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Show ST. BRENDAN LEGEND. The legend of the Irish St. Brendan and his Monks having discovered America far back in the early age of Christianity, was thus told by Archbishop Arch-bishop Healy, in his sermon the other day at the dedication of a new church in honor of the Saint in Galway. "There is a great mountain, that still bears the name of the Saint, some eight miles west of Tralee, rising more than three thousand feet over the Western weaves. It was on the summit of that lone mountain that Brendan built himself him-self a little oratory and a cell, and there he spent two or three years, exclusively in the contemplation of God, living with God and for Him alone. There, no doubt, as he gazed to the west over the boundless Atlantic ocean, the idea grew in his mind, which he afterwards realized real-ized of sailing over the old sea, as it was called, in the hope of finding- the land of promise, the fortunate islands to which reference was made in the literature both of Greece and Rome, and to which constant references was made in our own old Irish literature. Brendan heard the old tradition, and his heart was filled with a great pur-1 pur-1 pose of trying to find out these islands and of preaching the gospel of Christ to the people that dwelt there, if the message of salvation bad not reached I them over the great ocean. He built i himself a large currach (boat), and, I taking with him fourteen of his Monks, j they sailed the western ocean seeking this land of promise; and for seven years they sailed they knew not whither. whith-er. We acn hardly trust the narrative ofthe ancient in all Its details; but it was said that, under God's guidance and fed by God's fatherly providence. Brendan and his Monks crossed the Atlantic ocean and were the first to discover, if not the Continent of America, Amer-ica, at least some pi those beautiful islands in the West 'Indian seas, which were afterward discovered by that great Genosese navigator. And when St. Brendan landed God's angel met him and his companions, and told him that it was not the will of God yet to reveal these lands to the people of the East, but that it was God's will that he should return home again and preach the gospel in his native Ireland." |