of his cruel persecution.  They are called martyrs’ blossoms because they were as blossoms upspringing in the cold of earth’s unbelief, thus withered with the frost of persecution.  Blessed are the wombs that bare them, and the breasts which suckled such as these.  The mothers indeed suffered in the martyrdom of their children; the sword which pierced the children’s limbs pierced to the mothers’ hearts:  and it must needs be that they be sharers of the eternal reward, when they were companions in the suffering.”

I will now tell you about a very different kind of sermon from AElfric’s—­one of the sermons preached by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, who was not, like AElfric, leading a quiet life in an abbey, but throwing himself into the struggles and needs of a most disastrous time.  He saw how the Danish inroads had terribly demoralised the English people, and he spoke out as God’s preacher, who comes face to face with wrong, must speak.

He begins by telling his “beloved men” how evil will go on increasing till Antichrist’s coming; and then will it be awful, and terrible all through the world.  “Too greatly has the devil for many years led this folk astray, and little faithfulness has there been among men, albeit they spake well; and wrongs too many have ruled in the land; and not always were there many who thought earnestly about the remedy as they should; but day by day they added one evil upon another and they reared up wrong, and many evil laws all throughout this nation.  And therefore have we suffered many losses and shames:  and if we shall await any cure then must we deserve it from God better than heretofore have we done.  For with great earning have we earned the miseries that oppress us, and with great earning must we obtain the remedy from God if from henceforth it is to grow better.”  He tells them how in heathen lands they dare not withhold what has been devoted to the worship of idols:  “and here we withhold the rights of God.  And everywhere in heathen lands none dare injure or lessen within or without any of the things offered to idols:  and we have robbed God’s houses within and without.”  And so he goes on pouring out from his very soul the fiery words that tell of the warning of God’s laws, and the worsening of folk-laws; and how the Sanctuaries are unprotected, and God’s houses are robbed and stripped of their property, and holy orders are despised, and widows forced wrongfully to marry, and too many are made poor and humbled, and poor men are sorely betrayed and cruelly plotted against; and far and wide innocent people are given into the power of foreigners, and cradle-children made slaves through cruel evil laws for a little theft:  and freeman’s right taken away, and thrall’s right narrowed, and alms’ right diminished.  It goes on and on, the terrible list of wrongs that have brought God’s wrath on the land.  The sermon is not for the building-up of faithful ones, but for the rousing and stirring up of those whose baptismal vow has been terribly and shamefully broken, His words are clashed out as he brings men face to face with their sin.