The writer brings to his task only one qualification on which he
can rely--his own personal experience.

After having gone through a long course of preparation in Irish
ecclesiastical colleges, he lived for nearly thirteen years on
the Australian mission, and is now completing a decade spent in
giving missions and retreats in all parts of Ireland. Of the
college, therefore, and of the foreign and home missions he can
speak with whatever authority a long experience and ordinary
powers of observation are supposed to give.

In dealing with the foreign mission he does not rely solely on
his own judgment. Many matters here treated of he heard
repeatedly discussed by priests abroad, who bitterly deplored
that, while in college, they knew so little of the life before
them, and regretted that there was then no kind friend to take
them by the hand and show them what was in store when the day
came for them to plunge into a life that was strange and entirely
new. It is to be hoped that this modest volume will, in part at
least, discharge the office of that friend.

It may appear, at first sight, that when writing the fourth
chapter, "On Pulpit Oratory," the author had before his mind an
elaborate discourse, such as is expected only on great occasions.
This is not so.

It is true that the various parts of a sermon, when detailed in
analysis, may seem, like the works of a watch spread out on a
table, bewilderingly numerous and complex. But when we come to