I am aware that this supernatural way of presenting Irish history is not palatable to some individuals of our race who are tainted with the materialistic infidelity which infects the present age. _Some_ there are――not many, indeed, for materialism and infidelity are snakes that do not thrive in Irish soil――who hear this Catholic doctrine with ill will. They think it likely to breed a fatalistic apathy in the national breast. They fear it may dull the edge of patriotism and reconcile the popular heart to oppression and treason. Impious folly! Do they imagine the Irish are like the Turks, that they cannot distinguish God’s eternal purpose from man’s petty malice? Believing as we do that Christ’s sufferings were predestined, are we the less disposed to detest the cowardice of the unjust judge, the fury of the infatuated populace or the base treachery of Judas Iscariot? You forget, too, my infidel philosopher, that we are discoursing, not upon Ireland’s unknown future, but upon her glorious career in the past. That past cannot be understood without a constant reference to God’s adorable counsels. To the eye of the infidel history presents nothing but a disjointed succession of contradictory events, which follow each other without order, without meaning. It is only when we survey the life of an individual or of a nation from the standpoint of Divine Providence that we are enabled to soar above “the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,” and to seize things with the intelligent eye of the Christian philosopher. But to return from this digression. There are, as I remarked, so many points of analogy between the life of St. Patrick and the history of Catholic Ireland that a poetical mind might fancy the saint ended his mortal career only to begin life over again, on a grander scale, in his children. The life of St. Patrick divides itself into three distinct periods, the first two of which are preparatory to the glorious labors of the third. The first sixteen years of his life were years of peace and happiness, unmarred by sin or sorrow. During this period the young saint, sheltered from this evil world in the bosom of a religious home, and surrounded by models of Christian virtue, expanded in the rich bloom of unsullied innocence. Then followed the epoch of his trials in bondage, when the tender plant was plucked from its native soil and cast upon the bleak Northern hills. Here in the stern school of adversity the delicate became rugged; the child was developed into the man; and the modest youth began to dream of bold enterprises and vast spiritual conquests. Thus St. Patrick was trained to the Apostolate; and did not Divine Providence pursue the self-same course with the Irish nation? In the history of Catholic Ireland we discern these same distinct periods――the blameless, childhood, the stormy adolescence and the apostolic manhood.