Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/15



CHAPTER I.

the close of the fourth century the Christian Church had passed through many vicissitudes and had gained many victories. When the contest began between the small company of believers—despised and persecuted as they were—on the one hand, and the great power of Imperial Rome on the other, few would have ventured to predict that Christianity would ever take the place of paganism as the religion of the multitude; and yet, long before the time of which we write, it had been shown that the weakness of God is stronger than men, and that He in His great providence had chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. As early as the time of Justin Martyr, the Christian apologist could boast that 'there is no race of men, whether of Barbarians or of Greeks, or bearing any other name, either because they live in wagons without fixed habitation, or in tents leading a pastoral life, among whom prayers and thanks- 11