To him it may be, as
to the Psalmist, the storm-swept sea pictured the instability of
mortal things, while secure upon his cliff he said with the
Psalmist, "The Lord hath set my feet upon a rock, and ordered my
goings;" and again, "The wicked are like a troubled sea, casting up
mire and dirt." Often, again, looking upon that far horizon, must
his soul have been drawn, as many a soul has been drawn since, to
it, and beyond it, as it were into a region of boundless freedom and
perfect peace, while he said again with David, "Oh that I had wings
like a dove; then would I flee away and be at rest!" and so have
found, in the contemplation of the wide ocean, a substitute at least
for the contemplation of those Eastern deserts which seemed the
proper home for the solitary and meditative philosopher.
For indeed in no northern country can such situations be found for
the monastic cell as can be found in those great deserts which
stretch from Syria to Arabia, from Arabia to Egypt, from Egypt to
Africa properly so called. Here and there a northern hermit found,
as Hilarion found, a fitting home by the seaside, on some lonely
island or storm-beat rock, like St. Cuthbert, off the coast of
Northumberland; like St. Rule, on his rock at St. Andrew's; and St.
Columba, with his ever-venerable company of missionaries, on Iona.
But inland, the fens and the forests were foul, unwholesome,
depressing, the haunts of fever, ague, delirium, as St.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133