“Consider whom you have as your defence against the pagans who have appeared in your maritime parts. Set not your hope on arms, but on God. Trust not to carnal flight, but in the prayer of your forefathers. Who does not fear the terrible fate which has befallen the church of the holy Cuthbert? You, also, dwell on the sea, from which this pest first comes. “Bear in mind the nobleness of your fathers, and be not degenerate sons. Look at the treasures of your library, the beauty of your churches, the fairness of your buildings. How happy the man who, from those most fair dwellings, passes to the joys of the kingdom of heaven. “Accustom the boys to the praise of the heavenly King, not to digging out the earths of foxes, not to coursing the swift hare. How impious it is to leave the worship of Christ and follow the trace of the fox. Let them learn the sacred Scriptures, that when they are grown up they may teach others. He who does not learn in youth does not teach in age. Remember Bede the presbyter, the most noble teacher of our age, what a love he had for learning as a boy; what honour he has now among men; what glory of reward with God. Quicken slumbering minds with his example. Attend lectures; open your books; study the text; understand its meaning; that you may both feed yourselves and feed others with the food of the spiritual life. “Avoid private feasting and secret drinking as a pitfall of hell. Solomon says that stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant, but the guests are in the depth of hell; he means that at such feasts there are demons present. Do not lose eternal joys for sloth of mind or fleshly delights.” As we have seen, the same destruction that had come upon Lindisfarne came very soon after upon Wearmouth and Jarrow. Bede little knew how close home the blow which he forecast would strike. We should have felt that something was wanting if no letter had been preserved from Alcuin to the bishop and monks of Hexham. Hexham was the see of one of Bede’s most highly valued correspondents, Acca. Of the very small number of letters written by Bede which have come down to us, only fourteen in all, eight are addressed to Acca. They are in the main formal treatises on several parts of the Old and New Testaments, including a treatise on the Temple of Solomon which was probably suggested by the remarkable illustration of the Tabernacle in the _Codex Amiatinus_. The Church of St. Andrew, Hexham, built by Wilfrith, and St. Peter, Ripon, also built by him, were in Wilfrith’s time the two finest churches north of the Alps. We have the description of them by Wilfrith’s chaplain, Stephen Eddi.[139] Almost the whole of one of the two exquisite sculptured crosses which were placed at the head and foot of Acca’s grave is still in existence. The magnificent restoration of the Abbey Church of Hexham in this year of grace, 1908, is one of the greatest ecclesiastical works of the young twentieth century.