been almost horrified by the spectacle of Irish misery. And we may add, that we have every reason to love Ireland, for there, in the early spring of 1827, the first beams of light and life visited our previously dead and benighted soul, and Irish valleys and mountains witnessed the first tears and prayers that went up out of the heart to the throne of grace. We can therefore sympathise with Mr. Doudney or any other Englishman used to the comforts and cleanliness of favored England, and transplanted to that land of misery, poverty, and dirt, and with his attempts to benefit the people. Unless a person has lived in Ireland he can form no conception of what an Irish village is, and what amount of good may be done by a person of influence, such as the clergyman generally is, who throws himself heart and soul into the work. A really zealous man in Ireland has no paradise of ease. A mass of misery meets his eyes in every direction enough to make his very heart sink within him.* In this turf-walled cabin lies a stout, gaunt man, prostrate with fever; in that, a miserable old crone of a woman, shivering in rags, is warming her fingers over a few turf ashes; in a third, is a ragged slatternly mother with a host of half-naked children; in a fourth, pig or cow are sharing the floor with the human-to English eyes scarcely human-inhabitants. But this is not the worst feature of that wretched land. A pall of the densest darkness and ignorance rests upon the people. Popery has had for centuries such dominant sway that it has filled the land with the most abject superstitions, and Protestants have so lived side by side with Papists that they have become insensibly inoculated with Popish views and feelings. The ignorance of the Irish Protestant peasant is not simple ignorancewhat we may call common English ignorance. Like Irish dirt, it is engrained into the very substance of the people-the ignorance of centuries of Popish error, as Irish filth is the filth of a whole life. To carry the gospel into an Irish village without knowing whether there be an elect soul in the whole place; to have no saints of God to enjoy sweet communion with, no friend or brother minister near at hand to consult or converse with; to be without the many comforts and conveniences of an English house; to be almost daily exposed to the infection of that low typhoid fever† which, the result of starvation, is never absent from an Irish village, and in some parts to the bullet of the nightly assassin,‡ the blind hired agent of that secret society

* We were much pleased to be able, in the fearful famine of 1847, to send more than £500, which was contributed chiefly by the churches and friends interested in the "Gospel Standard," to that country, to which we owe so much.

+ When we knew Ireland, fever had not reached that fearful type which has since so desolated the land. It was of a low chronic character, which was rarely fatal to the poor, though a terrible scourge from its great prevalence. It was, however, very infectious, and when it attacked the higher classes, was very frequently fatal. Many an Irish clergyman's widow has reason to remember her husband's visit to the cabin the sick tenant of which struggled through the fever which gave death to the visitor.

We saw and conversed with a gentleman in Ireland whose life was preserved in a most miraculous way. Though a man of family and property, he

which palsies every Irish hand and blanches every Irish cheek; to lie under the maledictions of the priest*-in the eyes of the peasant a sacred being—whose curse is the curse of God himself; we are sure that a man need see his way very clearly, and almost have a special commission from God, before he can throw himself into such a path or expect support under it.

Dissent is at so low an ebb in Ireland, at least in the middle and south, that no one but a minister in the Establishment could do anything at all there. Among its other effects, Popery has infused into the Irish mind a strange, one may say a superstitious, reverence for church and priesthood. Whatever is not of the church, whatever is not from the priest, is to an Irishman damnable heresy, the very invention of the arch-fiend himself. By a natural process of thought, this superstitious reverence is, though in a modified degree, transferred by the Irish Protestant to the Protestant church and the Protestant clergyman; so that absolutely, unless a person be a landed proprietor, and so have temporal influence, or a minister in the Establishment, and so have religious influence, he has no more weight or power in an Irish village than a cork in the sea.

was in the habit of reading and explaining the Scriptures in the cabins of his tenants and laborers, undeterred by several Rockite notices-in Ireland not mere scraps of paper, but certain missives of death. One evening, however, whilst riding up his avenue with his servant, shots were fired from behind a wall. The servant man fell dead on the spot; he was himself wounded in one of his limbs, but the slugs aimed at his heart were intercepted by a Bible which he carried as usual in the breast pocket of his coat. In the midst of the leaves of God's word were the flattened slugs found.

* Mr. Doudney has been cursed from the altar, but the following bold and spirited extract from a printed circular to the inhabitants of his parish will show how little he heeds it:

"You are taught from time to time to believe that you are to merit heaven by your good works; but I never see those who set themselves up for teachers, and who ought to be (as the apostle Peter says, R. Catholic Bible, 1 Pet. v. 3) 'a pattern to the flock from the heart,' 'careful to excel in good works.' (R. Catholic Bible, Titus iii. 8.) Do they feed the hungry? do they clothe the naked? do they instruct the ignorant? Go to them, ye poor, ye starving ones, and what is your answer? To the poor-house-to the poor-house!' and what awaits you there? Separation from those you love; the husband from the wife and the child from the parent, and very often disease or a lingering death to each. A sorry prospect this! And yet if a man attempts to save you from this calamity, and to find you employment, he is denounced from what is. called God's altar, and branded with the foulest of names. But, friends, so little do I care for altar-threats or priestly curses or denunciations; so certain am I, that that God in whom I trust will preserve me until ray work on earth is done; and so greatly withal do I feel for the welfare of your never-dying souls, that even though death stared me in the face, and the next moment 1 must yield up my life into the hands of him who gave it, I would with my dying breath shout in the language of your own Bible, 'Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be burnt with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her." (Roman Catholic Bible, Apocalypse, 18th chapter, 5th and 8th verses.)

"I am, my friends and neighbors, your faithful friend and well-wisher, "June 17th, 1853. "DAVID ALFRED DOUDNEY."

The Establishment being a recognised fact, a thing which stands before the rudest mind in the palpable, visible form of a church, affords a fulcrum on which the lever may rest.

As our views on this point, though formed from considerable observation and reflection, may not meet those of many of our readers, we wish to explain our meaning a little more fully. It is well known to most of them that we were compelled, from conscientious feelings and motives, to secede from the Establishment. Our views on this point have not undergone the slightest change, but have rather deepened and strengthened. We view her now much as we viewed her then, and feel that we could not, with a good conscience, minister at her altar. But we never were among those whose cry is, "Rase her, rase her, even to the foundations thereof." On the contrary, though we cannot recognise her as a church of Christ, we believe that she has been productive of incalculable good to the temporal, and in a degree, from the good men who have ministered within her walls, to the eternal interests of men. Thus, could we by lifting up our little finger, shut up every church in the land, we could not, durst not do so. For the question would at once arise, "What can we substitute in her place?" The void must be filled up; for men will have some kind of religion, and the villages at least, if not the larger towns, would either sink into gross heathenism, or Popery, Mormonism, or some wild fanaticism, would rush in and supply the vacuum. Her separation from the State, with the abolition of church-rate and tithe, could it be peaceably effected, we would gladly see; but as we cannot give men spiritual religion, and Methodism or general Dissent presents greater opposition to truth, we feel a preference, as a system of natural religion, for that quiet, respectable, jog-trot Church-of-Englandism which, at least in the southern portion of this country, the part we are chiefly acquainted with,-seems best suited to the staid, sober-minded Englishman.

But if in this country the subject lies open to discussion, and a friendly difference of opinion may be entertained, what system of natural religion is best adapted for those who have no spiritual religion-the question after all being pretty much whether the dead shall be buried in flannel or silk, in an elm coffin or a leaden one, the case is very different in Ireland. There the question lies in a much smaller compass. In the middle and south (the north being chiefly Presbyterian) the question is not whether there shall be a neat chapel rearing its modest front, and a church formed on strict Baptist principles assembling within its walls, with a gracious, well-taught, experimental servant of God in the pulpit, but whether Popery shall universally brood over the land like an incubus, without opposition. Without attempting to justify the many monstrous things in the Irish Establishment, yet let it be weighed in an even balance, and many benefits will be seen to flow out of it. It spreads the Bible, sends out Scripture readers, and maintains a certain portion of divine truth in its articles. Many of its ministers are, or at least were in our day, before Puseyism had entered into its pale, zealous, self-denying,

simple-hearted men, holding a measure of truth,-how far experimentally we cannot say, but certainly laboring in the most unwearied manner for the bodies and souls of their parishioners.

