It must not be understood, however, that the wilderness is without its oases. In Scotland there would seem to be rising up a school of earnest, conscientious, deep-thinking men, keenly alive to the errors and the dangers and the wants of the day. So far these men are staunch Presbyterians, but they are not Romophobists. They do not fling at the Catholic Church the finely flavoured epithets of the old Covenanters and Cameronians. They seem never to have heard of the naughty woman of Babylon, who had been for a couple of centuries the pièce de resistance in all Scottish sermons, and never to have laid eyes upon her "scarlet robe." On the contrary, they regard the ancient Church with reverence and veneration, and they are driven by the force of logic to admit that the Church of Rome has never, and could never have been, the wicked idolatrous institution that their fathers had foolishly imagined her to be. Principal Tulloch (if I remember rightly), in the learned lectures on the "Churches of Christendom," delivered some time since in St. Giles," goes even farther than this, and argues, in true, hard, Scottish style that, to dissever the dissenting Churches of modern times from the ancient Church of the Papacy, were to sap the very foundations of the Christian religion itself.

It is on honest, earnest, sterling men like these that the future of Scotland may be said largely to depend. If honest thought and honest intelligent inquiry are permitted to grow and to expand, a Romeward movement is certain sooner or later to set in, in spite of the blind, stupid, malignant hatred of everything Catholic that still so widely prevails. If, on the other hand, the fiery spirit of the Beggs, and the Storys, and the Grahams, and other vulgar zealots, should gain the ascendant, the result will be that educated, thoughtful people will become sickened with the travesty of Christianity that is set before them, and will fling themselves in despair into the open arms of rationalism and unbelief; whilst the ignorant and the unreflecting will become more fiercely bigoted than ever against Catholic truth, and will regard their fanaticism as a veritable obsequium Deo, and indeed as the only obsequium that they will feel bound to offer to the Most High. At the present moment it is to be greatly feared that the preponderating movement of the nation is downward, to infidelity or scepticism, instead of upwards and onwards, towards Catholicity and truth.

I meant to devote the second part of this paper to the moral and social results of Presbyterianism, on the Scottish people. I have already, however, so lengthened out my remarks that I feel bound to dispose of the remainder of my subject within as limited a compass as possible. I do not think any one will accuse me of exaggerating when I express the conviction that, the Presbyterianism of the present day at least is an utter failure as far as the masses are concerned. First of all, the people who belong to the artisan and working classes do not go to Church. They do not care for the nasal, monotonous reading, of a chapter from the Bible, which, if they like, they can very well read at home; and the sermon of fifteen points has for the multitude at least fourteen points too many. The shop. keepers and the better classes do go to Church, certainly on the Sabbath, not merely once, but twice, and often thrice. Indeed, during most of the day the streets are lined with pious folk on their way to or from service, all bearing their broad phylacteries in the shape of huge prayer or hymnbooks, and all proclaiming, by their smug faces and selfsatisfied airs, that ordinary people are not to aspire to their unapproachable perfection.

But there is an unreality and an emptiness about this Kirk-going that is apparent to everybody. It is a mere matter of fashion or conventional propriety, and there the religious motive begins and ends.

As for the masses, I repeat, they are not Churchfrequenters. Scan the Church-goers as you may during all the year round, and you will rarely recognise amongst them an artisan or a labourer. These spend the Sabbath, lying idly in bed, or quaffing the ambrosial "hard ale" of Scotland-a poisonous beverage that combines lowness of price, with a highly valued power of intoxication. By order of the Established Church a partial census of Churchbelieving people was taken some months ago. The result has just been stated. Out of 1,547,963, "the number of adults said to be not in connection with any section of the Christian Church, was 93,624." These, it seems, recognised no minister of religion in the great momentous events of their lives-in their marriages, or in the baptism of their children, or the burial of their dead.

Very curious efforts, however, are made to gather a Sabbath congregation. It is Church against Church, and Chapel against Meeting-House. Whole columns of the Saturday newspapers are occupied with the ecclesiastical

bill of fare for the next day. The theatre pales into insig. nificance here before the Church, and we have such overpoweringly attractive advertisements as: "To-morrow, at Church, the Rev. Mr. White on The Incidence of the Poor-Rate,' or the Rev. Mr. Red on Clouted Shoes,' or the Rev. Mr. Black on Vivisection,'" and so on. The masses, however, will not be ensnared even by such catching show-boards as these. They look upon the whole thing as vanity, and (if I may quote the "Revised Version") "A striving after wind"-or after the raising of it. Nevertheless, Sabbatarianism, no one needs be told, in the sense of complete abstention from any sort of labour or recreation, is a peculiarly Scotch institution. Not long ago it was a police offence to whistle in the street or to play the piano in one's house, or indeed to do anything except walk demurely to Kirk on the Sunday. Some short time since, an unfortunate candidate for parliamentary honours was most severely "heckled" on the hustings for having once travelled by train on the Sabbath Day. In vain did he plead that his doing so was an act of piety-to assist at a parent's funeral. It was to no purpose. The dead should bury the dead, and he should observe the Lord's Sabbath. About the same date a minister was peremptorily rejected by a congregation, because many years before, he had been known to take a walk into the country on the Sabbath. He was a poor, dyspeptic man, all knew, that needed bodily exercise, but yet the sin was there, and could neither be atoned for nor palliated.

