“Is this then also a land of divisions and crumblings? Do the men of Leinster and the men of Ulster hate each other as the Huns hate the Romans and the Saxons the Britons?”
And Ethne had replied—
“Beloved, I am afraid the whole world is a land of divisions and dissolvings. What Patrick has brought us is the one universal Church of the One Living God, as he told the princesses of our race at the well—‘Our God is the God of all men.’ If our Ireland, if your Italy, can live in His life, we shall be one and at peace, and strong. And this is what we in our little way, what Patrick and Leo in their great way, are labouring for night and day, heart and soul, every day and for ever.”
It became indeed clear to them all, that in Ireland and elsewhere the world is a battle-field, because the heart of every one in it is a battle-field.
Not long after that, it is said, one of the greatest of the Irish saints was baptized with the double name of Wolf and Dove.[7]
“If only,” Marius said, “we could keep the Church from becoming a battle-field! As yet, Ireland seems to have no heretics—Manicheans, Arians, or Eutychians.”
“Only in the germ, at all events,” said Ethne. “I suppose the germs of all the heresies and sins are everywhere.”
But although they were too near the seat of judgment and the throne of rule not to see the dark as well as the bright side, Lucia and Marius felt they had come as to a sacred hearth, glowing with love and life, warm with the natural warm-heartedness of the race towards their own, and still more with the glow of first love in the hearts of Patrick’s Christians.
It was near Easter when they arrived, the great season of the baptisms. Only three years before, Ethne and Baithene, with Ethne their mother, had been baptized among the first converts. And now well-nigh the whole clan—old and young, children and grey-haired men and women—gathered as catechumens around Patrick and his priests for instruction. It was a time of wonderful awakening and joy. Marius had seen Rome lit up for Easter, and at Ravenna darkness turned into day through the night of Easter Eve, by the gigantic candles and torches flaming along all the streets. But never did any illumination seem to him so festive as this in that far-off barbaric island, which the glory of the sunrise had so lately touched.
The halls of Ethne’s home were lit up with torches; every hut and cabin had its humble illumination; and the hills flamed the good news to one another from summit to summit, the great Easter greeting, “The Lord is risen,” “He is risen indeed!”