nt of
devotion, and often with such an abundance of tears as excited others to
weep with him. He would say, frequently, with the most tender affection,
"How good a Jesus have we!" At the first sight of St. Cuthbert, he said
to the bystanders: "Behold a servant of God." Bede produces the
testimony of St. Cuthbert, who declared that Boisil foretold him the
chief things that afterwards happened to him in the sequel of his life.
Three years beforehand, he foretold the great pestilence of 664, and
that he himself should die of it, but Eata, the abbot, should outlive
it. Boisil, not content continually to instruct and exhort his religious
brethren by word and example, made frequent excursions into the villages
to preach to the poor, and to bring straying souls into the paths of
truth and of life. St. Cuthbert was taken with the pestilential disease:
when St. Boisil saw him recovered, he said to him: "Thou seest, brother,
that God hath delivered thee from this disease, nor shalt thou any more
feel it, nor die at this time: but my death being at hand, neglect not
to learn something of me so long as I shall be able to teach thee, which
will be no more than seven days." "And what," said Cuthbert, "will be
best for me to read, which may be finished in seven days?" "The gospel
of St. John," said he, "which we may in that time read over, and confer
upon as much as shall be necessary." For they only sought therein, says
Bede, the sincerity of faith working through love, and not the treating
of profound questions. Having accomplished this reading in seven days,
the man of God, Boisil, falling ill of the aforesaid disease, came to
his last day, which he passed over in extraordinary jubilation of soul,
out of his earnest desire of being with Christ. In his last moments he
often repeated those words of St. Stephen: "Lord Jesus receive my
spirit!" Thus he {453} entered into the happiness of eternal light, in
the year 664. The instructions which he was accustomed most earnestly to
inculcate to his religious brethren were: "That they would never cease
giving thanks to God for the gift of their religious vocation; that they
would always watch over themselves against self-love, and all attachment
to their own will and private judgment, as against their capital enemy;
that they would converse assiduously with God by interior prayer, and
labor continually to attain to the most perfect purity of heart, this
being the true and short road to the per