Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/39

 the lands of Christianity were then, like the fields of winter cereals, when, after the freshness of their first autumnal growth, they lie hid under snows, or, if seen, offer to sight but faded green blades tipped with yellow, while the roots, however, are strengthening in their invisible recesses beneath the frosts and snows. To change the figure to one drawn from the clearing of the forests in our Western world : when green logs, branches, and brush are thrown upon the burning heaps, these seem, at the time, to extinguish the fires, but really add matter for the flames to feed upon when they shall again burst forth.

Such has been the advance of Christianity. Nations and tribes were, under the lead of their kings or chiefs, added nominally to the Christian family, as also, sometimes, individuals on personal convictions, but in no case was there at first much religious knowledge or improvement of life. Thus the area merely of Christianity was extended. This was the way of natural growth, the way of Providence, nay, even the way of the Spirit, as promised to the Christian Church. There have always been ambitions, high and low, and they are yet as rife as ever; but those who, from our advanced point of view, regard these early movements with censorious feelings, make but poor use of their reason. They might as well denounce the plant of the heath because it does not exhibit the thrift of its kindred of the garden. In the accumulating masses there have always been pious people, high and low, and also men of advanced thought, who never broke with the Church, as well as communities which enjoyed in secret and under Church censure their own more rational and simple views of religion. These elements broke out at times into open rebellion. The first instance