of the genealogies, and having its origin in the belief in ghosts.
Fourth, a deification of certain abstract ideas, such as War, Fate,
Victory, and Death. But the average heathen Anglo-Saxon religion was
merely a vast mass of superstition, a dark and gloomy terrorism,
begotten of the vague dread of misfortune which barbarians naturally
feel in a half-peopled land, where war and massacre are the highest
business of every man's lifetime, and a violent death the ordinary way
in which he meets his end.




CHAPTER IX.

THE CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH.


It was impossible that a country lying within sight of the orthodox
Frankish kingdom, and enclosed between two Christian Churches on either
side, should long remain in such a state of isolated heathendom. For to
be cut off from Christendom was to be cut off from the whole social,
political, intellectual, and commercial life of the civilised world. In
Britain, as distinctly as in the Pacific Islands in our own day, the
missionary was the pioneer of civilisation. The change which
Christianity wrought in England in a few generations was almost as
enormous as the change which it has wrought in Hawaii at the present
time. Before the arrival of the missionary, there was no written
literature, no industrial arts, no peace, no social intercourse between
district and district. The church came as a teacher and civiliser, and
in a few years the barbarous heathen English warrior had settled down