PREACHED BY THE RIGHT REVEREND BROOKE Foss WESTCOTT, D.D., D.C.L., LORD BISHOP OF Durham, at THE CONSECRATION OF S. COLUMBA'S CHURCH, SOUTHWICK, SUNDERLAND.

June 9, 1890.

They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.

PSALM Xxxiv. 10.

SUCH were the last words which Columba wrote on the eve of his death. 'Here,' he said, when he finished the verse as he was transcribing the Psalter, 'I must stop at the close of the page; my scholar shall write what follows.' And most truly his biographer adds, 'This verse was appropriate to the master as the next was to the disciple-" Come ye children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord." Brethren, we hearken now and seek to learn the lesson while our thoughts go back to that early morning nearly 1,300 years ago, when, as on this day, the promise found fulfilment on the desolate shore of Iona, and the teaching of a life of sacrifice was consummated.

The death of Columba was a true revelation of

the saint. Twice, as it is related, the time of his departure had been delayed; once through the prayers of the churches that his help might still be continued to them, and once by his own prayer that his decease might not disturb the joy of Easter. But at last his Sabbath, his rest-day, as he called it, which he had foreseen, drew near. He knew that he must render to God on the morrow the life which had been entrusted to him. With tender thought for his household he went to the monastery barn and blessed it, and thanked God that his monks had still a year's supply in store. Afterwards he climbed the little knoll which overlooked the monastery itself, and blessed his house, and foretold how kings of foreign lands and saints of other Churches should do reverence to the mean and lowly place; then he returned to his own poor hut and continued a work of his early days, a transcription of the Psalter, till he paused at the words I have taken for my text. The evening service then followed; after this he went to rest, with a bare rock, as Adamnan says, for straw, and a stone for his pillow. So resting he gave his parting counsel. 'These, my little children,' he said, 'are my last words. I charge you to keep unfeigned love one with another. If you do so after the pattern of the fathers, God, the champion of the good, will help you... At midnight the bell sounded for matins,

Columba sprang up and entering the church before any of the brethren fell on his knees before the altar. A faithful attendant followed, and saw from afar the whole church flooded with angelic light. When he came to the door the light vanished; but groping his way through the darkness, he found the saint and lifted up his head and placed it in his bosom. By this time the brethren had come in with lights, and burst into lamentation at the sight of their dying master. Columba opened his eyes and looked round with an expression of marvellous gladness, for (his biographer adds) he saw the angel who had come to meet him, and responding to the action of his friend he feebly raised his hand that he might give by a sign the benediction which he could not pronounce with his failing breath. And so, like his Lord, he passed away in blessing.

The scene rises vividly before us, after the long centuries, with an unchanged and unchangeable message of victorious devotion. The hope, the prophecy of Columba still find fulfilment. He is to-day a living Evangelist on the crowded banks of the Wear, among people of another tongue, as on the desolate rocks of the place of his chosen exile. In different forms, under strange varieties of circumstance, his influence has found scope in this distant country. When Oswald was preparing himself for what seemed to

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be a desperate conflict, Columba, it is said, appeared to him in a vision and with cheering words nerved him for victory. The cathedral at Durham claimed to possess among its treasures some of his relics; and now in our latest age a church is raised here to bear his name and bring, as we trust, something of his spirit among us, a spirit purified by the discipline of great sorrows in the power of peace.

We desire to honour the memory of Columba, and happily his portrait has been preserved to us in a life by Adamnan, which has justly been described as 'the most complete piece of such biography which Europe can boast of' to the end of the middle ages. In this we see him as he appeared to those among whom he moved, and we can realise, at least in the broad features, what he was. He was then, in a word, a true man; a true Irishman; with all the virtues and faults of his race; tender, affectionate, self-willed, imperious, even fierce. The words of the Psalmist seem to find expression in his actions: 'How do I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee.' He was not perfect, but he was a saint, complete, not in faultlessness, but in the unreserved consecration of his whole nature.

When we go further into detail we are guided by the plan of his biographer, who has grouped the memorials of Columba's life under three divisions: