The Press. — London, England, 1854-01-28 00:00:00

JANUARY 28, 1854. ____...,-.. it tr at r. Memoir of the Rev. Alexander Ross, A.M., and a Selection from his Sermons. With a Preface by the Venerable John Hayden, MA., Archdeacon of Derry. London : Hatchard. T HE publication of this volume, recording the zealous labours of a distinguished minister in the " United Church of Great Britain and I re l a nd," gives us an opportunity for taking a re t ro spect of most i m p ortant facts in the recent history of Protestantism in Ireland. Nothing certainly can be more remarkable than the change in public opinion upon the question of the Irish Church. Twenty years ago a discordant array of adversaries to the principle of an Established Church clamoured about the existence of the Irish Establish ment, and called for the confiscation of its revenues. The advanced school of political economists were prepared with fabulous sta tistics of its wealth, and infinitesimal returns of its congregations. The Benthamites, at that time very numerous, scouted its " utility," and muttered something about " the greatest number." A large body of English Dissenters desired that Ireland should be subjected to the operation of " voluntaryism," and the levellers of Radicalism, anxious to gratify their desire for sweeping changes, shouted for spoliation, although the Irish Church had three centuries of prescription and the fifth clause of the Act of Union in its favour. Against these formidable assailants the elo quent voice was resolutely raised by a states man whose Protestant services can scarcely be overrated. When Lord Grey's Cabinet, in a fatal hour for its fame, resolved to coalesce with the directory of the revolutionary party in Ireland, Mr. Stanley (Lord Derby) exerted the same powers of strenuous eloquence in defence of the Irish Church which he had displayed in the advocacy of the Reform Bill. From first to last his views upon the whole question of the Church have been perfectly consistent, and he is rewarded by seeing them finally approved of by the British public. It is now nearly thirty years since he made his first political speech upon this very question, in which, in opposition to Mr. Hume, he con tended for the inviolability of the National Church. The vigour of his argument extorted the applause of one of the greatest reasoners that ever spoke in Parliament. " I congratu ' late the house of Derby on the new laurels it " has gained," were the significant words of Mr. Plunket, who then prophesied the future fame of the youthful debater. Ten years afterwards, in 1834, a similar line of argument was followed by Lord Derby. Office was given up, and the leadership of the " Liberal " party, then within his easy grasp, was resigned in deference to the conscientious calls of pub lie duty. It was a hard thing to separate from old personal friends and political associates. The sacrifice was made, the certain rewards of adhesion to (self-styled) Liberalism were rejected, and the vaguely-violent impulses of democratic Radicalism were encountered with intrepid front and unfaltering principle. It was not until then that the Conservative cause was placed on a firm foundation. High name, ancient lineage, and tried capacity for great affairs, were not the only resources which Lord Derby brought to Conservatism. He introduced into it the principle of adhesion to great national precedents and solemn religious compacts. He successfully protested against the vacillating principles of a sliding scale being applied to the standard of English Protestantism as accepted by our forefathers and confirmed by their descendants. When grievance -mongers talked of the majority of Romanists in Ireland, Lord Derby replied to them by pointing to the principle of a State Church, recognised by the Reformation, en forced by the Revolution, corroborated by the Act of Settlement, and affirmed by the con sistent voices of the predominant classes of an united empire. Unlike other statesmen, he boldly took his stand upon a natural and religious principle. He acted upon the view which was once enunciated by Burke, " that, " unlike the case of arithmetic, two and two " do not always make four in political compu- THE PRESS. " tation" 7 -a sentiment which is cognate with the aphorism of Napoleon, " that in war the " morale is to the physical as three park out "of four." Lord Derby stood upon principle. He declined to cast the Protestant institutions of the realm into a lottery; he sturdily con tended that the doctrine of a Protestant State and the establishment of the national religion should be maintained. Let us now see for what benefits we are indebted to his manly and invigorating counsels. First of all, let us look to comparatively the narrowest part of the subject, the state of the Church in Ireland. It will not be denied by the most ardent Roman Catholics that of late years Protestantism has been greatly on the increase in Ireland. Not only have the num bers of the Protestant population been aug mented, but the influence of the Established Church has been indefinitely extended. The Ultramontane bigotry has been sapped and weakened. The priests have been discovered as unworthy of reliance, at one time shouting to the Young Irelanders, and then shutting the doors in their faces when the police were at their heels. Paddy's shrewdness has come to the aid of his private judgment. The bene ficial influence, also, exerted by the Protestant clergy during the famine has not been with out powerful results. In the English Parlia ment the power of an Opposition has long been recognised, and the (heretofore) undis puted absolutism of the priests has at length been encountered by parsons acting as almo ners, their wives and daughters aiding as " Sisters of Charity," the munificence of English aid circulating through the arterial system of an institution providing a pastor and a poor man's friend for every parish. The Church of Ireland has acted so as to reconcile even the cold English utilitarian to its exist ence. It has been social and civilising, not merely theological and proselytising If it has not completely Protestantised, it has powerfully Itnperialised, the Irish. In order to appreciate the magnitude of such results, let us suppose that the Whig- Radical doctrine had been acted on in 1834, and that the Protestantism of Ireland had been put upon the slippery Peelite system of " the sliding scale." The affections of the Protestants would have been alienated; holders of property would have been alarmed ; the public mind of Ireland would have been confounded. By the violation of the Act of Union it would have been de clared that the "union" itself was liable to be "repealed." Doubts would have been insinu ated where no distrust had previously existed ; dismay would have slowly crept through the thrilling nerves