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tradition: and there seems really to have been early preaching of Christianity here, if the remote Britain were not used as a mere figure of rhetoric. Origen, speaking in the earlier half of the third century, said that "the power of the Saviour's kingdom 1eached as far as Britain, which seemed to be another division of the world." Old tradition ascribed to a King Lucius, who died in the year 201, the building of our first church on the site of St. Martin's at Canterbury. Britons are said to have died for the Christian faith; and Alban, said to have been beheaded A.D. 305 near the town now named after him St. Alban's, is described as the first British martyr. Three British bishops, one being from York and two from London, were at the first Council of Arles, A.D. 314. Some of our bishops had come to the remote west as pious missionaries, others were Celtic converts. One of these teachers, Morgan, who translated his name

station was in the Hebrides, upon the rocky island of Iona, which has an area of 1,300 Scotch acres, and lies off the south-western extremity of the island of Mull. After him it was called (IonaColumb-kill) Icolmkill; and the religious community there gathered by him, at first rudely housed, became the head-quarters of religious energy for the conversion of North Britain, the missionaries being devout native Celts, gifted with all the bold enthusiasm of their race, who were in relation rather with the Eastern than the Western Church.

The English settlers in Northumbria were Christianised by a Celtic priest, said to have been a son of Urien, who was educated at Rome, and took the name of Paulinus. But he and his fellowmissionaries promised temporal advantage to their converts, and when in the year 633 they suffered a serious defeat in battle, these fiercely cast off their

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into Pelagius (meaning "born by the sea-shore"), and who was an old man in the year 404, ventured on independent speculations that found not a few followers, and gave for a long time afterwards much trouble to the orthodox. To combat Pelagianism, and add to the number of converts from the heathen, two bishops from Gaul, Germanus and Lupus, came as successful missionaries into Britain in the year 429. Patricius, known as St. Patrick, is said to have been born of a Christian family at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in the year 372, and to have been ordained priest by Germanus before his preaching among the Irish Gaels.

There were then scattered among the people of Ireland and Scotland devoted men of their own race, known as Culdees, servants and worshippers of God, who were engaged in diffusing Christianity. Patrick added to the energy of the work done by these men in Ireland. It was an Irish abbot, Columba, who in the year 563 passed into Scotland, and from the age of about forty to the age of seventy-five worked as a Christian missionary on the mainland and in the Hebrides. His chief

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new creed, and Paulinus fled from them. help was asked from the followers of Columba. The first man who was sent out from Iona returned hopeless; but they were strenuous workers at Iona, who would not accept failure. Another, Aidan, took the place of his more faint-hearted brother, and formed in an island on the Northumbrian coast a missionary station upon the pattern of that in the Hebrides. This was at Lindisfarne, chief of the Farn Islands, named from the Lindi, a rivulet there entering the sea. Lindisfarne is a little more than two miles across from east to west, and scarcely a mile and a half from north to south, attached at low water as a peninsula to the coast, from which it is about two miles distant. It belongs to Durham, although really part of Northumberland, and is about nine miles from Berwick-on-Tweed. island is treeless, chiefly covered with sand, rising to a rocky shore on the north and east. The fertile ground in it is not more than enough for one farm. Here the Culdees established themselves in such force that the place came to be called Holy Island, and from this point they worked effectually for the

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Christianising of the north of England. They fed and comforted the poor, trusting instead of fearing the wild men they sought to soften, went up into their hills to live with them as comrades, and taught religion in a form that blended itself with the spiritual life of man, instead of depending for an outward prosperity on smiles of Fortune. The Culdees prospered in their work, an abbey rose in Lindisfarne, and there was a bishopric established there, which about the year 900, when the Danes ravaged the coast, was removed to Durham.

Aidan died at Lindisfarne in the year 651, and it was he who consecrated the first woman who in Northumbria devoted herself wholly to religious life, and wore the dress of a nun-Heia, who founded the religious house at Herutea. In this she was followed by the abbess Hilda, who is associated with the history of Cædmon's "Paraphrase," the grand religious poem with which our literature opens.

Hilda, daughter of Hereric, nephew to King Eduin, had been one of the converts made by the preaching of Paulinus. Hilda's sister Heresuid, was mother to the king of the East Angles. Hilda went, therefore, into East Anglia, and then designed to follow her sister when she took the religious vow at a monastery in France. But Bishop Aidan summoned Hilda back to the north, and gave her a site for a religious house on the north side of the river Wear. There she was called by Bishop Aidan, in the year 650, a year before his death, to be abbess in the religious house founded by Heia at Herutea, now Hartlepool, Heia then going to another place, probably Tadcaster. Eight years afterwards, when Aidan's successor, Finan, was Bishop of Lindisfarne,

THE WEST CLIFF AT WHITBY.

Hilda left Hartlepool to establish a religious house as a new missionary station on the west cliff at Whitby, then called Streoneshalh. Presided over by a woman, its first founder, this was a house established on the pattern of Iona, in which men

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there rich, and none poor, all things being in common to all, and none having any property. dence was so great, that not only persons of the middle rank, but even kings and princes, sometimes asked and received her advice. She obliged those who were under her direction to attend so much to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and to exercise themselves so much in works of justice, that many might very easily be there found fit for ecclesiastical duties, that is, to serve at the altar. In short, we afterwards saw five bishops taken out of that monastery, all of them men of singular merit and sanctity. Thus this handmaiden of Christ, Abbess Hilda, whom all that knew her called Mother, for her singular piety and grace, was not only an example of good life to those that lived in her monastery, but gave occasion of salvation and amendment to many who lived at a distance, to whom the happy fame was brought of her industry and virtue." She died in the year 680, after six or seven years of ill-health, at the age of sixty-six, having spent the first half of her life to the age of thirty-three in the secular habit, and devoted the rest wholly to religion.

Cædmon's poem was written in the Whitby monastery during Hilda's rule over it, that is to say, in the time between its foundation, A.D. 658, and her death, A.D. 680. The first buildings on the Whitby cliff were very simple, but in course of time a more substantial abbey took its place. It was destroyed by the Northmen in the latter half of the ninth century, rebuilt, and again destroyed. The ruins now upon the site first occupied by Abbess Hilda are of a rebuilding in which the oldest part is of the twelfth century.

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In Hilda's time the servants of God in the Whitby monastery were actively engaged in the conversion of the surrounding people to Christianity, and Cædmon, who seems to have been a tenant of land under them, was one of their first converts. As a convert zealous for the faith to which he had been brought, he sat at a rustic feast one day hearing the songs of heathen war and worship pass round the table. As the harp came towards him he rose. The guests coming from distant parts among a widely-scattered population had the cattle that brought them stabled, and in need of protection against raids for plunder. They took turns to mount guard over their property, and it being then Cadmon's turn, he made that an excuse for leaving his place among the guests before he should be asked to sing. In his mind, as a zealous Christian, would be the wish that songs of the mercy of the true God could be made familiar as these old strains to the lips of his comrades. He was a true poet, as his afterwork proved, and there might be an impulse in his mind that presently shaped itself into a dream as he dozed over his watch; but if so, to the simple faith of those times the dream would seem to be a revelation of the will of Heaven. Read in that way, the whole story of Cadmon, as we have it from Bede, looks like the record of a simple truth that passed for miracle. This-written not more than sixty years after the poet's death-is Bede's account of the manner of Cadmon's entrance into the monastery under Hilda's rule.

BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF CÆDMON.

There was in this abbess's monastery a certain brother, particularly remarkable for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and feeling, in English, which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others of the English nation attempted after him to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from man, but being assisted from above he freely received the gift of God. For this reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those which relate to religion suited his religious tongue; for having lived in a secular habit till he was well advanced in years, he had never learned anything of versifying; for which reason, being sometimes at entertainments, when it was agreed for the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turns, when he saw the harp come towards him, he rose up in the midst of the supper and went home.

Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stables of the draught animals, of which the care was entrusted to him for that night,' he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and saluting him by his name, said, "Cadmon, sing some song to me." He answered, "I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place, because I

"Ad stabula jumentorum quorum ei custodia nocte illa erat delegata." Jumenta are yoked animals-the cattle that had brought the guests to the feast. Yet on this passage the notion has been founded that Caedmon was a herdsman.

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could not sing." The other who talked to him, replied, "Yet you shall sing." "What shall I sing?" rejoined he. 'Sing the beginning of created things," said the other. Having received this answer, he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God the Creator, which he had never before heard, the purport whereof was thus:-" "We now ought to praise the Maker of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory. How He, being the eternal God, became the author of all miracles, who first, as almighty preserver of the human race, created heaven for the sons of men as the roof of the house, and next the earth." This is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep; for verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally translated out of one language into another without losing much of their beauty and loftiness. Awaking from his sleep, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and soon added much more to the same effect in verse worthy of the Deity.

