And all this time, when he was not doing anything else, he was writing books, and almost all of his works are regarded as the best books ever written upon the subjects of which they treat. “The American Commonwealth” is acknowledged to be the best account of our institutions ever penned by a foreigner. “The Holy Roman Empire” is a model of historical literature, while Mr. Bryce’s other books, on a variety of subjects, are of equal rank in scholarship and in literary merit.
The late Rev. Dr. John Hall, in his day the most eminent Presbyterian divine in America, was born at Armagh, where Cardinal Logue, the Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, presides over the ancient see of St. Patrick. Dr. Hall was born in 1829, entered Belfast College when he was only thirteen years old, and although the youngest in his class, ranked first in scholarship and took the largest number of prizes. He studied theology at the Presbyterian Seminary here, and when he was only twenty-two years old became pastor of the First Church at Armagh, his native town. In 1856 he was called to Dublin as pastor of the Rutland Presbyterian Church, and was appointed commissioner of education for Ireland. In 1867 he was sent to the United States as a delegate to the general assembly, and created such a favorable impression that he immediately received a call to the pulpit of the Fifth Avenue Church, Presbyterian, of New York, which he accepted and occupied the rest of his life.
XVI
THE THRIVING CITY OF BELFAST
Belfast has a population of 380,000, according to the most reliable estimates. The latest enumeration, in 1901, showed a population of 349,180, which is just double that returned by the census of 1871. Of this population 120,269 are Presbyterians, 102,991 are Episcopalians, 84,992 are Roman Catholics, 21,506 Methodists, and the remainder are divided among a dozen different religious denominations. It is distinctively a theological town.
You hear workingmen discussing theology in the street cars instead of politics, comparing the eloquence of their ministers and their soundness in the faith.
There is a remarkably large attendance at church. All the churches are crowded every Sunday. There is a difference of terms, however, with the several denominations. Catholics go to “mass” where a priest officiates; members of the Church of Ireland attend “service” which is performed by a parson; while the Presbyterians and other nonconformists go to “meeting” and hear the gospel expounded by a minister. The Presbyterian services are very long and heavy. They begin at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning and last till 1:30, and the Sunday school continues two hours. The congregation is never satisfied with a sermon less than an hour long, while an hour and a quarter is preferred, and they insist that their ministers shall expound doctrinal texts to their satisfaction or they criticise them freely and fiercely.
The Irish are the most old-fashioned kind of Presbyterians, being stricter than the Scotch. Few churches allow musical instruments or hymns that rhyme, and the congregations follow a precentor with a tuning fork in chanting Rouse’s version of the Psalms of David.
The people remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy only until afternoon. There are no railway trains or street cars running in the morning, and you cannot find a cab or a jaunting car on the street. No boats arrive or depart from the docks on Sunday, and when I took a walk along the river front one Sunday I found the men who were accustomed to work there all sitting around eating “willicks,” or periwinkles—a sort of water snails which are picked up on the beach of the bay and are peddled about by old women and small boys like chestnuts. You can buy half a pint of them for a penny. The peddler has a paper of long pins in his basket and gives one to each purchaser to pry the snails out of their shells. That seems to be the Sunday morning occupation. But Sunday afternoon everybody comes out for a good time, the streets fill up with promenaders and the cars are crowded with excursionists.
The Belfast directory gives a list of sixty orthodox Presbyterian churches, and they are numbered from the First Presbyterian Church consecutively to the Fifty-eighth Presbyterian Church, with two extras, called the Strand Presbyterian Church and Albert Hall Presbyterian Church. In addition to these are five “nonsubscribing” Presbyterian churches whose members have refused to subscribe to some article of the confession of faith, but are otherwise orthodox and are numbered with the elect; four “Reformed Presbyterian churches,” one “Original Secession Church Presbyterian,” one “East Reformed Presbyterian Church,” and one “United Free Presbyterian Church,” making altogether seventy-two Presbyterian churches in a city of three hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants, an average of one Presbyterian church for every five thousand inhabitants.