ese powers and with the pontifical
blessing, he took his departure from the holy city, well stored with the
necessary ornaments and utensils for the performance of the
ecclesiastical rites, besides a number of books to instruct the heathens
and to solace his mind amidst the cares and anxieties of his travels.
After some few years the fruits of his labor became manifest, and in 723
he had baptized vast multitudes in the true faith. His success was
perhaps unparalleled in the early annals of the church, and remind us of
the more recent wonders wrought by the Jesuit missionaries in India.[259]
Elated with these happy results, far greater than even his sanguine mind
had anticipated, he sent a messenger to the Pope to acquaint his holiness
of these vast acquisitions to his flock, and soon after he went himself
to Rome to receive the congratulations and thanks of the Pontiff; he was
then made bishop, and entrusted with the ecclesiastical direction of the
new church. After his return, he spent many years in making fresh
converts and maintaining the discipline of the faithful. But all these
labors and these anxieties were terminated by a cruel and unnatural
death; on one of his expeditions he was attacked by a body of pagans, who
slew him and nearly the whole of his companions, but it is not here that
a Christian must look for his reward--he must rest his hopes on the
benevolence and mercy of his God in a distant and far better world. He
who would wish to trace more fully these events, and so catch a glimpse
of the various incidents which touch upon the current of his life, must
not keep the monk constantly before his mind, he must sometimes forget
him in that capacity and regard him as a _student_, and that too in the
highest acceptation of the term. His youthful studies, which I have said
before were pursued with unconquerable energy, embraced grammar, poetry,
rhetoric, history, and the exposition of the Holy Scriptures; the Bible,
indeed, he read unceasingly, and drew from it much of the vital truth
with which it is inspired; but he perhaps too much tainted it with
traditional interpretation and patristical logic. A student's life is
always interesting; like a rippling stream, its unobtrusive gentle course
is ever pleasing to watch, and the book-worms seems to find in it the
counterpart of his own existence. Who can read the life and letters of
the eloquent Cicero, or the benevolent Pliny, without the deepest
interest; or mark