and he ate and was refreshed.  The dream passed with the morning; but the sense of heaven’s nearness to earth, the fervid loyalty to the service of his Lord, the tender restfulness and peace in the Divine presence which it reflected lived on in the life of Anselm.  Wandering like other Italian scholars to Normandy, he became a monk under Lanfranc, and on his teacher’s removal to higher duties succeeded him in the direction of the Abbey of Bec.  No teacher has ever thrown a greater spirit of love into his toil.  “Force your scholars to improve!” he burst out to another teacher who relied on blows and compulsion.  “Did you ever see a craftsman fashion a fair image out of a golden plate by blows alone?  Does he not now gently press it and strike it with his tools, now with wise art yet more gently raise and shape it?  What do your scholars turn into under this ceaseless beating?” “They turn only brutal,” was the reply.  “You have bad luck,” was the keen answer, “in a training that only turns men into beasts.”  The worst natures softened before this tenderness and patience.  Even the Conqueror, so harsh and terrible to others, became another man, gracious and easy of speech, with Anselm.  But amidst his absorbing cares as a teacher, the Prior of Bec found time for philosophical speculations to which we owe the scientific inquiries which built up the theology of the Middle Ages.  His famous works were the first attempts of any Christian thinker to elicit the idea of God from the very nature of the human reason.  His passion for abstruse thought robbed him of food and sleep.  Sometimes he could hardly pray.  Often the night was a long watch till he could seize his conception and write it on the wax tablets which lay beside him.  But not even a fever of intense thought such as this could draw Anselm’s heart from its passionate tenderness and love.  Sick monks in the infirmary could relish no drink save the juice which his hand squeezed for them from the grape-bunch.  In the later days of his archbishoprick a hare chased by the hounds took refuge under his horse, and his gentle voice grew loud as he forbade a huntsman to stir in the chase while the creature darted off again to the woods.  Even the greed of lands for the Church to which so many religious men yielded found its characteristic rebuke as the battling lawyers in such a suit saw Anselm quietly close his eyes in court and go peacefully to sleep.

[Sidenote:  William and Anselm]

A sudden impulse of the Red King drew the abbot from these quiet studies into the storms of the world.  The see of Canterbury had long been left without a Primate when a dangerous illness frightened the king into the promotion of Anselm.  The Abbot, who happened at the time to be in England on the business of his house, was dragged to the royal couch and the cross forced into his hands.  But William had no sooner recovered from his sickness than he found himself face to face with an opponent whose meek and loving