Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/68

48 the Celts. The strenuous opposition with which the Saxons greeted the new faith is comprehensible, when we consider their point of view. Not only was it the religion of their foes, the Celts, but it taught men to forgive injuries, which seemed to the stout pagan warriors a religion only fit for cowards, while a faith that held the highest life to be that of the cloistered monk was impossible to one whose only hope of eternity lay in a glorious death by battle.

But the time was ripening for a fuller conception of the responsibilities of life, when the mere gratification of passion and greed as well as the very material future offered by the Northern mythology was becoming totally inadequate.

The dawning change is so beautifully illustrated by the world-worn parable uttered by an old pagan chieftain in the North of England that we venture to repeat it, for the speaker voiced the feelings of his brethren when he exclaimed: "O King, often in winter when men are sitting at meat in your hall and the warm fire is lighted on your hearth, while the rain storm beats without, a sparrow flieth in at the door, tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the fire, and then goeth out by another door into the wintry darkness