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Western Civilization's Base of Supply
of the old pagan teachers, so in the other they consciously
modeled their apostolate on the pattern provided by the
early Christian teachers. When Christianity came into
the world the soil had already been prepared to receive
it and from Peter and Paul to Constantine the grafting
of the revealed doctrine upon the civilization of the
Roman world was a comparatively brief process. Then
Christianity and civilization went down in common ruin
and it was left to a new race of men, children of the
farthest western isle, to renew and restore both. The two
had traveled from East to West by different routes and
at different times. They journeyed back from West to
East not separately, but entwined in an inseparable union.
No jeweler's product resulting from the fusing of precious
metals, for which Ireland was then famous, could com-
pare with this masterwork of spiritual smithing represented
by the union through the force of the active Irish
intellect of Christianity with the ancient learning. The
process of developing that union went on till it appeared
to reach its full expansion in the thirteenth century, but
the ideal of Christian civilization first became a reality
on Irish soil and it was out of that realized ideal that the
vast organization of Christendom grew.
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