We continue: “Its aversion to sensual and reckless living.” This is simply astounding when we remember that M. Taine has just been telling us, through twenty pages, of their “ravenous stomachs filled with meat and cheese, heated by strong drinks,” “prone to brutal drunkenness,” becoming “more gluttonous, carving their hogs, filling themselves with flesh; swallowing all the strong, coarse drinks which they could procure,” etc.
And then follows the far more surprising psychological result: “These utter barbarians embrace Christianity straightway, _through sheer force of mood and clime_” (p. 44).
Now, M. Taine knows--as we all know--that these pagan Anglo-Saxons were brutal and sensual to the last degree. In personal indulgence, they were what he describes and more. They were pirates, robbers, and murderers.
The rewards promised them by their gods after death were that they should have nothing to do but eat and drink. Even the paganism of their Scandinavian and Teutonic forefathers, a mixture of massacre and sensuality, was corrupted by them, and the emblems of their bloody and obscene gods were naked swords and hammers, with which they broke the heads of their victims. The immortality promised them in their Walhalla was a long continuance of new days of slaughter, and nights of debauch spent in drinking from their enemies’ skulls. Such was the race found by M. Taine so constituted as to be “predisposed to Christianity by its gloom, its aversion to sensual and reckless living”; such the people who “through sheer force of mood and clime” laid aside their cruelty, brutality, carnage, and sensuality, gave up feasting for fasting, proud independence for obedience, indulgence for self-denial! Truly remarkable effects of atmosphere. The climate of England must have greatly changed since the year 597.
In the course of a debate which once arose in the British House of Commons on the subject of negro emancipation, it was urged against the measure that you could not civilize the negro; he belonged to an inferior race which offered human sacrifices and sold their own children into slavery. Whereupon, a member promptly replied that was just what our ancestors in England did--they offered human sacrifices and sold their children into slavery. This will naturally recall to the reader’s mind the touching incident which led to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, the fair-haired and blue-eyed children offered for sale, and their redemption by the great Gregory, who said they were not only Angles, but angels. From that moment the mission to England was resolved upon. We all know the story. Gregory’s departure, his capture by the citizens of Rome and forcible return, his elevation to the pontifical throne, the departure of St. Augustine and his forty companions, their trials, sufferings, and danger of death on the route, their arrival in England, their labors, the gradual and peaceful conversion of the people, their successful efforts in bringing the Saviour, his Gospel, and his church to benighted heathens, and their civilization and social amelioration of the Anglo-Saxons. To the immortal glory of these men be it said that neither violence nor persecution was resorted to by them, their disciples, or their protectors for the triumph of civilization and religion. It is one of the grandest Christian victories on record. Of all this, here is M. Taine’s record: