“Roman missionaries bearing a silver cross with a picture of Christ came in procession, chanting a litany. Presently the high priest of the Northumbrians declared, in presence of the nobles, that the old gods were powerless, and confessed that formerly ‘he knew nothing of that which he adored;’ and he among the first, lance in hand, assisted to demolish their temple. At his side a chief rose in the assembly, and said:
“You remember, O king, what sometimes happens in winter when you are at supper with your earls and thanes, while the good fire burns within, and it rains and the wind howls without. A sparrow enters at one door, and flies out quickly at the other. During that rapid passage and pleasant moment it disappears, and from winter returns to winter again. Such seems to me to be the life of man, and his career but a brief moment between that which goes before and that which follows after, and of which we know nothing. If, then, the new doctrine can teach us something certain, it deserves to be followed.”[3]
The Protestant historian, Sharon Turner, says of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons: “It was accomplished in a manner worthy of the benevolence and purity [of the Christian religion]. Genuine piety seems to have led the first missionaries to our shores. Their zeal, their perseverance, and the excellence of the system they diffused made their labors successful.” He gives a detailed narrative of the action of Gregory the Great, of the devotion and self-sacrifice of St. Augustine and his companions, of their long and perilous journey, their landing in England, and, in describing their procession on the Isle of Thanet, writes: “With a silver cross and a picture of Christ, they advanced singing the litany.” M. Taine, with a stroke of the pen, copies this line almost word for word, and makes it do duty for a full and detailed account of the labors of St. Augustine and his forty companions for two score years!
What period of time the word _presently_ represents to M. Taine we do not know. It may be an hour, or a day, or a month, but the incident which he refers to as occurring “presently” took place about forty years after the “procession.”
And now it is sought to belittle or decry the victory of the Christian missionaries in two ways: 1st. It was the most natural thing in the world for the brutal, bloody, slave-dealing, drunken barbarian to embrace the new religion, because his paganism so strongly resembled Christianity. 2d. But after conversion they remained, after all, substantially, barbarous pagans as before, and their songs remind M. Taine of “the songs of the servants of Odin, tonsured and clad in the garments of monks.” “The Christian hymns embody the pagan” (p. 46).