natives bear the impress and breathe the fragrance of the doctrines of the incarnation, which you look for in vain in any other country, and, unlike the constrained and unmeaning conventionalities of fine day that, the most refined form of ordinary salutation, it appears, that can be found in our imported speech-polished it may be, but cold and icy as it is polished-our own native tongue sends, warm from the heart, that heavenly phrase with which the angel of the Lord introduced his divine embassy, reflected again back with additional fervour by invoking on the person uttering the salutation the joint benediction of God and His Virgin Mother. There is, rely on it, in such pious forms of salutation a training to a high and Christian urbanity which all the faithless literary institutions of the world cannot supply; there is that ordinary aliment or daily bread which the sustenance of faith requires; there is a fashioning of the young and tender mind to purity by setting the spotless mirror of purity always before it; and there is in it that fragrant virtue, which is never found to flourish, save in the garden of the Catholic Church, watered by the graces coming through the Virgin Mother, to whom so appropriately belongs the beautiful appellation of the "sealed fountain."

With such evidence, then, furnished by their topography and language, of the singular veneration of our people for the Virgin Mother of God, it is not necessary that I should specially impress on you to mingle, with your prayers for us, a prayer, too, for her powerful intercession. To her this temple is specially consecrated. Nay, though several festivals to her honour are interspersed throughout the entire year, it is to this great feast of the Assumption of her body and soul into glory that our Cathedral church is peculiarly dedicated. It is but right, then, that on such a great and solemn occasion

as this, we should implore her interposition in her own temple-a temple which, were I to be silent, would not fail to attest the traditionary reverence of Ireland for the Mother of God, raised, as it has been, by the munificent piety of the clergy and people of this diocese, with my revered predecessor at their head, one of the men whose praise is in the churches, who showed forth the dignity of prophets, powerful in instructing the people. As language is too feeble to convey any adequate idea of her bliss and glory, the Church applies to her some of the most beautiful images in which the Divine Wisdom celebrates its own praises: "I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, and as a cypress-tree on Mount Sion: I was exalted like a palm-tree in Cades, and as a roseplant in Jericho: as a fair olive in the plains, and as a plane-tree by the water in the streets, was I exalted. My branches are of honour and of grace, and my odour like the odour of the sweetest balm and cinnamon." Yet not all these figures could adequately express the graces with which she has been adorned, the glory to which she has been elevated, the extent of merciful patronage with which she has been invested, or the odour which her name and virtues have spread throughout the world. No; nor the still more exalted image of St. John, comparing her to a "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." Yet all those high prerogatives of the Queen of Heaven are still the gifts of the Almighty flowing from the immensity of His goodness, as experienced in the angelic anthem that welcomed her advent to heaven: "Who this ti that cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved." Yes, leaning upon her beloved, who looked to the

humility of His handmaid, and exalted her to the dignity of a queen, arrayed in gilded garments, enriched with varied embroidery. And were I now, in invoking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, to turn to her image there, her head enwreathed with a diadem, some, perhaps, would feel, or affect to feel, scandalised, as if we were addressing ourselves to senseless representations. Should any entertain such a feeling, they will I trust, be instructed by the following historical incident: When Leo, the tyrannical emperor of the East, had ill-disguised his want of reverence for our Divine Redeemer by making war upon the crucifix among other images, a pious bishop, knowing his heart was steeled against all persuasion, called to mind the apologue with which Nathan reached the heart of David, and accordingly made use of a similar argument. Admitted to the presence of the emperor, he showed him a coin impressed with the imperial image, then flung it on the ground and trampled it under foot. The emperor was suddenly enraged, and felt himself treated with the utmost ignominy. And he was right: he forgot for a moment his false logic regarding the unfeeling materials of images; nature asserted her dominion over him, convincing him that, in the insult offered to his senseless likeness on the coin, the imperial majesty was obviously outraged. The bishop's argument succeeded, who promptly observed: "If you feel insulted at your image being thus trampled on, how is it that you have no feeling of insulting the God of heaven, whilst you insult, break, and scatter in fragments the symbols of our redemption, the venerated image of His crucified Son?" I need not pursue the application of this historical incident to the image of the Blessed Virgin. All the honour that is due to the Blessed Mother of God is given because her merits are all derived from the inexhaustible

source of our redemption. On her Divine Son she leaned in her sufferings; by Him she was sustained, and on Him, her Beloved, she leans now in His glory. Of our Church it may be likewise said that she is going up from the desert, wherein she so long sojourned, continuing to lean exclusively on Him whose arm sustained her in her trials through the wilderness, where "He has been the guide of her journeying." In her more prosperous career she surely stands not in need of any other aid, or of any other counsel, than the outstretched arm that protected her in her dangers and in her weaknesses, and those, that should be inclined to lean on the hollow support of the world, would find they were only leaning on a reed, which every breath was sure to sway, convinced of the truth of the inspired maxim, that it was better to trust in God than in princes. We will, then, trust in the promises of Him who has founded His Church and protected it, beseeching Him, in the prayers of the liturgy, on this solemn occasion: "Aid us, O Lord, by Thy presence; pour Thy spirit into our councils, and be Thou the sole suggestor of our judgments; guide us in the ancient paths, and let not ignorance mislead us, or a regard for gifts or persons betray us from the right course. And Thou, O Blessed Virgin, Holy Queen, Mother of mercies, our life, our sweetness, and our hope, turn thy compassionate looks on us, and obtain for us the grace of treasuring up the words of thy Divine Son, as thou didst treasure them in thy heart, that they may be a light to our path and a lamp to our feet in all our trials; that, after sharing in the sorrows which thou didst share with thy suffering Son, we may, with thee and all the saints, be sharers, too, in His everlasting glory." Amen.

'Exod. xiii. 21.

TUAM SYNOD, 1858.

"Pass not beyond the ancient bounds which thy fathers have set." -PROV. xxii. 28.

It is the melancholy lot of those who are placed beyond the pale of the Catholic Church to be continually carried about by every wind of doctrine, whilst the spirit of union, which it breathes, is found among the faithful children who have remained within its sacred enclosures. The peace which our Divine Redeemer left to His Apostles as His parting legacy has descended with the doctrine which He commanded them to preach, and has continued in the Church as the uniform handmaid of that power which He promised to exercise for its protection. Within, where the apostolic authority is felt and acknowledged, you are sure to find harmony in the profession of the same one faith, as well as that settled peace of which according dispositions must ever be productive. Whereas, outside the bounds of its acknowledged sway, nought is to be heard but the loud and incessant din of the strife of contending sectaries which cannot be appeased amidst the reign of anarchy and disorder. From such a contrast, between the wildest uproar from without and the most tranquil order from within, we may infer the importance, nay, the necessity in Church government, of the caution of the Wise Man conveyed in my text, of not crossing the mearings that have been fixed by our Fathers. It is this reverence for ancient usage, this zeal for the traditionary doctrines once delivered to the saints, this solicitude for walking in the same paths in which our holy predecessors have trodden; yes, this sensitive