BONIFACE, THE APOSTLE OF THE GERMANS. 453 this cause of your creation, my Christian brethren, in order that you may not regard yourselves as reprobate beings, and abdicate your dignity by living like brutes. God, who is the highest good, resolved to create beings endowed with reason, that acknowledging him as their Lord, the author of their existence, and being filled with his love, they should rejoice in being made happy in him." He then deduced the origin of evil from the desire of rational beings to have in themselves the ground of their being, life, and happiness; hence arises that internal emptiness, since the creature, turning away from the fountain of life and left to itself, must fall from fulness to emptiness, from reality to nothingness. He closed the whole address with the following exhortations: "We who are the unworthy messengers of the gospel to these times, adjure you in Christ's name that you renonce for ever the devil and all his works and ways, as you have already renounced them once at baptism; that you will acknowledge the one true God and Father who reigns for ever in heaven, and the eternal Wisdom who in time became man for us men, and the Holy Ghost, the pledge of eternal salvation granted to us in our sojourn here; and thus may you strive to live, as you have acknowledged it becomes the children of God. Be kind to one another and forgive one another as God hath forgiven you your sins. May God Almighty, who wills that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and who, by the instrumentality of my tongue, has delivered this in your hearing, grant that by his grace you may bring forth fruit in your hearts." 4. Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans. Boniface, or Winfred (his Anglo-Saxon name), who was born at Crediton, in Devonshire, in the year 680, deserves to be honoured as the father of the German church, though he was by no means the first who brought the seeds of the gospel into Germany. Many had already laboured in that field before him, but the efforts of scattered and isolated indi. viduals were not sufficient to secure the continued propagation of Christianity. Settled ecclesiastical institutions required to be added, and this was first effected by Boniface, from whose agency the salvation of so many proceeded even down to the present time. The first particular to be noticed in Boniface's history is, that the seeds of religion were early developed in his heart. As in England the custom had been kept up, which was introduced by the first pious Irish missionaries, for the clergy to visit the houses of the laity and to deliver discourses on religious subjects before their families, the children in such cases often listened attentively, and they gladly conversed with them on the things of religion. His father tried to repress his inclination for the ecclesiastical profession, as he had intended him for a post of secular distinction. But, as it often happens, the inclination which his father aimed to subdue only acquired greater force, and at last the impression of a severe illness induced his father to give up further opposition to his son's views. Boniface was educated in several noted English convents, where he became intimately acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, which were to be a light to his path in after-life among savage tribes. His mind was certainly narrowed during this period by many prejudices which kept him from the pure knowledge of Scripture doc. trine, and which must necessarily have been a hindrance to him in his missionary labours; for the more pure ande,, and unmixed with human schemes, Christianity is, the more easily it makes its way into the hearts of men, and the more easily can it preserve in undiminished vigour its divine attractive power over human nature. The missionary requires especially the spirit of Christian freedom, that he may not obstruct the work of God in the soul by human alloy, or prevent Christ, whose organ alone he ought to be, from obtaining in every nation that peculiar form which is exactly suitable to each one. This stand-point Boniface certainly did not occupy, and it was during this whole period unknown in the development of the church. The nations were obliged, first of all, to receive Christianity in the form of a definite, visible church, which had built many foreign materials on the one foundation, which is Christ, and to admit among them the great building of the Roman church, in order to develop themselves under its guardianship to the maturity of manhood in Christ, but at last were led by Luther from the guardianship of the church to Christ, whom alone to serve and on whom alone to depend is true freedom. When Boniface had completed his five-and-thirtieth year, ་ HIS LABOURS AMONG HEATHEN TRIBES. 455 he felt himself excited by the example of other missionaries among his countrymen to carry the message of the gospel to the heathen. What would have become of our fatherland if God had not by his Spirit awakened that missionary zeal, especially in England and Ireland! And as we now with joy look back with gratitude on the labours of those heroes of the faith, to whom we owe the blessings of Christianity and of all mental culture, so hereafter, the churches gathered from among the heathen in South India, Asia, and Africa, when they have received through Christianity the abundance of all earthly and heavenly good, will look back with gratitude on the commencing missionary zeal of the present day. An English priest, Egbert, gave the first impulse to this missionary movement. In a dangerous illness he made a vow, that if his life were spared he would devote it to the service of the Lord among foreign nations. After this, he decided with several of his associates to visit the German tribes; but when on the point of sailing he was prevented by several circumstances from accompanying them. though he must still be regarded as the prime mover in the