calling of Christ 'the best of the sons of the Lord,' in an orthodox
Catholic hymn, seems to point to the remnants of an older creed,
possibly Buddhist, the transition whence towards Catholic
Christianity was slow and imperfect. I might make merry over the
fact that there are many Bridgets, some say eleven; even as there are
three or four St. Patricks; and raise learned doubts as to whether
such persons ever existed, after that Straussian method of pseudo-
criticism which cometh not from above, from the Spirit of God, nor
yet indeed from below, from the sound region of fact, but from
within, out of the naughtiness of the heart, defiling a man. I might
weaken, too, the effect of the hymn by going on with the rest of it,
and making you smile at its childish miracles and portents; but I
should only do a foolish thing, by turning your minds away from the
broad fact that St. Bridget, or various persons who got, in the lapse
of time, massed together under the name of St. Bridget, were
eminently good women.

It matters little whether these legends are historically correct.
Their value lies in the moral of them. And as for their real
historical correctness, the Straussian argument that no such persons
existed, because lies are told of them, is, I hold, most irrational.
The falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a
truth. The high moral character ascribed to them would never have
been dreamed of by persons who had not seen living instances of that
character. Man's imagination does not create; it only reproduces and
recombines its own experience. It does so in dreams. It does so, as
far as the moral character of the saint is concerned, in the legend;
and if there had not been persons like St. Bridget in Ireland, the
wild Irish could never have imagined them.