Here is how western civilisation seems to understand its history. There was a time when we lived in caves. Then a long period of growing out of it. Then a regrettable episode when we believed in God. Finally we became Enlightened, developed technology, and now here we are: superior beings to all that.

However, we could develop a more accurate understanding. Western civilisation arose out of, and united around, Christian Identity. That Christian Identity saved western civilisation when all would otherwise have been lost. The particular brand of Christian Identity which saved it came through men who were associated with… caves.

Western civilisation descends from the very strong Christian spirituality that was in St Martin of Tours, 316-397. His base was a cave monastery in the Loire Valley. A major link onward from him was St Ninian, broadly 360-432, trained by St Martin. I recently visited St Ninian’s Cave on the coast of the peninsula of Whithorn, South West Scotland (a photo of the cave accompanies this blog). Tradition has it that he worshipped in the cave. It was certainly a most evocative site. It had the feel of what Celtic Christians might call “a thin place” – where very little seems to separate earth from heaven.

Now, the particular brand of Christian spirituality which was in Martin and Ninian was Life in the Holy Spirit of the Christian God. The two of them are long departed; but their brand of Christian Life has not been lost. By the 600’s, and through many gifted spiritual descendants of Martin and Ninian, it shaped the most ancient roots of the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish. After the Protestant Reformation, a thousand years later, many of their descendants took a regenerated version of this Life in the Holy Spirit of the Christian God into the wider world.

However, few if any Christians in the world of today who have received the Life in the Holy Spirit have even heard of St Martin of Tours. Yet this man who ministered out of caves was the missing link who passed the spiritual vibrancy that had been in Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul into the roots of the west. Discovering and writing up his story as I researched “The Mustard Seed” was a great privilege.