know a great
deal about St. Patrick, and we know it is quite true, because when he
was over one hundred years old he wrote it all down himself. He called
the book his "Confession," and though he told us such a lot about
himself, beginning with the adventures of his boyhood, there is one
thing he did not put down in the book. Can you guess what? Well, he did
not put down how good he was. For, you see, the Saints never thought
themselves good, because, instead of comparing themselves with people
_less good than themselves_, as we are all so fond of doing, they kept
on comparing themselves with Our Blessed Lord, and of course, that made
them seem very, very far from perfect.

When St. Patrick was a boy he did not love God or believe all his
Christian teachers told him, nor was he obedient or ready to _do his
best_. One day some fierce pirates raided the land where he lived with
his father and mother, and carried him off captive with lots of other
boys. Sailing across the sea to Ireland, the pirates sold the boys as
slaves.

St. Patrick was bought by a great chief called Milcho, and sent out on
to the hill-sides to watch the sheep. Do you think he was lonely and
afraid? No. For, when torn away from his home, from the friends who
loved him, he had discovered that there is one Friend that you can't be
dragged away from, and Who can be with you even in the midst of the
tossing green sea, on a pirate ship. For, though Patrick had forgotten
God, God had not forgotten Patrick. "The Lord," he says, "showed me my
unbelief, and had pity on my youth and ignorance."

So when he trudged out on to the mountain-side, he was not sad and
alone, but glad in the knowledge that his unseen Friend was with him.

"Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ above me, Christ beneath me,
Christ in the chariot, Christ in the fort, Christ in the ship."

That is a prayer St. Patrick made up himself. There, on the rough
mountain-side, the boy St. Patrick spent all his lonely days talking to
God, so that, he says, "more and more the love of God and His faith and
fear grew in me, and my spirit was stirred." He tells us that he would
recite one hundred prayers in one day, and nearly as many in the night.

He had to sleep out with the sheep in some rough cave or hut. "Before
the dawn," he says, "I was called to pray by the snow, the ice, and the
rain." But he did not mind this