It is not for us to prescribe ways to Providence, but to study His design in the events which we witness, and to bow down and adore his Power, his Wisdom, and his Goodness.
To give power to an apostate and persecuting nation, and the grace of fidelity to another; to use and even to create the material resources of the first as the instrument of his design over the latter, may appear a circuitous course, but it is only another instance of that unity of purpose and multiplicity, variety and apparent incongruity of means, which we witness in almost all his works.
When the people of God were carried away into captivity, “the priests took the fire from the altar, and hid it in a valley where there was a pit without water”. There “they kept it safe”, while the Gentile hosts reigned triumphant in the land. But “when many years had passed”, and the people returned, they sought the fire, but found only “thick water”. This they sprinkled on the new sacrifices that were prepared, and “when the sun shone out, which before was in a cloud, there was a great fire kindled so that all wondered”. (II. Mach., i. 19, 22).
An analogous phenomenon, methinks, has been presented in Ireland. That combination of frenzy and irreligion, which men have called “The Reformation”, swept before it almost every vestige of faith from many of the northern countries of Europe, and seemed in a special manner to have enveloped in darkness the islands of the West. Men were like “raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion”, boasting of liberty and light, but treating the faithful with savage cruelty, and showing their own inability to hold fast any positive principles which they proclaimed as truth. The ancient faith of these islands, overwhelmed in the waters of tribulation, seemed hidden in the hearts of the Irish people, saddened by persecution and sufferings of every kind.
But the day has come for pouring forth this water on nations. By their sufferings, the Irish race, driven into many lands, mingles with the progeny of its oppressors. The sun of God's grace, which seems under a cloud, is now shining forth, and a great [pg 081] fire is enkindled and is spreading its light and its heat far and near. The Church of God is everywhere showing itself again in its pristine beauty. English-speaking nations that were the ramparts of heresy, are beginning again to fall into the ranks of Catholic unity, and, as happened once before, the light of faith that took refuge in the most distant island of the West, is, from that sacred spot, sending forth its beams and gladdening the Church by giving her whole people as her children.
So far we are led, I may say, by the mere logic of facts. Were we to indulge in speculation, but in a speculation quite in conformity with the beneficent designs of God, we might expect still more from these effects of the steadfastness of Ireland.
Notwithstanding all the faults of England, the Catholic heart throughout the world has never lost its interest in that land, once so faithful. Other nations, once as Catholic, have been lost, and they are almost forgotten. The land where the Saviour Himself lived is, indeed, remembered on account of the sacred spots which he trod; but no hopes are entertained for the conversion of its people. The Churches planted by the Apostles have been destroyed. We cherish the memory of the holy confessors and martyrs who adorned them; but despair of their return to the truth is the only feeling in their regard that we can discover in the Catholic world.
But in one way or another the Catholic heart seems never to have despaired of the return of England. Opinions and expectations which are, probably, nothing more than an expression of the intensity of this feeling, are everywhere to be met. They exist among the learned and the high, as well as amongst the humble children of the Church, and are found to be cherished in different lands. England, with her long catalogue of saints, seems to be considered, not as an outcast, on whom the sentence of spiritual death has been executed, but rather as the prodigal, who in a moment of thoughtlessness demanded, what he called his own share, and wandered from his father's house. The father is looking out, expecting every day to see the wayward one return, and is ever ready to kill the fatted calf, and to call on his friends and neighbours to rejoice and be merry, for “he that was dead is come to life again, and he that was lost is found”.
But, alas! there is much reason to fear that such joy is not to be expected. We know of no instance of a whole nation once fully and deliberately apostatising from the faith ever again returning. The grace of faith, if lost by individuals by formal apostacy, is seldom recovered. It has never yet been recovered by any nation that once enjoyed its full light, and deliberately abandoned it. It is not for us, to be sure, to place bounds to the mercies of God. Who knows but that in these latter ages God [pg 082] may do a work which he never did before? and, now that the Church has encircled the globe, and announced the Gospel to every nation under the sun, God may send her back on another mission more glorious than the first, showing forth his power in giving new life to fallen nations as he did before in converting those who knew not his name. His first work might be compared to that which he performed when he took the clay and breathed into it the breath of life; this, to his raising up the dead already mouldering in the tomb. But he has done both in the physical, and he may do both in the moral order.
Without having recourse, however, to this extraordinary dispensation, the hope of which would be unwarranted by anything we have yet seen, may not the hopes to which I have alluded, and which could scarcely have existed without some influence of the divine Spouse of the Church, be realized in the conversion of the children, rather than in that of the mother? May not the expectations of the Catholic world be realized by a return of English-speaking brethren in the various colonies which the mother country has planted? May they not receive the graces which the latter has cast away, and thus more than compensate the Church for the loss of that one island?