The Irish country clergyman is not that stiff, starched, well-dressed, sprig of aristocracy recognisable at a glance in an English county town; or that ridiculous Popish ape, the close-buttoned Puseyite; but a plainly-dressed man, who, in his rough frieze top-coat, can push his shaggy poney through the intricate paths of the bog without much minding a few brown stains on his hat or splashes on his boots. His parish lying wide, and the cabins being scattered in the most out-of-the-way places, his poney is in daily use. The first thing in the morning, after breakfast, is to visit the school. This may well demand his first visit in the day, as well as his last thoughts at night, for next to his own house, and, if a single man, often before it, it stands the centre of all his hopes. Amidst the collection of scattered cabins, sometimes on the very edge of the bog whence the peasant cuts his winter fuel, rises a whitewashed building, forming, from its neatness, a contrast with the surrounding tumble-down huts. This is the school. This is the active Irish clergyman's workshop. Here he teaches or superintends the children; here he lectures on the week evening; here he distributes bibles, tracts, soup, and blankets; here, as in his cabinet, he administers his little realm. Several circumstances give the Irish school much greater prominence and weight in a parish than the English school possesses with us. The numerous little dame schools, which here educate the younger branches, have there no place. The people are too poor to support them, and the class of respectable females who here undertake the office of training the infant mind, at their own houses, does not there exist. Amidst, too, all the differences between Protestant and Papist, a love for education widely prevails. The Irish mind usually possesses little depth or solidity, but the Irish child has an innate aptitude for such learning as the school affords. The Irish people, too, have a singular veneration for "book learning," and will make almost any sacrifice that their children may acquire this highly-prized treasure. It is this feeling, connected probably with obscure traditions of the learning of St. Patrick and the Culdees, in those remote times when Ireland was not only the "Isle of Saints," but the centre of learned light, and not any love to Protestant doctrine, that makes the Romanist peasant persist in sending his child to the Church of England school in spite of the opposition of the priest; and this gives the clergyman a foot-hold in the affections of the very Papists themselves.

But some may say, "Are there no experimental ministers in Ireland? and if not, why do not some of our experimental ministers go over?” Why, as to that, we want them badly enough here, without sending any to Ireland; but as to doing any good, they might as well go to Japan. A year or two ago some scheme was got up and partly executed, to send 50 or more evangelical ministers to preach in the Irish towns and villages. We knew at the time what the result would be, and that the whole scheme was merely a burst of free-will enthusiasm,

concocted in thorough ignorance of the state of Ireland, and sure to be put down by popular riot and probably bloodshed. What was the result? That the few ministers who preached in the streets were glad to escape with their lives.

In the present state of Ireland, then, there is no place for such churches or such ministers as we are in union with. It is thoroughly and essentially a Popish country; and the only body which can maintain a firm front against Popery is the Irish Church. "But," say you, "that is a corrupt system, and we might, therefore, just as well have it swept away; for it is nearly as bad as Popery.' We don't agree with you. Its system, we well know, from personal and painful experience, is so carnal, and its services so burdensome to a tender conscience, that our wonder is how a good man can continue in it, much less deliberately go into it. But it is the only bulwark at present against Popery in that country; and were it thrown down, it would, in its fall, not only crush the Protestant population who now repose under its shade, but would give such an accession of power to the Romish Church, that very shortly, out of the 105 Irish members who sit in the House of Commons, there would be hardly half a dozen Protestants.

We do not, ourselves, believe that Popery will ever resume its ancient sway in England; but the greatest lift it could receive into the seat of power, would be the destruction of the Irish Church. Persons who talk fluently about sweeping away the Irish Church as a nuisance, are like those who talk about applying a sponge to the national debt. There are evils-great evils-in both; but an Irish Church is better than a Popish Church, and national debt than national bankruptcy.

What spiritual blessings have followed Mr. Doudney's ministration in Ireland we know not; but we suspect at present very little. His own account, in this respect, is not very cheering:

"Thus, reader, one sows in hope 'beside all waters.' The soil had long run to waste. 'Bonmahon' was reputed for its ungodliness; it was emphatically a dreaded place. But, 'mid many discouragements, unremitting toil, and considerable responsibility, there is much-very much-to cheer. The temporal condition of these poor and long-neglected ones is marvellously improved. Habits of industry are inculcated. Instead of wandering about the streets, or the cliff-brow, or sitting listlessly in their comfortless cabins, they are now (of their own free choice) closely occupied from early morn to dewy eve.' Their minds are cultivated. The way of salvation, in its fulness and freeness, is put before them. And the writer feels that, if but one solitary soul is at the last great day gathered into the heavenly garner, 'his labor will not have been in vain in the Lord.""

Much spiritual fruit, however, could not be expected, when the whole Protestant population, including children and adults, is but 80 or 90. But a little book now before us, from which we have already made several extracts, entitled, "An Outline of the Rise and Progress of the Bonmahon Industrial, Infant, and Ragged Schools"—in our time they were all ragged enough-affords abundant evidence to his zealous efforts to ameliorate their social condition.

We give from this little tract the following extract: