The Tithe-Proctor: The Works of William Carleton, Volume TwoCarleton, William
General
The Tithe-Proctor: The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
“Mamma,” said the sick girl, looking up into her mother's eyes, “I
am sustained by one hope, and that is, that I will soon cease to be a
burthen upon dear papa--my heartbroken papa and you. I am anxious to
pass away to that blessed place where all tears shall be wiped from my
eyes;” and as she spoke she raised herself a little, and quietly wiped
one or two from them; and, she proceeded, “where the weary will be at
rest. Alas! how little did we expect or imagine this great weight of
suffering!”
“My darling child,” said her mother, kissing her pale cheek, and
pressing her more tenderly to her bosom, “you have ever been more
solicitous for the comfort and well-being of others than you have been
for your own; yet, well and dearly as we love you, how can we grudge you
to God? It was He who gave you to us--it is He who is taking you from
us; and what can we say, but blessed be His name?”
“My children,” said the old man, “what would life be if there were
nothing to awaken us to a sense of our responsibilities to our Creator?
If it presented to us nothing but one unshaken path of pleasure and
ease--one equal round of careless enjoyment and indolent apathy? Alas!
my darlings, do not we, who are aged and have experience, know that it
is those who are not taken by calamity and suffering who gradually fall
into that hardness of heart, which prevents the spirit from feeling one
of the most wholesome of truths--that indifference is danger, and that a
neglect of the things which belong to a better life, and which serve
to prepare us for it, is the great omission of those who are not
called upon to suffer. You know, my children, that whom God loveth He
chasteneth, and it is true. To those whom He graciously visits with
affliction, it may be said that He communicates, from time to time,
a new revelation of Himself; for it is by such severe but wholesome
manifestations that He speaks to and arouses the forgetful or the
alienated heart. Our calamity, however, and sufferings, possess more
dignity, and are associated with a greater work than that involved
in the isolated sorrows of a single family. God is chastising a cold,
corrupt, and negligent church, through the turbulence and outrage of the
people. What has our church in this country been, within the memory of
man, but a mere secular establishment, like the law or the army, into
which men enter not from a lofty and pure sense of the greatness
of their mission, but as a convenient means of securing an easy and
indolent profession? I know not what our church might have been if left
to herself; but this I do know, that for many a long year the unblushing
iniquity of British policy has served only to corrupt and degrade her,
and to make what ought to be the speaking oracle of God's truth, the
consolation of the penitent sinner, the sure guide to the ignorant or
the doubtful--yes, to make that Church, which ought to be a source of
purity, of blessing, and of edification, to all--a system of corrupt
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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