p. 267 | Patrick in Ireland

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 23, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 17.

Patrick in Ireland.

CHRISTIANITY, in its purer form, came to Ireland about the middle of the fifth century. For six years Patrick, the son of pious parents, the child of a priest, had been held in slavery in Ireland, and on the hills of Antrim had tended his sheep and worshiped God. Every seventh year it was the Irish custom to set free all bondmen. Patrick returned to his native Brittany, to his parents, and his Christian friends, was ordained a presbyter, and studied in the Celtic schools of Gaul.

Yet his fancy must have often gone back to the pleasant fields and generous natives of Antrim, where his spotless youth had passed, who were still lost in savage superstitions, who sacrificed the firstlings of their flocks, and sometimes their infants, in the Valley of Slaughter, and knelt in the groves of the Druids. A vision came to Patrick as he labored at his studies in Gaul, summoning him to the conversion of Ireland. A voice called him in the midnight; he obeyed. About the year 432 he crossed the seas to the land where he had once been a slave, and preached the simple gospel to the bards, the princes, and the bearded people of Erin.

In the year 432 there were no images nor crucifixes, no pompous ritual, no spiritual despotism, no moral corruption emanating from Rome. The Imperial City, sacked by Goth and plundered by Hun, torn by discord, soon to be desolated by Genseric, and reduced almost to a naked waste, harried by robbers, and polluted by savages, had sunk to the condition of a provincial town. Its scanty population, its corrupted priesthood, or its trembling bishop were scarcely able to maintain the existence of its fallen church.

Patrick, therefore, the humble slave and missionary, brought to Ireland the simple elements of an apostolic faith; he preached only the doctrines of Paul, with almost equal success. The savage Irish received him with generous hospitality; he preached to the assembled nation on the hill of Tara; he purged the Valley of Slaughter of its dreadful rites; he founded schools, churches, and monasteries in the wilds of Connaught and along the dreary coast of Ulster, and Ireland became a Christian country, renowned for its intelligence, its pious genius, and its missionary zeal.

For many centuries the island of the saints abounded with schools where countless teachers were educated, and where scholars from all the neighboring countries came to study at the feet of the most accomplished professors of the age. While Rome and Italy had sunk into a new barbarism, Ireland had revived the taste for classical learning, and was filled with a thoughtful and progressive population. At the great college of Armagh seven thousand students are said to have been gathered at once; a hundred schools studded the green fields of the happy isle; in every monastery its inmates labored and taught with ceaseless industry; its missionary teachers wandered among the Franks of Gaul and the Celts of Scotland, to Belgium and to Germany, sowing everywhere the germs of Christian civilization.—Historical Studies.