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Protestant nurse who attended her said her oft-repeated prayer was 'Jesus, have mercy upon me,' and this with so much faith and fervour that the nurse declared emphatically, I know that Jesus has had mercy on her.'

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I should not omit to mention in connection with this case the true piety and kind Christian love and faith evinced by the sister of L- M- who is also a convert from Rome. Your agent went into this woman's house some time before L's death and found her with her Bible in her lap, in a very solemn mood; after a little she told the Reader the cause of her grief, "That she was afraid L- was not in a saved state, and when I think of this (she said) I go to my Bible and to prayer for consolation." At this time she did not know Lhad embraced the Saviour in the arms of her faith.

As I have but four Readers in this district instead of six, I keep them itinerating from one station to another in the district, so as to keep the Mission work going on all through the country. It is a plan of which dear Mr. Dallas highly approved, and in many respects I think it more useful than allotting men to sit down in one circumscribed district. The variety of mind, place, and circumstances keep the agents alive and interested in their work, and each man learns something from his fellow-labourer, to aid whom he is occasionally sent.

Iar Connaught Mission.--Many years since a poor woman who had been deserted by a worthless husband placed her two children under the care of a married sister, while she herself endeavoured to earn her own livelihood by taking service in the families of small farmers in the county where she resided. For several years these children were treated by their aunt, who was a Protestant, as if they had been her own, and educated as Protestants at day and Sunday schools-one kind lady in particular taking a deep interest in their instruction and welfare. Not long, however, was this happiness to continue. When the elder of the children, a little girl, had attained almost to the age of nine years, the zeal of some Roman Catholic relatives was awakened. An attempt was first made to get possession of the children by legal means, on the false pretence that the mother was dead, and when this failed, in the very courthouse where the case was tried, and out

of the arms of her aunt, the little girl was forcibly torn. Some police who permitted this abduction were dismissed the service, and the greatest exertions were made for the child's recovery by the magistrates and police. But all in vain. As with the Sherwoods, who were stolen many years ago, when on their way to the Spiddal Home, and who have never since been recovered, though the entire machinery of British law was put in operation and no expense spared, so it was with poor little At the time the child was thus stolen, her poor mother was lying ill in the fever hospital of WSoon the sad tidings

reached her, when she arose, rushed from the place, and wildly sought her lost one; and when, at last, she found that all search was fruitless, she brought her little boy, then just eight years of age, to the kind friend before mentioned. "Here, madam," said she, "is the only child I now have; won't you take him and hide him for me, where those people can never find him? don't tell even me where you put him lest they should find it out from me and rob me of him too. I know that where you send him he will be well cared for." Miss B- sent the boy to Spiddal Orphan Home, and three years after the poor mother walked from the town of W fourteen miles, to the

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more than house of the with whom she next day visited the orphanage, and having seen and wept over her son, immediately returned again by the same weary way.

For more than five years the sorrowing mother remained in ignorance of her daughter's fate. At length, in a most remarkable way, she discovered that the child had been taken by a priest to a nunnery near Dublin, and was there detained; and having taken the necessary legal steps, she at length, with wonderful perseverance, forced an interview with her daughter in the town of W- to which place the girl had been again removed by the nuns, when what was the poor woman's agony at finding that her child had been so influenced by the nuns that she said she preferred to remain with them, and refused to go with her mother. Half distracted, for her over-wrought mind then received a shock from which it never recovered, the now doubly-afflicted mother once more retraced her steps to Spiddal, and remained in that neigh

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bourhood for some months. Again she visited W- and having gone in an unsettled way from place to place, and from situation to situation, about a year since suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, at the very time when the event occurred which, had she known, would have brightened with sunshine her remaining days-her daughter, reminded again by the untiring friend of her childhood, whom she was permitted by the nuns to visit, of the lessons of Gospel truth which in her earliest days she had imbibed, awoke from the fatal spell which so long had bound her, and intelligently and heartily bade a final farewell both to the nuns and Rome. Both the brother and sister are now employed in an excellent Christian family, but of the poor mother there are no tidings. During the past ten years 195 children, many of them cases very similar to the above, were well cared for and well instructed in the Spiddal Orphan Home, and there are now fifty-seven children in this institution, the instruction in which is conducted by the Society for Irish Church Missions.

