In such ways, and not from the superfluity of the rich, many thousands of pounds were gathered annually.

It was still more wonderful to him to discover that large numbers of young men and women, and these the most able and energetic, devoted themselves to this foreign service, and that their brothers and sisters at home were banded together in unions to watch their doings and to pray for them.

He found himself entirely untouched by this enthusiasm, in spite of the beautiful expression it found in the lives of his new friends.
But it astonished him greatly that there should be this potent energy in the Irish Church.

The utter helplessness of its Bishops and clergy in Irish affairs, the total indifference of its people to every effort at national regeneration, had led him to believe that the Church itself was moribund.

Now he discovered that there was in it an amazing vitality, a capacity of giving birth to enthusiastic souls.