placed at the head of this paper66 GOD SAVE IRELAND!" Poor Ireland! she is indeed like a weak wayward child rebelling against the hearts that love her, and the hands that would help her. Yet if her people would with one heart and voice, ceasing their useless struggles, cry in deep earnestness, GOD save Ireland; if all who care for poor Erin would echo the cry, yea, besiege the throne of grace with this one request, saying, as Jacob said, "I will not let thee go except thou bless," in this "GOD SAVE IRELAND!" then, indeed, would this prayer, now uttered in rebellion, be what its composers never meant it to be, a bond of union between the two countries, so close that none should be able to sever it. Then, indeed, would there be hope for Erin and her poor people. I know that many, many Christians in England pray for Ireland, but dear friends, are you praying in faith? or are you only praying because you see no other way out of the troubles? "Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, Surely these dark days must only be as the darkest hour before dawn. Dear friends, do take this prayer even out of the mouth of the enemy, and turn it into sweetness and blessing. Let there be a new interpretation of Samson's riddle, "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." Take it as a new year's thought, a new year's prayer, and if it pleases our Father to answer it, we shall indeed all have a Happy New Year. SEEKING AND SAVING. I Do not know whether our English friends understand all the plans we have for reaching the minds of the Roman Catholics. It is all very well to have a Sunday school for Roman Catholics, and a Sunday service on purpose for poor people, but no Roman Catholic will come to either until some little anxiety is aroused in their minds about which is the right way to be saved. We have three means of arousing this interest, or rather four:-1st. By sending missionaries with the Bible in their hands and the love of Christ in their hearts, to visit from house to house, and from room to room, through the streets and lanes, where the poor people live. 2nd. By posting on the walls of the town placards with a text of Scripture in large letters, or a question which fixes itself in the mind of the reader so firmly that he feels he must get an answer to it. 3rd. By circulating thousands of handbills with questions and texts upon them, all taken from the Roman Catholic Bible; and 4th. Printing these same handbills in the newspapers, which is perhaps the very best way of all, because if a Roman Catholic receives a visitor, or takes a handbill, or reads a placard, he may be seen and reported as having done so, but any one may read a newspaper without being noticed, and many an earnest seeker after truth, has found what his hungry soul longed for, in the columns of a newspaper. Not very long ago a respectable Roman Catholic man was in this way led to Christ as His only Saviour; he attended the different classes and services, but was not known by any of our missionaries as a convert-however, Jesus knew him, and He gave him courage to confess himself a Protestant by taking a child to church to be baptized. The priest heard of this bold step, and immediately began to do all he could to bring him back to the religion he had forsaken, but without success. As a last resource he wrote to the man's mother, who lived in the country, telling her that her son had been guilty of a crime which would bring disgrace on the whole family. |