king, it was peopled by Cluniac monks; and finally, at the end of the fifteenth eentury became the seat of the Scottish Bishop of the Isles, the Abbey church being his cathedral, and the monks his chapter. Our concern, however, is with that early period of the monastery-the period of its real glory-when it was founded by St. Columba, and exercised an influence on the neighbouring country of England, which we do not exaggerate when we say it is felt to the present hour.

The present Bishop of Durham is the successor of St. Aidan, and St. Aidan was a missionary bishop sent from Iona to evangelize Northumberland. Under this bishop was founded the Church of Lindisfarne, after the model of the parent monastery of Iona. The next Northumbrian bishop was Finan, also an Irishman, who sent Cedd-of whom more hereafter-to preach the Word to the East Angles. The third bishop was the intrepid Colman, another Irishman, who at the Council of Whitby defended the Irish custom of celebrating Easter against the Roman use, and who, indignant at the introduction of Papal innovations, left his diocese in disgust and settled in Connaught. And thus Lindisfarne, an offshoot of Iona, was a missionary centre for Northumbria.

Indeed it was more. We go to the diocese of Lichfield, and we find that the present earnest and pious Bishop is the successor in a long line from Diuma, who was sent as their first bishop to the Mercians and MidAngles by the beforementioned Finan of Lindisfarne. He is also the successor of Caollach, or Kelly, the second bishop who sat upon the episcopal throne at Lichfield, and of Ceadda, another Irish scholar, of whom we have more to say. For Iona and Lindisfarne were connected in England with arch-episcopal as well as episcopal sees. The present Archbishop of York is not strictly speaking the successor of Paulinas, whose mission failed, and who retired to the more congenial associations of Rochester, but rather of Ceadda, who first being Bishop of Lichfield, was appointed some years after the retirement of Paulinus, and held his place until he was superseded by the intrigues of Wilfrid, the missionary from Rome.

And now we may go even as far as London itself. We are told by the ecclesiastical historian Bede (vol. iii. 22) that "Bishop Finan having sent Cedd, a presbyter and brother of Ceadda, to preach the Word amongst the East Saxons, and learning what good success attended his labours, appointed him bishop over that nation, having called in two other bishops to assist him in the consecration; and he having been thus promoted to the episcopal order, returned once more to his province, and, pursuing with greater authority the work he had already begun, erected churches in different places, and ordained priests and deacons to assist him in the preaching of the faith and the administration of the sacraments." And so we find that the Irish Cedd occupies the same position towards the Bishop of London as his spiritual father of Lindisfarne to the Bishop of Durham.

Thus, in the remote past, we find a certain compensation for a state of things which existed in later years when, as noticed by Dean Swift, as well as by less caustic writers, England gave many bishops to the Irish Church; for in those early times the Church of Ireland gave many bishops to her English sister. In this way there is a numerical reciprocity in the matter of men, though in the matter of emolument, having regard to the different circumstances of the times, it is to be feared the balance would be very much on the wrong side for the poor Irish missionary bishops.

It is a significant fact that this remote period of English Church history, so remarkable for the infusion of an Irish element, was the period of a struggle with Romelong continued and ultimately unsuccessful. We have seen that Colman resigned his bishopric rather than submit to the authority of the Papal delegate; and though Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, conformed at last to the Roman use, and submitted to the Roman authority at the Synod of Whitby, it was as an Irish Churchman he was the instrument of bringing the East Saxons to the faith.

It is certainly a matter of more than ordinary interest, a matter indeed of more than ordinary obligation, that in the remote

10.

OT only do modern ways prove the need of such preparation, but modern customs show how, when, and why it is done. When Ibrahim Pasha proposed

to visit certain places on Lebanon, the emeers and sheikhs sent forth a general proclamation, somewhat in the style of Isaiah's exhortation, to all the inhabitants, to assemble along the proposed route, and prepare the way before him. The same was done in 1845, on a grand scale, when the present Sultan visited Brusa. The stones were gathered out, crooked places straightened, and rough ones made level and smooth. The exhortation to gather out the stones is peculiarly appropriate. These farmers do the exact reverse, gather up the

stones from their fields and cast them into the highway; and this barbarous custom in many places renders paths uncomfortable, even dangerous."Dr. Thomson's "Land and Book.

XV. GOLD AND SILVER BEDS. "The beds were of gold and silver."-Esther i. 6. HESE beds of gold and silver may receive illustration from modern Asiatic furniture; the divan, or hall of audience, as also the room for receiving guests in private houses, is generally covered with a Persian carpet, round which are placed cushions of different shape and size, in cases of gold and silver kincob, or of scarlet cloth embroidered; these are occasionally moved into courts and gardens, and placed under the shahmyanah for the accommodation of company.-Forbes' Oriental Memoirs," iii. 191.

XIX. SINNERS CALLED.

"I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."-St. Matt. ix. 13.

N the second century, Celsus, a great adversary of Christianity, distorting our Lord's expression (Matt. ix. 13), complained :-" Jesus Christ came into the world to make the most horrible and dreadful society, for He calls sinners and not the righteous; so that the body He came to assemble is a body of profligates, separated from good people, among whom they before were mixed. He has rejected all the good, and collected all the bad." "True," said Origen in reply, "our Jesus came to call sinners, but to repentance. He assembles the wicked, but to convert them into new men, or rather to change them into angels. We come to Him covetous, He makes us liberal;

lascivious, He makes us chaste; violent, He makes us meek; impious, He makes us religious."

XX. THE LOVE OF CHRIST. "Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?”St. Matt. ix. 11.

CITY missionary was one day visiting one of the lowest and most degraded courts in London, when a woman said something like this to him: " You say you care for us, and are anxious about us; but it is a very easy thing for you to come from your clean quiet homes just to visit us. Would you come and bring your family and live in this court, and expose yourself to all these evils day by day, in order to lift us up? The missionary felt he had hardly love enough for that; but Jesus dwelt with sinners, as well as died to save them.