he would reduce their wishes and demands to one salutary point. Give the children of Ireland the Bible as free as Luther read it, and as God revealed it. This was their sole want. That this was a scriptural principle would appear from the command of God, in Deuteronomy, to teach the books of Moses to children; from the question and answer of David, "Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way ?-By taking heed thereto according to thy word;" from the unlimited command of our Saviour, "Search the " scriptures; " and from the biography of Timothy, in which, however brief, Paul relates how "from a child he had known the scriptures." The Protestants of Ireland are ready to sacrifice to the good of their country, and to the demands of the spirit of the age, any of the aids of education that are of mere human origin. However venerable, and however valuable, they have already surrendered them freely. But the

Bible is not their own manufacture; and if the spirit of the age demand that, the spirit of faith cannot yield it. The Bible is given of God for a light, and no man can pretend a right to remove it unless he produce a better; and he that pretends to improve the Bible as a book of education, must first trim the sun of heaven to make it shine brighter and warmer. He knew, indeed, there were not a few-even some Protestants, he was sorry to say—who thought the whole Bible not fit for juvenile instruction. The Bible, say these morbid sentimentaliststhe whole Bible, has too many records of sin to be fit for the eye of the young. Yes, and he might reply, the world, under the providence of God, has so many crimes passing in it, we must not let our children know anything about it. So coop them up as in the Tower, where the bristling cannon and the wakeful sentinel forbid all access; and at the mature age of twenty-one, bring them out into the activities of a life of which they are profoundly ignorant. Do so, ye sage experimenters on human perfectibility, and the first lying temptation that assails your pupils with its blandishments, and its promises, will demonstrate that the simplicity of artificial ignorance is a miserable defence against

the infection of crime. The excellence of the Bible, as a book of education, lies not, however, in the fact that it was a true picture of human life; but it lies in this, that it was a true picture of human life in all its realities of good and of evil, inseparably connected with the blessing or the punishment of heaven. The primal sin, the universal dissolution of morals in the days of Noah, the sinks of iniquity in the cities of the plain, the dreadful criminality of David, at which the recording spirit of God is ever pointing its unerring finger of condemnation—what were all these but so many records of the criminal court of heaven introductory to the tremendous sentences of a just and an almighty Judge? Or when any case of deep crime occurred where this terrible judgment was suspended or reversed, what was it but a record of that successful appeal which faith and repentance make to grace and mercy, as they reign in that bosom which "desireth not the death of a sinner?" And if there were those who were still angry with God, because he could pardon, let them cease their anger until they had found that they themselves had no sins to be forgiven. As well might the student of the healing art express disgust against the faithfulness of the book-case, recording the frightful forms of disease and the various results of treatment, as sinful man, at once both patient and student, might find fault with the Bible for describing at once the universal bane of sin, and the only remedy in the blood of the Saviour and the spirit of holiness. Bible was the only book that always set God in his being, providence, judgment, and justice before the eye of forgetful humanity, the only historical book in the world that ever gave or could give any true account of sin. Every man had some favourite sin whose deformities he attempted to hide, and whose selfcreated beauties he laboured celebrate; and nothing hindred any man from idolising this darling sin but the Spirit of God, by which it was mortified. Whenever, therefore, humanity uninspired became its own historian, it falsified from the impulse of its predilections, and presented a picture either of imagina

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tion or reality calculated to mislead or to pollute. It was needful, therefore, that the very Holy Spirit himself should be the historian of sin, that man might see the goodness of God without distortion, and sin and judgment without disguise. But would the Bible be read in Ireland? Had it not been denounced in its use as a school book, as contrary to all that was holy and exalted in the church of Rome? It had been so denounced, and he verily believed a greater truth never was uttered. It was not only contrary to, but utterly destructive of all that is "holy," when holiness means self-righteousness. It was utterly contrary to all that was called

ex

alted," when it seats itself in the temple of God, and “above all that is called God." Still the Bible survives in Ireland these blasphemous denunciations, of which I will give a modern instance :-' Mick,' said one of the Romish priesthood,

I hear you have got a Bible.' 'Yes, your reverence, and it is fine reading.' Ah! but Mick, you're an ignorant man, and it will do you a power of harm.' How can that be, your reverence, seeing it is the word of God?' But how do you know, you ignoramus, that it is the word of God?' True for you, your reverence, I am indeed an ignorant man, and cannot prove, beyond what it says, that it is the word of God; but here's the book, and may be your reverence would just prove that it is not the word of God.' His reverence declined the task. Mick triumphed in the honest simplicity of the appeal, manfully retained, and still openly read his Bible. Another instance of successful ingenuity in argument, and of genuine attachment to the Bible, has lately been related to me by a brother minister in Ulster. A female employed in teaching to read the Irish Scriptures was assailed by the parish priest, who finding the attempt unsuccessful, applied for the aid of the bishop. When all arguments of flattery and threatening had ceased, as a last effort, it was admitted there was a great deal of good in the Bible, but also a great deal of what was bad. The charge Betty admitted with all possible humility; and taking out her Testament from her pocket- Here it is,' said she,' and

