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FAMINE IN IRELAND
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ing Christ, or carrying out his gospel; and I pray to be forgiven, if wrong, in saying, that in no place whatever, where Christianity is preached, have the sad effects of a nominal one been more fatal. The letter without the spirit has shown emphatically what it can do. It can make men proud, covetous, vainly puffed-up, and it can make them oppressive too; it can make them feel, and it can make them act as did the Puritan, in the early settlement of the New England colonies. "The earth," he said, "was the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, and what is the Lord's belongs to the saints also, therefore they (Puritans) had a right to drive out the savages and take their lands;" accordingly they did. The same spirit is literally carried out there in the tithe gathering; these "saints" have a claim on what belongs to God, and consequently the law covenant belonging to the Jewish priest, under Moses, is handed over to them, and whatever barbarian, Scythian, Jebusite or Perizzite dwells in the land, must to them pay tribute. The magistrates who collect this tribute sometimes do it in the face of spades and pitchforks, and stockings full of stones, which the brave women hurl; but having the "inner man" well strengthened, by both law and government gospel, they generally escape with the booty. These ludicrous and shameful scenes have measurably abated since the tithes are gathered in a form not quite so tangible, by merging them in or behind the landlord's tax, who puts this ministerial "tenth" into an advanced rent on the tenant; but "murder will out," and the blow is