Page:Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (tr. Jane).djvu/25

Rh among the English. The fascinating legends of Irish saints, so rich in sentiment and fantasy—above all, that most entertaining and human document, the story of the hot-headed Irishman S. Columba—prove that the appeal of Christianity in the Celtic world was primarily to the imagination and the heart. If, on the other hand, the noble output of English prose and verse during the eighth century is poorer in elements of imaginative beauty than the literature of Ireland, it is correspondingly richer in the searching record of ethical experience. If we turn away from both Irish and Anglo-Saxon, toward that Roman genius already evident, and destined later to express itself through the Normans, we shall see a temper that delights in efficiency and administration, in the construction to the glory of God of great buildings and of theological systems equally firm. These instincts, like those of the Celt, Bede shows us at work, energizing and leavening the English race. But in this race the conscience had first to be won : it was the central citadel, and only when it had yielded did the whole nature of the man enter into faithful allegiance. If we see the deep temperamental gloom of the Anglo-Saxons softened and brightened, and the curious paralysis that sometimes seems to oppress them yielding to wise energy, it is because they have found in Christianity a sure and necessary stay for their moral nature. They were a people that could never attain true development till they rested on a sustaining force. That force, Law in the outer universe, was Duty within, and the faith in it once gained was destined never to fail through the long unfolding of national life.

Thou who art destiny and law When empty terrors overawe, From vain temptations dost set free, And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong!"

To such music of the English future does Bede's great story already march.

And in Bede himself do we not find the same union of