From the first all that was best and noblest and wisest in the land—all the artistic skill, all the wisdom and knowledge Ireland had—were laid at the feet of Christ. Druids and bards became priests and singers of the Christian Church. Not as an iconoclast of all the beauty and wisdom already existing did Christianity win Ireland; but consecrating all that was already wise, perfecting all that was already beautiful. As far as possible the existing organization was accepted. Bishops were the bishops, not of a territory, but of a clan, or kindred group of men. The old laws were not destroyed, but expanded and raised into the new. Patrick, though himself a Gallo-Roman, learnt in every sense the language of the people, the language of their hearts. There is scarcely another European nation that has, breathing through the first moments of its Christian life, a hymn in its own mother-tongue. But Patrick’s hymn was the _Hymnus Scoticus_, the Irish hymn in which every peasant mother could teach her little children “the Practice of the Presence of God,” binding daily round them as a constant “lorica” or breastplate in the daily battle the invocation— “Christ within us, Christ around us; Christ beneath us, Christ above us,” always and for ever. And, moreover, in every place where he came and founded a colony of Christians, Patrick left, if possible, a copy of the Gospels, or both “the Testaments of God.” These were indeed in Latin, but then, necessarily, Latin was the key to the treasuries of all the ages. And Patrick in bringing Ireland into the kingdom of God brought her also into the inheritance of all the civilized past, lifting in a sacred ark above the floods of Danish barbarism and Moslem fanaticism, so soon to sweep over the nations, not only the revelation of God, but the wisdom of Greece and Rome. Fifty years afterwards, the queenly Saint Brigit, then a babe in arms, had arisen, and (herself also a captive and a slave) had gathered men and women around her in thousands to the feet of Christ. Before that century had closed, the light and warmth of Christianity had penetrated into the remotest regions of the land, north and south, east and west; to Donegal, Derry, Banchor, and Connaught. Before another century had closed, from the fountains of the Irish monasteries the living waters had poured forth through Scotland and England, Gaul, Switzerland, and Germany; whilst to those fountains themselves, kings, nobles, men of letters from all parts, all who longed for fresher Christian life and deeper human learning, had come to drink. All this Marius could not know, but he felt the glow of the morning, felt that he had indeed found the Fountain of Youth. And all his life afterwards he would say to Ethne, when the days were darkest and the battle fiercest— “The sun is shining still in thy land, beloved! We may be sure the battle is a victory there.” [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV.