hundreds to thousands.

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[Illustration: NO. 16. ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER]

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Let us fancy what this country was like more than thirteen hundred
years ago. The English had conquered it and given it their name and
language. The Christian Faith, which the Britons had learnt while the
Romans were ruling them, had been almost quite forgotten except in the
western part of the land; for in the east very many of the English had
settled, and they were heathen. Do you remember that Pope Gregory the
Great, when he was still just a simple priest, had seen some English
children in the slave-market at Rome, and thought they were fair as
angels? He never forgot these children, and when he became Pope he
sent his friend, Augustine, and some priests to England to teach its
people the Christian Faith. {58} These missionaries landed in Kent and
were kindly received by its King, Ethelbert, whose wife, Bertha, was
already a Christian. In time he was baptized; and the old historian
Bede tells us that he "builded in the Citie of London St. Paules
Church"; and its first Bishop was that Mellitus to whom the fisherman
Edric brought the message that St. Peter had consecrated his own abbey
on Thorney.

In time Ethelbert died, and Mellitus was made Archbishop of Canterbury;
then the men of London became heathen again. There is a curious old
tale about this, and though it is just a story, not real history, I
will tell it to you. Do you remember that the monks said Sebert, King
of the East Saxons, rebuilt St. Peter's Abbey? Do you not think, then,
that he must have cared enough about the Christian Faith to teach it to
his sons? Yet after his death they went back to the old Faith. It
chanced that one day, when Mellitus was holding the solemn service of
the Mass, they broke open the door of the church, rushed in and ordered
him to give them "white bread" such as he used to give their father;
they meant the Bread used in the Mass. How could Mellitus give it to
men who did not believe the Faith in which such Bread is a holy thing?
He refused, and in their anger they turned him out of London; and, as I
said, the Londoners went back to their old religion. Truly it took a
long time and much teaching to make them really Christians.

Near the end of the seventh century we hear of another Bishop of