Saint Patrick and How The Irish Saved Civilization
Perhaps the greatest missionary since St. Paul gets little more than green beer from most of us. There's not even a major motion picture about him. He deserves better.
Saint Patrick was a very simple man. Most of the artwork of him makes him look like a typical bishop from the period. He was anything but.
The Irish didn't just copy books, they illuminated them, creating fabulous works of original art. The Irish imagination was given full vent on the pages of these codices. This one is from the Book of Durrow.
The Irish landscape is both harsh and fanciful, stark and idyllic. These contrasting qualities show themselves in the Irish people as well.
There are far more Irish living outside Ireland than inside. Many came to the United States in the 19th Century and settled in cities like New York, Boston and Chicago. This is Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, an excellent example of the Gothic style of architecture. (Photo used courtesy of A Day Not Wasted. See link at end of article.)
Once again, the rivers are running green (at least in Chicago), the parades are being held, green beer is being dispensed in Irish pubs, people are wearing shamrocks, Irish jokes and limericks are being recited, and idiotic artwork is being sent back and forth across the Web. But does any of this have anything to do with Saint Patrick? Very little.
George Mueller
George Mueller and Bible
George Muller Orphan Houses, Ashley Down, Bristol, England
The Orphanages Today
The Greatest Man of Prayer of the Past Two Centuries
George Mueller (also spelled Müller) was born less than a decade before Charles Dickens in 1805; so he was certainly aware of all the horrors of society that the famed novelist describes in his works: workhouses, prisons, filth and disease, lack of concern for the poor and homeless - all the things about which Ebenezer Scrooge in his unredeemed state could care less. But Mueller did care, deeply; and in 1834 he decided to do something about it. He and his best friend, Henry Craik, founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution (SKI) in Bristol, England, with one of their prime objectives being to establish Orphan Homes for the many homeless children in Great Britain.
But Mueller and Craik had no money, nor did they intend to ask anyone for it: they believed that God would provide everything they needed - without patronage, without requests for contributions and without debts. All they had to do was pray, and God would provide. For 64 years, that was how George Mueller operated. In that course of time, he built The Orphanage campus at Ashley Down, where he cared for and educated over 18,000 children; educated over 100,000 more in other schools at the Orphanage's expense; distributed hundreds of thousands of Bibles and tens of millions of religious tracts; supported about 150 missionaries; travelled over 200,000 miles as a missionary himself; and shared the Gospel with over 3 million people around the world. And in all that time, he never asked for one penny from anyone, his children never missed a meal, and he never had a debt. That is the remarkable record of George Mueller.