“ Those forms of worship openly avowed their designs, and publicly professed their enmity to the Christian religion. The proceedings of those who promoted and supported the Church Establishment were, on the contrary, marked by the vilest and most degrading hypocrisy. They pretended and professed to be the sincere friends of liberty of conscience, and of the progress of education and enlightenment, whilst at the same time they were the most dangerous enemies of every kind of freedom and progress, and endeavoured to establish the most galling despotism, and to spread ignorance through Ireland. ”

“ Barlow, we think, would give little quarter to such an objector. And yet this is the very course of reasoning he has himself pursued. The answer in each case is exactly the same. We know that creation is possible, because it has actually taken place. And so, too, we know that the doctrine of eternal punishment is in harmony with the attributes of God, because He that cannot deceive has told us that the doctrine is true. If we cannot see that harmony, it is because the judgments of God are incomprehensible, His ways unsearchable to our finite understanding. ”

“ That such a system should go on in the nineteenth century; that such a thing should go on while all the arts are in a forward and onward course, while all the sciences are progressing, while all morals and religion too—for, my lords, there never was more of religion and morality than is now presented in all parts of the country,—that this gross abuse, the most outrageous of all, should be allowed to continue, is really astonishing. ”

“ That government had ever met the exertions made by Rome to gain this point by reciting the fundamental principle of the constitution, which asserted the complete equality of rights, of persons, of religions, and of everything else. Hence it was looked upon as a great victory, and one for which Cardinal Consalvi deserved high praise, when he succeeded in extorting the admission that stands at the head of the Concordat, to the effect that the Catholic religion in France was the religion of the majority of the citizens. ”

“ The words of eternal truth, and the faith of the universal Church, are weighed in the balance against the civilization of the nineteenth century; they are found wanting, and they must be cast aside. We cannot contemplate this sentiment without a feeling of horror and amazement. ”

“ As to education, we shall merely observe that the supporters of the Establishment left no means untried to banish it altogether from among the masses of the people in Ireland. Catholic schools were suppressed, and their property confiscated; the erection of new schools prohibited; no Catholic parent allowed to give a Catholic education to his children at home, and he was subjected to the severest penalties if he sent them to foreign schools. What more could be done to suppress the knowledge of the Christian religion by a Julian or a Mahomet? ”

“ The inmates of those institutions passed their time in prayer and study; they had rendered great services to literature by copying and preserving the works of classical antiquity, whilst their labours for religion and the poor were worthy of the highest praise. There were also many convents of religious ladies, who devoted their lives to the service of God and their neighbour, to the education of youth, and who edified the world by the sweet odour of their virtues. ”

“ But it is something new to find a distinguished Protestant Divine, who frankly admits this inconvenient fact. Mr. Barlow must, indeed, find it difficult to persuade himself that the Church which sends forth such missions, is the same as that which Isaias addressed in those well known words: "Enlarge the place of thy tent, and stretch out the skins of thy tabernacles; spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt pass on to the right hand, and to the left, and thy seed shall inherit the gentiles". ”

“ This "terrible difficulty" is presented to us in two different forms. First, Mr. Barlow implicitly appeals to the divine precept of fraternal charity. Every one is bound to love his neighbour as himself. Now, if the blessed in Heaven fulfil this precept, they must be intensely miserable. For the proof of true charity is that we feel for our neighbour's sufferings, the same grief as if they were our own. Therefore the saints must experience the same internal anguish for the torments of the damned as if they endured these torments themselves. ”

“ To us his reasoning offers little difficulty. If the heathen, when he rejects the Christian faith, commits a deliberate grievous sin, he will certainly be punished accordingly. But this punishment must surely be ascribed to his own wickedness, and not to the labours of the missionary. The work of the missionary is a blessed work; it is the heathen himself that has changed it into a curse. We may illustrate this explanation from the pages of Sacred Scripture. The wicked servant in the gospel, if he had not received the one talent from his master, could not have buried that talent in the earth. ”

“ We would say that, in the saints every affection that has not for its object what is good and pleasing to God, will be utterly extinguished; and therefore they will cease to love those unhappy souls that have been condemned to Hell. The reason is clear. The saints in Heaven see things as they are; and hence they cannot love that which is wicked and hateful in the sight of God. In Mr. Barlow's mind this severance of earthly ties must come from an increase of "heartless selfishness". To us it seems to flow from perfect love of God. ”

“ The late census tells us that every effort to introduce Protestantism has been a complete failure, and that notwithstanding so many persecutions and sufferings, the old Catholic faith is still the religion of the land, deeply rooted in the affections of the people. ”

“ The exertions and sacrifices made in this holy cause are a proof of the zeal of the Catholics of Ireland for education, and reflect the greatest honour on their charity and generosity.
Let us now look to what government has done in regard to Catholic education. In the first place, our rulers in past times prohibited all Catholic schools under the severest penalties, determined, it would appear, to sink the people into the degrading depths of ignorance, or to compel them when acquiring knowledge to imbibe at the same time Protestant doctrines. ”

