"come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb," and who sing benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and strength, to our God for ever and ever. Amen.

THE OPENING OF THE TUAM SYNOD, 1854.

"For where there are two or three gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.”—S. MATT. xviii. 20.

We cannot more appropriately open the solemn council on this great Festival of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady than in the language of our Divine Redeemer, which St. Celestine addressed to the bishops some fourteen hundred years ago, when convoking the Council of Ephesus. The presence of the Holy Ghost, observes the pious Pontiff, is attested by the numerous assemblage of His anointed priesthood; for, if the presence of the Holy Spirit be not wanting when only two or three are assembled in our Saviour's name, how much more securely may we not calculate on His presence and protection when those are assembled in His name, and in greater numbers, with whom, through the Apostles, He has promised to abide to the end of time, teaching the things which He has commanded, and dispensing the graces of the sacraments which He has instituted. Never, continues the holy Pope, was Christ, whom they were commanded to preach, wanting in sustaining the 'Apoc. vii. 14.

doctrine of His own preachers, whether it was promulgated by the Apostles themselves, or by those to whom their divine commission had descended. In the solicitude of the pastoral office all those have participated, who, at different times have been seated on the chairs of the Apostles, and by the hereditary right of their legitimate succession, associated to a share in the consoling privileges, as well as in the awful responsibility, which their exalted ministry involves. It was not enough that the Apostles went forth casting the seed of sound doctrine, and watering it abundantly with their blood. No; it was still necessary that this seed be fostered and preserved, and the care of its cultivation and protection to the end of time devolves in a special manner upon those who, notwithstanding the diversity of places over which they may be scattered, are bound, by their joint solicitude and labour, to transmit in its integrity to others the rich treasure which has reached them through the series of their apostolical predecessors. It is to fulfil our portion of this common duty we are assembled here on this occasion-bishops, priests, and people—in the name and to the glory of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, relying firmly on His own promises, that He will vouchsafe to us His divine assistance, and that He will not fail to listen to the prayers of the assembled thousands of the people, ascending to the throne of mercy, to bring down on our deliberations the blessings of heaven.

To impress adequately how much we need the divine assistance and the prayers of the people, through which it is conveyed, I need but glance at the figures under which the pastors of the Church are represented in the inspired writings, and at the mystic functions that are assigned to them, all, expressive of incessant solicitude and toil. In one place, they are

represented as fishermen, casting forth their nets into the deep, and gathering in the elect from its waters; in another, under the apparently strange figure of persons engaged in the chase, driving from every hill and from every mountain those monsters of wickedness and infidelity which sometimes turn the earth into a wilderness. Again, the Church is likened to a field, and the pastors to husbandmen whose daily duty it is to work it, to weed it, to build or repair its fences, and to gather in the fruit in due season. Nor are we to omit a passage of the Psalms which so strikingly sketches the arduous contests that must engage the chiefs of the Church in guarding the deposit of the faith, and repulsing the assaults of its enemies. "Surround Sion," exclaims the Royal Prophet, "and encompass her; tell ye in her towers; set your hearts on her strength, and distribute her houses, that ye may relate it in another generation." Illustrating the comparison of "a city seated on a mountain," the Church has never ceased to attract the attention of the world, and if it has everywhere scattered the benefit of its light, it is no less certain that it has encountered bitter hostility from every quarter; and if, as we are told by the inspired writer, the most ordinary life partakes of the military character, how much more so was the life of the chief pastors of the Church a continual succession of vigils and of warfare, incessantly labouring to encompass the walls of this outspread city-now sending forth from its towers the voice of their warning, and again assigning to such of their associates as were distinguished for their fidelity and prowess those portions of the breach through which, if neglected, a stealthy or a daring foe might securely enter. How strikingly are those and several

such representations of the zeal, the toil, and struggles of its pastors exemplified at different periods in the annals of the Church.

In the Apostles, their first vocation was changed and exalted into that of fishers of men casting their nets without tiring, until they were nigh breaking from the multitude they had taken. In some of the subsequent fathers and champions of the Church we discover those mighty men of renown, who pursued and wrestled with those monsters that profaned the earth by warring against heaven. Such were St. Athanasius and St. Hilary in their days, who moved from kingdom to kingdom animating the faithful against the blasphemous heresy of Arius and his followers, who sought to tear the Son of God from His eternal throne. Such, too, were St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Celestine, from whom I have already quoted, who vindicated the honour due to the Blessed Virgin, of which Nestorius, a prelate, backed by the temporal influence of the imperial court of Constantinople, sought to rob her by denying that she was the Mother of God. If the Apostles have been justly considered fishermen in gaining countries to the Church, and those fathers, 1 have alluded to, likened to courageous combatants in protecting the faith, well might St. Celestine be entitled to the praise of both; since, whilst he preserved the east from a heresy that was aimed against the Blessed Mother of God, he swept the western seas with the nets of the fishermen, and brought our own nation from its depths to the pale of the Catholic Church. Never was a more precious gem yet drawn from the bosom of the ocean, for since it caught first the gleam of the faith which revealed its richness and its beauty, its solidity has been proof against all force; and, no matter how thick the darkness, it could not obliterate or tarnish its

lustre. Not, indeed, that it was not sufficiently tried in the most fiery ordeals-not that Satan had not often sought to sift its followers as wheat, as he once attempted on Simon, but the same power that fortified the faith of Peter fortified likewise that of Ireland, because it was indissolubly bound to the same rock; and hence those gates of hell, which could not prevail against the one, have been, from their connection, equally powerless against the other. In a long-continued contest, in which Satan and his followers have put forth all their strength for the upturning of our Church, it is not to be imagined that it should have escaped utterly unharmed. It was a contest for life or death, for the light of faith or the darkness of infidelity; and, like the serpent, who leaves his body without defence when his head is in danger, the Irish people cheerfully sacrificed their bodies, their lands, their immunities-nay, more, all the material interests of their Church, and, what is more painful to a sensitive and intellectual people, they bore the forced privation of literature and science, in order to preserve the rich jewel of their faith, the hidden treasure of the field, with which neither the wealth nor wisdom of the world could be put in competition. In other countries even successful assaults upon religion were but of short continuance. In some the tidings that announced the approach of the aggressor, were at the same time the harbingers of his triumphs; and the faith and courage of the vanquished sunk at once, without an effort to rise from under the first tide of barbarous conquest that passed over them. In others, for example, nearer home, the feeble faith of the chief pastors of the Church, long dimmed in a tainted and corrupt atmosphere, paled before the more dazzling glare of mere secular honours, for which they panted, and when the few intrepid shepherds were stricken down by viclence