There can be no doubt that the years which he spent at Lérins exercised an abiding influence on Patrick. He was brought under the spell of the monastic ideal; and though his life was not to be sequestered, but out in the active world of men, monastic societies became a principal and indispensable element in his idea of a Christian Church. It is improbable that during these years of seclusion he was stirred, even faintly, by the idea of devoting himself to the work of spreading Christianity in the barbarous land associated with his slavery and shame. But he was profoundly convinced that during the years of his bondage he had been held as in the hollow of God’s hand; whatever hopes or ambitions he may have cherished in his boyhood must have been driven from his heart by the stress of his experience, and in such a frame of mind the instinct of a man of that age was to turn to a religious life. At Lérins, perhaps, his desire, so far as he understood it, was to remain a monk; _uenire ad eremum summa perfectio est_. But there were energies and feelings in him which such a life would not have contented. At the end of a few years he left the monastery to visit his kinsfolk in Britain, and there he became conscious of the true destiny of his life. § 2. _At Home in Britain_ [Sidenote: PATRICK’S DREAM] When Patrick returned to his old home, his kinsfolk welcomed him “as a son,”[40] and implored him to stay and not part from them again. But if he had any thought of yielding to their persuasions, it was dismissed when he became aware, all at once, that the aim of his life was determined. The idea of labouring among the heathen, which may have been gradually, though quite unconsciously, gathering force and secretly winning possession of his brain, suddenly stood full-grown, as it were, face to face with him in a sensible shape. In a vision of the night it seemed to him that he saw a man standing by his side. It was a certain Victoricus. We may suppose that Patrick had made this man’s acquaintance in Gaul, and that he was interested in Ireland, but his only appearance in history is in Patrick’s dream. To the dreamer he seemed to have come from Ireland, and in his hand he held a bundle of letters. “And he gave me one of these, and I read the beginning of the letter, which contained ‘the voice of the Irish.’ And as I read the beginning of it, I fancied that I heard the voice of the folk who were near the wood of Fochlad, nigh to the western sea. And this was the cry: ‘We pray thee, holy youth, to come and again walk amongst us as before.’ I was pierced to the heart and could read no more; and thereupon I awoke.” This is the dreamer’s description of his dream. But, as the story was told in later days, the cry that pierced his heart was uttered by the young children of Fochlad, even by the children still unborn. There is nothing of this in Patrick’s words, yet the tradition betrays a true instinct of the significance of the dream.