The way Irish Priests get money.

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harbours for fisheries, reclaiming land, and working the Irish mines, than to claim land for nothing.

There can be no nicer sight to behold of a harvest day than the holy priest coming with waggons to carry off, as harvest offerings, the best of the corn which the poor tenant forces by the sweat of his brow, upon bad diet and sickness, out of the barren, marshy, or rocky soil of the Green Isle. The poor Irish tenants cannot really feed themselves as well as John Bull feeds his dogs and cats after they have given the corn to the priest, the money to the landlord, and the little pig as a marriage gift to the daughter. There can be no pleasanter sight than to see the bright, merry faces of the priests' people after they have. emptied their purses on his table, at confessions, in private houses, where the priests eat the chickens, turkeys, and geese, and drink whisky till midnight. Happy are those souls whose money is presented to the holy priest at Easter and Christmas offerings.

Considering that the Pope and the bishops, the church dignitaries and the priests, in the Popish and Anglican system, get all the money, in excess, which they can pick up by art or craft, it is not a very great crime in a poor vicar to say to his parishioners and church authorities, "All I want is enough of food to eat for the work you give me to do, and if you do not give it to me, I will give you a meal a day for nothing, and I will go to whatever church will keep me alive by giving me a guinea for officiating in it.”

The poor vicar gives actual value for the livelihood which he receives; but the following will shew what the priest does for his money :—

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The Priest saving a dead man's soul.

A priest was sent for to anoint a dying Irishman; but before he arrived, as he was enjoying his whisky punch that cold night, the man died.

At the arrival of the priest, the dead man's relatives, especially the women, burst out into frightful screaming, quite as bad as that of the Primitive Methodists when despairing of salvation. The relatives were fainting at the thought that the man's soul was now in hell, as the priest had not anointed him to fit him for purgatory. The priest enquired how long the man was dead, and when told that it was four hours, he exclaimed, "He was born and he died under a lucky star, for his soul holds the centre of gravity between four places-heaven and hell, earth and purgatory; and, as the mean lies between the extremes, his soul is just mid-way between the earth and purgatory. So I can get him back." The people then gave three cheers for joy, and, falling on their knees they worshipped the priest. The priest then said a few words in Latin, and when asked why he did not speak in "Irish, the beautiful anti-English tongue," he replied that "Above all other languages the devil could not understand Latin, or get his tongue round a word of it." The priest then called for pen, ink, and paper, neither of which was there. So running after a goose and catching her, and pulling a quill out of her wing, he cried out in anger, at the top of his voice, "Unlike Martin Luther, the apostate heretic from the Holy Catholic Church, with his dreams, and his goose quill writing a Bible, which he invented against Catholic teaching, I will work a miracle." Having forgotten his pen-knife at home over his whisky, he called for a razor to

A dead man's passport to St. Peter.

make the quill into a pen.

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He asked for the Prayer

Book, out of which he tore a leaf, and for ink he took the blue bag, in which was the indigo used in washing the linen, and dipping it in water, and the pen into it, he wrote the words, "PLEASE, PETER, ADMIT THE BEARER." He put the document into the dead man's mouth, and he cried out, addressing the dead man, "The razor's operation on the pen will make sharp work with thy soul which will fly lighter than a feather from the centre of gravity between earth and purgatory over the sky, which will become bluer and bluer as thou travellest, instead of being cloudy and black like school ink." He then gave the soles of the dead man's feet some galvanic tickling, and they, with the legs, moved. Then in triumph he exclaimed "PLEASE, PETER, ADMIT THE BEARER." The people then shouted with delight, "Oh! Blessed be God, and the holy priest, for this miracle, for we saw our darling dead Paddy's legs moving alive off to heaven to St. Peter." They then fell down and worshipped the priest again. They gave him a sovereign out of a stocking, taken out of the roof of the house in the thatch, where it was hid. The priest then left the dead man with the holy passport in his mouth to guide him to the door of heaven, and to get him admittance from St. Peter. The priest got much money after this for saying masses for the dead.

Now that the Protestant, disendowed, and plundered Irish Church is depending on the alms of the people, her ministers will soon be priests or Passport officers, sending dead men to St. Peter.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The story of an Irish boy, converted from Popery, requiring to be brought into the Protestant Bishop's Palace to enable him to believe in the heaven described by the priests-His views on most of the Popish errors-His persecution, but final triumph.

M

ANY years ago a Roman Catholic boy, utterly ignorant of the Scriptures, living near Tuam, in Ireland, was taught the text, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world" (John i. 29). He was taught by the Protestant Bishop himself, to whom the text was suggested by seeing the boy day after day looking after sheep. After a year the good Bishop saw the boy again, and he asked him to repeat the text which he had taught him, and that he would give him a crown. So the youth said the words, "Behold the sheep of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." "Oh! you are wrong," cried the Bishop, angrily, "I told you to say 'the Lamb of God." "Well, surely," returned the boy, "what was a lamb last year is a sheep this year. The fault is your own, for not having come to teach me for a whole year. So I hope you will give me the crown." "It is God who can give you that," cried the Bishop. "I am His treasurer by virtue of my office to administer His Word." "Surely, in that case," remarked the boy, "you can let me have half the crown, and God will send it to you to make up five shillings for

Story of the Popish converted boy.

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somebody else out of your treasury fund." "Dear me! dear me!" cried the Bishop, "how ignorant your priest and the Pope's system have made you, poor benighted lad, without knowing the simplest truths of Scripture, or without having the crown of righteousness in your heart." So the Bishop left the boy.

This youth came every Sunday afterwards to the walls of the Bishop's Palace, expecting some droppings out of the treasury of crowns. He told people that the Bishop was under an obligation to him, by reason of having made him do the work of remembering and repeating that "the sheep of God takes away the sins of the world." At last some of the Protestant clergy took notice of the youth, and, when he told them why he was there, they informed the Bishop of it. The Bishop then gave him the five shillings, for he said that in fairness or mercy he ought to have the benefit of the doubt, as it was not clear whether the crown meant the five shillings or the blessing of the righteousness of Christ.

When the Pope's priest heard of all this he reported it to his Bishop, who sent for the boy, to give an account of himself for having listened to the Protestant Bishop, whom he called "the Saxon and anti-Irish heretical impostor." He told the boy that the Protestant Bishop was really a layman, into whom the devil had entered to make a Bishop of him to imitate the catholic church, and that he had sold his soul to the devil for money and Government honours. "Tell me, my boy," asked the Popish Bishop, "what is the way of salvation?" "I believe," answered the boy, "that the way is to go straight to what is good and to heaven, without any