Ireland, Historic and Picturesque

by Charles Johnston

"I am willing for His sake to shed my blood, to go without burial, even though my body be torn by dogs and wild beasts and the fowls of the air; for I know that thus I should through my body enrich my soul. And I know that in that day we shall arise in the brightness of the sun, in the glory of the Anointed Master, as sons of the divine and co-heirs with Him, made in His likeness. For the sun we see rises daily by divine ordinance; but it is not ordained to rise for ever, nor shall its light last for ever. The sun of this world shall fade, with those that worship it; but we bow to the spiritual Sun, the Anointed, that shall never perish, nor they who do His will, but shall endure for ever like the Anointed himself, who reigns with the Father and the Divine Spirit now and ever....

"This I beg, that no believer or servant of the Master, who reads or receives this writing, which I, Patricius, a sinner and very unlearned, wrote in Ireland,--I beg that none may say that whatever is good in it was dictated by my ignorance, but rather that it came from Him. This is my Confession, before I die."

That is the story of the most vital event in the life of Ireland, in the words of the man who was chiefly instrumental in bringing it about. Though an unskilled writer, as he says himself he has nevertheless succeeded in breathing into every part of his epistle the power and greatness of his soul, the sense and vivid reality of the divine breath which stirred in him and transformed him, the spiritual power, humane and universal, which enkindled him from within; these are the words of a man who had first-hand knowledge of the things of our deeper life; not a mere servant of tradition, living on the words and convictions of other men. He has drawn in large and universal outline the death to egotism--reached in his case through hunger, nakedness and slavery--and the new birth from above, the divine Soul enkindling the inner man, and wakening him to new powers and a knowledge of his genius and immortal destiny.

Not less vivid is the sense he conveyed, of the world in which he moved; the feeling of his dignity as a Roman Patrician, having a share of the greatness of empire; the sense of a dividing-line between the Christian realms of Rome and the outer barbarians yet in darkness. Yet the picture he gives of these outer realms is as certainly true. There are the rival chieftains, each with his own tribe and his own fort, and bearing the title of king. They are perpetually striving among themselves, so that from the province of one he must move to the province of another with an escort, led by the king's son, who receives gifts in return for this protection. This is the world of Concobar and Cuculain; of Find and Ossin, as they themselves have painted it.

The world of Find and Ossin, of Cael and Credé, was marked by a certain urbanity and freedom, a large-mindedness and imaginative power. We are therefore prepared to expect that the Messenger of the new life would be received with openness of mind, and allowed to deliver his message without any very violent opposition. It was the meeting of unarmed moral power and armed valor; and the victory of the apostle was a victory of spiritual force, of character, of large-heartedness; the man himself was the embodiment of his message, and through his forceful genius his message was effective. He visibly represented the New Way; the way of the humane and the divine, transforming the destructive instinct of self-assertion. He visibly represented the divine and the immortal in us, the new birth from above.

Yet there were tragedies in his apostolate. In another letter a very vivid and pathetic account is given of one of these. Coroticus, a chieftain of Britain, and therefore nominally a Christian and a citizen of Rome, had sent marauding bands to Ireland to capture slaves. Some of the new converts were taken captive by these slave-hunters, an outrage which drew forth an indignant protest from the great Messenger:

"My neophytes in their white robes, the baptismal chrism still wet and glistening on their foreheads, were taken captive with the sword by these murderers. The next day I sent letters begging them to liberate the baptized captives, but they answered my prayer with mocking laughter. I know not which I should mourn for more,--those who were slain, those who were taken prisoner, or those who in this were Satan's instruments, since these must suffer everlasting punishment in perdition."

He appeals indignantly to the fellow-Christians of Coroticus in Britain: "I pray you, all that are righteous and humble, to hold no converse with those who do these things. Eat not, drink not with them, accept no gifts from them, until they have repented and made atonement, setting free these newly-baptized handmaidens of Christ, for whom He died.... They seem to think we are not children of one Father!"

The work and mission of this great man grow daily better known. The scenes of each marked event are certainly identified. His early slavery, his time of probation, was spent in Antrim, on the hillside of Slieve Mish, and in the woods that then covered its flanks and valleys. Wandering there with his flocks to the hill-top, he looked down over the green darkness of the woods, with the fertile open country stretching park-like beyond, to the coast eight miles away. From his lonely summit he could gaze over the silvery grayness of the sea, and trace on the distant horizon the headlands of his dear native land. The exile's heart must have ached to look at them, as he thought of his hunger and nakedness and toil. There in deep pity came home to him the fate of the weak ones of the earth, the vanquished, the afflicted, the losers in the race. Compassion showed him the better way, the way of sympathy and union, instead of contest and dominion. A firm and fixed purpose grew up within him to make the appeal of gentleness to the chiefs and rulers, in the name of Him who was all sympathy for the weak. Thus the inspiration of the Message awakened his soul to its immortal powers.

Later, returning with the clear purpose of his message formed, he began his great work not far from his first place of captivity. His strong personality led him always to the presence of the chiefs and warriors, and he talked to them freely as an equal, gradually giving them an insight into his own vision of life, of the kinship between soul and soul, of our immortal power and inheritance. He appealed always to his own inner knowledge of things divine, to the light and power unveiled within himself; and the commanding genius in his words lit a like fire in the hearts of those who heard, awakening an enthusiasm for the New Way. He had a constant sense of his divine mission: