IRELAND by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 17, 1900

IRELAND

By John Norton Loughborough

From April 27 to May 3 I was with the church in Liverpool, England, and had the pleasure of speaking several times to that company in their place of worship. A number of persons have accepted the truth since the general meeting of last fall. This has already resulted from the labors of Brethren Andross, Altman, Harris, and their helpers. There seems to be a fair prospect of further increase by the tent effort to be made this summer.

From May 4–23, in company with Brother Hutchinson, I met with the organized churches of Belfast and Banbridge, Ireland. We also visited the scattered ones in Portadown, Tanderagee, Cady, Cloner, Baleyborough, and Bangor. With a very few exceptions we saw all the Seventh-day Adventists in northern Ireland. There are about one hundred. These all hold their membership with one or the other of the two organized churches. Those situated where they can not meet with their church have local family Sabbath-schools.

In Banbridge, on Sunday afternoon, May 13, with a short notice, we had an audience of one hundred and fifty, in Orange Hall, who attentively listened to a talk on the signs of the times. In Belfast, on Sunday, May 20, in the Ulster Hall, thirteen hundred assembled to listen to the same subject. This hall was next to the largest in the city. Although the rent and advertising cost several pounds, the expense was more than met by contributions, and by a collection of twenty-three dollars taken at the meeting.

Brother Hutchinson has his twenty-by-forty-foot tabernacle erected in a good part of the city, and there is a growing interest in the meetings. In Belfast, during the month of May six or more persons decided to obey the truth, and still others are in the valley of decision.

Steadily and surely the cause of truth is gaining ground in Ireland. Those who have accepted the truth are anxious to see the work advance. As is natural in every field, they would like to see the work on the island have its due proportion of labor. There are many precious souls to be hunted out in that field. Pray for the success of the work there.

At the time of my visit to the island, it was clothed with its emerald green fields and darker green “thorn” hedge fences. These hedges, skirted with the brilliant yellow “whins” blossoms, and their banks covered with the cream-colored primroses, blue violets, and purple meadow rockets, were a gorgeous sight. No wonder the Irishman of America speaks of the beauty of the home land. Many fled from the country, not because of its lack of beauty, but to escape the oppression of landlords. I was glad to learn, however, that Britain has now provided for the mitigation of some of those oppressions.

In our journey to Cady we had an hour in Armagh. We visited the St. Patrick Cathedral, erected in 445 A. D. This was the home diocese of the famous St. Patrick, whom the Irish Catholic claims as ‘our principal patron, who banished the reptiles from Ireland.’ As to his ‘banishing’ snakes and toads, that is probably fabulous; but I was told by many citizens that a snake will not live in Ireland. Several times snakes have been brought there; and when placed upon the ground, they will crawl along a little way, then curl up and die. It is supposed that there is something in the soil that

is surer death to the snake than the power of the dead St. Patrick.

One thing is certain; that is, that St. Patrick of the fifth century did not entertain all the many tenets of the Catholic Church of later centuries. Many writers claim that he was not in his time a Roman Catholic. Be that as it may, the St. Patrick Cathedral on the hill in Armagh is now a Protestant place of worship. The Catholics have in late years erected another cathedral on another hill in Armagh, still to hold a Catholic diocese of St. Patrick.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.