Page:Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (tr. Jane).djvu/14

x imperfectly observe, may well learn a fresh appreciation of the startling nature of the faith we profess, as we watch it in the pages of Bede, transforming a haughty and at times blood-thirsty race into the likeness of Jesus of Nazareth.

When Christianity, new-born, made its swift way around the shores of the Mediterranean, it brought its message of hope to ancient peoples, weary with much thinking and striving, among whom arts, philosophies and the science of dominion had reached perfection and were ripening to decay. But no sooner had the gifts of Rome and Greece become intimately one with the gift of Judæa, than a new act in the drama opened. The advancing tide of the Faith, setting from the East, encountered the tide of the Germanic invasion, sweeping down from the North in successive waves over the Roman Empire. From the blending of these two tides at the term of classic civilization arose the mediæval world. Christianity was now called on to penetrate and possess a rude life in which neither the graces nor the vices of civilization existed. The process of converting our Germanic ancestors lasted long: from the fourth century, when the West Goths were won, to the eleventh, when the sturdy Vikings of Scandinavia finally succumbed. In England the fifth and sixth centuries witnessed the inundation of the old British peoples, already partially Christianized, by the heathen Germanic tribes. The seventh century is the century of the Conversion. The eighth, Bede's own century, is, broadly speaking, the Golden Age of early English Christianity. In the ninth century came the fresh invasion of the heathen Danes, and the work was largely to be repeated.

Indeed, in one sense we may say that it has not been thoroughly done yet. Christianity has no easy task. It must prove the paradox that defeat may be the truest victory, and that "forgiveness is force at the height." It must displace the Fighter from the heart of the world, and must put the Sufferer there. Since, from the national or social point of view, we are still so imperfectly Christian, we cannot wonder if the Danes in the century after