belief, and with merely the change of a name, sanctified and turned them
to its own uses.

[Illustration: ST. KEVIN'S CHURCH, GLENDALOUGH.]



VI.

ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH.

About fifty years after the death of St. Patrick a new missionary arose,
one who was destined to carry the work which he had begun yet further,
to become indeed the founder of what for centuries was the real
metropolis and centre of Western Christendom.

In 521 A.D., St. Columba was born in Donegal, of the royal race, say the
annalists, of Hy-Nial--of the royal race, at any rate, of the great
workers, doers, and thinkers all the world over. In 565, forty-four
years later, he left Ireland with twelve companions (the apostolic
number), and started on his memorable journey to Scotland, a date of
immeasurable importance in the history of Western Christianity.

In that dense fog which hangs over these early times--thick enough to
try even the most penetrating eyesight--there is a curious and
indescribable pleasure in coming upon so definite, so living, so
breathing a figure as that of St. Columba, In writing the early history
of Ireland, one of the greatest difficulties which the historian--great
or small--has to encounter is to be found in that curious unreality,
that tantalizing sense of illusiveness and indefiniteness which seems to