AN EXAMPLE OF HEROISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 336, 26 September 1879, Page 15

AN EXAMPLE OF HEROISM.

A few Sundays ago Rev. Dr. Duggan, Bishop of Clonfert. preached a sermon in which, referring to religious fidelity, he said there wag a race which was to-day a mystery and a paradox to the powers of the earth. There was a race of heroes and of martyrs in the sacred cause. In the time of the Danes a wave of persecution passed over them, from which they emerged with the motto, " What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and to suffer the loss of his own soul ? " Centuries passed away, and then came three centuries of which he was about to speak with no bitter memories, for they must have been in the designs of Providence for some purpose — three centuries for which there was no parallel in the history of the world but the three first centuries of persecutions which tlie early Church underwent. Irishmen were exiled ; their property was confiscated, and they were put to death. The famine came, the horrors of which not the pen of a Milton could truly describe, nor the pencil of a Michael Angelo paint in their full colours, and which would never be revealed until the Day of Judgment. His Lordship then commented on the hardships and deaths which were then caused by the want of food, and on the system of proselytism which was carried out at the time. Apropos of this subject he narrated a most touchi ng example of female heroism. There was a pause in the public work.-, which grew out of that political economy after whose operation a million of the Irish race died before the world, and a poor man, the father of seven children, on finding every possible means of sustenance exhausted, said in his agony, to his wife, " To-morrow I will send my children to this school. They will get bread and clothing. I will die myself, but I cannot see my children die." The wife begged a d;iy, hoping that some means of relief would arise. On the next evening the father said, "Well, tomorrow ? I must not see my poor children die.' 1 The third day passed and then the father said, " I will not stand it longer, the children must go to this school to-morrow." The mother seeing that his resolution could not be changed, said, " As it must be so, and I cannot prevent it, leave the girls to me, and you take the boys. The father consented, and the mother and the gi Is went to bed together that night with the thought that they should never rise again. In the morning at five o'clock a steamer appeared in the bay (they lived on the west coast of Ireland), the public works were resumed, credit was restored and they obtained a sufficiency of food. Some 7 years afterwards be paid a visit to this noble mother of the Machabces, and a^-ked her how she was faring after all her sufferings. She answered "Do you see that corn-field, and that horse and cart ? These are mine. Do you see that other corn-field ? That is mine. Do you see that cow and thai sheep 1 These also are mine. The Lord has blessed us with plenty." He asked how she felt on the night when she lay down to die with her daughters around her. With the sublimity of a martyr she said humbly, " We said the Rosary of the Bles&ed Virgin as best we were able, and we closed our eyes never to open them again till the Blessed Virgin sent relief. That was one of a thousand instances of the fortitude with which during that dreadful period of trial the Irish race preferred the safety of their immortal souls to the goods of this world, and there were thousands of Irishmen scattered over tbe earth who, had they yielded to the tempter, would be now in the possession of thrir own homes in Ireland. There were two prominent features in the Irish chaiacter which were ineradicable — love of crc<?d and love of country ; and the sooner every one admitted this fact the better for the Irish race and the better for every other iace. The love of creed was first and that of country next. Wherever In'shmen had gone— whether in Canada— in one portion of which (Montreal) 1,200 men and women and children of that iace found a nameless grave in the famine days, having perished after quitting the emigrant ship— or to the United States, or to Austialia, or t» England, they had always endoavouied to procuie a priest, if they had not one already, and to build a church, that they might hear again the song of praise and nourish their souls with the food of life.