Henry O'Brien

“ For my part I cannot contemplate any form of religion without a sensation of awe. There may be much imposture, much also of hypocrisy, and no small share of self-delusion amongst individuals of every sect, but sincerity will be found in the aggregate of each: and where certainty is not attainable by finite comprehensions, nay, where unity is incompatible with freedom of thought and will, it would more become us, methinks, to make allowance for each other’s weaknesses, than to vilify any worship, which, after all, may only differ from our own as to mode. ”

“ How often beneath her charmed inspirations they wandered forth, exulting over the boundless fields of metaphysical and physical science—endeavouring by the things that are manifest to retrace the hidden Divinity—to look through nature up to nature’s God! And if happily they discover some strange and stirring indications of the Almighty’s elaborating hand, or some bright testimony of His vivifying though impalpable Spirit, have they not hastened with glowing hearts, and souls overcharged with adoration, to whisper the mystery in secret, or to proclaim the marvel to the world? ”

“ To screen those two ligaments of sexual familiarity from the peril of profane and irreverent acceptations, all the investiture of magic was shrouded upon them. The vocabulary of love and of religion became one and the same: mystery and enchantment were identified, and the negotiations of the earth, and the revolutions of the heavens, were blended with the witchery of amative sway.
In this universality of domain, no one of those dear helpmates had a greater portion of honour assigned to it than the other. They were equal in power, and alike in attributes. ”

“ Of all the antarctic constellations, the celebrated Southern Cross is by far the most remarkable; and must in every age continue to arrest the attention of all voyagers and travellers who are fortunate enough to see it. I think it would strike the imagination even of a person who had never heard of the Christian religion; but of this it is difficult to judge, seeing how inextricably our own ideas are mingled up with associations linking this sacred symbol with almost every thought, word, and deed of our lives. ”

“ To wind up the matter, steadily and unequivocally I do deny that the Round Towers of Ireland were fire receptacles. I go further, and deny that any of those eastern round edifices which travellers speak of, were ever intended for fire receptacles: that they were all pagan structures—and temples too—consecrated to the most solemn and engrossing objects of human pursuit, however erroneously that pursuit may have been directed, I unhesitatingly affirm. ”

“ I wonder why do not our moderns confer these subterraneous cruciform edifices upon the industry of the early Christians, as they have striven to claim for them the corresponding structures above ground! and without half the probability of success! For if it may be stated, that the crucifixions upon the towers were an interpolation, with a view to Christianise what before was devoted to Paganism, no one, at all events, would maintain that the monks had gone down into the bowels of the earth, and after ejecting the inmates of old Alma Mater, converted their tabernacles into a magical cross! ”

“ Rome was a flourishing and thriving city long before the son of Rhea was born, and the only credit that he deserves, as connected with its history, is that of uniting together under one common yoke the several neighbouring communities, many of whom, particularly the Etrurians, were advanced in scientific and social civilisation, conversant not only with the researches of letters, and the arcana of astronomy, but particularly masters of all manual trades, and with none more profoundly than that of architecture. ”

“ For as the religion of the ancient Irish was intermingled with their history, and as the wide diffusion of their celebrity arose from the eminence of their religious creed, the flames of that conflagration have inflicted a loss upon the antiquarian which fifteen centuries of study have not been able to repair! ”

“ On sweet and fragrant herbs they feed, amid verdant and grassy pastures, and drink ambrosial dew, divine potation: all resplendent alike in coeval youth; a placid serenity for ever smiles on their brows and lightens in their eyes; the consequence of a just temperament of mind and disposition, both in the parents and in the sons, inclining them to do what is great, and to speak what is wise. ”

“ It is one thing to admit the ingenuity, or even the plausibility, of a writer’s views, and another to accept them as articles of belief. So far from claiming for O’Brien that he has completely solved the mystery of the Round Towers, we may even confess a doubt that the latter admits of any complete solution. Certain links in the chain of evidence are wanting, which, to all appearance, are not likely to be ever supplied. That, for instance, the Tuath-de-danaans came from Persia, bringing with them to Ireland their arts and their religion, is quite possible ”

“ But it may be said that this is a day-dream of youth—the hereditary vanity of one of Iran’s sons, arrogating antiquity and renown for an inconsiderable little island, without a particle of proof to substantiate their assumption, or a shadow of authority to give colour to their claims. Why, sir, cast your eye over the fair face of the land itself, and does not the scene abound with the superfluity of its evidences? What are those high aspiring edifices which rise with towering elevation towards the canopy of the “Most High”? ”

“ Buildings of cruciform structure, and evidently devoted to religious uses, exist all over the East and West; and both they and the Mithratic caves, for which no one has ever claimed any but a pagan origin, partake of the same character. To aver that the Cross was emblematical of a vicarious sacrifice by which the redemption of mankind was accomplished, is merely to say that it expresses a belief common to many Sabaic faiths of the pagan world—a belief of which it was the recognised emblem in Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, and America, as well as in Ireland. ”

“ I have already intimated my decided belief of the application of the Egyptian pyramids to the combined purposes of religion and science. The department of science to which I particularly referred was astronomy, the cultivation of which was inseparably involved in all their religious rites; for despite of the reverence which the Egyptians seemed to pay to crocodiles, bulls, and others of the brute creation, in those they only figured forth the several attributes, all infinite, in the divinity; as their worship, like that of the ancient Irish, was purely planetary, or Sabian. ”

“ This instinctive influence, which the daughters of Eve universally exercise over the sons of Adam, is not more irresistible in the present day, than it proved in the case of their great progenitor. Love, however disguised—and how could it be more beautifully than by the scriptural penman?—love, in its literal and all-absorbing seductiveness, was the simple but fascinating aberration couched under the figure of the forbidden apple. ”

