THE REV. THOMAS CONNELLAN, - The Gospel Magazine

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The Gospu Magazine. 539 nestling at the feet of the sugarloaf hills; these eyes have beheld many sights and scenes since they last looked upon thee, but nothing comparable to thy varied loveliness! One evening, after riding in from a visit to my dearly loved people, I found a letter from the bishop in my room. Although my quarters were separated from his only by a half-inch board, and some lath and plaster, he was always pleased to signify his sovereign pleasure by letter. I took it for granted that I was going to be sent forty or fifty miles away, and opened the epistle, I confess, with a trembling hand. It was not a lettre de cachet, for a wonder; it was merely a very civil request that I should preach the Holy Thursday Sermon in the cathedral. The subject of this annual oration was Transubstantiation. It was expected that the Protestants w
540 The Gospel Magazine. and pondered, while the soft south wind fanned my feverish forehead. Here was I, leading a life which I knew to be a living lie, longing to fly away and be at rest, and yet my regard for those who were dear to me kept me chained to my wheel. But at length it pleased God to constrain me, for after some time I could neither eat nor sleep, and walked about feeling as if vitriol instead of blood coursed through my veins, and shot in myriad fibrous threads about my temples. Tuesday, September 20, 1887, was my last day on the Shannon. I was sick almost to death, but the hope of speedy emancipation sustained me. After breakfast my parish priest had a talk with me about certain schools of which I had charge, and then I walked out of St. Peter's for ever! I had sent a Glad{;tone bag, containing a secular suit of clothes, to the boat, and determined at any risk to have done with myoId life. It was a lovely day, bright and breezy, and the pull on the river soothed, as it always did, my agitated nerves. I landed on the Leinster shore near Carberry, deposited my secular clothes in some underwood, and pushed out into the river. I then undressed, dodged a fisherman for a little, and having plunged into the water swam ashore, and stood for a moment upon a green mound to have a last look at the Shannon, then dashed across some uplands, through a red bog, emerging finally on the railway. I might have run to Moate, I fancy, had I so desired. No baptism by water had ever wrought a more wonderful regeneration than had that plunge into the sunlit Shannon. The load of sufferings and care which I had carried for years remained with my clerical garb in the boat. For years I had been as wretched a slave as ever tugged at galley oar. Now I bounded a free man once again, and myoId spirit had returned. I caught the evening train from Moate, and had my first sound sleep for many months in Dublin that night. Next morning I crossed from Kingstown, and about six o'clock in the evening stepped out of Euston, friendless and unknown, in a wilderness of five millions of souls. But the God who befriended the Judean shepherd lad when sold into Egypt took care of me. In a few days I obtained the post of subeditor (under an assumed name) on the staff of a weekly paper. Since then my longing desire has been for more light. Daily in the readingroom of the British Museum I followed, step by step, the thread which had guided me out of the labyrinth of superstition and fraud. I was mO,re than convinced that my position was sound, and longed for nothing more than a closer communion with God. An Irish friend introduced me to the Rev. H. W. Webb-Peploe, Vicar of St. Paul's, Onslow Square. There, indeed, I found that of which I had been in search-a man devoted heart and soul to his callingworking among his people fourteen hours per day, a scholar, a gentleman, one accessible to the "heavily burdened," even as Christ had been. He proved such an attraction to me, that I went to live in his parish, and, like Paul with Gamaliel, I have since sat at his feet. To him and his senior curate, the Rev. J. Harford-Battersby (now the Rev. J.
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THE REV. THOMAS CONNELLAN, - The Gospel Magazine

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