Oisin. It would be pitiful and mournful, if thy story were true, ah Patrick! for all the saints who are in heaven, if they were to strive with Fionn in contest of liberality, could not obtain the victory over him.
* * * * *
Tell to me without controversy what is the reason of the custom you have to be ever beating your breasts, and each evening kneeling under gloom?
St. Patrick. I tell thee that it is not because we have scarcity of food and of drink that we are under armour (watching), but because we desire to be perpetually on our guard against gluttony.
Oisin. It is not fear of gluttony, nor in dread of king of saints that I receive for myself scarcity of bread, but because I am not able to obtain it from the clergy.
Astonishment is upon me to witness the greatness of your love for the man you call Christ, if hereafter he will perpetually upbraid you for the abundance of your portions and of your drink!
Farewell to Fionn of the noble Fenii; with him was ample banquet and division; he was not like the man who is called God; and moreover he gave without waiting for remuneration.... Never at any time did I witness him asking for kneeling and bitter weeping.[644]
But vain was the lament of the blind bard. The ideal of the pagan hero, whose fame he vaunted, had lost its primal appeal. It was the ideal of the cloister, incarnate in the “saint of many prayers and many vigils,” that was now enthralling the affections and shaping the consciences of men.
The monasteries as the cradle of the modern social conscience
In the course of a few generations the vast enthusiasm awakened for the ascetic life covered all Christian lands with convents and monasteries, which in their ethical influence constituted one of the most important of the institutions of the Church. In truth, the monasteries stand in closer and more vital relation than does any other ecclesiastical institution to the ethical evolution of the Western world. The service they rendered to civilization in preserving and transmitting to the modern world various elements of the intellectual and material cultures of antiquity has been fully recognized and gratefully acknowledged; but not so full justice has been rendered them for their contribution to the moral life of modern times. Yet it is probably true that the most precious thing conserved by the monasteries from the wreck of ancient civilization was that social conscience which was generated in the heart of old Judaism and bequeathed to Christianity. Professor Nash, in his work entitled The Genesis of the New Social Conscience, maintains, and we think with right, that the distinctive qualities of the modern conscience—tenderness for the unfortunate, a lofty altruism, a noble capacity for self-sacrifice—were qualities conserved and cradled in the medieval monasteries.