NO REVISION of the English Kalendar will be tolerable that does not replace in it the name of St Patrick. Even now he is commemorated at many altars, and, by permission of the Bishop of London, notably and solemnly at the altar of All Saints’, Margaret-street. To many Welshmen St David, has become the symbol of racial unity, a hero of the nation rather than a saint of the Church. But to the Irishman St Patrick remains the Apostle of Ireland, Irish Churchmen and Roman Catholics alike claim him as their father in the Faith of Christ. We are sure that to-day many prayers will be made at English altars for St Patrick’s sorrowful land. If in some respects the Irish Church does not correspond to all our ideals, or offer to us when we visit Ireland all that we desire, she yet makes an urgent claim upon our admiration and sympathy. It needs no little courage to maintain her cause in such loneliness as is the lot of many an Irish priest and layman in the South and West. They can have but little support from experience of the corporate life of the Church, yet they hold on bravely in a task always difficult and occasionally perilous.
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