LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week " paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR.]
THE VENERABLE BEDE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The twelve-hundredth anniversary of the death of the Venerable Bede is celebrated in the Diocese, of Durham during the present week. It would not be in my power to supplement the tributes which have been, or will be, paid to his memory by the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York, and by the Bishop and the Dean of Durham. All that I can think of doing is to draw from his life and his death some inferences which may not, even now, be wholly superfluous.
Of these the first is the benefit, not only social but spiritual, of a National Church. The Church of Rome, in virtue of her world-wide organization, makes, as she has ever made, a strong appeal to the intelligence and the conscience of many Chris- tians, but a Church which is so predominantly Italian as not only the Popes since the Reformation but the majority of the Cardinals have been, and still are, cannot altogether satisfy the aspirations of English or English-speaking people. Even so impressive an event as the canonization of the two English martyrs, Cardinal Fisher and Sir Thomas More, does not wholly compensate for the partial isolation of the Roman Catholics in England during the ceremonies of the Royal Jubilee, and for their complete isolation at the time of the great Service of Thanksgiving in St. Paul's Cathedral. For if all the Churches should adopt the same policy of isolation as the Church of Rome, the unity of the nation would be broken up. The Venerable Bede, if he was a representative of the undivided Church, was still more a representative of the Church of England, as his great work entitled Histaria Ecclesiastica Geniis Anglorum sufficiently proves.
Again, it is natural in the commemoration of the Venerable Bede, to emphasize the ecclesiastical relation between the North and the South of England. For England, as Bishop Lightfoot was fond of arguing, was converted to Christianity rather from the North than from the South. His own book, entitled Leaders of the Northern Church, attests the influence of such great names as those of St. Aidan, St. Cuthbert, Ceadmon, Biscop, St. Hilda and St. Chad, as well as of Bede himself, upon the early history of the Church of England. They are all names belonging to the North. " Northumbria," in Bishop Lightfoot's words, " bore the chief part in the making of the English Church, as she did likewise in the making of the English State."
Bede himself says of his life from seven years onwards, " Spending all the remaining time of my life in that Monas- tery "—i.e., at Jarrow—" I wholly applied myself to the study of scripture, and amidst the observance of regular dis- cipline and the daily care of singing in the Church, I always took delight in learning, teaching and writing."
Surely, it follows that the name of the Venerable Bede, " the father of English learning," as he has been called, may- be chosen to illustrate the value of learning, as well as of worship, in the Church of England.
In human character there is no feature perhaps more inspiring than the union of intellectuality and spirituality, as it was so signally exemplified .in Bede's life and even in his death. His example may be held to have played a noble part in investing the Church of England with the special dis- tinction, which has clung to the earth through the ages, as combining in not a few of her most eminent sons profound study and devout belief. It may be feared that the Church is not so truly-today, as she was of old, a home of sacred learning, but if' ,the Monasteries no longer afford a quiet refuge for religious students, is it not possible—and if so, is it not highly desirable ?—that the Cathedrals should be, in a large measure, devoted to the encouragement of sacred learning ? Who, then, can refrain from wishing and hoping that, even if the Bishops today are too busily occupied for intense study, an ever- increasing number of Deaneries and Canonries will be conferred upon clergymen who have rendered, or are capable of ren- dering, noble service to the Church by their intellectual as well as by their spiritual culture ?—I remain, Sir, your
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