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.