gustine with his companions landed
at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, where AEthelberht's forefathers had landed
nearly a century and a half before. After a while AEthelberht arrived.
Singing a litany, and bearing aloft a painting of the Saviour, the
missionaries appeared before him. He had already learned from his
Christian wife to respect Christians, but he was not prepared to
forsake his own religion. He welcomed the new-comers, and told them
that they were free to convert those who would willingly accept their
doctrine. A place was assigned to them in Canterbury, and they were
allowed to use Bertha's church. In the end AEthelberht himself,
together with thousands of the Kentish men, received baptism. It was
more by their example than by their teaching that Augustine's band won
converts. The missionaries lived 'after the model of the primitive
Church, giving themselves to frequent prayers, watchings, and
fastings; preaching to all who were within their reach, disregarding
all worldly things as matters with which they had nothing to do,
accepting from those whom they taught just what seemed necessary for
livelihood, living themselves altogether in accordance with what they
taught, and with hearts prepared to suffer every adversity, or even to
die, for that truth which they preached.'

5. =Monastic Christianity.=--These missionaries were monks as well as
preachers. The Christians of those days considered the monastic life
to be the highest. In the early days of the Church, when the world was
full of vice and cruelty, it seemed hardly possible to live in the
world without being dragged down to its wickedness. Men and women,
therefore, who wished to keep themselves pure, withdrew to hermitages
or monasteries, where they might be removed from temptation, and might
fit themselves for heaven by prayer and fasting. In the fifth century
Benedict of Nursia had organised in Italy a system of life for the
monastery which he governed, and the Benedictine rule, as it was
called, was soon accepted in almost all the monasteries of Western
Europe. The special feature of this rule was that it encouraged labour
as well as prayer. It was a saying of Benedict himself that 'to labour
is to pray.' He did not mean that labour was good in itself, but that
monks who worked during some hours of the day would guard their minds
against evil thoughts better than if they tried to pray all day long.
Augustine and his companions were Benedictine monks, and th