“Pluck from her memory a rooted sorrow,
And raze the written troubles from her brain.”
But, above all, if we be just men, we shall go forward in the name of truth and right, bearing this in mind—that, when the case is proved and the hour is come, justice delayed is justice denied.
There are many who think that to lay hands upon the national Church Establishment of a country is a profane and unhallowed act. I respect that feeling. I sympathize with it. I sympathize with it while I think it my duty to overcome and repress it. But if it be an error, it is an error entitled to respect. There is something in the idea of a national establishment of religion, of a solemn appropriation of a part of the Commonwealth for conferring upon all who are ready to receive it what we know to be an inestimable benefit; of saving that portion of the inheritance from private selfishness, in order to extract from it, if we can, pure and unmixed advantages of the highest order for the population at large.
There is something in this so attractive that it is an image that must always command the homage of the many. It is somewhat like the kingly ghost in Hamlet, of which one of the characters of Shakespeare says:—
“We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery”
But, sir, this is to view a religious establishment upon one side, only upon what I may call the ethereal side. It has likewise a side of earth; and here I cannot do better than quote some lines written by the Archbishop of Dublin, at a time when his genius was devoted to the muses. He said, in speaking of mankind: