Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/47

Rh "There is little doubt," proceeds the cockney historian, " that the conversion of Clovis was as much a matter of policy as of faith." But the cockney historian had better limit his remarks on the characters and faiths of men to those of the curates who have recently taken orders in his fashionable neighbourhood, or the bishops who have lately preached to the population of its manufacturing suburbs. Frankish kings were made of other clay.

The Christianity of Clovis does not indeed produce any fruits of the kind usually looked for in a modern convert. We do not hear of his repenting ever so little of any of his sins, nor resolving to lead a new life in any the smallest particular. He had not been impressed with convictions of sin at the battle of Tolbiac; nor, in asking for the help of the God of Clotilde, had he felt or professed the remotest intention of changing his character, or abandoning his projects. What he was, before he believed in his queen's God, he only more intensely afterwards became, in the confidence of that before unknown God's supernatural help. His natural gratitude to the Delivering Power, and pride in its protection, added only fierceness to his soldiership, and deepened his political enmities with the rancour of religious indignation. No more dangerous snare