The single meeting-house of L------ stands on the main street, with its
tall spire and its two tiers of gray-blinded windows. Beside it is the
mossy burial-ground, where prim old ladies walk on Sunday afternoons,
with sprigs of sweet-william.
Across the street, and a little way down the road, is the square white
house with a hopper-roof, which an elderly, childless widow, departing
this life some forty years ago, thoughtfully left behind her for a
parsonage. It is a pleasant, home-like house, open to sun and air, and
the pleasantest of all its rooms is the minister's study. It is an upper
front chamber, with windows to the east and the south. There is nothing
in the room of any value; but whether the minister is within, or is
away and is represented only by his palm-leaf dressing-gown, somehow the
spirit of peace seems always to abide there.
There is the ancient desk, which the minister's children, when they
were little, used to call the "omnibus," by reason of a certain vast and
capacious drawer, the resort of all homeless things,--nails, wafers, the
bed-key, curtain-fixtures, carpet-tacks, and dried rhubarb. Perhaps it
was to this drawer that the minister's daughter lately referred,
when she said that the true motto was, "One place for everything, and
everything in that one place."
Over the chimney-piece hangs a great missionary map, showing the
stations of the different societies, with a key at one side. This blue
square in Persia denotes a missionary post of the American Board of
Commissioners; that red cross in India is an outpost of a Presbyterian
missionary society; this green diamond in Arrapatam marks a station of
the Free Church Missionary Union. As one looks the map over, he seems to
behold the whole missionary force at work. He sees, in imagination, Mr.
Elmer Small, from Augusta, Maine, preaching predestination to a
company of Karens, in a house of reeds, and the Rev. Geo. T. Wood, from
Massachusetts, teaching Paley in Roberts College at Constantinople.
Thus the whole Christian world lies open before you.
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.
You see that one has a good deal to go through who undertakes to prepare
a life of Saint Patrick.
But our thoughts have wandered from Dr. Parsons. He has gathered the
books before him with great pains, from public and private libraries,
and he religiously meant to make an exhaustive study of them all; but
sermons and parish calls and funerals, and that little affair of
Mrs. Samuel Nute, have forced him, by a process of which we all know
something, to forego his projected subsoil ploughing and make such hasty
preparation as he can.
He has read the Confession and the Epistle to Coroticus, and he has
glanced over the "Life and Legends," reading in a cursory way of the
leper's miraculous voyage; of the fantastic snow; of the tombstone that
sailed the seas; of the two trout that Patrick left to live forever in a
well,--
"The two inseparable trout,
Which would advance against perpetual streams,
Without obligation, without transgression--
Angels will be along with them in it."
And being very fond of pure water himself, the Doctor is touched by
Patrick's lament when far away from the well Uaran-gar:--
"Uaran-gar, Uaran-gar!
O well, which I have loved, which loved me!
Alas! my cry, O my dear God,
That my drink is not from the pure well of Uaran-gar!"
But finally he has settled down, as most casual students will, to the
sincere and charming little sketch by William Bullen Morris,--"Saint
Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland." He is reading it now by the east
window, holding the book at arm's-length, as is his wont.
The theme is new to him. There opens up a fresh and interesting field.
The dedication of the little book strikes his imagination: "To the
Members of the Confraternity of Saint Patrick, established at the London
Oratory, who, with the children of the saint in many lands, are the
enduring witnesses of the faith which seeth Him who is invisible."
He is interested in the motto on the title-page,--"_En un mot, on y voit
beaucoup le caractère de S. Paul_," and in the authorization,--"_Nihil
obstat_. E. S. Keagh, Cong. Orat." "_Imprimatur_, + Henricus Eduardus,
Card."
The Doctor looks through the book in order. First, the introduction; and
here he considers the questions--First, was there in fact such a man
as Saint Patrick? Second, what was his nationality? Third, when was he
born: and, herein, does the date of his escape from captivity conflict
with the date of his visit to his kinsman, Saint Martin of Tours?
Fourth, to what age did he live? Fifth, where and by whom was he
converted? Sixth, are his miracles authentic? and so forth.
After this introductory study the book takes up the saint's life in
connected order. Patrick was the son of a Roman decurio. From his
earliest days wonders attended him. When he was an infant, and was
about to be baptized, it happened that no water was to be had for the
sacrament; whereupon, at the sign of the cross, made by the priest
with the infant's hand upon the earth, a fountain gushed forth from the
ground, and the priest, who was blind, anointing his own eyes with the
water, received his sight.
As Patrick grew older, wonders multiplied. He came as an apostle of the
faith to Strangford Lough. Dichu, the prince of that province, forewarned
by the Druids, raised his sword at Patrick; but instantly his hand was
fixed in the air, as if carved of stone; then light came to Dichu's
soul, and from a foe he became a loving disciple.
Then comes the story of the fast upon the mountain. It was on the height
ever since called Cruachan Patrick, which looks to the north upon
Clew Bay, and to the west on the waters of the Atlantic. It was Shrove
Saturday, a year and a little more from the apostle's first landing
in Ireland. Already he had carried the gospel from the eastern to the
western sea. But his spirit longed for the souls of the whole Irish
nation. Upon the mountain he knelt in prayer, and as he prayed, his
faith and his demands assumed gigantic proportions. An angel came down
and addressed him. God could not grant his requests, the message ran,
they were too great. "Is that his decision?" asked Patrick. "It is,"
said the angel. "It may be his," said Patrick, "it is not mine; for my
decision is not to leave this cruachan until my demands are granted."
The angel departed. For forty days and forty nights Patrick fasted and
prayed amid sore temptations. The blessing must fall upon all his poor
people of Erin. As he prayed, he wept, and his cowl was drenched with
his tears.
At last the angel returned and proposed a compromise. The vast Atlantic
lay before them. Patrick might have as many souls as would cover its
expanse as far as his eyes could reach. But he was not satisfied with
that; his eyes, he said, could not reach very far over those heaving
waters; he must have, in addition, a multitude vast enough to cover the
land that lay between him and the sea. The angel yielded, and now bade
him leave the mountain. But Patrick would not. "I have been tormented,"
he said, "and I must be gratified; and unless my prayers are granted
I will not leave this cruachan while I live; and after my death there
shall be here a care-taker for me."
The angel departed. Patrick went to his offering.
At evening the angel returned. "How am I answered?" asked Patrick.
"Thus," said the angel: "all creatures, visible and invisible, including
the Twelve Apostles, have entreated for thee,--and they have obtained.
Strike thy bell and fall upon thy knees: for the blessing shall be on
all Erin, both living and dead." "A blessing on the bountiful King that
hath given," said Patrick; "now will I leave the cruachan."
It was on Holy Thursday that he came down from the mountain and returned
to his people.