Page:Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (tr. Jane).djvu/13

Rh channel, but from the Northern portions of the island itself. Columba died in the very year of the landing of Augustine, and his Celtic followers had already done earnest work from Iona. The political sagacity of the Italians, aiming first at the conversion of the rulers, proved sterile and transitory, while the loving democracy and humble saintliness of the Celtic monks planted a seed destined to have fair permanent growth in English soil. Through Bede's careful reticence and kindly pacific temper, we can easily discern the antagonism between the schools. He gives us a vivid study of Wilfrid—efficient, worldly, devout prototype of many princes of the Church, from Becket to Manning; on the other hand, we have the exquisite picture of Aidan and his Celtic brethren, living as holy anchorites or traversing on foot the drear country of Northumbria with their message of deliverance and love, united in curious mystic fellowship with man and beast. We cannot fail to perceive how inevitable was conflict between the two types: yet we gratefully recognize the necessity of both to the full life of the Church Catholic. We see that Church reconciling and energizing with new force the varying gifts and powers of those who embrace her; we watch the provincialism and faction born of ignorance, yielding slowly to that unity which is in Christ.

So Bede tells his thrilling story of a critical time: how England—always to him a unit, no mere congeries of warring tribes—was civilized and brought into union with the rest of Europe through the agency of the Church. Yet the central value of his work is not in the outward history so carefully narrated; we find it rather in his revelation of the secret life that was transforming the heart of the English. Here, in a practically contemporary account, it is our privilege to catch in the very act the re-creation of a primitive people by the power of an ideal. We in these latter days, sons of a civilization nominally Christian, accustomed to platitudes which we