conflicting feelings, if not unmanned by conflicting duties-a service, in which the brightest triumph must be darkened by the saddening conviction that the blow struck for the freedom of another country was only to bind in faster fetters the religion of his own. I can well conceive our enemies not to be entirely content with such cold and reluctant duty; though, under all the circumstances, it should, instead of censure, draw forth their gratitude and admiration. But to accuse them of cowardice when fighting for the Pope, to arraign their valour when combating for their temples and their altars, is to arraign their fidelity to their religion, a virtue that could never have been denied them. And the reason this flood of calumny has been let loose upon our soldiers is this, because envy feared how painful might be the contrast between the feats of an Irish soldier in a service which persecutes his faith, and the feats of the same soldier when he feels that his power will crown with additional triumph the object of his dearest affection. Let us recollect that it was on the wicked profaners of God's temple, and the persecutors of his priesthood, the most signal chastisements have been inflicted; but that it was in protecting the same temples, and the rights of the same priesthood, the most striking manifestations of God's interposition have been displayed. It was after rifling the temple of Jerusalem, and defiling its altar that the impious King Antiochus felt the hand of the Lord heavy upon him: driving at a furious pace, in haste to repeat the same sacrileges of which he was already guilty, he was flung from out of his chariot, and so bruised that a loathsome disease was the consequence of which the noisome exhalations were tormenting to himself and intolerable to the entire army.1 In like manner, Heliodorus, at the insti12 Mach. ix. 9, &c.

gation of another king, went to rob the sacred treasures of the same temple; but his sacrilegious attempt was checked by the terrible apparition of a young man mounted on a furious horse, whose forefeet smote the robber on the forehead, whilst two angels laid him, almost gasping for death, upon the floor.1 But to come down to Christian times, and to pass over several instances of the manifest interposition of the Almighty on behalf of Christendom, suffice it to advert to the fate of another impious tyrant, who, like Antiochus, breathing fury against God's temple, proudly boasted that he would feed his horse with a measure of oats at the altar of St. Peter. And yet six years did not entirely elapse, when this conqueror, who, from the rapidity of his movements, received the surname of The Lightning, fell into the hands of Timur, another Mahometan tyrant still more triumphant, and was carried about in an iron cage, a spectacle to the world of the folly of human pride, of the limits of human power, and the utter inability of both to cope with the eternal counsels of the Almighty. At a later period, towards the close of the sixteenth century, when the same Turkish race, the enemy of civilisation as well as of religion, threatened to overrun Europe, they were defeated, and their fleet scattered in the Gulf of Lepanto-a victory which was ascribed to the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and the tidings of which were brought at the very moment to the Pope by a miraculous message, surpassing any modern telegraph in the quickness of its communication. The modern revolutions that are now convulsing Italy, and threatening to subvert the order of the neighbouring States, are not improperly 1 2 Mach. iii. 25.

2 The Turkish Sultan Bajazet I. towards the close of the 14th century.-ED. 3 Otherwise Tamerlane.-Ed. 4 St. Pius V.

compared in the pastorals of some of the French bishops, with the anarchy that accompanied the armies of the Turks. Nay, these wars, carried on in the heart of Christendom, and waged against the Holy Father by some of his own ungrateful and unnatural children, are in some degree far more formidable than the invasions of the Saracens, before which Europe so often trembled, inasmuch as intestine quarrels are always more rancorous than wars with foreign enemies, and the hostility with which her schismatical children pursue the Church that bore them, is far more deadly and more poignant to their afflicted mother than the worst persecutions with which pagans and infidels ever assailed her. The prayers of the Church are not less necessary nor less efficacious now than in those times. The intercession of the Holy Mother of God is surely not less powerful, nor the faith of the people in that intercession less strong and lively, than it was then. This Sunday happens, I hope by a favourable coincidence, to be in a special manner the feast of her holy patronage. These festivals are as pillars of light which the Church intersperses through the desert of life to afford guidance and repose in our dreary pilgrimage. Let us, then, implore the Virgin that she look down with particular favour on the temple this day dedicated to the honour of the Almighty, that all who come to worship here may, like Moses, who stripped off his shoes because the ground on which he trod was holy,' leave outside its threshold all worldly thoughts by which the sanctity of this temple could be defiled; that she may guard with equal solicitude the purity of those other temples belonging to its worshippers, namely, their own bodies, called by St. Paul the temples of the Holy Ghost; that she may inspire them with holy thoughts to preserve them undefiled; that, when 21 Cor. vi. 19.

1Exod. iii. 5.

this and all the material temples shall have passed away with this world, the temples of our bodies, after having been dissolved by death, shall be raised up again, bright, glorious, incorruptible, and immortal, through the merciful power of our Redeemer, who, by dying for us, destroyed our death, and renovated our life by His Resurrection, to whom be honour, and glory, and benediction for ever. Amen.

THE CONSECRATION OF A CHURCH.

"And the children of Israel, the Priests and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of the house of God with joy."-1 ESDRAS. vi. 16.*

SUCH is the language in which we are told by the inspired historian of the dedication of their temple after the return of the Jews from their captivity. Humbled by seventy years of a severe foreign bondage, the penitent Hebrews sighed for their ancient residence of Sion, and longed to pour forth their sorrow for their sins, and their gratitude for their deliverance in the temple of their fathers. Accordingly, the Almighty lent a favourable ear to their petitions, and mercifully solaced all the hardships of their exile with the certain hope of its speedy termination. While the spirit of the people sunk under the accumulated evils they had endured, and their hearts were sore because their hopes were so long protracted, God, by the assurance of His prophet Jeremias thus cheers their despondence: "I will save thee from a country afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity, and Jacob shall return and be at rest, and there shall be none whom he may

fear." Never was prophecy more faithfully fulfilled. The language of my text speaks the evidence of its accom

1 Jer. xxx. 10.

plishment. "And the children of Israel, the Priests and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of the house of God with joy." It is to solemnise a similar dedication you are assembled here this day: not the dedication of a temple confined, like that of Judea, to the worship of one people, but the dedication of a church, consecrated to the Redeemer, at whose altar all the nations of the earth have knelt, realising the prediction that His reign should extend to the extremities of the world, and that "a pure oblation should be offered in His name from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof." Yes, we are come to offer our homage to Him who has thrown down the wall that separated Jews and Gentiles, and who has been deservedly called the corner-stone, uniting into one solid and harmonious structure the loose and discordant materials of all the ancient temples. It is a scene worthy of all the reverence of the human heart, it is one to which human tongue cannot do justice; nor should I presume to explain the nature of that homage which is due to the Almighty, had He not condescended in time to come out of the mysterious darkness in which He was shrouded from eternity in order to dwell in human tabernacles, and prescribe the forms of worship by which He was to be adored. Guided, therefore, by the revelation of His own wisdom, I shall briefly sketch the necessary obligations of that worship which creatures owe to the Supreme Being, as well as the conditions with which it ought to be accompanied in order to render this religious homage, which is proffered upon earth, acceptable in heaven.

Of all the feelings of our nature there is none more reasonable or spontaneous than that which prompts us to break forth into grateful acknowledgments to the Author of our being. It is a feeling which springs with

'Malach. i. II.