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Page 12
"They immediately did as he commanded; and it happened most
wonderfully that the moment the kettle began to boil the wind began
to cease, and the waves to be still Having finished their repast, and
seeing that the sea was calm, they went on board, and to their great
delight, though with shame for their neglect, reached home with a fair
wind. Now this, as I have related, I did not pick up from any chance
authority, but I had it from one of those who were present, a most
reverend monk and priest of the same monastery, Cynemund, who still
lives, known to many in the neighbourhood for his years and the purity
of his life."
* * * * *
I hope that the memory of this story, which, thinking it myself
an extremely pretty one, I have given you, not only for a type of
sincerity and simplicity, but for an illustration of obedience, may
at all events quit you, for good and all, of the notion that the
believers and witnesses of miracle were poetical persons. Saying
no more on the head of that allegation, I proceed to the Dean's
second one, which I cannot but interpret as also intended to be
injurious,--that they were artless and childish ones; and that because
of this rudeness and puerility, their motives and opinions would not
be shared by any statesmen of the present day.
It is perfectly true that Edward the Confessor was himself in many
respects of really childish temperament; not therefore, perhaps, as I
before suggested to you, less venerable. But the age of which we are
examining the progress, was by no means represented or governed by
men of similar disposition. It was eminently productive of--it was
altogether governed, guided, and instructed by--men of the widest and
most brilliant faculties, whether constructive or speculative, that
the world till then had seen; men whose acts became the romance, whose
thoughts the wisdom, and whose arts the treasure, of a thousand years
of futurity.
I warned you at the close of last lecture against the too agreeable
vanity of supposing that the Evangelization of the world began at St.
Martin's, Canterbury. Again and again you will indeed find the stream
of the Gospel contracting itself into narrow channels, and appearing,
after long-concealed filtration, through veins of unmeasured rock,
with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. But you will find it
the only candid, and therefore the only wise, way of research, to look
in each era of Christendom for the minds of culminating power in all
its brotherhood of nations; and, careless of local impulse, momentary
zeal, picturesque incident, or vaunted miracle, to fasten your
attention upon the force of character in the men, whom, over each
newly-converted race, Heaven visibly sets for its shepherds and kings,
to bring forth judgment unto victory. Of these I will name to you, as
messengers of God and masters of men, five monks and five kings; in
whose arms during the range of swiftly gainful centuries which we are
following, the life of the world lay as a nursling babe. Remember,
in their successive order,--of monks, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St.
Martin, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory; of kings,--and your national
vanity may be surely enough appeased in recognizing two of them for
Saxon,--Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. I
will read three passages to you, out of the literal words of three
of these ten men, without saying whose they are, that you may compare
them with the best and most exalted you have read expressing the
philosophy, the religion, and the policy of to-day,--from which I
admit, with Dean Stanley, but with a far different meaning from his,
that they are indeed separate for evermore. I give you first, for an
example of Philosophy, a single sentence, containing all--so far as I
can myself discern--that it is possible for us to know, or well for us
to believe, respecting the world and its laws.
"OF GOD'S UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE, RULING ALL, AND COMPRISING ALL.
"Wherefore the great and mighty God; He that made man a reasonable
creature of soul and body, and He that did neither let him pass
unpunished for his sin, nor yet excluded him from mercy; He that gave,
both unto good and bad, essence with the stones, power of production
with the trees, senses with the beasts of the field, and understanding
with the angels; He from whom is all being, beauty, form, and number,
weight, and measure; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent,
all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and
seeds, derive and have being; He that gave flesh the original beauty,
strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry; He
that gave the unreasonable soul, sense, memory, and appetite; the
reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will; He,
I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man,
no, nor the most base and contemptible creature, neither the bird's
feather, nor the herb's flower, nor the tree's leaf, without the true
harmony of their parts, and peaceful concord of composition:--It is
in no way credible that He would leave the kingdoms of men and their
bondages and freedom loose and uncomprised in the laws of His eternal
providence."[5]
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