tradition, as Trolls and Giants, hostile alike to Christianity and
man. Christianity had taken possession indeed, but it was beyond her
power to kill. To this half-result the swift corruption of the Church
of Rome lent no small aid. Her doctrines, as taught by Augustine and
Boniface, by Anschar and Sigfrid, were comparatively mild and pure;
but she had scarce swallowed the heathendom of the North, much in the
same way as the Wolf was to swallow Odin at the 'Twilight of the
Gods', than she fell into a deadly lethargy of faith, which put it
out of her power to digest her meal. Gregory the Seventh, elected
pope in 1073, tore the clergy from the ties of domestic life with a
grasp that wounded every fibre of natural affection, and made it
bleed to the very root. With the celibacy of the clergy he
established the hierarchy of the church, but her labours as a
missionary church were over. