But as opinions on this article are changed, and we are called to act for our country, it becomes us to explore the dangers that will attend its peace, and to avoid them if we can.

Few of us here, and fewer still in proportion of our constituents, will doubt that, by rejecting, all those dangers will be aggravated. . . .

ST. ANSELM (1032-1109)

St. Anselm, who has been called the acutest thinker and profoundest theologian of his day, was born in Piedmont about 1032.  Educated under the celebrated Lanfranc, he went to England in 1093 and became Archbishop of Canterbury.  He was banished by William Rufus as a result of a conflict between royal and ecclesiastical prerogative.  He died in 1109.  Neale calls him the last of the great fathers except St. Bernard, and adds that “he probably possessed the greatest genius of all except St. Augustine.”

The sermon here given, the third of the sixteen extant, is given entire from Neale’s translation.  It is one of the best examples of the Middle-Age style of interpreting all Scripture as metaphor and parable.  It contains, moreover, a number of striking passages, such as, “It is a proof of great virtue to struggle with happiness.”

THE SEA OP LIFE

“And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him to the other side, while he sent the multitude away.” (Matt, xiv, 22.)

In this section, according to its mystical interpretation, we have a summary description of the state of the Church, from the coming of the Savior to the end of the world.  For the Lord constrained his Disciples to get into a ship, when he committed the Church to the government of the Apostles and their followers.  And thus to go before him unto the other side,—­that is, to bear onwards towards the haven of the celestial country, before he himself should entirely depart from the world.  For, with his elect, and on account of his elect, he ever remains here until the consummation of all things; and he is preceded to the other side of the sea of this world by those who daily pass hence to the Land of the Living.  And when he shall have sent all that are his to that place, then, leaving the multitude of the reprobate, and no longer warning them to be converted, but giving them over to perdition, he will depart hence that he may be with his elect alone in the kingdom.

Whence it is added, “while he sent the multitude away.”  For in the end of the world he will “send away the multitude” of his enemies, that they may then be hurried by the Devil to everlasting vdamnation.  “And when he had sent the multitude away, he went up in a mountain to pray.”  He will not send away the multitude of the Gentiles till the end of the world; but he did dismiss the multitude of the Jewish people at the time when, as saith Isaiah, “He commanded his clouds that they should rain