mitted his Bride, to whom He had revealed His secrets, and opened His treasures. Deservedly is that soul called beloved, in whom all is made up of love, and there is nothing of fear. My beloved,' He says, 'my dove.' My dove-a dove truly taught to mourn, that knew nothing of the gall of bitterness, but wept with those that wept, was weak with the weak, and burned for those that were offended. 'Rise up, my

love, my fair one, and come away.'

"For lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.' Then, O blessed Saint, the winter was indeed past to thee, when, with happy eye, thou didst gain the sight of thy heavenly country-that country which the Sun of righteousness illumines by the brightness of His light, which love warms, and a wonderful equality, like the attempering of the spring-time, regulates by an ineffable unity. Then the unseasonable winter which fills all on earth with discomfort, which hardens the frozen hearts of men by vices that fall upon them, where neither truth shines, nor love burns to the full-this was past and gone, and thy holy soul, completely triumphant, escaped from the showers of temptations, and the hail-storms of persecutions, into the beauty of perpetual verdure.

"The flowers,' he says, 'have appeared in our land. For around thee, O blessed Ninian, breathed the odours of the flowers of Paradise, when on thee, as on one most familiar to them, the multitudes of those that are clothed in crimson and white, smiled with placid countenance, and bid thee to their company-they whom chastity has clothed with white, and love with blushing crimson. For though no occasion was afforded thee to give the sign of bodily martyrdom, still that without which martyrdom is nothing, denied

not the merit of martyrdom. For so often as he offered himself to the swords of the perverse, so often as in the cause of righteousness he opposed himself to the arms of tyrants, he was prepared to fall in the cause of truth, and to die for righteousness. Deservedly then is he admitted among the flowers of the roses, and the lilies of the valley-himself clothed in crimson and white, going up from Lebanon to be crowned among the hosts of heaven.

For soon,

"For the time of the vintage is come.' as a full ripe cluster, he must be cut from the stem of the body, from the vineyard of the Church on earth, to be pressed by love, and laid up in the storehouses of heaven.

"Thus the blessed Ninian, perfect in life, mature in years happily departed from the world, and attended by angelic spirits, was borne to heaven; and there associated with the company of the Apostles, mingling with the ranks of Martyrs, and united to the bands of holy Confessors, adorned with the Virgins' flowers, he ceases not to succour those on earth who hope in him, call on him, and praise him.

"He was buried in the Church of St. Martin, which he had himself built from the foundation, and placed in a stone coffin near the altar, the Clergy and people standing by, and lifting up their heavenly hymns with heart and voice, with sighs and tears. And at this place the power which had shone forth in his life, ceases not in death to manifest itself around his body, so that all the faithful recognize him as living in heaven, because it is evident that he produces effects on earth. At his most sacred tomb, the sick are cured, the lepers are cleansed, the evil ones are affrighted, the blind receive their sight. And by all these things

the faith of believers is confirmed to the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen."

The death of St. Ninian occurred on the 16th of September, A. D. 432; and on that day his memory was celebrated in the Scottish Church, in Catholit ages, with deep veneration, as their chiefest Saint, to whom first they owed it, that they had been brought from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God. The service for the day in the Aberdeen Breviary is very beautiful, and in connexion with his history, most interesting. It contains nine Lessons, extracted from St. Aelred's life, and throws into devotional form the various events we have been recording. The circumstances of his life and miracles are expressed in hymns and proses, antiphones and responses, which once were chaunted in his praise throughout all the Churches of Scotland. His name and day were noted in the Kalendar prefixed to the Scottish Prayer Book of King Charles the First.

The rest of St. Aelred's work is occupied by a detailed account of miracles wrought at the tomb of St. Ninian, which it is not necessary now to narrate. "When the Saint had been taken up to heaven," he says, "the multitude of the faithful continued to visit, with the deepest devotion, what seemed to be left them of him—his most holy remains, and out of regard to their piety and faith, the Almighty showed, by the evidence of numerous miracles, that, though the common lot of mortality had taken His Saint from the earth, yet he still lived in heaven." A distorted child was first restored; this led many to hasten to bring their varied diseases before his holy relics; in particular, a man

covered with a cutaneous disease of a most horrible kind was restored; then a girl, who had lost her sight; and two lepers were made clean by bathing in his spring. “Through his prayers,” to quote a hymn for his day, "the shipwrecked find a harbour, and the barren woman is blessed with offspring ;" and St. Aelred says that the power continued to be manifested even in his own times.

CHAPTER X.

Conclusion.

AND now, that we have followed St. Ninian through his laborious life to his peaceful rest, we may not unnaturally wish to know what became of his Church and people after he was taken from them. On this point however our information is very limited, and much is left to be inferred from probabilities.

He had introduced the Ritual and Observances of the Roman Church, which were certainly different from those which the Britons used. Of these however no traces can be discovered. It would seem as if they had been lost among the changes which occurred between his death and the time of Bede; for, though that writer carefully sought for instances of conformity with Rome, he makes no mention of this, which would have been marked in itself, and known to the Saxons at Whithern. The Church of St. Ninian may herein have conformed to the practices of the other Britons, un

der the Episcopate of St. Kentigern, or have quite sunk into obscurity.

We should naturally expect that the instructions he established, would, for a time at least, be maintained; that the religious society would hold together, and continue its work, as a refuge of piety and teacher of religion; and there is some confirmation of this expectation in the statement of Scottish historians, that St. Ninian's monastery was a school which supplied teachers for the people; and that of Bede, that the body of the Saint, with those of many holy men rested in the Church of Whithern, as though there was there a home of Saints.

As regards the succession to his See, we are altogether without information. It is possible that in the troubled state of the country, when the Picts and Scots were so grievously afflicting the Britons, and when there certainly was so great a want of earnestness among the British Bishops, they may have neglected to supply a successor to St. Ninian; and the monastery and country priests may have continued without a pastor, trusting to occasional missionary visits, such as those of Palladius and others. The Church he loved so well was now desolate, and a widow. This seems most probably to have been the case till the time of St. Kentigern, who fixed his See at Glasgow, and inIcluded in his diocese the district which had been St. Ninian's care, and it is said, completed the work of conversion. That diocese, as has been stated before, extended over the south-west of Scotland, and the Cumbrian Britons, as far as Stainmoor; and Whithern, whether it retained its monastery or not, became subordinate.

Meanwhile the Saxons were occupying England;