hearty co-operation in mission work among the heathen. We
may leave out of consideration alleged miracles; also the curious, or
even the ludicrous, test of a divine mission suggested by "the aged
hermit" of the story. The Celtic bishops refused any sort of
co-operation, and Augustine left them, not without a solemn warning:
"If they would not have peace with their brethren, they would have to
accept war from their enemies; if they would not preach the way of life
to the nation of the Angli, they would have to suffer at their hands the
vengeance of death." It is scarcely credible--though in religious
controversy almost anything is credible--that a warning so obviously
wise, and even charitable, should have been interpreted as a mere
threat, and as evidence that Augustine himself was the author of the
calamities that afterward befell the Celtic Church.

Such is the simple story of the mission and the life--for we read
nothing about his life but his mission--of Augustine, the first
archbishop of Canterbury. He was not able to carry out the whole scheme
of Gregory. He was not the first to introduce Christianity into Britain.
But, apart from Queen Bertha's private chaplain, he was the first to
introduce Christianity to the English--those Teutonic tribes which were
the ancestors of the English of to-day. Who first brought the gospel to
the Roman province of Britain no one knows; nor is it of the slightest
importance that anyone should know. But that there should have been two
Christian religions in England when the nation was being consolidated,
would have been fatal both to nation and church. We conclude this brief
notice by a passage from two historians, neither of whom could possibly
be suspected of any undue subservience to the modern Church of Rome. The
first is from Mr. Green's "The Making of England" (pp. 314, 315); he is
speaking of the results of the Synod of Whitby (A.D. 664).

"It is possible that lesser political motives may have partly swayed
Oswin in his decision, for the revival of Mercia had left him but the
alliance of Kent in the south, and this victory of the Kentish Church
would draw tighter the bonds which linked together the two powers. But
we may fairly credit him with a larger statesmanship. Trivial in fact as
were the actual points of difference which parted the Roman Church from
the Irish, the question to which communion Northumbria should belong
was, as we have seen, of immense moment to the after-