Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/37

 It will easily be understood that reasoning of this kind could scarcely fail to convince. The preacher stood before his audience as a living proof of the doctrine that he preached. The Druids professed to be able to destroy with their curse any one that opposed them. They were never weary of citing the case of Cormac Mac Art, the greatest of the ante-Christian kings, who, they said, was choked by a fish-bone because he had denied the truth of their idolatrous religion. But Patrick publicly defied them, and showed in himself that they were utterly powerless.

On more than one occasion they tried to destroy him by stealth. On his way to Tara they laid wait for him, but he managed to elude the ambush, and when the would-be assassins reported that nothing passed them except eight deer followed by a fawn, the astonished people jumped to the conclusion that this herd of deer was nothing else than the saint and his companions miraculously disguised.

All this explains to some extent the fact that Patrick was listened to from the first, and that his success was assured from the moment he stood before the king. But there was another and still more powerful reason which must not be kept out of sight. It is this; that Patrick was a man of faith, that he had the love of God in his heart, and an earnest desire to bring men to the knowledge of the truth, and that the truth which he preached was the simple Gospel of the grace of God.

As an example of the doctrines that he preached, and as showing to some extent the spirit in which he undertook his work, we may here quote the hymn commonly known as Saint Patrick's Breastplate. The original is written in Irish of a very ancient dialect, and it is quoted in the seventh