ARTHUR O'LEARY.
Arthur O'Leary was born in the year 1729, at Acres in the parish of Fanlobbus, near Dunmanway, in the western part of the County of Cork. His parents were undistinguished amongst the industrious and oppressed peasantry, who at the time of his birth suffered under the operation of the penal laws. The family from which he descended was early distinguished in Irish history; but if his immediate ancestors ever enjoyed a higher rank in the social scale than that which is derived from successful industry, their circumstances had changed long before his birth, as a name which excited the respect of his countrymen, and a mind worthy the possessor of such a name, were the only inheritance of which he could boast.
In the year 1747, after having acquired such share of classical literature as the times he lived in would permit, O'Leary went to France, with the intention of devoting himself to the service of the Catholic Church.
A convent of Capuchin Friars at St. Malo in Brittany, was the school where O'Leary imbibed the principles of the learning, virtue, and philanthropy, which during a long life formed the prominent traits in his character. After having received holy orders, he continued to live in the monastery for some time.
In the year 1771 he returned to Ireland, and became resident in the city of Cork. Shortly after his arrival there, he contributed to the erection of a small chapel, in which he afterwards officiated, and which was generally known in Cork as "Father O'Leary's Chapel." Here he preached on the Sundays and principal festivals of the year to persons of different religious persuasions who crowded it to excess when it was known that he was to appear in the pulpit. His sermons were chiefly remarkable for a happy train of strong moral reasoning, bold figure, and scriptural allusion.
HIS CONTROVERSY WITH AN INFIDEL.
Some time in the year 1775, a book was published, the title of which was—"Thoughts on Nature and Religion," which contained much gross blasphemy. Its author, a Scottish physician of the name of Blair, residing in Cork, undertook to be the champion of free-thinking in religion; and, under the plausible pretext of vindicating the conduct of Servetus in his controversy with Calvin, this writer boldly attacked some of the most universally received articles of the Christian Creed. The work attracted some share of public attention. A poetical effusion in verse was addressed to Blair in reply by a minister of the Protestant Church; and an Anabaptist minister also entered the lists with a pamphlet nearly as sceptical as the one he professed to answer.
Father O'Leary's friends thought his style of controversy better suited to silence the Doctor than that of either of the tried opponents, and persuaded him to enter the lists. They were not disappointed. His reply crushed Blair; while his wit and logic and grand toleration raised him to the esteem and gratitude of his fellow-men. His first letter opens with this beautiful introduction:
"Sir—Your long expected performance has at length made its appearance. If the work tended to promote the happiness of society, to animate our hopes, to subdue our passions, to instruct man in the happy science of purifying the polluted recesses of a vitiated heart, to confirm him in his exalted notion of the dignity of his nature, and thereby to inspire him with sentiments averse to whatever may debase the excellence of his origin, the public would be indebted to you; your name would be recorded amongst the assertors of morality and religion; and I myself, though brought up in a different persuasion from yours, would be the first to offer my incense at the shrine of merit. But the tendency of your performance is to deny the divinity of Christ and the immortality of the soul. In denying the first, you sap the foundations of religion; you cut off at one blow the merit of our faith, the comfort of our hope, and the motives of our charity. In denying the immortality of the soul, you degrade human nature, and confound man with the vile and perishable insect. In denying both, you overturn the whole system of religion, whether natural or revealed; and in denying religion, you deprive the poor of the only comfort which supports them under their distresses and afflictions; you wrest from the hands of the powerful and rich the only bridle to their injustices and passions, and pluck from the hearts of the guilty the greatest check to their crimes—I mean this remorse of conscience which can never be the result of a handful of organized matter; this interior monitor, which makes us blush in the morning at the disorders of the foregoing night; which erects in the breast of the tyrant a tribunal superior to his power; and whose importunate voice upbraids a Cain in the wilderness with the murder of his brother, and a Nero in his palace with that of his mother."
Deploring the folly of him who thinks "his soul is no more than a subtile vapor, which in death is to be breathed out in the air," he holds that such a person should "conceal his horrid belief with more secrecy than the Druids concealed their mysteries. * * In doing otherwise, the infidel only brings disgrace on himself; for the notion of religion is so deeply impressed on our minds, that the bold champions who would fain destroy it, are considered by the generality of mankind as public pests, spreading disorder and mortality wherever they appear; and in our feelings we discover the delusions of cheating philosophy, which can never introduce a religion more pure than that of the Christian, nor confer a more glorious privilege on man than that of an immortal soul."