In the morning he came to the steward, his superior, and having told him of the gift he had received, was conducted to the abbess, by whom he was bidden, in the presence of many learned men, to tell his dream, and repeat the verses, that they might all give their judgment what it was and whence his verse proceeded. They all concluded, that heavenly grace had been conferred on him by our Lord. They explained to him a passage in holy writ, either historical or doctrinal, ordering him, if he could, to put the same into verse. Having undertaken it, he went away, and returning the next morning, gave it to them composed in most excellent verse; whereupon the abbess, embracing the grace of God in the man, instructed him to quit the secular habit, and take upon him the monastic life; which being accordingly done, she associated him with the rest of the brethren in her monastery, and ordered that he should be taught the whole series of sacred history. Thus he, keeping in mind all he heard, and as it were, like a clean animal, chewing the cud, converted the same into most harmonious verse; and sweetly repeating the same, made his masters in their turn his hearers. He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis; the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of promise, with many other histories from holy writ; the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of our Lord, and his ascension into heaven; the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the apostles; also the terror of future judgment, the horror of the pains of hell, and the delights of heaven; besides much more of the divine benefits and judgments: by all which he endeavoured to turn men from the love of vice, and to excite in them the

love and practice of good actions. For he was a very religious man, humbly submissive to regular discipline, but full of zeal against those who behaved themselves otherwise; for which reason he ended his life happily.

For when the time of his departure drew near, he laboured for the space of fourteen days under a bodily infirmity which seemed to prepare the way for him, yet was so moderate that he could talk and walk the whole time. Near at hand was the house into which those were carried who were sick, and likely soon to die. In the evening, as the night came on in which he was to depart this life, he desired the person that attended him to make ready there a restingplace for him. This person, wondering why he should desire it, because there was as yet no sign of his dying soon, yet did what he had ordered. He accordingly was placed there, and conversing pleasantly in a cheerful manner with the others who were in the house before, when it was past mid

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night, he asked them, whether they had the Eucharist there? They answered, "What need of the Eucharist? for you are not likely to die, since you talk as cheerily with us as if you were in perfect health.". "Nevertheless," said he, bring me the Eucharist." Having received the same into his hand, he asked whether they were all in charity with him, and without any ill-will or rancour? They answered, that they were all in perfect charity, free from all anger; and in their turn asked him, whether he was in the same mind towards them? He at once answered, "I am in charity, my children, with all the servants of God." Then strengthening himself with the heavenly viaticum, he prepared for the entrance into another life, and asked how near the hour was when the brethren were to be roused to sing the nocturnal lauds of our Lord? They answered, "It is not far off." Then he said, "It is well, let us await that hour;" and signing himself with the sign of the cross, he laid his head on the pillow, and falling into a slumber, so ended his life in silence.

Thus it came to pass, that as he had served God with a simple and pure mind, and quiet devotion, so now he departed to His presence, leaving the world by a quiet death; and that tongue, which had composed so many holy words in praise of the Creator, in like manner uttered its last words while he was in the act of signing himself with the cross, and recommending his spirit into the hands of God. From what has been here said, he would seem to have foreknown his own death.

There is only one known MS. of the metrical First-English Paraphrase of Bible story ascribed to Cadmon. It was discovered by James Ussher when he was a young scholar commissioned to hunt for books wherewith to furnish the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The college was then newly founded, and had Ussher among the first three students who put their names upon its books. Ussher gave the MS. -for him unreadable-to Francis Junius, a scholar known to be active in study of the Northern languages, who was then resident in London as librarian to the Earl of Arundel, and a familiar friend of Milton's. Junius recognised in it a large part of the lost work of Cadmon, and it was first printed by him at Amsterdam in the year 1655. The MS. is a small folio of 229 pages, now in the Bodleian Library among the collection of his manuscripts bequeathed by Francis Junius to the University of Oxford. The first 212 pages are in a handwriting of the tenth century, and adorned with illustrative pictures as far as page 96, with spaces for continuing the illustrations. From page 213 there is the poem of Christ and Satan in a later handwriting, with no spaces left for illustrations.

Cadmon's poem begins with the story of Creation, and joins with it the same legend of the fall of Satan that was joined with it in mediæval times, and used in his "Paradise Lost" by Milton. This was founded on a passage in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah (verses 12-15), where Israel is to take up the proverb against the king of Babylon: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit

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also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." St. Jerome seems to have been the first who applied this symbolical representation of the king of Babylon, in his splendour and his fall, to Satan in his fall from heaven; probably because Babylon is in Scripture a type of tyrannical selfidolising power, and is connected in the Book of Revelation with the empire of the Evil One. Cadmon represented Satan as the Angel of Presumption holding council with the fallen spirits, and there are one or two fine thoughts in his poem which are to be found afterwards in Milton's treatment of the same theme. As the old work was in the hands of Milton's friend Junius for years before "Paradise Lost" appeared, and as Milton included in his epic thoughts from old poets of Greece, it is not improbable that he also consciously enshrined in it a thought or two from our first Christian bard, who was also the greatest of the poets produced in FirstEnglish times. I translate into blank verse very literally the opening of Cadmon's Paraphrase:—

THE OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE.

