ADDRESSES 243 



snatched up the light and rushed on to new victories. Now 

 that long time has passed, history has summarized the influ- 

 ence of these missionaries. If we ask who destroyed the 

 great social evils of Rome, Lecky answers, 'The Christian 

 missionaries.' Ask when the rude tribes of the northern 

 forests began to be nations, Hallam answers, ' When Boni- 

 face crossed the Alps on his Christian mission.' Asked for 

 the beginning of England's greatness, Green tells us the 

 story of the two Christian teachers who one winter's night 

 entered the rude banquet hall of King Ethelbert." 



About the middle of this period commenced the hermit 

 or ascetic life in the far East. Paul, Anthony, Pacomius, 

 and others, gathering together the thousands of disciples 

 that had followed them, peopled the arid wastes and rocky 

 valleys of the Thebaid with their nuns and monks. 



Next follows the missionary period, in which these de- 

 voted soldiers of the cross, pushing their adventurous way 

 into every part of Europe, reconquered for the church the 

 territory it had lost, and, planting their monasteries in the 

 wildest and most unfrequented spots, became the heralds of 

 civilization and Christianity. In this period and in the last 

 the monasteries were largely enriched by the gifts of the 

 faithful, — in most cases the donors begging the interces- 

 sion of the monks in their behalf. Thus St. Eloysius in his 

 charter to the monks of Solignac writes: "I, your suppli- 

 ant, in the sight of the mass of my sins, and in hopes of 

 being delivered from them by God, give to you a little 

 thing for a great, earth in exchange for heaven, that which 

 passes away for that which is eternal." So Peter, the Lord 

 of Maule, says: "The prudent ant as she sees winter ap- 

 proach makes the more haste to bring in her stores, so as to 



