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The Coming of Christianity
The Coming of Christianity; Part 6

The Coming of Christianity; Part 6

The Church, then, rebuked vice and punished ill-doers. But rebuke and punishment by themselves were not enough. Had the Church contented itself with merely commanding men to be good, its influence would have been slight. It was necessary to show the way; to teach not only by precept, but by example. This the monks and parish priests did admirably. Their own peaceful and simple lives brought men to see that doing their duty at home was better than seeking adventures abroad; that it was better to forgive an enemy than to overcome him; that a man should strive to be loved rather than feared.

To the Church, too, we owe the beginnings of our learning. The Abbey of Whitby found shelter for a cowherd who had become a monk. This man was Caedmon, the first English poet. His great religious poem seemed to those of his time to be sent direct from heaven. " Others after him strove to compose religious poems, but none could vie with him, for he learnt not the art of poetry from men, or of men, but from God." Bede, another monk - the "Venerable Bede" is the respectful title that has been bestowed on him - is a type of the great teachers whom the Church gave us. " My constant pleasure ", he says, "lay in learning, or teaching, or writing." At his school of Jarrow six hundred monks learned from him. He was our first historian; and, indeed, it is he who tells us almost all we know of this time. And yet more than this, he translated into English St. John's Gospel, devoting the last days of his life to the task. He was urged to rest from the work that was killing him, but he refused, saying: "I don't want my boys to read a lie, or to work to no purpose when I am gone". When the last chapter of the Gospel was finished the great scholar died.

Another, and a very different type, from among the men the Church gave us was Dunstan. He, too, was a monk; but while Bede was a scholar, Dunstan was not only a scholar but a statesman also. He was the adviser of two kings, and practically regent for a third; he went with the king on campaigns against the Danes; he kept the royal treasure. As in addition he was Archbishop of Canterbury, we can understand that he was much the most powerful man in the kingdom. He was the first man to be great both as a cleric and as a statesman. But there were many who followed in his -steps. In fact, until the reign of Henry VIII, the greatest ministers of our kings were almost always clerics. There where many things that commended them. No cleric could be suspected of aiming at the throne; nor could he found a family, and therefore he was presumably less greedy for lands and honours than a baron, who could leave such things to his son. Again, clerics were far more able and enlightened than the ignorant warriors and nobles who formed the king's court, and they did a great work for England. As we shall see later, one of these Church-statesmen, Stephen Langton, had much to do with obtaining for us our Magna Carta.

The Church, then, gave us the beginnings of our national unity; it did much to give us peace at home, and a better sense of what was lawful and right; it gave us scholars, and it gave us statesmen.

Chronology

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