This Sabbatarianism is undoubtedly one of the ugliest aspects of Scottish Presbyterianism. It is invested with such an amount of deceit and duplicity and hypocrisy! On the Sabbath you may drink or swear, or cheat, or do worse, provided you do not stretch your limbs for a brisk walk, or go out into the country to breathe the pure air of heaven! We all know the history of the Glasgow Sabbatarian bankers, and how scrupulously these venerable elders observed the Lord's Day, whilst their robber hands were thrust deep into the pockets of the widow and orphan.

Another religious institution of Scotland-more honoured in the breach than the observance-is "Fast Days." These days were originally set aside for “selfexamination" and for partaking of the Lord's Supper (which by the way your independent Presbyterian always partakes of seated on his own bench). As a matter of fact the "Fast Days" have become days of universal debauchery

and drunkenness and dissipation. In the evenings, if you have the courage to traverse the streets, you will find between fifty and eighty per cent. of those whom you meet hopelessly intoxicated. These "Fast Days" were intended, it seems, to supplant the Christian festivals of Christmas, Easter, and so on (for in Presbyterian Scotland there is no recognition of such solemnities). The Fast Days-many are now beginning to see-are a failure, and in Glasgow and other places they have happily been abolished. The abolition will certainly not injure Christian morality, even though it may detract somewhat from Presbyterian prestige.

Over the social immorality of Presbyterian Scotland it is as well perhaps to cast a veil. Only one or two remarks on the nauseous subject. In the annual birthrate, the proportion of illegitimate births goes up in some shires as high as 15 per cent., and in this percentage are not included the very large number of children born in actual wedlock though very soon after marriage. What is implied is easily understood north of the Tweed. It is better for decency's sake not to pursue the subject, but rest content with the remark that here as in matters of doctrine, Presbyterianism "is known by its fruits." But one further word. It is a quotation from a committee report to the recent General Assembly of the Established Church: "The statistics of illegitimacy in rural parishes were appalling: the view of the relation of the sexes was said to be low; and no worthier object could be set before the national Church, her ministers and elders and members, than the removal of this stain from Scotland." Out of her own mouth comes the "Church's" condemnation.

It is ead-indescribably sad-to contemplate this gloomy picture of Scotland-Scotland that was blessed with the prayers and watered with the tears and cultivated by the hands of St. Columbkille and his colony of Irish saints-Scotland that was ennobled by the valour and the chivalry of Wallace and the Bruces: that was sweetened by the gentle life of St. Margaret, and that possesses such a store of pathetic remembrances in the sufferings and the loveliness and the heroism of Mary Stuart. But, as has been intimated, the cloud has its silver lining. The dark reign of malignant bigotry and religious rancour is on the wane. Sooner or later the great struggle will be fought out in Scotland as in many other kingdoms-a struggle not of sect against sect, or Church against Church, or

Protestant against Catholic, but of rationalism against allrevealed truth. "Rome and Unbelief," writes a distinguished author, "are the two vortices round which and into which all other modes of opinion are visibly edging in more or less quickening circles." God grant that when this supreme strife is over and the smoke of battle cleared away, Scotland may be found once more resting in the bosom of the Church of her fathers; and that the speck of blue which now peeps through her still lowering skies may deepen and broaden until the whole. land is bathed once more in the sunshine of Catholic faith and truth.

M. F. SHINNORS, O.M.I.

CHARLES O'CONOR OF BELINAGARE. VI.

DR. O'RORKE, BISHOP OF KILLALA.

an

PERS ERSECUTION provided young O'Conor with accomplished teacher to perfect whatever knowledge he had hitherto been able to acquire, and guide him to higher and wider levels of intellectual culture. Here we have an illustration of the wonderful ways of Providence. Out of the most malignant evil devised by man, it still can bring forth good. He to whom the Catholic people of Ireland owe so much, who, by his patriotic labours and writings in after years, was to open the eyes of Protestants themselves to the infamy of their Penal Code, and bear a chief part in rousing his Catholic fellow-countrymen from their hopeless lethargy of years, owed in a great measure his education and power for good to the very operation of those impious laws.

We have already seen' that the mother of Charles O'Conor was Mary O'Rorke of the princely house of Breifny. Her brother, the Rev. Thadeus O'Rorke, became known to Prince Eugene, the hero of his age, at Vienna, as the son of Captain Tiernan O'Rorke, whose gallantry and fall on the field of Luzzara he had himself witnessed. The Prince appointed Father O'Rorke, his Chaplain and Private Secretary. His learning, virtue, and commendable life

1 II. E. RECORD (Third Series), vol. v., p. 239.