194 



MISS ELEANOR H. HULL, ON THE 



may believe to have been the case. St. Patrick's own words 

 attest it. He had been, he said, " into remote parts of Ireland 

 where the Word had never before been preached," proving that 

 in most parts it had already been known and accepted. The 

 legends of the saints also go to prove the establishment of some 

 churches and communities at a very early date. 



To follow his work or examine his teaching is not our business 

 here. St. Patrick, like the teachers of whom we have already 

 spoken, belonged, in our view, not to the native Celtic Church, 

 but to the Koman Church in these islands. It is not without a 

 purpose that so much attention has been concentrated upon his 

 work and mission, and that the later teachers, St. Columba, St. 

 Finnian, and " the hosts of the Saints of Ireland " and Wales 

 have been half-forgotten by their countrymen. Yet to my mind 

 it was they and not St. Patrick who most truly may be said to 

 have established the native Celtic Church. 



The establishment by the Apostle of Ireland of fixed episcopal 

 sees at Armagh and elsewhere was the carrying out in Ireland 

 of the system of organisation to which he had been accustomed 

 in Britain ; it was totally unlike the native Church system, and 

 it appears to have become extinct on his removal, to be revived, 

 later on, under different circumstances, when a formal reunion 

 with the lioman Church took place in the end of the seventh 

 and beginning of the eighth century.* The distinctive feature of 

 the Celtic Cliurch, its monastic organisation, is not in its native 

 form heard of in his time, and the monks and nuns, " so many past 

 liis counting," of whom he speaks, seem not to have been attached 

 to particular centres, but to have been companions of his travels. 

 We hear nothing of abbots, but much of bishops ; later, the bishop 

 sinks into a secondary position and the abbot is the centre of the 

 Christian community and the pivot on whom the ecclesiastical 

 organisation revolves. The system from outside that St. 

 Patrick endeavoured to impose upon Ireland was not suited 

 to the then prevailing social and political conditions, and 

 it fell off as an ill-fiiting cloak immediately after his 

 withdrawal. 



There is, indeed, an ancient Irisli Catalogue of Saints which 

 exactly expresses, in a few brief sentences, wliat I believe to 

 liave actually liappened. 



Dividing the stages of Christian development into tlnee, it 

 tells us that the s])ecial feature of the first stage was the 



* See Prof. Biirv's Li/e of St. Patrick. Appendix on Episcopal 

 Succession in Ireland. 



