Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/21

Rh enshrine; which is made by the occasional breaking-up of the One Light into many colours, to fade before long into the Unity of White Light again; and which, when it departs, leaves nowhere in the world a trace of its having existed, except on man's heart an impression of spiritual beauty, and in his mind the power of attaining a knowledge of the Laws of Light.

We gain a curious side-light on the early history of religions by the study of Cornish legends. When, in the early ages, savage tribes were converted by strangers of a different religion, the priests who converted them taught them to connect the memorials of their old faith with the idea of evil magic. Where, therefore, we find Druidic stones, believed by peasants to be relics of evil magicians, we may guess that some conversionist has been trying to indoctrinate people with his views. In Cornwall there are distinct traces of a stratum of some religion intervening between the old idolatry of fixed stones and the Christian ideas imported from Rome through England. The characteristic of Cornish legends is that monoliths are people who would not pay proper respect to the Sabbath; and who, as punishment for that crime, were arrested on their way to somewhere where they wanted to go, and were struck into stone to stand on the moor for ever, to show what comes of not keeping Sabbath. Now when we know about any preacher, that he instructs his flock to expect, as the penalty for neglect of religious observances, arrestation of progress, and the falling into a permanently fixed position, we can form a tolerably clear idea what was the main character of the religion taught by him. we are not here, however, left dependent on mere