North-East District. - Your Missionary returned yesterday evening from a tour through the Glen's Mission, and while we have not the same ostensible results here as in some other parts of Ireland, yet the interest in our work seems to increase, and the Readers have many openings to the Roman Catholics.

Controversial lectures were delivered during the present week, on Monday at etc. On all occasions the audience was very attentive, and at and couraging.

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These meetings had been previously announced by handbills, and also, except in one instance, by large placards, and it was very remarkable that some of these placards were allowed to remain without being torn or otherwise injured.

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As the month of May is specially dedicated by Roman Catholics to the Virgin, your Missionary procured the kind assistance of several of the clergy of Belfast, who readily volunteered to preach controversial sermons in the principal churches in town.

In some of the country districts one is glad to find here and there a spirit of candour and religious inquiry, which with God's blessing may yet be productive of greater results. A Roman Catho

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The Romanists of this place felt deep interest in them, several of whom are emigrating day after day to seek that liberty of conscience in America which is denied them at home.

Language can ill describe the persecution to which converts from the Church are exposed on their being brought out from darkness, error, and superstition. A young man in this neighbourhood who attended the controversial lectures has been lately coming to church. Since then he underwent great persecution, yet he is as firin as a rock, earnestly contending for the faith. His father is his greatest opponent. He tried every means to induce him to apostatize, and now he is sending him away out of the country rather than keep him under his roof.

The visits of your agents are gladly received by the Romanists of this extensive region, and the inhabitants of the surrounding islands of the Atlantic are being brought under the sound of the Gospel. The schools are well attended, and the Romanists are very much pleased to have their children taught the Word of God. The Sabbath school is very well attended, and the pupils are teaching those around them, not only by word but by example.

The Word of God is bearing fruit in the happy homes of our numerous converts, who take deep interest in the extension of the Gospel at home and

abroad.

The Banner of the Truth in Ireland.

OCTOBER 1, 1870.

THOUGHTS ON A RECENT VISIT TO SOME OF THE FRENCH AND BELGIAN CATHEDRALS.

(By the Rev. Henry Lansdell, Association Secretary to the Society for Irish Church Missions.)

EMPER EADEM," or "always the same," is a motto in which the Church of Rome rejoices. She would have us believe that it applies to her doctrines no less than her practice. The power of granting indulgences, for instance, she asserts that the Church has used from the earliest antiquity (Council of Trent, Sess. xxv., De Indulg.); the invocation of saints, and the use of images in worship she would have us regard as the teaching of the early Catholic Church. But when she tells us that doctrines such as these are Catholic, or, in other words, that they have been "at all times, in all places, and by all persons believed," we simply say that she errs, not knowing, or else ignoring, the statements of history. The first plenary indulgence was not granted until the year 1095; for the first four centuries the invocation of saints was unknown; and, as early as the eighth century, the use of images in worship was condemned by a Christian Council. So then "semper eadem "is utterly false when applied to many of the doctrines of Rome.

The motto, nevertheless, in some respects is true; for if we take the word "always" in its less accurate meaning of "everywhere," I fear that it is but too true of many of the characteristics of Rome that they are both "everywhere" and "always" the same. Some of those characteristics I witnessed last year, when making a tour through our Missions in Ireland. This year I have observed them again in parts of

France and Belgium; and the solemn conviction left on my mind is this: First, that the public worship now prevailing in Popish countries is a false, hollow, and heartless worship; and further, that the Church of Rome imposes most atrociously upon the ignorance and superstition of her people. Whether this conviction, thus strongly expressed, may at first appear uncharitable I know not; but I proceed at once to offer "the reason why " I have said it.

