundred years, bore the name of Scotia ; and, during the early centuries, no traces are discoverable of the Romish corruptions subsequently introduced. She was then not only the Emerald Isle, but a garden of the Church; now, alas! (to quote the language of one who wrote thirty years ago) "Ireland is a garden, where what was originally good has run to rampant mischief, only bearing abundant tokens that it needs but to be pruned and trained to become again most innocently lovely."

The chilling blight of Romish influence soon unsettled the primitive Irish Church. After the first ages of purity and progress had passed away, some dreary years of suffering and of decline in faith succeeded before the conquest of the country by the Normans. At the Conquest, the attendants of William the First parcelled out the land, and, in course of time, these lords became heads of clans, and, as such, exercised a mighty influence over the rude population. Before very long, the invading families were thoroughly acclimatised, and both in speech and social customs were found to be entirely Irish; and, recognising the authority of their chief, the Irish of a given district were ever ready to fight in his quarrels, regarding the head of a tribe as a paternal ruler, and themselves as members of his family. These chieftains or feudal lords were of course the owners of the soil; but, instead of letting farms in the manner now usual, they imposed on their dependants a sort of tax, varying in amount with their annual expenditure. This custom was retained long after the Reformation made a change of procedure desirable so that, when in the days of James the First an alteration was effected, it was welcomed by no party concerned-neither by chiefs nor people. Reform had become highly necessary, but the clumsy hand of a Stuart government could not be expected to show any tact in administering it. A gradual and judicious reform would have been accepted by all parties; James only succeeded in producing confusion and inconvenience. At any rate, by authority of law, rent as now understood was substituted, for the feudal tax, and being abruptly introduced, it bred nothing but disaster. Chieftains surrendered their ancient privileges without persuading the people to conform to the new code; and the fact that neither lords nor people understood the language of the country, whence emanated the new ideas which troubled them, contributed not a little to the confusion. Thus did absenteeism originate in Ireland. The landowners, growing poor, sought relief by looking for occupations in other lands; while the tenants they left behind, being but ill-reconciled to the new laws, were coerced into a show of obedience. Here then was a rupture calculated to widen the breach already existing between the two countries. The feuds in the nation prior to this date were chiefly religious in their origin. "The Danish Bishops of Waterford and Dublin," says Dr. Todd, "in the eleventh century, had received consecration from the See of Canterbury,

entirely ignoring the Irish Church and the successors of St. Patrick. From that time there were two churches in Ireland."

The deeper we go into Irish history, the more does it become manifest that Rome has been the primary and continual cause of the illfeeling springing up between the Green Isle and England. The papacy was the original power which stirred up the evil passions of the people. It was the pope who first bestowed Ireland on Henry the Second, at a time when preaching Christianity meant diffusing among the people exalted notions of the priesthood, and of the dignity of the Bishop of Rome. Then was it that the ultra Romanists, in their pride of office and prestige, began to despise the old landmarks of the Irish Church, and to oppose themselves to its interests. These men, with their sympathisers of the English Pale, opened up disputes which time has never healed.

It will scarcely be denied that Ireland has been badly used; nor that the English government, from a very early period, has managed to keep alive a spirit of animosity between the races, though happily this has nearly passed away. Our fathers got into the habit of treating the Irish as humble dependants, rather than as a part of their own empire. The infamous statute of Kilkenny, for example, in 1367, made it high treason for settlers of the English Pale to adopt Irish customs. By speaking Celtic, or by wearing the national costume, a British citizen risked the confiscation of his property. The Saxon farmer might not condescend to take in to graze the cattle of his Irish neighbour; nor could a native of the soil inherit any ecclesiastical cure. The Irish were not eligible to enter the religious houses their own piety and industry had founded, and their lives appear to have been counted of less value than those of brutes. Such were the circumstances which originally begot estrangement between two peoples, whose interest it is to live in harmonious friendship.

Thus the friends of Ireland may remember that, even prior to the Reformation, there were two distinct antagonistic churches in the country. The English Pale, as the dominant power, became intensely popish, and her priests completely ignored the more ancient and more pure communion of the native Celts. Hence the pope, as an hereditary enemy of Ireland, still remains true to his colours; for, as his influence was of old used to curse and to oppress, he curses and oppresses still. The abominations committed by a government, subject to the Romish Church, engendered a deeply-rooted hatred to Eugland and to the English rule; and, on this account, the Reformation was unsuccessful in Ireland: Offered to a conquered race by their ancient foes, it was contemptuously rejected. The Reformation necessarily transformed the pope into an enemy of England, and thus he rose in the affections of the Irish.

That the papacy is a system devoid of principle, history has shown again and again. It could glory in maintaining an iniquitous alliance with England to the oppression of the weaker kingdom, so long as England honoured her chief idol, the pope; but when Britain awoke in the light of the Reformation, and refused the degrading thraldom, then Rome could turn and caress the wretched people she had lately aided to despoil. As much as possible Ireland was made an instrument to perplex and punish England, and foreign firebrands of all schools there found

a home, and a convenient theatre for exercising their arts, till laws absurdly severe were passed to check the evils they did not fail to

increase.

The history of Christianity in Ireland tells strongly against the papacy, and is worthy of careful study for that reason. If we go back to the beginning, we shall find the life of her evangelist, Patrick, contradicting the pretensions of Rome, and testifying against her teaching. The apostle of Ireland and the planter of its primitive church, and whom posterity recognises as SAINT PATRICK, like too many others of his class, has been claimed by Rome as one of her great missionaries. But as Patrick laboured before Rome rose in ascendancy, and before her corruptions in their full enormity blighted the church, he is no more to be counted one of her heroes than are Columba and the Culdees. Nevertheless, monachism, which has been busy with Patrick's life, would have us believe that he was an emissary of Rome, when he had nothing to do with Rome; and would set him down as one commissioned by the pope or chief bishop, and instructed in his oracles, when the old missionary only recognised the divine call, looked to no other authority than God's word, and confessed his ignorance of the world's knowledge. Patrick told a very simple story; too simple indeed for the taste of monks who flourished in subsequent ages, and accordingly they have embellished the relation with a due proportion of fiction. In his own estimation, he was a simple uneducated man, touched with love to Christ and zeal in his cause, and was, as such, one whom heaven had commissioned to throw "the evangelic net." In this character he landed in Ireland, and sought to bring into the gospel fold the chieftains and their semibarbarous clans. So fearful was he of being misapprehended, that he circulated a confession or pastoral letter, in vindication of himself against the charge of corruption made by certain persons, wherein, with true modesty, he urges that the blessing attending his efforts sufficiently proved the validity of his calling. Such an unadorned story, without some borrowed colouring, was doubtless intolerable to Romish apologists, already somewhat troubled at the rude style of Patrick's Latin. It was incredible that an unlearned man could preach the gospel with power and success: even if true, it would be inconvenient for the people to possess such a history. All was amended till the itinerant missionary was transformed into a popish saint, and his life and work confounded with another person of the same name, who seems to have been commissioned by Rome.

Patrick's family occupied a position of influence and respectability for those times-but the place of his birth is not known, some accounts making him a native of Boulogne, and others of North Britain. Though a deacon, his father was also a magistrate of some importance. Thus the family held an honourable station; but " Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and least of all the faithful," as he calls himself, sacrificed alluring worldly prospects for the sake of the gospel. Where he was exactly located in early youth is not known, this much only being plain, he was seized, with many other youths in his sixteenth year, and carried off by savage heathen pirates, who, on landing in Ireland, sold him into slavery.

The events in the life of a great evangelist, like the holy Patrick, are