of Irish loyalty. The sound and the orthodox would have emigrated, while the weak and unscrupulous could have reckoned up the advantages of conformity with Rome. Protestantism would have receded —the Papacy advanced. Then would have come the " Repeal Year" of 1843, the French Revolu tion of 1848, surging in their influences upon a population ripe for ascendant Romanism, and ready for violent revolution. With Peelites preaching and intriguing for Puseyism in Eng land ; with the Papacy growing in audacity, and launching its hierarchy, with the help of the Gladstones and the Grahams ; with Irish Roman Catholic demagogues boasting of the accession of panicstricken Protestants, per verts for expediency, what, then, would have been the state of Protestantism in Ireland ? We need not describe that side of the ques tion. Let us rather turn to another and more cheering social prospect. Let us look at Pro testantism in Ireland as it is, to-day. Freed from its abuses by the vigorous mea sure of internal reform, devise d and carried by Lord Derby in 1833 (Irish Church Tempo ralities Act), the Church in Ireland has rallied its numbers by tens of thousands. In the west of Ireland conversions have tak en place upon a most extensive scale , and in other parts of the island hosts of Rom an Catholics have joined its standard. The character, also, of the clergy of the Establishment has been greatly raised within the last twenty years. The divinity course at Trinity College, Dub lin, has been made more extensive, and the theological examinations have become more stringent. The aptitude of the young roer clergy for their special vocation has impved, an 87 knowledge of the Gaelic dialect has been added in many instances to classical erudi tion. The Protestant clergy of Ireland iu our time do not at all resemble7their.predeeessora of the last century. On this point let us ob serve the feeling way in which Archdeacon Hayden speaks in his preface : No one more willingly confesses his past blindness and misdeeds than the man whose life has been reformed under the transforming efficacy of divine grace. Up to the period, however, of his real conversion - he is eager in self-vindication, denies that he is any worse than his neighbours, and often plumes himself on the proper fulfil ment of all the religious and social duties he thinks him self called on to discharge. It is the same with bodies of men. No matter what may be the amount of their shortcomings and abuses, they will not admit, as just, any imputation of delinquency, cannot even endure the least approach to censure or remonstrance, till, as in the case of an individual, reforma tion has actually taken place. The Church in Ireland has been no exception to this rule. It is a painful and humihatine, though perhaps not unprofitable, task to refer to her ierrowful history, and that at no distant period. Royal and episcopal patronage grossly abused, the great bulk of her ministers slothful, unlearned, secular, without zeal and almost without shame, ill-qualified to spread the truth of that Gospel which they but imperfectly compre hended themselves, and assailing, with bitter ridicule and reviling, those few devoted men of their own order who struggled to keep alive the nearly extinguished light of scriptural truth in the land. There were, it is true, some profound and accomplished scholars among her sons, but, alas ! all their learning and talents were perverted "to defend the Church," to prove her immaculate purity, and to maintain her lofty pretensions. And what were the results of such a state of things ? The archdeacon answers : The consequences were obvious. The lower classes of the people were only Protestants in name. We wets re proached (our ranks were so fearfully thinned) with being only the " staff of a Church " in Ireland, while Protestant ism seemed to melt away as a vision, and Popery to stttle down with a deeper darkness over the land. Fe w now deny these facts. They were, however, stoutly and angrily denied at the time, and, if men are ready to make a tree and penitent admission of the truth in these days, it is (all praise to Him whose prevailing pits interceded for the barren tree) because so great a change has taken place that the Church herself is forward to confess her past unfruit fulness. There were, no doubt, peculiar causes in 01eru tiou in Ireland which continued to aggravate all the evils of her spiritual condition, but England or Scotland can lift up no eye of pride to heaven, as they contrast their past state with the apathy and unfaithfulness of the Clnurli in Ireland. What was the state of religion in England that drew forth the touching appeals to the rich of Wilberferce's tender but powerful pen, and led to the bitter opposition to Hannah More's self-denying labours, to rescue the poor from almost heathenish ignorance? The archdeacon might have asked what was the state of religion throughout Christendom generally in the eighteenth century? Mural apathy, "philosophical" frigidity, vague long ings after perfectibility, Voltairian levity, and enthusiastic Rousseauism, characterised the spiritual condition of many countries nomi nally " Roman Catholic." There is a letter extant from the pen of the lute Doctor Doyle, the titular Bishop of Kildare and Leighliu, in which he records the Deism and Infidelity which he met amongst Spanish ecclesiastics, saying, " T trembled while I heard the very " Hall of the Inquisition echoing the scoffs of " Diderot and the infidelity of D'Alembert." We regret, and we will not deny, the scandals of the Irish Church in the last century, but iu censuring them we must recollect the general character of civilisation in those days of ro• laxed principles and enervated morals. Even in spite of these evils the Irish Church pro duced many shining lights. Amongst others, Kirwan, the most eloquent of modern pulpit orators, and Archbishop Magee, the author of a theological masterpiece, "On the Atone ment," the precursors of Jebb, and Greaves, and Archer-Butler, and other ornaments to the literature of the Church of Englund. Let us, then, rejoice that the Irish Church has been preserved unbroken, and that its social utility and its transcendent political importance have been recognised by the opi nion of the empire. The views of Lord Derby have been ratified, and his foresight has been justified, by the present progress of Protes tantism in Ireland. He was the real defende of our United Establishment: ho sacrifice much (as we have intimated) when he threv: down the gauntlet to the Whig assailants o the Church, but his sacrifices have not been without fruit. Never since the Reformation has Protestantism been so powerful and pro gressive in Ireland as in our days. Never Ira the Church possessed such active ministers ; and when we recollect the recent revelations 1./ 0 t a t 1 *~