Now, if the history of our race has been a history of supernatural patience and tenacity of principle, the destiny of our race is also a supernatural one. I am quite well aware that this position may be controverted. We have become so imbued with the materialistic spirit of the age, that finds its expression in books. and pamphlets, in the entire literature of the country, that many are dreaming of the time when Ireland shall become a great mercantile nation, competing for success with half the globe. God grant that her children may flourish on her soil in the full numbers that her natural resources fit her to support; but I hardly think or hope that Ireland will ever rank amongst the great Powers, that her armies will be invincible, or that her navies will sweep the seas; neither would I desire it. I had rather see her mountains crested with monasteries, from which God's praises ascended by night and by day, than see her valleys blackened with the smoke, and her rivers polluted with the slime of great factories. And, surely, there is no true Irishman who would not rather see your harbour ploughed by the emigrant ship, carrying your evangelists over the world to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, than to see its waters blackened with the hulls of warships crammed with deadly instruments of destruction for the annihilation of the weaker nations of the earth. No! Ireland has one great mission-that of Christian teacher and apostle; and Irish Catholics should have one great ambition-that of liberty enough to preserve the traditions of the motherland and to strengthen and consolidate the mighty race to which they belong-in a word, to make Ireland once more what she was from the fifth to the tenth centuries, the home of religion, the sanctuary of learning, the Pharos of the Western seas. I do not know whether there may not be in Ireland some chosen soul to whom God is speaking now, as He spoke to His Prophets, as He spoke to O'Connell, and revealing the future of the race. I wonder whether in the class-room of some Irish. seminary, in the hall of some great college, in some lonely Dublin attic, or walking the streets of our cities-in the dust of our towns, or dreaming on the purple mountains-I wonder whether there may not be, even one, who, gifted with fine genius and instincts, is looking into the future, and beholding possible conquests greater than those of Alexander and Napoleon, more stupendous and epoch-making than even their victories? If so, he has a vast If vocation, a mission that belongs but to the genius of sanctitythat of drawing the world to the feet of Christ and his Vicar. I may suppose such a great Catholic leader, full of the Church's philosophy, enthusiastic for the Church's rights, proud of the Church's history, I say he has a magnificent theatre before him, and such an audience that the greatest of orators or dramatists might envy. France would inspire him with the example of De Maistre, De Bonald, Montalembert; Spain with the example of Donoso Cortes; his own Ireland with the example of O'Connell. He would have to contend with the materialism of the age, the spirit of indifferentism in religion; that evil genius of France, the anticlericalism that is the badge and token of Freemasonry on the Continent and of secret societies at home. He would have to contend, in Parliament or out of Parliament, for the material interests of the people-for these are bound up with their spiritual well-being-and to labour for liberty without licence, and progress without perversion of principle. The great questions of Catholic education, temperance, social purity; the elevation and refinement of the home circle, the revival of the ancient religious spirit of Ireland, that filled her valleys with convents and her convents with saints, would pass into his special programme. He would preach the splendid socialism of the Gospel, the dignity of labour, the sacredness of poverty, the obligations of wealth. His armoury would be the Acts of the Martyrs, the philosophy of St. Thomas, the Encylicals of the Roman Pontiffs, and every brave precedent and episode in the history of Christianity from the days of the Catacombs until now. His allies would be all great and good men, who only want a strong voice to reawaken the slumbering instincts of a people of God. And, as it is human to err, he would have the spiritual insight to guard himself against grave mistakes of policy by looking habitually towards the centre of immutable truth, the chair of Peter. And thus armed and thus safeguarded, he would speak through press and from platform to the Irish race, and, through them, to the world. And as his voice echoed from colony to colony of our fugitive people, the exiles of Ireland would turn to us once more, and say, "Thank God, our motherland is not dead, nor stricken. Behold, in her old age, she has brought forth a Samuel or a Baptist, and the nations are hearkening and wondering at the preachment of the old Gospel of peace through the truth." But, perhaps, you will say: "We want no more leaders; we want no watchers on the mountain heights, but workers in the valleys." Well, be it so. Nevertheless, there is need of some power to bind up your strength and direct it. We want a voice to embody your feelings and declare them. We want a soul to touch your souls as with a flood of light, to be reflected back in an illumination of words and works. Meanwhile, we give you the inspiration you seek, the model you require, the counsel you need, in the life and words of him whom we commemorate to-day, and we tell you in a word, the secret of his success in life, his immortality in death, when we say that O'Connell loved his country with all the warmth of his great Celtic heart, but, above and beyond his country, he loved his God. MESSAGES. OD loosed His shining flock at even, GOD And every little gold bird came winging Into the dim, blue heaven, Sailing and singing, Swift and eager in luminous flight Through the breathing dark o' the summer night. With bright wings palpitating over the blue, Journeying by aëry hill and hollow? I fain would follow Through the ways of heaven, I the cagéd swallow, I the man bereaven, In whose heart is a wound as of a thousand swords. On your heavenly road You are so high, so high, Can you see my true love's face By the crystal lattices, When the gates of the House of God Her hair is a mist of light, Her eyes are the eyes of a dove, Her vesture is maiden-white, She is my beautiful love! I know you will find her, for sure, My saint all sanctified! Tell her I bring a daffodil in March And a golden leaf in the harvest-time, The winds moan on the purple hill. In through the fretted bars Whisper my messages, wingéd stars! Tell her no maiden's face doth pleasure me For any maiden's voice on land or sea My sad heart never stirs. No rose may blossom on her dead young cheek, Out from her grave no voice shall ever speak. O birds of God, Tell her I am with nor hope nor succour Since the day He took her Into His rest. Yea, the wolf of pain hath gnawed To the very quivering core of the living heart in my breast. Say unto her these things, O birds of the shining wings! Hie away! Blue in the east is the dawn o' the day, And the eagle of the sun Would reign alone. Out of his road! Little star-birds, fly home to God. ALICE FURLONG. THE A NEW BATCH OF TRANSLATIONS. HE twenty-second day of July is the feast of St. Mary Magdalen. We have seized on this circumstance as an excuse to insist on finding room in the present Number for certain fresh samples of translated verse, one of which is in praise of her to whom much was forgiven because she loved much. But why is this paper called "a new batch of translations?" Because our Magazine has at sundry times given to the world, singly or in groups, new translations of old poems, especially some of the great classical hymns of the church. For instance the Dies Irae and the Adoro Te devoté have never been rendered more successfully than by our illustrious contributor, the late Mr. Justice O'Hagan; and Denis Florence MacCarthy also enriched our pages with several admirable translations from the Irish and the Spanish. Indeed a portly and very precious volume of translated verse could readily be selected from the two dozen annual volumes now ranged upon our shelves; and this store might have been indefinitely increased if our poets had been less importunate in their demands for space to set forth their original inspirations. And so it happened that our tribute to St. Mary Magdalen sought hospitality elsewhere, namely in the Journal in which the original Latin hymn which called it forth had appeared. About the feast of St. Mary Magdalen in July, 1894, the following poem in her honour by J. H. W. (of whom we know only the initials) was printed in The Tablet with the title, De Sancta Maria Magdalenâ juxta crucem Jesu stante : I. Te, Maria Magdalena, Qualem te respiciam II. Clavis laesi pedes isti Et tersisti crinibus; Spinis est crudelibus. |