Page:Sermons in Irish-Gaelic - O'Gallagher.djvu/20

xiv Standing on the high hills of the historic past in the light presented by impartial witnesses, one can take a glance at the state of Europe, and especially of Britain and Ireland, in the seventeenth century, and sec how far the upheavings of European society had an effect on the spirit of Englishmen in their relation to Ireland.

The intellectual life of Europe in the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth was subjected to unusual and extraordinary processes of literary and scientific development. A new continent had just a little before that time been discovered by Columbus. That single event changed at once the old theory of Ptolemy regarding this earthly dwelling of men, and urged unsettled spirits to seek for fresh fields of enterprise, and means of acquiring new territory. To scholars, sublime and refreshing knowledge regarding the natural heavens was laid open—worlds in space, planetary systems, hitherto unknown, were presented to the astronomer's gaze. "A new heaven and a new earth were," so to speak, "created," and as if all this were not enough to keep thinking men in a slate of excitement, an intellectual battle that has continued to this hour on the high spiritual ground of religion, then began. Religion drew into the fight of heroes on earth all that relates to heaven. Thus the natural and supernatural, in wild and conflicting forms, engaged men's thoughts. The most powerful incentives that can promote energy and excite action were on either side enlisted to take a share in the combat. The fight, described by Homer, in which gods and men commingled in the same battle-field, was only a faint forecast of the interesting and long-continued struggle. In this mighty contest