eye: how Augustine was sent to us by
Gregory; how he fainted in the way at the tidings of our fierceness, and,
but for the Pope, would have shrunk as from an impossible expedition; how
he was forced on "in weakness and in fear and in much trembling," until he
had achieved the conquest of the island to Christ. Nor, again, how it came
to pass that, when Augustine died and his work slackened, another Pope,
unwearied still, sent three saints from Rome, to ennoble and refine the
people Augustine had converted. Three holy men set out for England
together, of different nations: Theodore, an Asiatic Greek, from Tarsus;
Adrian, an African; Bennett alone a Saxon, for Peter knows no distinction
of races in his ecumenical work. They came with theology and science in
their train; with relics, with pictures, with manuscripts of the Holy
Fathers and the Greek classics; and Theodore and Adrian founded schools,
secular and monastic, all over England, while Bennett brought to the north
the large library he had collected in foreign parts, and, with plans and
ornamental work from France, erected a church of stone, under the
invocation of St. Peter, after the Roman fashion, "which," says the
historian,(4) "he most affected." I call to mind how St. Wilfrid, St. John
of Beverley, St. Bede, and other saintly men, carried on the good work in
the following generations, and how from that time forth the two islands,
England and Ireland, in a dark and dreary age, were the two lights of
Christendom, and had no claims on each other, and no thought of self, save
in the interchange of kind offices and the rivalry of love.

7.

O memorable time, when St. Aidan and the Irish monks went up to
Lindisfarne and Melrose, and taught the Saxon youth, and when a St.
Cuthbert and a St. Eata repaid their charitable toil! O blessed days of
peace and confidence, when the Celtic Mailduf penetrated to Malmesbury in
the south, which has inherited his name, and founded there the famous
school which gave birth to the great St. Aldhelm! O precious seal and
testimony of Gospel unity, when, as Aldhelm in turn tells us, the English
went to Ireland "numerous as bees;" when the Saxon St. Egbert and St.
Willibrod, preachers to the heathen Frisons, made the voyage to Ireland to
prepare themselves for their work; and when from Ireland went forth to
Germany the two noble Ewalds, Saxons also, to earn the crown of martyrdom!
Such a period, indeed, so rich in grace, in peace,