CHAPTER VII. "When foemen watch their tents by night, Their pastoral warfare guide thou well." CHRISTIAN YEAR. DURING our travels through the more remote districts of Ireland, we continually heard the different classes of people speak with gratitude of the untiring zeal and benevolence of their pastors. Difficult as the position of the Protestant clergy has always been in that distracted land, it is now greatly increased amidst the present fiery trial of famine and disease; their houses being daily surrounded by dying multitudes, who look up to them as their natural and tried benefactors. Surely, then, it becomes a duty incumbent upon all, to sympathize in their sorrows, and seek to lighten the heavy load of anxiety under which they labour. Hundreds are perishing around them by sickness, and the want of the necessaries of life, and believing, as they do, that "there is none other name under heaven by which they can be saved, but only the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," what a painful augmentation of their trials must it be, to see hundreds perishing in ignorance of the way of salvation, and of the infinite value of that divine Saviour who is "the way, the truth, and the life!" During our stay in Ireland, all our Sundays were spent in Dublin; with the exception of one at Glin, where the Protestant congregation was composed of the knight, his family, his sons' tutor, the friends staying at the castle, and his household, with a very small number of poor people. I have thought that a few brief recollections of one or two of the preachers whom we heard in Dublin, may not be uninteresting to the reader; I shall, therefore, give a slight sketch of one, as the most descriptive amongst the many we heard, of that fervour and eloquence for which the Irish clergy are so celebrated. It was on Sunday, the 9th of May, that in our way to the church, the service of which we proposed attending, we looked in at St. Thomas's, merely to take a view of the interior of the building. The sexton, however, entreated us to enter; and another person, observing that we were strangers, added his entreaties, giving us to understand that we should hear "a splendid preacher." The church was crowded to excess, so that it was with some difficulty that I was pioneered up the centre aisle. In a large square pew I found an inch or two of sitting room; but F. and E. were obliged to stand in the aisle, which was filled from one end to the other with charity children, who interested me much by the eagerness they displayed to put half-pennies, or farthings, into the plates as they were carried by; for the sermon was a charity one, in behalf of the schools. In a less sacred place, we could have smiled at the intense anxiety of a gentleman standing near E., in the aisle; who, after the preacher had gone on for three-quarters of on hour without any reference to the cause for which he was to plead, exclaimed in a loud agitated whisper, "God bless me ! the gentleman has forgotten altogether the charity which he is to advocate; he ought to be reminded of it." -g, He The preacher was the Rev. N――s Aat that time curate of Monastereven. had a strong Hibernian accent, and his voice was sufficiently powerful to have been heard without the walls, accompanied with such incessant and forcible action that the very reading desk beneath the pulpit seemed to vibrate. He preached without notes, or book of any kind; and, certainly, such extraordinary pulpit eloquence of its kind I had never heard, or am very likely to hear again. His doctrine was strong and decided-his utterance rapid-his expressions vehement and forcible-his illustrations numerous and original, and calculated to place every portion of the subject in the clearest point of view. In addition to this, his flights of imagination were crowded so quickly one upon another, that the idea of carrying home in my memory anything like a distinct outline of the sermon was given up by me, long before we were half through it. He raised our first parent Adam from his slumbers in the grave, and hurried him through the varied scenes of life, that he might mark the fatal and destructive effects of sin-its deadly nature-and the ruinous force of evil example. "Many people talked of having done no harm to others; that by neglecting religion they only injured themselves, &c. This was as if a man with a contagious fever made his escape from a hospital, and rushed into the midst of an assembled multitude. The cold air might be injurious to himself, but what would be the effect on others?" Here he described the rapid spreading of contagion. Also, the ruin and destruction, desolating whole streets or towns, by means of the man whose house was on fire, but who affirmed, that no one would be injured by the flames but himself in the loss of his house and furniture. All this was described in language that I could not attempt to imitate, for the strongest would seem weak. He applied this part of the subject, first to the minister of the gospel, representing him as looking into the abodes of hell and witnessing the misery of souls that had been entrusted to his care, and hearing their bitter reproaches, because he had kept from them that gospel which had been entrusted to him, &c. In the same manner, he represented the |