“ The history of Freemasonry being in fact the history of the gradual progression of devotion and philosophy in the youth, maturity, and declension of our planet’s millenary circle, is intensely interesting to the philosophic mind, as the ages of the one have a thousand mystic correspondences with the ages of the other. After taking a luminous survey of the advances of human intelligence as revealed in Scripture, it traces the perpetual tradition of divine wisdom among the hierophantic academies of classic memorial. ”

“ To them, whatever is “wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,” in all the records of humanity, hath a kind of kindred familiarity of association unknown to others; for in all true men they recognise their ancestry or their brotherhood, and they watch the broad line of their genealogical descent with the reverent fondness of a lineal and loyal progeny. In their history they love to contemplate the magnificent economy of Providence for the gradual perfectionising of all lapsed intelligences. ”

“ They track every subtle declension of lofty and bright-souled truth into the shadowy circumference of hostile error; and thus, establishing their minds on the deepest foundations of history, they continually build up superstructures of all that is precious in literature or elegant in art. ”

“ As the development of truth in the elucidation of history is the object of the antiquarian, and, as the ‘labourer is worthy of his hire,’ I take the liberty respectfully to ask whether, if I make my ascription of the Round Towers a mathematical demonstration, with every other incident relating to their founders, comprehending all the antiquities of Ireland, as connected therewith—and this by all the varieties and modes of proof—whether, I say, in that event, will the Academy award me the gold medal and premium? ”

“ He is the universal spirit that pervades and diffuseth itself over all nature. All beings receive their life from Him. There is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe ”

“ But the consummate skill of the artist had nearly cost him his life, for the prince, struck with the matchless beauty of the palace, was determined that it should stand unrivalled on the earth, by putting the architect to death, who alone was capable of constructing such another, after the moment the building received the finishing touches of his skilful hand. ”

“ They belonged to an era and to a dynasty, not only of a more ancient but of a more exalted character in every sense of the word, and whose religious ceremonials, for the celebration of which the Round Towers were constructed, the then inhabitants did not only abhor, but did all in their power to efface and obliterate. Nor was it the religion alone of this inoffensive and sacred tribe that this new and devastating race of militants laboured to extirpate ”

“ Of all nations on the globe, the Irish, as a people, are universally admitted to possess, in a pre-eminent degree, those finer sensibilities of the human heart, which, were they but wisely controlled, would exalt man above the level of ordinary humanity, and make him, as it were, a being of another species. The numerous instances adduced in all periods of their history, of ardent and enterprising zeal, in every case wherein personal honour or national glory may be involved, are in themselves sufficient to establish this assertion. ”

“ The world, whose ideas are base and grovelling as the dust upon which they tread, must be led by objects perceptible to the senses to perform the ceremonial of their worship; the chosen offspring of Brahma are destined to nobler and sublimer hopes; their views are bounded alone by the ages of eternity.
These specimens, though brief, will prove that the spirit of the religion of ancient India and Egypt was not that farrago of mental prostration which some have imagined. ”

“ So passed out of life a gifted young soul that had just begun to know the measure of its strength. Had O’Brien been spared, he might have taken the very highest rank among antiquarians and ethnologists; as it is, his fame must rest upon a single crude and imperfect work, written in haste, before his powers were fully ripe, or his learning properly assimilated. Beyond this, and his translation of Villanueva, he may be said to have left no trace behind. ”

“ I will make you, sir, if you have candour in your constitution, acknowledge the fact. Listen—“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding: when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” [261]
Here allusion is made to a period antecedent to the existence of either Cain or Seth. The myriads of revolving ages suggested by the interrogatory set even fancy at defiance; nor are their limits demarked by the vague and indefinite exordium of even the talented and otherwise highly-favoured legislator, Moses himself. ”

“ And may not “Fidh Inis,” instead of being a name of reproach, such as you affected, by associating it with “wintry and uncultivated wilds,” be one of distinction and of renown? And though to you its authors, as well as the mystery of its import, were an impenetrable secret, may it not, notwithstanding what you see verified now, be made one of the engines exercised in the recovery of truth, to prove the splendour and the refinement of our venerable ancestors? ”

“ In the Irish language, which, as being that of ancient Persia, or Iran, must be the oldest in the world, and of which the Hebrew, brought away by Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, [245] is but a distant and imperfect branch,—well, in this primordial tongue, the nursery at once of science, of religion, and of philosophy, all mysteries, also, have been matured: and it will irrefutably manifest itself, that in it, exclusively, was woven that elegantly-wrought veil, of colloquial illusiveness, which shrouds the nature of our first parents’ downfall. ”

“ In the days of Malcolm, therefore, and of Canute, the history of this pyramid was as difficult of solution as it was in those of Pennant and of Cordiner. And there is no question but that the two monarchs looked, with as much wonder, upon the hieroglyphics along its sides, as did the two antiquarians, who would fain associate them with them.
It is to me marvellous, how persons, in the possession [Pg 321] of common reason could, contrary to all the evidence of observation and history, look upon the Danish invasion as the epoch of all enlightenment! ”

“ With the exception of the Mosaical Scriptures, we are acquainted with nothing which so plainly wears the stamp of remote antiquity, ascending beyond the times within which the known empires of the East flourished; in which we catch, as it were, the last faint echo of the history of a former world, anterior to that great catastrophe of our planet, which is attested in the vicinity of the parent country of these legends, by the remains of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the mammoth, and other countries properly belonging to the countries of the South. ”