The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
The Excellences of the Irish Character are beheld in London in their rudest form.
The extreme ignorance in which the poor Irish have been left in their own country gives us illustrations of a fine natural character, only in its rudest, wildest, most uncivi- lized and undisciplined form. They are about as ignorant of the Gospel as if they had come from some heathen land, for the priests in teach less even than the priests in England. | |
" For the most part, the native Irish of London know nothing. They cannot express one dogma of their faith distinctly, and are not at all acquainted with those distinc- tions in which the Roman Catholic poor in this country are trained. You must speak to them as if they were children. And they are more easily reached by the heart than the head. .. . They will often bring out some book of devotions | |
263 | as the Word of God, and seem quite unconscious of the difference. They take their religion from the priest, and obedience to the priest is the chief part of their religion. So long as they remain Romanists, they are incapable of being affected with arguments, and when they become Pro. testants it is difficult to keep them from transferring to the minister the same blind faith which they have reposed in the priest." [1] |
Footnotes: [1] Garratt's "Irish in London," pp. 190, 197. |