Groomsport Orlock Point. Mouth of Belfast Lough

Ship Eagle wing continued

The influence which this company of emigrants exercised on Ireland, and ultimately on America, is incalculable. It is scarcely possible to conceive, that any situation in New England could have afforded them such a theatre of action as the province of Ulster; perhaps none they might have occupied anywhere in America, even in founding a new State, could have afforded such ample exhibition of the power of their principles and godly lives. There had been a revival, a great revival in Ireland, among the emigrants from Scotland and their children; but as yet, no Presbytery had been formed; and the influence of the Presbyterian Protestants was circumscribed, and their principles not yet deep-rooted for permanency. Had this colony succeeded in finding an agreeable situation in America, in all probability so many of their friends and countrymen would have followed, that the North of Ireland would have been deserted to the native Irish, or the wild beasts, as in the times just preceding the emigration from Scotland. This company of men, as will be seen in the subsequent history, were the efficient instruments in the hands of God, of embodying the Presbyterians of Ireland, of spreading their principles far and wide, and marshalling congregation after congregation, whose industry made Ulster blossom as the rose. The Presbyterians became the balancing power of Ireland. "You need not"--said an intelligent physician of Petersburg, Va., who is familiar with Ireland, and does not claim to be a Presbyterian,--"You need not ask when you are to pass from the Catholic counties to those of the Protestants. You will see and feel the change in everything around you."

Had the principles of Usher prevailed, and these men been permitted to labor in peace in their parishes, it would in all probability have been long before a Presbytery had been formed in Ireland; and when formed its influence and number of churches would have been really less than they were in 1642, the year the first Presbytery met. The intolerance of the Court and their obedient bishops drove these men out of the churches of the establishment. When the four set sail in 1636, for America, no faithful Presbyterian was left; the others were dead, or had retired to Scotland; all bonds were broken that might have held them in connection with the Episcopal church. The tempest brought them back to do a work in Scotland; and the rebellion and consequent massacre, by the native Irish, opened the way for their successful labors in Ireland, and for founding the Irish Presbyterian church. The wrath of man, and the tempests of the ocean, together work the wonderful counsels of Almighty God.

After the lapse of some two-thirds of a century, Ulster began to send out swarms to America; shipload after shipload of men trained to labor and habits of independence, sought the American shores; year after year the tide rolled on without once ebbing; and many thousands of these descendants of the emigrants from Scotland, disdaining to be called Irish, filled the upper country of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Ulster, in Ireland, has been an exhaustless hive, a perennial spring; and the form and fashion of its emigrants were moulded by these men, whom the storms baffled and sent back to do a work for Ireland and America. LIVINGSTON and BLAIR lived for Posterity.

In 1608, Jamestown, in Virginia, was founded by a small company from England; in 1620, the May Flower landed her little band of Puritans on Plymouth rock; in 1636, the Eaglewing relanded her company at Lochfergus; and some few years afterwards King Charles forbade the sailing of the vessel that should have carried away from England the Spirits of the Revolution. Napoleon, with all his immense hosts of savans and soldiers, did not, could not so change the condition of the world, as those four bands that, collectively, would scarce have formed a regiment in his immense army. Principles, not men, must govern the world under the Providence of God.

It was well that the distressed people of Ireland turned their thoughts to America for a resting place; it was better that they embarked for the wilderness, as it manifested an enterprise equal to the emergency; but it was better still that God's wise providence sent them back to labor for Ireland, and shut them up to the work; and last, it was best of all, that they laid the foundation of that church which may claim to be the mother of the American Presbyterian Church, the worthy child of a worthy mother