No doubt, my friends, the subject of Ireland’s unutterable woes has often forced itself upon your minds, and at the remembrance of her sufferings the tear has sprung to your eye, and your cheeks have burned and your breast heaved with just indignation at the inhuman wretches who, age after age, have lent themselves to Satan to be the instruments of his cruelty. But have you never looked beyond the physical miseries of each day and hour? Or have the wails of Erin’s exiles, the dying moans of her outcast children, as they famish by the wayside, and the bitter torments of her legions of martyrs so stunned your soul as to make you incapable of appreciating the moral grandeur of the scene? Oh, then, you have never conceived thoughts worthy of Ireland! You have seen nothing but her humiliations; you have not discovered the Divine glory which shines through them. You have seen the wretched work of man, but not the all-shaping, merciful hand of God. My mission, brethren, is one, not of hatred, but of charity; hence you must not expect to hear from me either a pathetic narration of Ireland’s wrongs or a vehement invective against her oppressors. Indeed, whilst I am very far from wishing to extenuate the infamy of those who have outraged and devastated the land of our fathers, yet, instead of fostering rancor against them, I feel more disposed to bless their infatuated malice, which, under the supreme control of Providence, has so chastened and sanctified the nation as to make it the model of Christendom. If Ireland, like the other nations, had “rested on her lees, and had not been poured from vessel to vessel nor gone into captivity” (Jer. 48:11), she, too, would have been a profane nation, with her measure of worldly greatness and with worldly ambitions and aspirations; but she would not have attained that noble station in the Church to which she was predestined, and for which a long series of trials was the indispensable preparation. Who does not sympathize with St. Patrick under the lash of his captors? But Patrick’s bondage was necessary for Ireland; and, brethren, Ireland’s bondage was necessary for the world. She was led into captivity, not only that the world might have a brilliant illustration of the heroism of Christian patience and resignation, but, especially, that it might have what it sorely needed, a nation of Apostles.