Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

VENERABLE
EDE.
her first husband, and there she founded a monastery,
which afterwards became as renowned as any in the
kingdom, 672. Sixteen years after burial the body
of Wilfrid's royal penitent was discovered to be free
from all traces of corruption, and to possess healing
powers for spiritual and physical infirmities.1
Jarrow was not slow to produce a perfect type of
the enedictine life. If its soil had yielded only
Bede, it would have been sufficiently fertile. This
man of singular and attractive holiness was accus-
tomed to the yoke from his earliest years, which, as
he tells us, he passed at Jarrow, for at the age of
seven (679) his parents made him over to the care of
the abbot, Bennet Biscop. The study of Scripture
and the service of the altar were the occupations of
his life, and moulded his mind. In his history of the
Church he discloses the higher qualities of the
historian, perhaps the highest of all: he is essentially
a lover of truth for its own sake. If he is not up to
the standard of modern criticism, that is because our
modern critics, in their fear of believing too much,
minimise the power of God, and reduce His action
in human things. The dates of Bede may occa-
sionally be erroneous, but he never allows his readers
to think bad good or good bad. His proportions are
right, so that it is a matter of less consequence if his
details are at times faulty. The historian, for whom
truth is a ^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H dead letter, reverses the case, and gives us
splendid details. Only his basis is defective. He
1 Hist. Eccles., lib. iv. cap. xix.