period it was more rapid; and if the converts were now more influenced by earthly motives, their posterity at any rate reaped abundant blessings from being brought into the fold of Christ. Perhaps this change is indicated, when after the lame and blind had not filled the feast, it is said that the last messengers were to compel men to come in.

It is but reasonable to suppose that St. Ninian's preaching was extended to those of the Southern Picts, who still continued in their earlier settlement north of the Frith of Forth. Indeed as has been said, many writers confine the settlement of this race to the northern districts, and do not suppose them to have had any permanent settlement south of the Roman Wall. The question however, is not of any importance in its bearing on a history of St. Ninian. Some again have confounded the southern Picts with the British inhabitants of Valentia. Others, with the race called Picts, who came from Ireland, and occupied Galloway in the ninth century, and who alone bore the name in the later period, when the proper Picts were lost among the other nations who occupied Scotland. St. Ninian was ever known as the Apostle of the Southern Picts, and as his proper mission was to the inhabitants of Galloway and Valentia generally, it was not unnatural to imagine these tribes to be those who are meant by the Southern Picts. They were however clearly a distinct tribe; and it is a confirmation of the truth of St. Aelred's history that he does so distinguish them, as Bede had also done, and as the Collect for St. Ninian's day, in the Aberdeen Breviary, "Deus, qui populos Pictorum et Britonum per doctrinam Sancti Niniani Episcopi et Confessoris docuisti."

It was not however enough to gain the people to a profession of the Gospel; St. Ninian also provided for the permanent maintenance of the Church, by the consecration of Bishops, and regular establishment of Clergy. His biographer says, "he ordained Priests, consecrated Bishops, arranged the ecclesiastical Orders, and divided the whole country into parishes." The last is noticed as an anachronism, as the system of parochial division did not generally arise till a much later period. It may however very probably mean nothing more than the division of the country, so that the Priests might each have his own definite sphere of labour; which was very necessary in so wide and thinly peopled a district. In the consecration of Bishops we do not know whether St. Ninian acted alone, as was allowed in cases of necessity; and would be the more so here, as he was not apparently included in any province, of which the other Bishops might assist in the consecration; or whether some of the British Bishops joined in the sacred rite. They might still be remaining in their Sees, but were far removed from this country, and the hostilities and dangers which prevailed might hinder them from coming.

We are equally in ignorance as to the succession of the Bishopricks; of which we know no more than of those of the ancient Britons. It was very possible that they might have been numerous, as those of Ireland were. Of the portion North of the Forth, Abernethy was the Bishoprick, and so continued till later times, the Bishop, or as he was sometimes styled, Archbishop of that See, being called the Bishop of the Picts. In all probability St. Ninian would leave some of his own clergy, as the Priests and Bishops of his new converts. They could not themselves so

soon have persons who could be entrusted with the sacred office of preserving the deposit of the truth, and St. Ninian, from his own experience, would be conscious of the value of a long and careful preparation for the sacred ministry. Nor is there any reason why we should not suppose that he revisited the Picts, and from time to time supplied what was wanting for the completeness of their ecclesiastical system. St. Aelred, indeed, speaks as if all had been done in one visit, but he might naturally adopt such a summary mode of narration when he was without any distinct information of the particulars of the visits. He passes on at the conclusion to the tranquillity which characterized the latter days of the Saint. "When he had confirmed the sons whom he had begotten in Christ in faith and good works, and arranged all which seemed necessary for the honour of God and the salvation of souls, the Saint bade farewell to his brethren, and returned to his own Church, where he spent the rest of his life, perfect in holiness, and glorious by his miracles, in great peace and tranquillity of mind.”

By the Picts his name was remembered, and the Church he formed among them preserved. It was above a century after when St. Columba came amongst them, and they then professed Christianity, and mentioned St. Ninian as the Bishop by whom they had been converted.

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CHAPTER IX.

St. Ninian's latter Days.

AND now that we have followed the Saint through the broken incidents of a holy and laborious life, there are few remaining points on which to dwell, but such as they are, they will be interesting to recount.

And first, of the personal habits of St. Ninian. Holy and spotless as he had been through life, it would seem as if he might have been free from penitential austerities, and have spared the hardnesses which others must use with themselves. But such views proceed on erroneous notions, since they contradict the practice of the most eminent saints. The most pure and holy have ever been the most severe in their mortifications. Holy men, such as he was, become, as it would seem, not only indifferent to worldly comforts, but lovers of suffering endured for Christ's sake, and that principally from the love of Him. It seems to them, so to say, unnatural to live at ease, when He endured so much on their account. And they may suffer in a way which corresponds to His sufferings, by suffering for their people, by accompanying their earnest intercessions with those acts of mortification which are natural in deep sorrow. There is ever before them the sight of some, lost to their true interests, passing day by day from a life of folly and forgetfulness into an unchanging state; and yearning for their recovery and salvation, yet unable to effect it, when their words seem to them as idle tales, to weep, to fast, to pray, to endeavour to prevail with God for them is

their natural resource. Then again, in a deep humble sense of not having corresponded to the influence of Divine Grace; the consciousness that though they have not wilfully and obstinately continued in sin, yet they have not improved duly the spiritual privileges afforded to them; the knowledge of imperfection and tendencies to sin-all these are so clearly seen, and acutely felt by those who really love God, that the sorrows and afflictions of saints are ever penitential. Let us not then be surprised, if, when we draw near St. Ninian, and learn his secret ways, we do not find contrivances for comfort, or the enjoyment of life.

They show on the coast of Galloway, on the face of a lofty and precipitous line of rocks, against which one of the stormiest of our seas incessantly beats, a damp chilly cave, lying one third of the way, it may be, from the bottom of the cliff, and accessible only by climbing and springing from rock to rock. It is a deep recess, running back some twenty feet, and gradually narrowing from the mouth, where it may be twelve feet high, and as many wide.

There is nothing spray which beat

to screen it from the winds and against the rock, no bottom of earth to rest upon, but only bare uneven stone. Here, the tradition of the country says, St. Ninian used to come for penitential and devotional retirement; and it is not improbable. For a religious person in those days, to retire to a cave, nay, to live in one all his life, was no strange thing; it was but to follow in the steps of the confessors of the earlier dispensation, who lived in dens and caves of the earth. It was the ordinary practice of good people thus to deprive themselves of every earthly comfort, and to realize the time when they should be completely stripped of all which this