The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger

Father Ryan at the North. From among the number of highly eulogistic notices of the Rev. A. J. Ryan, which have appeared in our Northern exchanges we select the two following as showing how his peculiar style of oratory, so much admired throughout the South, is appreciated by our Northern friends:

[Watertown, N. Y. Morning Dispatch]

St. Patrick's church was filled to overflowing last evening with a large and fashionable audience to listen to the eloquent lecture of Father Ryan, on the "Two Christs." We regret that our space forbids the publishing of a full synopsis of the lecture as taken by our reporter.--We will say however, that although having before listened to the Rev. speaker and knowing of his great capabilities as an orator, we had no conception of the grandeur of which in his hands the subject is capable. Father Ryan not only possesses a wonderful command of language, but a flexibility of voice that is astonishing; at times his tones are as soft as those of a refined and cultivated woman, again sharp as a knife with cutting sarcasm, thrilling with deep emotion, hissing with scorn or deepening into impressiveness with the varying changes of his theme, his large audience sat spell bound under the wonderful magnetism of the lecturer. Even now as we write the form of the meek and lowly Savior standing before questioning Pilate is more vivid to our minds, although perfectly familiar with the history, than we had ever deemed possible. Although we may not agree wholly with some of his premises and the conclusions derived therefrom, yet we will ever have a vivid remembrance of his incomparable treatment of the subject, its skillful handling and the eloquence portrayed, of its beauties and of the pleasure experienced in listening to the discourse, and we sincerely hope to often enjoy the same pleasure hereafter.

From the New York Sun.

THE ELECTRICAL ORATOR.

An event in New York Catholic Circles- The Poet Priest of the South in St. Stephen's Last Night-Jesus Before Pilate.

The poet priest, Father Ryan of Mobile, preached in St. Stephen's R. C. Church at 10 A. M. yesterday, and the usual congregation who listened to his eloquent and logical sermon returned to the lecture in the evening, reinforced by at least a thousand more persons than were in the church in the morning. As soon as the church doors were opened the throngs who were waiting surged into the edifice, and as fast as the tickets could be taken they were accommodated with seats, until every pew in the body of the church and both of the side aisles was filled. Respectful and music-loving as Catholic congregations are, that in St. Stephen's last night showed signs of impatience that the floods of melody from the organ loft should cease, and permit them to listen to the orator; and when at last Father Ryan made his appearance with Dr. McGlynn the mutter of expectation became audible, and as he ascended the pulpit, many rose from their seats and stretched their necks to catch a better view of the small, ungraceful, unpretending man that stood before them. He looked neither the poet nor the orator. But when he had finished reading from the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John the account of Pilate's last interview with Jesus, in a ringing, sonorous voice that penetrated like a sharp bell to all parts of the building, and stood silently gazing on the multitude after uttering the words, "What is truth?" the singular power of genius held his audience spell bound even before he broke forth in clarion tones that electrified them, "Pilate, Governor of Judea, did you ever forget the pale face of the poor prisoner that, bound and shackled before you, looked back into your face with his sad eyes? Did you ever forget his low whispers when he answered your interrogatory? Did he haunt you to the last day of your life with his poor pale face that on that Friday morning gazed into yours? Did it torture you to the end? A man bound and fettered, without one friend to sustain him and say to the Governor, 'He is true, and therefore innocent.' Poor, powerless, friendless, he stood before the ruler, and answered, and ere his answer could be heard, Pilate returned to the multitude without who clamored for his blood. Before Pilate he stood in the guise of a malefactor, and he, the haughty Roman whose banner had flashed in victory in every quarter of the world, asked a man fettered and bound, 'Are you a king?' For an hour and twenty minutes he held his auditors enchained by a succession of alternate logical points and flowers of poetic metaphor and symbolism, mosaicked in a stream of pure and elegant English. As soon as he began speaking his form and face glowed with the fire of eloquence, and every movement and gesture was full of impassioned grace and beautiful in expression. His small and well-formed hands are as expressive as his face. His concluding words were: "Ever since that Good Friday Truth has become a coronet linked with a sorrow. They nailed his feet to the cross, but instead of stopping them in their pathway it made them strong to travel through ages with his children. In crucifying Truth they crowned truth. Roses fade, but thorns endure through years and ages. Truth was cradled before the human race was cradled and earth and humanity will die before its De profundis will be sung. Truth never wears a perhaps. It is an everlasting yes. She is as intolerant of uncertainty as arithmetic and geometry are. They laugh at your efforts to make twice two three or to make the three angles of a triangle equal to four right angles. But while truth is intolerant of falsehood she must be tolerant of those who fall in falsehood, but do it unconsciously of the mistake they are making. Smile not at the Druid who clasped an oak thinking he had found truth. Honor him rather that he pursued her though he worshipped an error. But we have not a shadow of the truth but truth itself. Not a gleam of heaven through a rift in a church, but the full blue and the gleaming sunlight of truth to lead us to the sunlight of eternity".