Page:Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (tr. Jane).djvu/23

Rh rejoice: "For it is no wonder," says Bede of S. Cuthbert, "that the very creature should obey his wishes who so faithfully obeyed the great Author of all creatures. But we for the most part have lost our dominion over the creation that has been subjected to us, because we neglect to obey the Lord and Creator of all things." The creation that has been subjected to us! How strangely had this quiet incidental phrase fallen on Pagan ears!

These miracles have for the most part a homely sweetness, quite dissimilar to the artificial marvels of later ecclesiasticism; their fragrance is natural as that of the blossoms to spring later around the footsteps of S. Francis and his companions in the Umbrian plain. Cuthbert takes refuge for the night in a deserted hut; his horse pulls at the straw of the roof, and there falls down a cloth wrapped round a portion of meat and half a hot loaf, which the saint shares with his faithful beast. He stands all night doing penance in the wintry sea, and when he emerges two friendly otters, crawling from the waves, warm his poor cold feet with their breath. A sick horse, rolling in the green grass that naturally grows from the dust of King Oswald, is restored to health. The post on which hangs a cloth containing dust from the grave of Aidan remains unburned when the cottage of wattles is consumed around it. Almost always the stories bear unconscious witness to the new fellowship. Crows, fishes, eagles gladly serve the saints. The careful accounts of the cure of a little maid's headache, of healing wrought on children, poor people, servants, gain fresh cogency when we realize that we are dealing with a generation when the zest for wholesale slaughter must have been keen in memory of nerve and brain, and when, as Bede frankly tells us, it still got the better of men from time to time.

It is an interesting evidence of Bede's honesty that he is chary of miracles in the periods where he had only tradition to guide him, and multiplies them as he approaches the time when he could sift his testimony himself. One also notes that they occur more often in connection with the Celtic than with the Roman side of the