Pinned up on one of the doors is the Pauline Chart. Have you never seen the Pauline Chart? It was prepared in colored inks, by Mr. Parker, a theological student with a turn for penmanship, and lithographed, and was sold by him to eke out the avails of what are inaptly termed "supplies." You would find it exceedingly convenient. It shows in a tabulated form, for ready reference, the incidents of Saint Paul's career, arranged chronologically. Thus you can find at a glance the visit to Berea, the stoning at Lystra, or the tumult at Ephesus. Its usefulness is obvious. Over the desk is a map of the Holy Land, with mountain elevations.
The walls of the room are for the most part hidden by books. The shelves are simple affairs of stained maple, covered heavily with successive coats of varnish, cracked, as is that of the desk, by age and heat. The contents are varied. Of religious works there are the Septuagint, in two fat little blue volumes, like Roman candles; Conant's Genesis; Hodge on Romans; Hackett on Acts, which the minister's small children used to spell out as "Jacket on Acts;" Knott on the Fallacies of the Antinomians; A Tour in Syria; Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians, and six Hebrew Lexicons, singed by fire,—a paternal inheritance.
There are a good many works, too, of general literature, but rather oddly selected, as will happen where one makes up his library chiefly by writing book-notices: Peter Bayne's Essays; Coleridge; the first volume of Masson's Life of Milton; Vanity Fair; the Dutch Republic; the Plurality of Worlds; and Mommsen's Rome. That very attractive book in red you need not take down; it is only the history of Norwalk, Conn., with the residence of J. T. Wales, Esq., for a frontispiece; the cover is all there is to it. Finally, there are two shelves of Patent Office Reports, and Perry's Expedition to Japan with a panoramic view of Yeddo. This shows that the minister has numbered a congressman among his flock.
It is here that Dr. Parsons is diligently engaged, this cold March afternoon, to the music of his crackling air-tight stove. He is deeply absorbed in his task, and we may peep in and not disturb him. He has a large number of books spread out before him; but looking them over, we miss Lange's Commentaries, Bengel's Gnomon, Cobb on Galatians,—those safe and sound authorities always provided with the correct view.
The books which lie before the Doctor seem all to, deal with a Romish Saint, and, of all the saints in the world, Saint Patrick. In full sight of his own steeple, from which the bell is even now counting out the sixty-nine years of a good brother just passed away in hope of a Protestant heaven,—tolling out the years for the village housewives, who pause and count; under such hallowing influences,—beneath, as it were, the very shadow of the Missionary Map and the Pauline Chart, and with a gray Jordan rushing down through a scarlet Palestine directly before him, suggestive of all good things; with Knott on the Fallacies at his right hand, and with Dowling on Romanism on his left, the Doctor is actually absorbed in Papistical literature. Here are the works of Dr. Lanigan and Father Colgan and Monseigneur Moran. Here is the "Life and Legends of Saint Patrick," illustrated, with a portrait in gilt of Brian Boru on the cover. Here are the Tripartite Life, in Latin, and the saint's Confession, and the Epistle to Co-roticus, the Ossianic Poems, and Miss Cusack's magnificent quarto, which the Doctor has borrowed from the friendly priest at the factory village four miles away, who borrowed it from the library of the Bishop to lend to him.
Perhaps you have never undertaken to prepare a life of Saint Patrick. If so, you have no idea of the difficulties of the task. In the first place, you must settle the question whether Saint Patrick ever existed. And this is a disputed point; for while there are those, like Father Colgan, whose clear faith accepts Saint Patrick just as he stands in history and tradition, yet, on the other hand, there are sceptics, like Ledwick, who contend that the saint is nothing but a prehistoric myth, floating about in the imagination of the Irish people.
Having settled to your satisfaction that Patrick really lived, you must next proceed to fix the date of his birth; and here you enter upon complicated calculations. You will probably decide to settle first, as a starting-point, the date of the saint's escape from captivity; and to do this you will have to reconcile the fact that after the captivity he paid a friendly visit to his kinsman, Saint Martin of Tours, who died in 397, with the fact that he was not captured until 400.
Next you will come to the matter of the saint's birthplace; and this is a delicate question, for you will have to decide between the claims of Ireland, of Scotland, and of France; and you will very probably find yourself finally driven to the conclusion—for the evidence points that way—that Saint Patrick was a Frenchman.
Next comes the question of the saint's length of days; and if you attempt to include only the incidents of his life of which there can be no possible doubt, you will stretch his age on until you will probably fix it at one hundred and twenty years.
But when you have settled the existence, the date of birth, and the nationality of Saint Pat-rick, you are still only upon the threshold of your inquiries; for you next find before you for examination a vast variety of miracles, accredited to him, which you must examine, weeding out such as are puerile and are manifestly not well established, and retaining such as are proved to your satisfaction. You will be struck at once with the novel and interesting character of some of them. Prince Caradoc was changed into a wolf. An Irish magician who opposed the saint was swallowed by the earth as far as his ears, and then, on repentance, was instantly cast forth and set free. An Irish pagan, dead and long buried, talked freely with the saint from out his turf-covered grave, and charitably explained where a certain cross belonged which had been set by mistake over him. The saint was captured once, and was exchanged for a kettle, which thenceforth froze water over the fire instead of boiling it, until the saint was sent back and the kettle returned. Ruain, son of Cucnamha, Amhalgaidh's charioteer, was blind. He went in haste to meet Saint Patrick, to be healed. Mignag laughed at him. "My troth," said Patrick, "it would be fit that you were the blind one." The blind man was healed and the seeing one was made blind; Roi-Ruain is the name of the place where this was done. Patrick's charioteer was looking for his horses in the dark, and could not find them; Patrick lifted up his hand; his five fingers illuminated the place like five torches, and the horses were found.