Saint Anselm Author:Richard William Church Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. ANSELM AT EEC. " Temperance, proof Against all trials ; industry severe And constant as the motion of the day ; Stern self-denial round him spr... more »ead, with shade That might be deemed forbidding, did not there All generous feelings nourish and rejoice ; Forbearance, charity in deed and thought, And resolution competent to take Out of the bosom of simplicity All that her holy customs recommend." Wordsworth, Excursion, b. vii. " Servants of God ! or sons Shall I not call you ? because Not as servants ye knew Your Father's innermost mind, His, who unwillingly sees One of His little ones lost— Yours is the praise, if mankind Hath not as yet in its march Fainted, and fallen, and died ! Then in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardour divine. Beacons of hope, ye appear ! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow." Matthew Arnold. ANSELM came to Bec, as men later on went to universities, to find the best knowledge and the best teaching of this day. He read indefatigably, and himself taught others, under Lanfranc. Teacher and pupil, besides being both Italians, had much to draw them together; and a friendship began between them, which, in spite of the difference between the two men, and the perhaps unconscious reserve caused by it, continued to the last genuine and unbroken. Lanfranc was a man of strong practical genius. Anselm was an original thinker of extraordinary daring and subtlety. But the two men had high aims in common; they knew what they meant, and they understood each other's varied capacities for their common task. They found themselves among a race of men of singular energy and great ambition, but at a very low level of knowledge, and wi...« less