It sometimes happens that children who perhaps have not been very attentive at the time to those who have tried to teach them what the Bible calls “the fear of the Lord,” have remembered the wise and loving words they heard in childhood, long afterward, when they have been far from home and friends, in trouble or in danger.
I will tell you the story of a Scotch boy who thus remembered the teaching of his parents, when he was in a strange land, in banishment and slavery.
You may remember how we read in the history of our country that the Romans, the mightiest people in the world, who had conquered all the nations round the Mediterranean, at last conquered our little island, too, and ruled in Britain for four hundred years. During that long time the Britons learned many things from their conquerors, and before the Romans went home to defend their own city and country, leaving the Britons to take care of themselves, many of the people had become Christians.
The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Christians who lived in Thessalonica, tells them that they had “turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.” So, by God’s mercy, through the teaching of Christians from Rome, many of the Britons had turned from their false gods, and their dark, cruel ways of worshipping them, “to serve the living God.” They no longer believed the Druids, who sacrificed beasts, and sometimes even men and women, as you see in the picture, to their gods in the oak groves, or on the high hills, but they prayed to God in heaven. And instead of believing, as these “holy men,” the Druids had taught them, that the spirits of the dead passed from their bodies into those of animals, they knew that every soul whom the Lord Jesus had redeemed belonged to Him; and so when a Christian father and mother buried their little baby’s body, they thought of its glad spirit rejoicing in heaven. Their faith was very precious to the Christian Britons; some of them had given their lives for it, and we cannot wonder that when the child of whom we are speaking was born in a Christian village on the woody banks of the Clyde, his parents tried earnestly to instruct him in their own faith.
Succat, however, was fond of pleasure, and paid very little heed to the teaching of his father, Calpurnius, and his mother, Conchessa. His wild ways were a grief to his good parents, and at last God allowed a dreadful calamity to come upon him.
Before I tell you what befell Succat, I must ask you to think of what you have read in your English history about those savage people, the Picts, or painted folk, who kept rushing down from the highlands of Scotland upon the quiet hamlets of the Britons. They burned and plundered wherever they went, and the Scots—for that was the name of the people of Ireland in those days, though we shall call them “Irish,” that you may understand the story better-used to come in their pirate boats over the sea from Ireland, just at harvest time, and carry away the ripe corn of the poor country folk—sometimes even taking away any people they could catch that they might make slaves of them.
While he was still a child, Succat’s parents left Scotland, and went to live in the part of France which was then called Armorica. There it was that the terrible calamity, of which I will tell you, befell Succat.
He was near the seashore one day, with two of his sisters, when some Irish robbers landed, carried the three children off to their boats, and sold them for slaves as soon as they got back to Ireland. Succat, like the prodigal in the parable, was sent into the fields to feed swine. There, alone in his great distress, God spoke to his heart. At the thought that he was never more to hear his mother’s voice, he remembered, with deep sorrow, the holy lessons taught to him by her, when he, a heedless child, had cared for nothing but his amusements. He particularly grieved over one fault he had committed, unknown to any but himself, and the remembrance of which pressed heavily upon his heart.
At last, like the prodigal in the far country, Succat said in his heart, “I will arise and go to my Father.” His earthly father he might never see again, but God was near him in that heathen land, and when he prayed he “seemed to feel the arms of a father uplifting the prodigal son.” I think you would like to read what he long afterward wrote about this part of his life. The words are his own, only translated from the Latin in which he wrote.
“I was sixteen years old,” he says, “and knew not the true God, but in that strange land the Lord opened my unbelieving eyes, and, although late, I called my sins to mind, and was converted with my whole heart to the Lord my God, who regarded my low estate, had pity on my ignorance, and consoled me as a father consoles his children.
“The love of God increased more and more in me, with faith and fear of His name. Even during the night, in the forests and on the mountains, where I kept my flock, the rain, and snow, and frost, and sufferings which I endured, excited me to seek after God.”
You will be glad to hear that Succat was rescued and brought back to his family, although I am sorry that I cannot tell you what became of his sisters who were carried away with him. But what will you say when you hear that he went back again, of his own accord, to the land where he had suffered such cruel slavery?
He thought of Ireland now, not as the land whence the pirates had come who had taken him away from home and friends, but as the land where he had found Jesus Christ, and he longed earnestly to preach the Christian faith to the Irish pagans. So, though his parents would gladly have kept their son with them, Succat, or, as he was afterward called, St. Patrick, went back to Ireland.
You will think he was a strange missionary, for he carried a large drum with him. When, by beating this drum, he had collected the people of a district into the fields, he would tell them, in their own tongue, “the history of the Son of God,” and had the joy of seeing many of them leave their vain idols and joyfully embrace the faith of Christ.
Far away, in the west of Ireland, there is a beautiful mountain, which the Irish have called Croaigh Patrick, after the name of the missionary who came to their land to preach to them. They tell many foolish and untrue stories about the miracles which they say he wrought there; but if you ever see that grand mountain, with its lofty cone piercing the sky, you will remember this true story of the Scotch boy who told the “history of the Son of God” in Ireland, so long ago. C. P.