o did not learn (of course the vast
majority, in days when there was no printing), he taught by sermons, by
pictures, afterward by mystery and miracle plays. The Bible was not
forbidden to the laity till centuries afterwards--and forbidden then,
why? Because the laity throughout Europe knew too much about the Bible,
and not too little. Because the early monks had so ingrained the mind of
the masses, throughout Christendom, with Bible stories, Bible personages,
the great facts, and the great doctrines, of our Lord's life, that the
masses knew too much; that they could contrast too easily, and too
freely, the fallen and profligate monks of the 15th and 16th centuries,
with those Bible examples, which the old monks of centuries before had
taught their forefathers. Then the clergy tried to keep from the laity,
because it testified against themselves, the very book which centuries
before they had taught them to love and know too well. In a word, the
old monk missionary taught all he knew to all who would learn, just as
our best modern missionaries do; and was loved, and obeyed, and looked on
as a superior being, as they are.

Of course he did not know how far civilization would extend. He could
not foretell railroads and electric telegraphs, any more than he could
political economy, or sanitary science. But the best that he knew, he
taught--and did also, working with his own hands. He was faithful in a
few things, and God made him ruler over many things. For out of those
monasteries sprang--what did not spring? They restored again and again
sound law and just government, when the good old Teutonic laws, and the
Roman law also, was trampled underfoot amid the lawless strife of
ambition and fury. Under their shadow sprang up the towns with their
corporate rights, their middle classes, their artizan classes. They were
the physicians, the alms-givers, the relieving officers, the
schoolmasters of the middle-age world. They first taught us the great
principle of the division of labour, to which we owe, at this moment,
that England is what she is, instead of being covered with a horde of
peasants, each making and producing everything for himself, and starving
each upon his rood of ground. They transcribed or composed all the books
of the then world; many of them spent their lives in doing nothing but
writing; and the number of books, even of those to be found in single
monasteries, considering the tedious labour of cop