3. Yes, my friends, after withstanding for ages the open violence and the insidious wiles of Satan, Ireland was advanced to the highest station in the Church. “God,” says St. Paul, “has placed in His Church, first of all, the Apostles;” and by an unparalleled grace the Irish people were raised in mass to this sublime office. Other nations have, indeed, given birth to illustrious apostles. Spain may well be proud of St. Francis Xavier, Britain of St. Boniface and Italy of St. Augustine. But Ireland has done still more: she has not sent forth isolated missionaries; she has gone forth herself to the extreme ends of the earth. Oh, how often in these latter days has not that stern but salutary voice of God resounded through the island: “Go forth out of thy country and from thy kindred and out of thy father’s house;” and even though that high decree came disguised in the harsh tones of a bailiff, with what filial acquiescence in the Divine Will have not millions of her children bidden a sad farewell to their native land, their humble hearth and their dearest kindred, and gone forth to penetrate the wilds of America, the jungles of India and the sands of Australia! Truly, “there are no speeches nor languages where their voices are not heard; their sound is gone forth into all the earth.” With unflagging zeal and superhuman endurance they have planted the faith under every star of heaven, making the desert and the wilderness bloom with all the beauty of Carmel and Saron. Oh! island of the saints, how sublime is thy destiny! Everything pertaining to thee is extraordinary and supernatural. Thou seemest to belong to a different world from this, thou art so unlike the other nations of the earth. Thou hast been trampled on by every passer-by. Thy haughty invaders have disdained to call thee a nation. They have wished to sweep thee, with thy language and thy institutions and thy religion, from the face of the earth. Yet, lo! that which men despised and rejected, the same has become the corner-stone of the edifice of God. The more they trampled on thee, the more deeply didst thou cast thy roots; the more they shook thy aged trunk, the more rapidly didst thou shoot forth thy far-spreading branches.