Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/332

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326
ANNALS OF THE

our own ease, and in face and eyes of the customs of a God-hating world, is reprehensible, and wholly and entirely aside from the precepts and examples of Christ and his followers; and though to the blameworthy this may appear severe, because true, yet I cannot be a faithful recorder of what I saw and experienced in Ireland, without leaving this testimony, which I expect to meet at the judgment, that a proud, worldly, respectable Christianity is the first great deep evil that keeps that country in a virtual bondage, from which she never will escape, till the evil be removed. The awful gulf which is placed between the higher and the "lower orders" there, is as great between professed Christians and the world, as between the estated gentleman or titled lord, who makes no pretensions, and in many cases much greater. There are lords, sirs, and esquires in Ireland, who would sooner admit a bare-foot into their back-door and hear his tale of woe, than would many of the dissenting classes, of so-called followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. Why is it so? Simply this, not because these lords and gentlemen were Christians, but because they were not in danger of losing a standing which a worldly government had given them, by so doing, while the dissenter., a step lower in worldly honor, without sufficient vital piety to fall back upon, must keep the respectable standing that he had, or he was lost forever. And before closing these pages, duty requires to correct statements which have been made by many of the misjudging class of Irish who read the first volume, and have said that I had no opportunity to give a true ac-