the sacred supernatural meaning of the Canticle is therefore found in the narrative taken in this transferred sense. The figurative sense, as such, is divided specifically into simple metaphor, allegory, and parable. An allegory is a series of co-ordinated metaphors where not only the narrative taken as a whole conveys a complete lesson, but the single details also represent corresponding features of the antitype. It assumes a comparison already made, and some identity verified. 'I am the true Vine; and My Father is the husbandman . . . you the branches. . . . As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me' (John xv.). The parable is based on an express comparison between two things or states of a lower or higher order under some particular aspect. The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed which is the least indeed of all seeds, but when it is grown up, it is greater than all herbs (Matt. xiii. 32). The words in both branches of the parable retain their proper signification. The descriptive details do not apply to the antitype, but merely modify the lesson drawn from the whole parable narrative. When either of these figurative forms of speech is carried to any length, a pure parable or allegory is rarely the result. The parable has a tendency towards allegory; the allegory drifts into parable. The Canticle, of its nature, is a parable tending towards allegory: an allegorizing parable.' That it is in the main parabolical with some clearly defined and established allegorical traits is evinced chiefly by comparison with those places in the prophets where the marriage figure is used to illustrate the union of God and His people. In such prophetical descriptions the principal allegorical figures represent Jehovah and Israel: but the narrative is in its broad outlines and details clearly parabolic. parabolic. Common sense and the evident intention of the prophet prevent the exegete from attaching any particular significance to the details of the description. Moreover, as regards the Canticle, the variety of views met with among allegorists as to the meaning of the details, not to speak of the countless

absurdities resulting from pressing the letter of the Canticle too far, furnishes sufficient proof that excessive allegorism, even on the most subtle and scientific lines, cannot be sustained. If it meant to establish the sacred nature of the Canticle in the face of hostile criticism by linking the book up in every detail with the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, of which some authors appear to consider it a compendium, such exegetical extravagance is well calculated to defeat its own end. It is manifestly a case where the advice of St. Paul might be taken literally with much profit, 'not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety.' When we consider that the key to the interpretation of the Canticle looked on merely as a parable has to be sought elsewhere in Scripture, it seems quite sufficient to admit the existence of some well-marked allegorical traits whose identity can likewise be firmly established from parallel prophecy. This view of the essentially parabolical nature of the Canticle is all the more cogent when, as we shall see in a concluding article, the allegorical interpretation which makes the Canticle correspond to the historic relations of God with Israel from the time of the Exodus from Egypt, appears to be totally devoid of foundation in the context.

J. H. POWER, o.p.

GRACE ABOUNDING

A CHAPTER OF IRELAND'S STORY-VIII

BY REV. E. J. QUIGLEY

English Protestants are gulled into contributing their thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds to equip a new invasion of Ireland to support a rabble of greasy hypocrites and consecrated cobblers,' who under the name of Bible readers or missionaries prowl about through remote and lonely places, snapping up here and there an old hungry reprobate to make of him a child of hell two-fold more than themselves.-PROF. P. MURRAY.

W

HENCE was derived the vast horde of tramps who

were paid to rob Ireland of her faith? They were natives and foreigners. The vast majority were reared in Protestantism and admitted the fact. A considerable number were reared Protestants in Ulster, but masqueraded as converts, as did M'Manus, who was Menzies. The tribe of hungry old reprobates' was a composite corps, made up of hungry men, reprobates, priest haters from some cause or another-men who sought a salaried job, disappointed men; schoolmasters under some private patron, trust, or society, men who were unfit to pass the teachers' examinations for teachers under Kildare Street or National Board, half-educated tramps, who all wished to draw salaries and cared nothing for souls or for true religion or conversion. Many of them were hardened in vice, and preserved in ardent spirits! Shoals of them were English apostles! Archdeacon Stopford's 'converted ballad singers' were numerous camp-followers of the campaign. Let one or two extracts out of scores available show those men and their methods :

