‘And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon[929].’

Florence’s noble panegyric on Alfred is well known, where he tells how there passed away ‘Alfred the king of the Anglo-Saxons, the son of the most pious king Æthelwulf, the famous, the warlike, the victorious, the careful provider for the widow, the helpless[930], the orphan and the poor; the most skilled of Saxon poets, most dear to his own nation, courteous to all, most liberal; endowed with prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance; most patient in the infirmity from which he continually suffered; the most discerning investigator in executing justice, most watchful and devout in the service of God[931].’ Even the turgid, tasteless Ethelwerd becomes simple and dignified in the face of this great event. ‘There passed from the world,’ he says, ‘the high-souled Alfred, the immovable pillar of the West Saxons; a man full of justice, learned in discourse, imbued especially with the sacred Scriptures, … whose body rests at Winchester in peace. O reader, breathe the prayer “Christ, the Redeemer, save his soul[932].”’ He must be a stern Protestant who would refuse to obey Ethelwerd’s behest.

Lessons of Alfred’s life.

§ 119. Some of us probably know the story of the little boy who, when asked in an examination paper a foolish question as to what Alfred, if he were alive now, would think of certain present-day problems, made the sage reply: ‘If King Alfred were alive now, he would be much too old to take any interest in politics.’ It was an instance, sublime, though unconscious, of answering a fool according to his folly. And yet we should surely be wrong if we thought that, because Alfred died a thousand years ago, his life and work have therefore no lessons for ourselves.

Army. Navy. Learning. Education.

The question may not be of dividing the national militia into two parts, one to be at home and one out; but the problem still confronts us how to provide an army which shall both defend our shores at home, and also be adequate to the needs of the empire abroad. The question may not be whether our ships shall be built on Frisian or on Danish lines; but there are problems of naval construction on the right solution of which the safety of England may very largely depend. The knowledge of Latin is happily not extinct among us now, as it practically was in Alfred’s day; but the necessity still exists, which he felt so strongly, to mediate between the best thoughts of the past and the needs and aspirations of the present; while in education we have hardly perhaps fully realised even Alfred’s modest wish that ‘all the youth of England of free men … be set to learn … until that they are well able to read English writing[933].’

Unity of administration. Faith in God, and in England.

Again, few things are more striking in Alfred, than the way in which he keeps an equal hand on all branches of the national life, army, navy, church, justice, finance, education, learning. It is no doubt a harder task to co-ordinate the administration of an empire with world-wide possessions and world-wide responsibilities, than of a little state like Wessex. But we need something of this unifying guidance from above, if our government is not to fall apart into a chaos of independent, and possibly jealous and hostile departments. But above all we need Alfred’s high faith; a faith first of all, unswerving, unfaltering, in an over-ruling Providence, the guidance of a Higher Hand; but faith also in the destiny of his country and his people. Had he, like Burgred of Mercia, given up the struggle in despair, and gone as a pilgrim to Rome, no one in his own day would have thought the worse of him; and he might have won that pale halo of mediaeval saintship, which, as it was, he did not gain[934]. But England would have been lost to Christianity[935]; and Alfred had faith that it was not in the purposes of God so far to roll back the tide of progress, as to let England become once more a heathen land. Surely Alfred stands high in the muster roll of those ‘Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, … turned to flight the armies of the aliens[936].’

Personal character.