less, notwithstanding this, many of the teachers and the taught, as they conned over the story of the life of Christ, experienced the surprise of a heavenly light, darting into the dark chambers of their minds, converting them into temples of the Most High.

One of the capitulars passed in the reign of Ethelred, A.D. 994, directs that each of the Christian laity should pray at least twice a day. In the same year we find a law of the Witenagemote directing that "Christians be not sold out of the land; also that they shall not be condemned to death for trifling offences."

One proof of the influence of personal religion at this period is afforded by the practice of bestowing freedom on slaves from religious motives. This became more and more prevalent down to the days of King Harold. Sometimes there was more of superstition than religion in the motive of the emancipation; but in many instances it is expressed to be grounded on the love of Christ, and I know not why we should doubt that the sacrifice arose from an individual reception of the Gospel of salvation. The parties went to the altar of some well-known church, called on the priests to witness the act, proclaimed it to the assembly, and had it registered in the church copy of the Gospels as the most sacred and enduring of records. It is not too much to believe also, that, in some cases, the light and love which induced this action on the part of the master reached as well to the heart of the grateful slave; so that the latter became likewise free by a surer title, and in an infinitely higher sense.

The advancement of Anglo-Saxon Christianity as an

ecclesiastical system was accompanied by its degeneracy as an exponent of the truth. The tenets relating to the invocation of saints and the worship of relics, which at first appeared as sentimental excrescences, became of greater relative importance as years rolled on, and ultimately superseded Gospel truth itself. Meanwhile, there were still some who concerned themselves more with the kernel than the husk or its accessories. The existence of a controversy on the old topic of free-will and God's decrees, proves that men's minds were not altogether engrossed in ritual observances. The followers of Alcuin held to the line of truth embraced by Augustine, whilst others expressed the relentless logic of more extreme views.

The popular literature which characterizes the later period of Anglo-Saxon Christianity is not calculated to afford any high idea of the knowledge or taste of the learned. It consists of lives of the saints, which were written and dispersed in great numbers, but in which fiction prevails to an extent which renders it now impossible to separate the fact from the fable. The same legends were also pictorially represented on the church walls. The genuine seeker after Divine truth was embarrassed and confused by these misleading guides.

It is extremely difficult to obtain materials for our work from the older annalists. The history of external things may be recovered from the waymarks left along the track of time; but internal things, the successive consciousness of successive generations, can never be fully recalled.

From such slender stores we gladly escape into the

lawful charities of a wide induction, using the well-chosen words of an American writer:-

"During all these ages of corruption, however, the Spiritual Church existed, represented in the persons of devout men, who walked with God amid the night of error, sufferers from the evil of their times, unable to explain or to break away from them, but seeking in their monastic cells, or in the walks of ordinary life, that purification and peace which are received only by faith; and the ecclesiastical historian finds grateful relief, as he gropes through the dark ages, in being able continually to point to these scattered lights, which, like the lamps in Roman tombs, gleamed faintly but perennially amid the moral death of the visible Church." *

The objective history of redemption will ultimately be the most interesting of all tales. The work of God in this land will form no inconsiderable chapter in that great history. It gleams out occasionally in the pages of ordinary chronicles, but it has been evolved by a series of causes principally operating out of our view; working out results, not in accordance with men's anticipations, but in spite of them.

One feature characterizes the subject which, at first sight, appears to deprive it of interest; namely, the absolute identity of vital religion wherever and whenever found. We discern the same enlightened apprehension, the same enlivened heart, whether the grace of God has produced them in the barbarous Celt or the refined Englishman-whether in the gloom of the

* Dr. Stevens, "History of Methodism,” chap. i.

eighth or the light of the eighteenth century. But the grand succession of human events through and in which true Christianity is displayed to us, renders its career one of continual diversity.

All unknown to the majority of our countrymen, there was at this time spreading under the shadows of the Maritime Alps, and along the rich plains of Provence, the evangelism which, under the name of the Albigensian heresy, was afterwards so ruthlessly stamped out, partly by the aid of English soldiery.

CHAPTER IV.

The Normans.

DOUBTLESS, all the political movements of human society are connected with the advancement of Christ's kingdom; though we cannot, at present, always see the connexion. This kind of knowledge properly belongs to the future condition of our being, when we shall be unembarrassed by the limitations which now clog our powers and obstruct our view.

The Norman Conquest left unaltered the state of things spiritual. Whatever there was of true piety in Britain, was still a rare and hidden product.

The invaders were in good odour with Rome before their descent on England. In accordance with the fashion of the times, the Duke of Normandy had sought and obtained the Pope's sanction for his great enterprise. It was begun and continued in the sacred name of God; a perversion, alas! too common on the pages of history to excite any remark.

The Norman ecclesiastics, whilst deeming themselves accountable to Rome alone for their faith and practice, yet held of the local nationalities the land attached to