That the public worship of Romish countries is a false worship appears from the fact, that it is offered exclusively neither to the person nor in the manner that the Almighty has commanded. The Word of God tells us distinctly, "Thou shalt worship Jehovah thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." Rome, however, does homage to saints as numerous as the gods of her pagan forefathers. Like them, too, she has tutelar saints or divinities to whom she flies for help in special times of need; as, for instance, to St. Christopher and St. Clement from the dangers of the ocean, to St. Petronilla in case of ague, to St. Rooch in the time of the plague, and to St. Apollonia for the tooth. ache. Foremost among her saints, however, as everyone knows, she delights to honour the blessed Virgin Mary. I was struck with a notable instance of this at Rouen, when visiting the Church of Nôtre Dame de Bonsecours. On entering the western door, the appearance of the interior is perfectly dazzling. The roof, the pillars, the windows, the arches, the walls, almost everything in fact, but the stones of the floor, are covered with colour and gold. Solomon's temple, although "exceeding magnifical" could scarcely have looked, I should think, more brilliant. Such splendour, however, serves but to heighten one's grief on noticing that the north and south walls are literally covered to the height of several feet with votive tablets in honour of the Virgin. On the greater number of them is recorded, “I have prayed to Mary, and she heard me ; on one is written, "At Sebastopol, in the thickest of the fight, I called upon Mary, and she heard me: but, alas! upon no one of them did I see God's faithfulness acknowledged in the words of the Psalmist," O Lord my God, I cried unto Thee; and Thou hast healed me." The spectacle, therefore, served only as another illustration of the terrible fact, that, whatever Rome may profess in theory, yet, in practice, she puts the worship of Mary first, and that of Jesus afterward.

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As Romanists, however, pray to those who are not gods, so also do they worship both the true God and his saints in a forbidden manner. Nothing, surely, can be plainer from the Old Testament, than that God abhors the use of a similitude or an image in worship. Yet Rome fils her churches with likenesses of things that are in heaven abore,

and in the earth beneath (to say nothing of what she represents of the places "under the earth"), and, further, she teaches her people (Council of Trent, Sess. xxv.) that "they adore Christ and venerate the saints, whose likenesses the images bear, when they kiss them, and uncover their heads in their presence, and prostrate themselves." Now it is very remarkable that Rome does not see how, that by this practice of image worship, she exposes herself both to loathing and ridicule. The face of a sixpenny doll is often far more comely than some of their representations of the Virgin, before which the people are taught to fall down and worship. How gross then must be their conceptions of celestial beings, if their ideas of the originals are to be drawn from these so-called "likenesses!" On the other hand, how absurd must it appear to worship before an image, such as I saw at Rouen, in the church of St. Maclou, where the trunk of St. Clair is represented standing upright, and holding in his hand his decapitated head, as if, by the bye, to rival St Denis, who

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Which poetical statement (as a sacristan told me of another prodigy I saw elsewhere) "they may believe who like."

Apart from their veneration of saints and images, however, are we just in speaking of the worship of the Church of Rome as a "hollow" or "heartless" worship? If it be right in any degree to judge from appearances, then, surely, this question may be easily answered. One sees the market woman, for instance, enter the church on a week day, loaded with baskets full of commodities, and, having placed them before her patron saint, she kneels by their side, crosses herself, and her lips begin to move. But does she begin to pray? for the wandering eye, and the occasional use of the snuff-box even, cause one to fear that such prayer can hardly be

"The motion of a hidden fire,

That trembles in the breast."

From the very nature of Romish prayers, we should hardly expect that it would be so. The prayers of a Romanist consist very largely of repetitions of the "Our Father," and the "Hail Mary," and the last more than the first. These repetitions, moreover, serve for a variety of purposes. Sometimes they are "done" by the dozen, or even by the score, as penance or punishment; whilst at other times,

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