l." Here he preached
on the Sundays and principal festivals of the year to persons of
different religious persuasions who crowded it to excess when it was
known that he was to appear in the pulpit. His sermons were chiefly
remarkable for a happy train of strong moral reasoning, bold figure, and
scriptural allusion.

HIS CONTROVERSY WITH AN INFIDEL.

Some time in the year 1775, a book was published, the title of which
was--"Thoughts on Nature and Religion," which contained much gross
blasphemy. Its author, a Scottish physician of the name of Blair,
residing in Cork, undertook to be the champion of free-thinking in
religion; and, under the plausible pretext of vindicating the conduct of
Servetus in his controversy with Calvin, this writer boldly attacked
some of the most universally received articles of the Christian Creed.
The work attracted some share of public attention. A poetical effusion
in verse was addressed to Blair in reply by a minister of the Protestant
Church; and an Anabaptist minister also entered the lists with a
pamphlet nearly as sceptical as the one he professed to answer.

Father O'Leary's friends thought his style of controversy better suited
to silence the Doctor than that of either of the tried opponents, and
persuaded him to enter the lists. They were not disappointed. His reply
crushed Blair; while his wit and logic and grand toleration raised him
to the esteem and gratitude of his fellow-men. His first letter opens
with this beautiful introduction:

"Sir--Your long expected performance has at length made its appearance.
If the work tended to promote the happiness of society, to animate our
hopes, to subdue our passions, to instruct man in the happy science of
purifying the polluted recesses of a vitiated heart, to confirm him in
his exalted notion of the dignity of his nature, and thereby to inspire
him with sentiments averse to whatever may debase the excellence of his
origin, the public would be indebted to you; your name would be recorded
amongst the assertors of morality and religion; and I myself, though
brought up in a different persuasion from yours, would be the first to
offer my incense at the shrine of merit. But the tendency of your
performance is to deny the divinity of Christ and the immortality of the
soul. In denying the first, you sap the foundations of religion; you cut
off at one blow the merit of our faith, the comfort of our hope, and the
motives of our charity. In denyi