The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-27 00:00:00

IRISH CHURCH MISSIONS.

(From the Irish Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.)
DUBLIN, Jan. 25.

The Society for Church Missions in Ireland has met with
a damaging exposure. The Rev. George Webster, rector of
St. Nicholas, Cork, and chancellor of the diocese, in a lec-
ture which he delivered in his church, charged the society
with " bribing its supposed converts." A correspondence
ensued between him and the Rev. H. C. Eade, the secretary
of the society, which throws much light on the way converts
are made in Ireland. " The terrible fact," says Mr. Webster,
addressing Mr. Eade, "with which you have to grapple is,
that under your society a Roman Catholic child receives
his bed and breakfast—he is housed and clothed—on the
express condition that he listens to Protestant teaching,
and attends a Protestant place of worship." Mr. Eade's
reply is worthy of Jacobar or Sanchez, or any casuist of the
Sorbonne : "The attraction lies in the teaching, and not
in the food"--a remark which every one acquainted with
the comparative affection which children manifest for their
catechism and their breakfast will appreciate. Ho also
admits that in some cases the children " believed at first
they were doing wrong"—in other words, the heresy was
swallowed with the viands provided, and the integrity of
the child was destroyed in the effort to save its soul through
its stomach. Mr. Webster observes upon this that it is
wholly unworthy of Protestantism to make the poverty of
the Roman Catholics an occasion for outbidding or over-
reaching the heads of the Roman Catholic Church—and
therefore "as long as you tempt Roman Catholics, by a re-
gular fixed system of relief, to prefer the interests of this
world to the interests of the world to come, so long must I
,eel myself bound to make every protest in mypower against
the Irish Church Mission So ciety." He then notices the
speech of the Bishop of Ox ford, and expresses his sor-
row to find that his lordship was misinformed.
He would see cause to change his mind if he
was acquainted with the facts which ho Mr. Webster,
and many other clergymen could have furnished.
He was deeply grieved to see that many other Englishman
had fallen into the same mistake, and had taken up the
notion that the Irish Church, Mission is really doing a good
work in Ireland. His only comfort was, that so much of
the machinery of this society is worked by Engl shmen,
that when in a few years th ey discover the mischief they
have done, and the very imp 3rfect grounds upon which they
continue to believe they wei working with success, they
will not have to charge th a Irish cletgy with being the
cause of their mistake. Mr. Webster then proceeds to make
the following startling dieco rust !s :—" If it were necessary,
I could give instances where I he ordained agents of the
Irish Church missions paid P rotestants to pretend they
were Roman Catholics at your controversial meetings, and
at these meetings to call thorA very ordained agents the
hardest names. I could tell y, au of a school of which it was
reported that there were eigh .ty Roman Catholics in attend-
ance, when the fact was, not .a single Roman Catholic.
over entered the place, , exec pt some five or Blx
wretched children who we: t sone fa one Dublin by the Irish
Church Mission Society. I con id tall you of a scene I once
witnessed at the same est, .blislai cent, where on a Sunday
morning large quantities pf brQ A were given to Roman