Ireland as it stands to-day presents a problem of the deepest interest not only to a thinking Christian man, but also to the student of political history. It, of all nations and peoples, has resolutely refused to follow after the _ignis fatuus_ of the revolutionary spirit of the age. This it has done in the face of the most pressing incentives to join hands with the agents of social and political disorder. From the first day of English rule in Ireland that country has been, perhaps, _the_ worst-governed country in the world; and this ill-government is only _beginning_ at last to cease. No better soil could have been offered as a battle-ground for the agents of evil. Yet, owing chiefly to the essentially conservative and Christian character of the Irish race, informed and strengthened by a true conception and grasp of the religion of Jesus Christ, the Irish people, as a people, has steadfastly refused to achieve right by doing wrong. For this the English government has to thank that religion which it was its avowed and persistent purpose to root out of the Irish heart, in which most wicked and revolting purpose it would certainly have succeeded long ago, were not God more powerful than all the force and machinations of man, inspired and guided by the spirit of evil. Ireland has at last shaken off some of the strongest chains that bound her, a bleeding nation, to her own earth; and she has succeeded in doing this by a persistent adherence to the right. She would not die, because Heaven made her immortal, and because the principle of immortality was grafted deep in her soul by an Almighty hand. She would not live at a gift; she would not accept a false life at a sacrifice of principle. She waited and suffered on. Her patience and her constancy, her virtue and her faith, have overcome all things. A new era opens before her. The question of questions is: What will she do with it?