Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/193

Rh stillness of death, and spread the solitude of a churchyard over whole realms.

“They could proclaim war and peace; found and destroy kingdoms. They gave away lands and seas, which yet were not their own. A stroke of their pen on the map of the world became the boundary line of peoples and kings.

“They commanded the human mind to stand still, or allowed it merely as much action as they thought right. They measured it out very sparingly for science, still more sparingly for freedom, and prevented its too hasty diffusion by artificial impediments; by love and by fear.

“They were rulers even of the disposition of the world. Their power was founded on faith and on superstition. They ruled in the realm of mind by the magic wand of the imagination.

“They had power even over time. They cast out of the earthly as well as out of the heavenly paradise; they hurled the human soul into the abyss of hell and drew it again thence; they took hold upon the remotest future, as well as on the past, from which, like spirit-conjurers, they summoned human souls to obey their voice. For they had power both to loose and to bind.

“Their whole being was mythic, but nevertheless, their whole empire was as real as it was powerful, a form intermarrying heaven and earth.

“Their word declared human beings blessed, raised them amongst the saints of heaven and enabled them to perform miracles. They were the judges of the living and the dead.