CHAPTER XIII.

THE progress of our spiritual adventure in the West of Ireland during the year 1848 was most encouraging, and every step tended to justify the original impression concerning the state of the people. The readiness with which the people attended upon the occasions afforded them, gave a prospect of future important results, and the countenance the movement received from the Bishop strengthened us in our efforts to induce the Irish Society of London to undertake direct and open Missionary work. The incidents already recorded laid the foundation for Missionary stations which have become important centers, and have manifested the blessing given to the work in a remarkable degree.

In order to enable the reader to judge of this blessing in the places where the present result has been specially eminent, it will be

well to give the details of some of the beginnings, more particularly as they will convey a clearer view of the working of Divine Providence in raising the Irish Church Missions to their historical position with reference to the Church in Ireland. The events of a single day which happened to be crowded with circumstances of interest will contribute some materials for the history of the Church in a large district called Errismore; and will, besides, illustrate the nature of the operations by which the Missionary work was commenced, and by which that seed was sown in tears of which we are now reaping in joy the first sheaves of a large harvest.

Many months after the preaching at Sellerna described in the last chapter, and when the promised school there had been built, I was on a visit at Clifden Castle. My friend, the Rev. John Lynch, was there also, and it was arranged that we should visit the school at Errislanon, and endeavour to gather the people there that I might address them. We set forth early, and crossed the bay to the promontory of Errislanon, which is one of those slender fingers that make Connemara resemble a vast hand of earth laid upon the waters of the Atlantic. On arriving at the school we found

the children and a number of adults standing about the door. The famine of 1847 had not yet left the land, though it had decreased, and its ravages had been checked by the bounty which had made such great efforts to supply the people with food. But its retirement only made room for the advance of the scourge which followed in its train; pestilence, cholera, and sad diseases were gathering the lives that famine had scarcely spared, and the general appearance of the people was truly deplorable.

I was addressing a group of men, women, and children thus marked with misery, and I was placing before them the comforting power of Christ's gospel as contrasted with the hardness of Rome's requirements, when a man came along the road in haste, and coming up to me, put a paper into my hand. It was a petition from the inhabitants of Errismore, asking that a school might be established in their district. It concluded with these words, "We are, therefore, willing to submit to a course of education based on the Scriptures; therefore, your kindness to afford us such facility for the improvement of our children shall be thankfully received and anxiously attended to, no matter what the opposition may be."

To this petition were appended 163 names.

Opposite to each was written the number of children the signer had to send, and these added together amounted to 439.

The petition and all the names were written in the same handwriting, and I asked the messenger who it was that had written it all. He said it was himself. Upon further inquiry, he assured me that every name was that of an individual who had authorized him to put it down. I asked, "Where is Errismore ?" He pointed across another bay to the south-that was Errismore, and the principal village was Derrygimla, which was close to the shore.

I bade the man (whose name was Stephen King) to go back to Derrygimla and gather as many as he could of those who had signed the petition; and I told him that I would cross the bay, and meet him by the time that he had reached Derrygimla by land. He bounded off at a hind's pace to make the circle of the road, in the hope of anticipating my straighter path across the water.

When I had closed my address to the people at the Errislanon School, we walked across the promontory, and arrived at a point where the Board of Works had authorized the expenditure of some money in the making of a pier, for the sake of employing the people.

There were about a dozen poor famished creatures who were nominally at work, but hardly moving one stone in a quarter of an hour. We had sent for the boat to go round from Clifden Bay to Mannin Bay, and we waited at this point for its arrival. It was impossible to lose the opportunity of telling the gospel to these apparently dying men, whose emaciated appearance gave me the most solemn impression as they stood or sat around me like living skeletons; and they listened with fixed attention, as if they were pausing on the brink of the grave to receive a message from heaven as to their journey beyond it. I do not remember that I ever set forth the salvation of Christ under so strong a feeling that my hearers would soon be called to experience the truth of my statement. As I stepped into the boat, I prayed earnestly for that group of hearers, who had heard the call of the gospel probably for the first time, and still more probably for the last time. None can tell how many of them had responded to the invitation and laid hold of Christ, who had so ordered his Providence that it should be sent to them even at the last moment, the eleventh hour of their lives.

We soon crossed the bay, and ran the boat upon a lovely beach of coral sand on the Erris