Page:Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (tr. Jane).djvu/22

xviii charged with the first free emotion and excitement that they inspired. The Visions of Fursey and of Drithelm, so naïvely and earnestly related, are original adventures of the pilgrim soul. They are among our earliest reports from those strange regions, beyond and within our mortal life, from which Dante, six centuries later, was to bring back perhaps the last authentic message. There is an interesting reticence in these stories. The four fires seen of Fursey in the air above the dark and obscure valley are not the fires of Hell, but the fires of falsehood, covetousness, discord and iniquity, which "would kindle and consume the world." Nor does Drithelm, in all the picturesque and solemn variety in his experience, behold more than the mouth of the Pit and the far light of Heaven. This reserve is finer by far than the bold irreverence with which the later middle ages descanted on the ultimate secrets of the prison house. Nor is the Christian ethical feeling with which the tales are charged any the less impressive because they are full of haunting reminiscence of Celtic Other-World myths; for the power of Christianity is seen always less in its invention of new things than in its transformation of old. And again we note the light and grace of a new supernatural hope. If the folklorist be right, the Other-World of the Celt was the exclusive abode of the gods, opened only to an occasional hero favoured by the love of an Immortal. In this new legend, the idea has enlarged its bounds, and Paradise awaits, late or soon, all faithful souls.

Allied to the visions recorded by Bede are the frequent miracles, of which he tells with a grave simplicity full of innocent poetry. And here the reader will surely err if he indulge in any instinct of patronage toward monkish credulity, or any attempt to rationalize. For these Signs are of the very warp and woof of Bede's narrative, a natural product of the new psychology. They belong to that Christian consciousness which was so lovingly and gratefully aware of the influx of deep mystical currents of love and healing through the channels of daily life. If we find that birds and beasts, the air and the sea obey the children of God, it behoves us less to marvel than to