if you would just be so kind as to look out the bad spots, and put down a dog's ear, and make a mark with your thumb nail, I would promise to your reverence never to read one of these bad places as long as I live.' His reverence did not attempt the discovery of the bad spots, and still Betty remained, as he believed, a successful teacher of the Word she so ingeniously defended. To a public charge, levelled, he presumed principally, but at all events, inclusively, against the scriptural schools of Ireland, he should here advert. He had read lately the report of a speech delivered at the Mechanics' Institute in Liverpool, and he believed, during the sittings of the British Association, in which, amongst many other most objectionable statements, the scriptural schools were accused of communicating little or no intellectual knowledge of what their children read. The exact words he could not remember; but to the meaning and effect he pledged himself. And the charge insinuated amounts to this, that in the scriptural schools they teach the children no better than starlings or parrots, and have their intellects totally unexercised and unilluminated. Now, to put this matter to the test, and to teach philosophers and M.P.'s to think twice before they speak once, he did there make his appeal to the public newspapers, to convey to the learned and honourable gentleman the following challenge. Let him choose any book of scripture; let him study it till the end of the session of parliament, and reveal it or keep it secret, as he pleased; let him then return by Belfast, and the day after his arrival he should be met by the scholars of one or more Sunday schools, each under fourteen or fifteen years of age; examiners should be indifferently chosen; the examination should not be doctrinal, if the hon, and learned gentleman chose to avoid it, but purely historical and philological, with proofs and parallel passages-in other words, intellectual; and upon the comparative result of that examination, he (Dr. C.) would fearlessly peril the claim of Ireland to a free and unmutilated Bible education. This challenge he gave, not in the spirit of a vain braggadocio

who dreaded its acceptance, but in a spirit, whose earnest wish was its acceptance, and whose object was to remind philosophers, when they speak of Bible education, that they should take care that they knew what the Bible was. He should conclude with reminding the meeting that, in Ireland, the scripture schools had more than one antagonist to all their educational efforts. He should confine himself, however, to one; but to which he begged to call the special attention of the meeting. It was a power to which Protestants possessed no counterpoise. They could not obtain it if they would, and they would not employ it if they could.

He meant

the fearful and anti-christian power of personal intimidation. How often had scriptural schools been emptied by the delicate persuasion of the priest's horsewhip? He believed it was seldom any laughing matter to the little shoulders to which it was tenderly applied. But this was not the worst form of intimidation. Children might be flogged from school; but the life of the adult convert was often the forfeit of his profession. Amongst the very last persons with whom he parted was a convert from Romanism, persecuted out of the extreme south of the kingdom, and escaping for his life to the denser Protestantism of the north; and much he regretted that time and tide, that unaccommodating couple that wait for no man, compelled him to leave the stranger unprovided with acquaintance or employment. With one example of the power and nature of intimidation he would conclude. A reverend pastor in the arch-diocese of him that rejoices in the name of John Tuam,' thought fit to assist a worthy man who was guilty of reading the scriptures to some members of his flock; but to the ghostly interdict compliance was refused. An argument ensued, when the scripturist, in his defence, drew from his pocket-not a pocket pistol to fire a bullet of lead, but a pocket Bible, from which he discharged a text; for this temerity was he summoned before a sage and solemn bench of magistrates, and for no crime but what he had specified found guilty of an assault. They might, indeed, cry' Hear!'

and the nation should cry Hear!' And whilst they laughed at the absurdity of the western Solomons, they must mourn over the tyranny that charges truth as a crime, and that unmanly pliancy of the secular arm that still carries into execution the anathemas of a ghostly domination. As illustrative of the nature of the intimidation employed against the sore disease of a diffusive Protestantism he might be permitted to state three prescriptions of a learned and reverend Irish physician-the same that obtained the decree of assault a scripture quotation. To give due solemnity to the recipe it was proclaimed, he believed, from the steps of the altar. Prescription the first, If any of these Bible men come near your houses, hunt the dogs on him.' They might laugh; but he that had scraped acquaintance with a hungry and hunted Irish dog might have little fun and less profit. Prescription the second, if the first sample fail, 'If the Bible men come near you, sink them in the bog-holes.' Yes, an Irish road being often through a bog, is often conveniently margined with a continuous pool of dark water a few feet deep, with a corresponding quantity of delicate soft mud at the bottom. A gentle movement of the shoulder would soon plunge a man in, and if a man had a reasonable alacrity in sinking he might never see the surface. But should he swim out-then for prescription the third. Here just as a physician, baffled by the strength of the disease, concentrates all his skill, calls in consultation aid, and risks at last a remedy which is said to be kill or curejust so our Rev. Esculapius, twice foiled, returns to the charge, 'hunt the dogs,' 'plunge in the bogholes,' but if that won't do, stab them with pitchforks.' When such a system of intimidation reigned, and reigned almost without control, to what power was the Irish peasant to look for deliverance? There were evils, some below and some above, legislation. But they were evils not above the power of light to expose, of truth to record, of justice to condemn, or of mercy to pity. Since the edicts of Pharaoh against the children of Israel; since the interdict of Nebuchadnezzar against prayer to Almighty God; since the

THERE is something delightful, when we see both extremes in life brought under the power of the gospel, the poor exalted by it as Christ's freemen, and the noble submitting themselves to it as his servants. On the one hand, those who have nothing in this life, are made through contentment, as if they possessed all things; while, on the other, those who possess all that this world can offer, become content, for their Master's sake, to be as if they had nothing of their

His mother was

peerage in 1603. Anne, daughter of Robert Kelway, Esq. of Combe Abbey, and the heiress of that family. To this lady was entrusted the education of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. well known in history as the Queen of Bohemia. Their eldest son, Kelway Harrington, died young; and the expectations which their surviving son (the subject of this memoir) afforded them, were also destined to be entombed in an early grave, but not till he had shone as a light in the world.

Lord and Lady Harrington were persons eminent for prudence and piety, and carefully brought up their son, not only in the accomplishments of the age, but also in religious instruction.

He possessed great natural abilities, improved by industry and docility, so that in a short time he was able to read Greek authors, without assistance, to converse in Latin, and to write it in purity. His acquaintance with modern languages was as great; for he could readily discourse with foreigners, in French and Italian, and was able to read Spanish. In mathe

* Clarke adds, and this honourable Lord, as a thankful man for their care, and honour received from them, returned honour to them again, and with that advantage, being no less honourable to them, than they were to him.' 20