All this assuredly, so far as the young child, consecrated like David,
the youngest of his brethren, conceived his own new life in Earth and
Heaven,--he understood already in the Lion symbol. But of all this I
had no thought[31] when I chose the prayer of Alfred as the type of
the Religion of his era, in its dwelling, not on the deliverance from
the punishment of sin, but from the poisonous sleep and death of it.
Will you ever learn that prayer again,--youths who are to be priests,
and knights, and kings of England, in these the latter days? when
the gospel of Eternal Death is preached here in Oxford to you for the
Pride of Truth? and "the mountain of the Lord's House" has become a
Golgotha, and the "new song before the throne" sunk into the rolling
thunder of the death rattle of the Nations, crying, "O Christ, where
is Thy Victory!"

[Footnote 31: The reference to the Bible of Charles le Chauve was
added to my second lecture (page 54), in correcting the press,
mistakenly put into the text instead of the notes.]


NOTES.

1. _The Five Christmas Days_. (These were drawn out on a large and
conspicuous diagram.)

These days, as it happens, sum up the History of their Five Centuries.

Christmas Day, 496. Clovis baptized.
" " 800. Charlemagne crowned.
" " 1041. Vow of the Count of Aversa (Page 80).