THE PEESIDENT's ADDRESS. 29 



This, indeed, is frankly admitted in the Tripartite Life of 

 St. Patrick. 



Patrick was ambitious of obtaining peculiar privileges from 

 God, notably that of sitting in judgment over the Irish people 

 at the Day of Doom. To obtain this he instituted a fast. 



When in a condition of nervous exaltation he fancied that 

 an angel appeared and intimated to him that such a petition was 

 offensive to God, and he offered him some other favour in place 

 of it, Patrick stubbornly rejected all compromise, and continued 

 his fast, as the writer says, "in a very bad temper, without 

 drink, without food." After some time, he fancied again that 

 the angel approached him, offering further concessions. " I will 

 not go from this place till I am dead," replied Patrick, " unless 

 all the things I have asked for are granted to me." 



In the end he fell into such a condition of exhaustion of 

 body, that he became a prey to hallucinations, thought the sky 

 was full of black birds, and deluded himself with the belief that 

 the Almighty had given way on all points. ;]: Mr. Newell in his 

 "Saint Patrick" is very angry with the writers of this story, 

 "A fouler travesty of a noble character could scarcely be pub- 

 lished than is contained in these late legends. "§ I entirely differ 

 from this able writer. The anecdote seems to me to breathe the 

 spirit of that transition condition of mind in which the early saints 

 among the Celts were, whilst legal conceptions were strong in 

 them and coloured deeply their religious ideas. Such a story 

 could not have been invented at a late period when the principle 

 had been forgotten on which fasting was practised. 



There is a story of three scholars in the Book of Lismore 

 that also illustrates how completely this legal notion of trans- 

 acting business with the Almighty affected the minds of the 

 early Celtic Christians. 



J" Tripartite Life," p. 115. Tirechan, the most trustworthy of the biograph- 

 ers of St. Patrick, speaks of this fast. 



§ " St. Patrick, his Life and Teaehing,"_S.P.C.K., 1890. A like story is told 

 of St. Maidoc of Ferns, who desired to obtain some outrageous privileges— that 

 no successor of his should go to hell, that no member of his community or tribe 

 should be lost eternally, and that till the day of judgment he might be able to 

 deliver daily a soul from hell. He fasted against God, to wring from Him these 

 privileges, and continued his fast for fifty days, and deluded himself into the belief 

 that he had forced the Almighty to grant everything. " Cambro-British Saints," 

 p. 243. 