undertaking. Boniface himself informs us, that an impulse natural to his nation contributed, with the religious interest, to impel him to missionary labour-in other words, a passion for foreign travel and the fear of Christ, as he expresses it in one of his letters. He terms it the fear of Christ, since he regarded it as a debt due to the heathen, an obligation laid upon him by Christ, which he believed himself bound to fulfil: he would have exclaimed with the Apostle Paul, “Woe is me, if I preach not the gospel!" First of all, he assisted in his labours the zealous Willibrord, one of those missionaries who followed the impulse given by Egbert, and founded the church in East Friesland and the Netherlands. He wished to have retained Boniface near him that he might be his successor as archbishop of Utrecht; but he declined compliance, feeling impelled by an inward call to begin a fresh work among the heathen tribes of Germany. The subject of his waking thoughts presented itself to him in an admonitory dream, and great views of the future were opened to him, as a female friend (the Abbess Bugga) in England reminded him at a later period, that God had 66 revealed himself to him in a dream, and had promised him an abundant harvest among the heathen. The value he set on the Holy Scriptures is shown in the following words, addressed to a young man in his native land, whom he exhorted to a diligent study of the Bible: "Throw aside everything that hinders you, and direct your whole study to the Holy Scripture, and there seek that divine wisdom which is more precious than gold; for what is it more seemly in youth to strive after, or what can age possess more valuable, than the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, which will guide our souls, without danger of being shipwrecked in the storm, to the shores of the heavenly Paradise, to the eternal heavenly joys of angels?" To an abbess who had sent him a Bible, he wrote in return, that she had consoled him when banished to Germany, with spiritual light; for whoever is obliged to visit the dark corners of the German people falls into the jaws of death, unless he has the Word of God as a lamp to his feet and a light to his path." He requested his old friend, Daniel, bishop of Winchester, to send him a manuscript of the Prophets left behind by his deceased abbot and teacher, Wimbert, which was written in very plain and distinct characters. If God incline you to grant this request," he wrote to him, "you can render no greater comfort to my old age; for in this country I cannot obtain such a manuscript of the Prophets as I wish for, and with my already weak eyesight I cannot distinguish small and closely-written characters. 66 66 In the following passage of a letter to an English abbess, he shows what was the ground of his confidence in all his labours and conflicts. Pray for me, that He who dwelleth on high and looketh on the lowly (Psa. cxiii. 5) would forgive my sins, that the word may be given me with freedom of utterance, and that the gospel of the glory of Christ may run and be glorified among the heathen." In his twentysecond letter to some English nuns, he says: "I entreat, as I have confidence in you that you always do So, that you pray fervently to the Lord that we may be redeemed from wicked and mischievous men-for all have not faith; and be assured that we praise God, although the sufferings of our heart are many. May the Lord our God, who is the refuge of the poor and the hope of the humble, deliver us from our trouble HINDRANCES TO COMPLETE SUCCESS. 457 In a letter addressed Seek to obtain by your and from the temptations of this evil world, that the glorious gospel of Christ may be glorified, that the grace of the Lord shown to me may not be in vain; and since I am the last and most unworthy of all the messengers which the Romish church has sent out for the publication of the gospel, may I not die without having brought forth fruit for the gospel; may I not depart without leaving sons and daughters behind; so that when the Lord comes I may not be found guilty of having hidden my talent, and that I may not, by the guilt of my sins, instead of the reward of labour, receive punishment for unfruitful labour from Him who sent me." Thus he endeavoured-as became a humble labourer in the Lord's vineyard, who knew how to distinguish what was divine in the cause from the defects of its human instrumentality-to find the reason of the hindrances to his success in his own sinfulness and deficiencies. to the English clergy, he says: prayers that our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who will have all men saved and attain to the knowledge of God, may convert the hearts of the pagan Saxons to the faith, that they may be delivered from the snares of the devil in which they are entangled, and become associated with the children of the mother-church. Have pity upon them, for they were used themselves to say, 'We are of the same flesh and bone [with the Anglo-Saxons].'" To an English abbot, he writes: We beseech you earnestly that you would support us by your prayers-us, who labour and scatter the seed of the gospel among the rude and ignorant tribes of Germany: now neither is he that planteth nor he that watereth anything, but God who giveth the increase. In a letter to an English bishop, he says: "I need your prayers, since the sea of Germany is so dangerous to sail over, that I may by your prayers and under God's guidance arrive at the haven of eternal rest without stain or damage to my soul; that I may not, while I am trying to bring the light of evangelical truth to the blind who know not their own darkness and do not wish to see- -that I may not be covered by the darkness of my own sins-that I may not run or have run in vain— that I may be supported by your prayers, and may attain undefiled and enlightened to the light of eternity.' again: "Pray the living Protector of our life, the only Refuge And |