The latest appearance of these missionaries in large numbers took place on Saturday, 30th July, 1858, when one hundred of them, from England and Scotland, appeared about ten o'clock in the morning, at

the Kingsbridge Terminus, Dublin, and took an apostolic trip to all the towns on the line to Cork. I saw them, for I travelled with them. It might be called a holy spree, in which religion, revenge, faith and frolic seemed strangely mixed up. The whole scene looked more like what might be called a spiritual lark than the mission of God. The mission ended in a free fight in Limerick, in which the Abbey boys of the Violated City worsted the missionaries; one saint crept under a bed for protection, another apostle was discovered in a hayloft and recognized by the white cravat which he wore on his holy neck, and a third was taken into a butcher's shop where he hid behind a quarter of fat beef, the infallible sign of the true reformed Church. And let it be publicly known. it is to the priests of Limerick they are indebted for their security, against the maddened rage of the people, under the most unprovoked and shameful conduct in calling the citizens 'priest-ridden Idolaters.' have heard an Irish song, which exactly suits these sainted spree missionaries :

'We boxed in Kilkenny, played cards at Tralee,
Broke doors in Belfast, and got drunk in Ardee.

We danced at the races, and loved at the fairs,

While thinking of bright eyes, and not of our prayers.
And what's that to anyone, whether or no,

Shin theshin, shin theshin, na bonin shin vo.'1

But the public utterances of these itinerant saints were mild and sweet when compared with their words and works in the lone and drear homes and hovels where they forced entrances to convert Popish idolators. Their ways were appalling. Men drove them off with hay-forks. Lonely women and girls fled at their approach. The merest shadow of assault brought police, petty sessions, landlord, parson, agent, and bailiff wrath. Their words and oaths were taken against the dozen of Papist oaths. They were 'saved'; they were saints working amongst sinners. Papists defending their homes and their daughters were tried and punished for threatening and for whacking the itinerants, at Gorey, Arklow, Ballymahon, Virginia, Donegal, Charleville, and elsewhere.

The masters of those men stopped at nothing in their canvass. Open bribery, threats, persecutions were daily. I knew a doctor who, in his early professional days, had a hard struggle. A parson called and called and urged him to

1 Dr. Cahill's Letters and Sermons, p. 112.

renounce Popery, and that the parson would obtain a local good-salaried job for him, provide him with a wife, and secure him a place amongst the local gentry. We can hardly imagine that occurring now. A handsome clerk, at 6s. per week, was urged to renounce Popery, and his employer's sister, a large landlord's super-adult sister, would wed the clerk of twenty and bring him lands and money and leisure. I knew him well, and often heard the holy history from him and others. Hundreds of such instances of brazen effrontery happened in Ireland in the Souper campaign: many were lured; few fell. God's grace guarded the poor Irishmen and saved them from the wiles of those ravening wolves.

The funds to pay this crusade came almost entirely from England, for the Irish Protestants, parsons and landlords, were, like the spouse of John Gilpin, of frugal mind'; and small part of the thousands of pounds paid to them as salaries and rents helped the new reformationists. But they excelled in zeal, in plotting, in propaganda, and in every way-save in money aid-helped the strollers who were to convert Catholic Ireland. Money they would not give, and the parsons were brought frequently to court by their poor curates to recover the miserable dole paid to those starving men, who starved and prayed on £40 a year, whilst their absentee superiors enjoyed from their parishes and pluralities large incomes, ranging from £600 to £1,800 per year. Scores of cases like the following are recorded in contemporary Press and pamphlet :—

THE RECTOR AND HIS CURATE; OR, ONE POUND Two.

I trust we shall part as we met, in peace and in charity. My last payment to you paid your salary up to the first of this month. Since that, I owe you for one month, which, being a long month of thirty-one days, amounts as near as I can calculate to six pounds eight shillings. My steward returns you as a debtor to the amount of seven pounds ten shillings for conacre ground, which leaves some trifling balance in my favour.1

1 Letter of Dismissal from the Rev. Marcus Beresford to his Curate, the Rev. T. A. Lyons.

VOL. XXII-18