Page:Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (tr. Jane).djvu/20

xvi present at an emancipation of hearts, which find in their own wondering depths, impulses and delights, directly born from above, unguessed before. How touching the story of the little cloister-bred boy who clung so lovingly to the young sister, Eadgyth, and, calling three times in death on her beloved name, summoned her to follow him to the land where love knows no parting! How ever-fresh the picture of the two dying brothers, placed in the same bed and helped to kiss each other; or the other tale of Cuthbert and Herebert, those long-severed friends content in the faith that the prayers ascending from Farne and Derwentwater met before the Heavenly Altar, yet asking and receiving the boon that their souls might depart together! In the pages of Bede we watch the birth of no less a gift and blessing than Christian friendship. Its light shines through the book: fair as moonlight, holy, temperate, released from the sad bonds of time or passion, of exacting greed or jealous fear. How gently do these people deal with one another! With what wise tenderness do the abbesses care for the welfare of their spiritual daughters, how fine the relations between the kings and their directors, as between Oswin and Aidan! Compassion, that virtue so rare in heathen, times, is pervasive and compelling. Such sympathetic insight as prompted the remarkable instructions of Gregory to Augustine regarding the forbearance to be shown in methods of proselytizing, is everywhere visible. It implies a respect for others and a delicacy of feeling which leads, on the one hand, to such wise statesmanship as that of Paulinus, on the other to such friendly feeling for all animate life as we see in Cuthbert and Aidan. In these inward reactions of the Faith, in this extension, softening and elevation of the sympathies, we shall do well to see a fulfilment of the ancient promise: He shall take away the stony heart out of your breast, and shall give you a heart of flesh.

If Bede reveals a new comfort in human relations, he shows us also abundant gladness born of a deeper source. For fogs have lifted, and grateful eyes gaze outward to horizons before unseen, and upward to the open heavens.