ng the immortality of the soul, you
degrade human nature, and confound man with the vile and perishable
insect. In denying both, you overturn the whole system of religion,
whether natural or revealed; and in denying religion, you deprive the
poor of the only comfort which supports them under their distresses and
afflictions; you wrest from the hands of the powerful and rich the only
bridle to their injustices and passions, and pluck from the hearts of
the guilty the greatest check to their crimes--I mean this remorse of
conscience which can never be the result of a handful of organized
matter; this interior monitor, which makes us blush in the morning at
the disorders of the foregoing night; which erects in the breast of the
tyrant a tribunal superior to his power; and whose importunate voice
upbraids a Cain in the wilderness with the murder of his brother, and a
Nero in his palace with that of his mother."

Deploring the folly of him who thinks "his soul is no more than a
subtile vapor, which in death is to be breathed out in the air," he
holds that such a person should "conceal his horrid belief with more
secrecy than the Druids concealed their mysteries. * * In doing
otherwise, the infidel only brings disgrace on himself; for the notion
of religion is so deeply impressed on our minds, that the bold champions
who would fain destroy it, are considered by the generality of mankind
as public pests, spreading disorder and mortality wherever they appear;
and in our feelings we discover the delusions of cheating philosophy,
which can never introduce a religion more pure than that of the
Christian, nor confer a more glorious privilege on man than that of an
immortal soul."

HIS INTERVIEW WITH DR. MANN.

Before he entered into a controversy with Doctor Blair, he deemed it
prudent, owing to the state of sufferance in which Catholic priests then
lived in Ireland, to obtain the sanction of the Protestant bishop of the
diocese. To this end he waited on Doctor Mann at the episcopal palace.
The interview is said to have been humorous in the extreme. O'Leary's
figure, joined to an originality of manner, sterling wit, and an
imagination which gave a color to every object on which it played, made
him a visitor of no common kind; and as the bishop was not cast in the
mould of "handsome orthodoxy," the meeting was long remembered by both
parties. After some explanation, Doctor Mann gave his consent to the
undertaking; in consequenc