ed to missions to the Angles and
Saxons; and I have never quite been able to see how the Britons could be
expected to go to their sanguinary and conquering foes with any message,
least of all to tell them that their religion was hopelessly false. The
expulsion of the Britons from the land of their fathers was too recent for
that; the retort of the Saxons too apposite, that at least their gods had
shewn themselves stronger than the God of the Britons.

It is a curious fact that we know more of the work of the British Church
beyond its borders than at home; and what we know of it is very much to
its credit. Somewhere about the year 395, when the inroads of barbarians
from the north had become a grave danger, and the territory between the
walls had been abandoned by the Romano-Britons, one of the British nation,
who had studied at Rome the doctrine and discipline of the Western Church,
and had studied among the Gauls at Tours, established himself among the
Picts of Galloway and built there a church of stone. The story is that he
heard of the death of his friend Martin of Tours when he was building his
church, and that he dedicated it to him. This, which after all is a late
story in its present form, but is, as I think, to be fully accepted, gives
us the date 397; the only sure date in Ninian's history. From this
south-west corner of Scotland he spread the faith, we are told, throughout
the southern Picts, that is, as far north as the Grampians.

This Christianising of the Picts may not have been very lasting. Patrick
more than once speaks of them[37] as the apostate Picts. It did not
prevent their ravaging Christian Britain, denuded of the Roman troops. But
it had a great influence in another way. The monastery of Whithorn, which
Ninian founded, was for some considerable time the training place of
Christian priests and bishops and monks, both for Britain, and,
especially, for Ireland. The Irish traditions make Ninian retire from
Britain and live the later part of his life in Ireland, where he is
certainly commemorated under the name Monenn,--"Mo" being the affectionate
prefix "my," and Monenn meaning "my Ninian."

Ninian lived and worked, we are told, for many years, dying in 432, a date
for which there is no known authority. That period covers the second,
third, and fourth withdrawal of the Roman troops from the northern
frontier and from Britain[38]; a time when British Christians might well
have said they had more than