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iron gates of monasteries, began again to irrigate and
fertilize the desolated wastes of Western Europe. In
their course they met the currents of Oriental Science,
borne westward by the Crusader--his only recompense,
save earthly misery and his eternal hope, and with this
learning was mingled the Saracenic refinement and
knowledge which illuminated the Universities of Spain,
all the South of Europe, and Northern Africa. From
these mingled waters there grew teachings and schools,
and free thought in Philosophy, and new hope in Re-
ligion. Rulers and Statesmen began to study Plato and
Aristotle, and Cicero and Seneca, and good men began
to rescue the Christian law from the imprisonment of
forgotten tongues. Even as early as the beginning of
the 9th century, the venerable Bede had translated a
portion of the holy gospels for the Church service in
England, thus early marking--what you will observe to
the end--the essential difference between the English
and Roman Churches in the diffusion of liberal knowl-
edge. The latter part of this, the 9th century, witnessed
a growing zeal for learning, as manifested by educa-
tional lectures in the town of Oxford--lectures, or free
and public discourses, which formed the beginning of
that educational system finally to be developed into the
College, and then into the University. The same pe-
riod, embracing the discussions of Paschasius Radbert
and his cotemporary opponents, presents the scene of
an English King befriending an Irish scholar--whose
liberal philosophy had opposed the Romanist application
of scholastic logic to the Sacraments of the Church: A
scholar--John Scotus Eregena--whose tendency to ra-
tionalism is counterbalanced by his endeavor, made
equally in Roman Paris and Anglican Oxford, to refute
that interpretation of the Eucharist which finally devel-
oped--in the 12th century--into the name and doctrine
of Transubstantiation; a King--Alfred--who did his part
in the progressive work of English Philosophy and Faith
by the translation of Boethius--a Christian Philosopher
of the purest type.

Thus early, then, while the earth was almost a bar-
baric wilderness, and ferocious ignorance over-hung,
like a storm-cloud, the institutions of men, the Church

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of England was nurturing a pure and lambent flame,
and lighting the fires of true philosophy at the altar of
Christianity, as she is doing here to-day. To King Al-
fred--that "king to justice dear." who,

"Though small his kingdom as spark or gem,
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem;
And Christian India, through her wide-spread clime,
In sacred converse, gifts with Alfre shares"--

To his conjunction of science with religion may justly be
attributed the undying glory of having placed the
Church of England in such relation to the Church of
Rome, as forever, even down to their final separation,
and, to this day, to mark their just distinction. Rome
sought to restrict Science and Christian knowledge to
the Church--England from the first conjoined them and
sent them abroad among the people. Rome kept her
science in the monasteries, and her Bible in a dead
tongue. Alfred translated parts of the Bible into the
common, living language; and besides thus working
for the intellectual enlightenment and freedom of the
people, he began that recognition--by personal acts and
partially by legislation--of the political rights of man
which finally led the people to demand and secure a
Magna Charta. Thus Liberty, Learning and True Re-
ligion were the offspring of one birth from the teeming
womb of the English Church. It is true that for cen-
turies, amid the savage gloom of Danish invasions, and
beneath the grinding yoke, and fierce, hard tyranny of
the Norman conquest, we scarcely recognize this off-
spring; but still, as you will see, it lived and grew be-
neath the genial shelter of that Church, which even
then, as now and ever, "was engaged in ascending up
to Heaven to fetch down blessings, and descending to
scatter them among men"; and these are the blessings
which, living and active, are dwelling with us, equally,
on the banks of the Mississippi, the Thames, and the
Ganges.

As early as 1085, the "Sarum Use," a collected and
complete Anglican "Book of Prayer," provided for the
people a complete Church-Service, independent of Ro-
man authority. This "Use," as well as others more

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