the Church is wielded, and the consequent triumphs by which its incessant combats with the powers of darkness are crowned. In fine, the Church is represented under the figure of the city of God by one Prophet, Isaias; the city of the great King by another, the Royal Psalmist; by our Lord Himself, the city on the mountain-top; and I should be repeating a large portion of the prophetic writings if I were to cite the various passages which exhibit the empire of Christ under the same emblem of a fortress, ever engaged in the extension of its spiritual conquests, and, at the same time, in the protection of its acquisitions against the jealous and mutinous subjects who would fain raise up a rebellion within its walls. And it is after this model, so often displayed in the predictions of her own prophets, that the Church has been constructed by its Divine Founder, having Christ Himself for the cornerstone, the Apostles for its foundations, and the entire edifice, as the Apostle says, so compacted and so fitly joined together in its various parts, as to be equally proof against the hostility of those who would attempt to storm it by violence, or to take it by the more slow, and dark, and treacherous operations of the mine. By both external foes and intestine traitors it has been incessantly assailed, from its first establishment until now, and over both its victories have been equally signal and decisive. Though it wanted not, ere it reached and subdued the promised land of the Gentiles, some of those seditious defections on the part of its own children, such as Moses encountered from the envious Levite and his ambitious companions, who disputed with Aaron the exclusive honours of the priesthood, and though its altars were adorned with the plates into which the forbidden censers of those insurgents were beaten, and though in its tabernacles was deposited the rod of

Aaron, which budded and blossomed amidst the barren rods of his sacrilegious rivals; and though these monuments of its early sufferings in the desert are yet visible in God's Church, attesting, to the end of time, the protection of heaven which shielded the lawful priesthood, as well as the vengeance which overtook its attempted usurpation-still it was only at a later period, and when encouraged by powerful allies, that the banners of heresy and schism were daringly displayed. The first three hundred years of the existence of the Church were years of terrible conflicts with the confederated idols of the earth, defended by powerful emperors, the avowed patrons of the worst passions of the human heart by which those licentious idols were adored. Amidst the rage of the storm, the jealous murmurs of the schismatic and disobedient could scarcely be heard, and the selfish and ambitious had little to tempt them, when even the standard of revolt could not claim exemption from the penalties by which the faith of the Catholic Church was proscribed, and the persecutions by which so many of its intrepid martyrs were crowned. Well did they exemplify the beautiful language of the liturgy that has been now entoned: "Blessed is the man whose aid is from Thee, O Lord! Better is one day in Thy courts than thousands of days. I have chosen to be abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners." Yes; the vivid sense of beatitude beyond this life, for which they panted, was the secret of their courage; and all the fleeting enjoyments of this perishable world were deemed as nought compared to the happiness of residing in the tabernacles of the Lord for ever.

Of all the nations that have been given to Christ as

'Ps. lxxxiii. 5-10.

His inheritance, and associated to the kingdom of His Church, some at an earlier and others at a later period, there is none that obeyed the merciful call with such cheerful promptness as our own, or one that has clung to the revered object of its love with a grasp so tenacious as death itself could not loosen. Though in the mysterious dispensations of His punishments and rewards no one can question the Almighty, no more than the potter's clay can ask of its maker, "Why hast thou formed me thus ?" and though nations, like individuals, have no right to boast of gifts not their own, but for which they are beholden to the bounty of heavenit ought to be a subject of unceasing thankfulness to us that God has never in His anger departed from our temples, or taken away His Holy Spirit from the hearts of our people. Those who were earliest favoured with the blessing have long since fallen away from the faith, and whole regions to whom the Gospel was preached by the Apostles and Evangelists have been for ages buried in idolatry. The portions of the vineyard that were planted by St. Peter and St. James have alone hitherto escaped the fury by which so many fair and flourishing gardens have been destroyed. A neighbouring church, though cultivated by the labours of zealous missioners, has had, too, the misfortune of becoming a prey to the boar of the forest, by which its sacred enclosures have been broken and its treasures have been rifled. How singular, then, has been the prerogative of St. Patrick, that the fruits of his labours have remained as enduring as those of the most favoured of Christ's Apostles! and how specially blessed must have been that people, whose faith and fortitude have been as unconquerable as those of Rome, and whose

1 Rom. ix, 20.

fidelity has been no less striking than that of the kindred people of Spain, though subjected to as harassing a persecution as the others had suffered from the sanguinary fury of the Moors! Deep and grateful must have been the soil on which the seed cast by St. Patrick fell, to be productive of fruits so vigorous and so lasting; and the varied monuments of religion with which the land is interspersed are but faint emblems of their steady and ardent devotion, which no hostility could extinguish. Whatever portion of the island you traverse, you are sure to meet conspicuous memorials of the religious feelings of the people, not only in the ruins of those churches, colleges, and cloisters which they erected in after ages, but in the mountains, lakes, and holy springs which an unbroken tradition has converted into consecrated records of his life. Thus the lofty mountain on the shores of the Atlantic, on whose peak the eagle, who gave it a name, had so long fixed his nest, was thenceforward changed into the appellation of Croagh-Patrick, and is frequented to this day by multitudes of pious pilgrims. The wells and fountains in which he immersed and baptised thousands of converts who thronged round him as he went along, are still remembered and enclosed with a devout reverence

THE DEDICATION OF A CHURCH.

"And he brought me again to the gate of the house, and behold waters issued out from under the threshold, came down to the right side of

the temple."-EZECH. xlvii. 1.

AMONG the various images under which the abundant and continual graces of God's Church are represented, that of the fountain gushing forth from the threshold of His temple, and refreshing the earth with its waters, is one of the most just and familiar, as well as one of the most cheering and consoling. In describing the Catholic Church, the wisdom of its design, the vastness of its extent, the solidity of the structure, and the beauty of its decorations, the Prophets of the Old, and the Evangelists of the New Law have copiously employed their inspired eloquence. All creation lay before them, from which to borrow the most appropriate objects of their comparisons, such as the sun and the moon, the running stream, the smiling valley, or the lofty mountain; yet creation itself failed to give an adequate idea of that spiritual edifice and its treasures, which can only be viewed in its proper light when creation shall have passed away and time shall be no more. Yet though inadequate to bring to the mind a full idea of those blessings, they were a help to raise it towards their contemplation. Those material objects, adapted to understandings that receive their knowledge through the senses, were suitable vehicles for conveying information to the soul. They were, as St. Paul expresses it, that glass through which we imperfectly see God in this life and a glass, too, thickly smoked and dimmed, since