“ Is it safe, then, for a Catholic youth to gather his ideas of modern civilization from the lips of such a teacher as Mr. Barlow? We are told, indeed, it is for secular education alone that a Catholic student should go to Trinity College: that he may learn his [Pg 227] religion from other sources. But, if we understand the words aright, secular education must surely include modern civilization, and modern civilization, as taught by Mr. Barlow, is contrary to Catholic faith. ”

“ May not the experience of past ages be appealed to to prove that education under such government control becomes hostile to true religion, tends to introduce a spirit of despotism, and to rob the subject of his liberty? This was the tendency of all government enactments on education in Ireland for centuries. The Archbishop observes:
"Robespierre and other French despots fully understood all this, when they proclaimed that all children were the property of the state, to be educated under its care, at the public expense. ”

“ These ornaments, better than the last mentioned, are still inferior to our fresco. Finally, in the cemetery of Domitilla, there is a cubiculum adorned with the finest stucco, on which a pencil more skilled in pagan than in Christian painting has drawn landscapes and figures that remind you of the houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum, rather than of the paintings of the catacombs. ”

“ When the instruction of the rising generations and the direction of schools falls under the absolute control of the ruling powers of the Earth, that sort of wisdom which Saint Paul calls earthly, sensual, diabolical, soon begins to prevail; the wisdom from above falls away, and neither religion nor true Christian liberty can be safe". ”

“ When, in the fourth century, the struggle between paganism and Christianity ended in the triumph and recognition of the latter, and art revived, it was, if not in a new form, in a new spirit, by which the old forms were to be gradually moulded and modified. The Christians found the shell of ancient art remaining; the traditionary handicraft still existed: certain models of figure and drapery, etc., handed down from antiquity, though degenerated and distorted, remained in use, and were applied to illustrate, by direct or symbolical representations, the tenets of a purer faith". ”

“ These and other remarks of the Count were urged with such tact and grace, that after some resistance, Napoleon at last yielded. "Well, then", cried he, "to prove to you that it is not I who seek to quarrel, I consent that the commissioners shall meet on to-morrow for the last time. Let them see if there be any possibility of an agreement; but, if they separate without coming to terms, the rupture may be looked on as final, and the Cardinal may go. I declare, likewise, that I insist on this article just as it stands, and I will allow no change to be made in it". ”

“ He maintains, moreover, that each one will receive, in the world to come, rewards and punishment "according to his works". Therefore, the punishment reserved for the sinner, even though it were not eternal, must yet be something dreadful to contemplate. And the missionary, the number of whose real converts, "'possessed of saving faith', may be regarded as practically evanescent", brings down this dreadful punishment on all to whom he preaches the gospel. Hence, if we accept Mr. Barlow's argument, even on his own doctrine of finite punishment, the missionary will be a curse to heathen nations ”

“ Catholic children in purely Catholic schools must pass the greater part of the day without any act or word of religion, lest they should offend Protestants who are present only in imagination. No crucifix, no image of the Blessed Mother of God, no sacred pictures, no religious emblems, though experience teaches that such objects make excellent impressions on the youthful mind, are tolerated in National schools, even when no Protestant frequents them. ”

“ Continued attempts to force the Reformation on our forefathers, the prohibition of Catholic schools, and a most galling system of penal laws, afterwards reduced our country to a state of misery and degradation, in which it was impossible for the masses of the people to approach the fountains of knowledge, or to render services to other countries. ”

“ In many of those schools all religious education is excluded, and in those which are under Presbyterian and other similar patrons, as well as in model and training schools, the rights of the bishops of the Catholic Church, to whom Christ gave the power of teaching all nations, are completely ignored. In every National School the teaching and practice of religion are strictly prohibited during the hours of class. Such a system appears to fall under the condemnation of the Holy See. ”

“ Laurence O'Toole nearly the same possessions which are still held by the see of Dublin, and which he had inherited from his predecessors who lived before English rule began in Ireland. It was also private property, belonging to monasteries and convents, and to the Church, so that neither king nor parliament had any claim on it. But ancient rights and justice and prescription were [Pg 235] no longer to be respected; the reforming monarchs did not hesitate to change the law of God and of nature, and to ignore the maxim that every one should have his own. ”

“ She could not restrain the late Protestant Archbishop of Dublin from explaining away the fundamental mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, nor Dr. Colenso from denying the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures, nor Rev. Mr. Barlow, a Fellow of Trinity College, from impugning the eternity of punishment in another world. She affords so little light to her children, that, according to a report of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, signed by several dignitaries of the Establishment, millions of those children are pining away in worse than pagan vice and ignorance. ”

“ Barlow.
The second form in which this "terrible difficulty" appears is more plausible than the first. Many a saint in Heaven will miss from the mansions of the blessed the friend of his bosom. Many a fond sister will look in vain for her gay and dissipated, but yet warm-hearted and affectionate brother. Many a loving mother will behold afar off the undying torments of her darling son. Are we to suppose that the generous affections of the human heart are extinguished in Heaven? If so, then man must be morally worse in Heaven than he was upon earth. ”