1.

Most right it is that we praise with our words,
Love in our minds, the Warden of the Skies,
Glorious King of all the hosts of men,
He speeds the strong, and is the Head of all
His high Creation, the Almighty Lord.
None formed Him, no first was nor last shall be
Of the Eternal Ruler, but His sway
Is everlasting over thrones in heaven.
With powers on high, soothfast and steadfast, He
Ruled the wide home of heaven's bosom spread
By God's might for the guardians of souls,
The Sons of Glory. Hosts of angels shone,
Glad with their Maker; bright their bliss and rich
The fruitage of their lives; their glory sure,
They served and praised their King, with joy gave praise
To Him, their Life-Lord, in whose aiding care
They judged themselves most blessed. Sin unknown,
Offence unformed, still with their Parent Lord
They lived in peace, raising aloft in heaven
Right and truth only, ere the Angel Chief
Through Pride divided them and led astray.
Their own well-being they would bear no more,
But cast themselves out of the love of God.
Great in Presumption against the Most High
They would divide the radiant throng far spread,
The resting-place of glory. Even there
Pain came to them, Envy and Pride began
There first to weave ill counsel and to stir
The minds of angels. Then, athirst for strife,
He said that northward he would own in Heaven

1 Northward

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in Heaven. So also in "Paradise Lost," Bk. v.,

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A home and a high Throne. Then God was wroth,

And for the host He had made glorious,

For those pledge-breakers, our souls' guardians,
The Lord made anguish a reward, a home

In banishment, hell groans, hard pain, and bade
That torture-house abide their joyless fall.
When with eternal night and sulphur pains,
Fulness of fire, dread cold, reck and red flames
He knew it filled, then through that hopeless home
He bade the woful horror to increase.
Banded in blameful counsel against God,

Their wrath had wrath for wages. In fierce mood
They said they would, and might with ease, possess
The kingdom. Him that lying hope betrayed,
After the Lord of Might, high King of Heaven,
Highest, upraised his hand against that host.
False and devoid of counsel they might not

Share strength against their Maker. He in wrath
Clave their bold mood, bowed utterly their boast,
Struck from the sinful scathers kingdom, power,

Glory and gladness; from the opposers took
His joy, His peace, their bright supremacy,
And, with sure march, by His own might poured down
Avenging anger on His enemies.

Stern in displeasure, with consuming wrath,

By hostile grasp he crushed them in His arms;

Ireful He from their home, their glory seats

Banished His foes; and that proud angel tribe,
Malicious host of spirits bowed with care,

He, the Creator, Lord of all Might, sent

Far journeying, with bruised pride and broken threat,
Strength bent, and beauty blotted. They exiled
Were bound on their swart ways. Loud laugh no more
Was theirs, but in hell pain they wailed accurst,

Knowing sore sorrow and the sulphur throes,
Roofed in with darkness, the full recompense
Of those advancing battle against God.

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But after as before was peace in Heaven,
Fair rule of love; dear unto all, the Lord
Of Lords, the King of Hosts to all His own,
And glories of the good who possessed joy
In heaven, the Almighty Father still increased.
Then peace was among dwellers in the sky,
Blaming and lawless malice were gone out,
And angels feared no more, since plotting foes
Who cast off heaven were bereft of light.
Their glory seats behind them in God's realm,
Enlarged with gifts, stood happy, bright with bloom,

But ownerless since the cursed spirits went

Wretched to exile within bars of hell.

Then thought within His mind the Lord of Hosts

How He again might fix within His rule

The great creation, thrones of heavenly light

High in the heavens for a better band,

Since the proud scathers had relinquished them.

The holy God, therefore, in His great might

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Willed that there should be set beneath heaven's span 20
Earth, firmament, wide waves, created world,
Replacing foes cast headlong from their home.
Here yet was naught save darkness of the cave,
The broad abyss, whereon the steadfast king
Looked with his eyes and saw that space of gloom,
Saw the dark cloud lower in lasting night,
Was deep and dim, vain, useless, strange to God,

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The Almighty had disposed ten Angel tribes,

The Holy Father by His strength of hand,

That they whom He well trusted should serve Him

And work His will. For that the holy God

Gave intellect, and shaped them with His hands.

In happiness He placed them, and to one

He added prevalence and might of thought,
Sway over much, next highest to Himself
In Heaven's realm. Him He had wrought so bright
That pure as starlight was in heaven the form
Which God the Lord of Hosts had given him.
Praise to the Lord his work, and cherishing
Of heavenly joy, and thankfulness to God

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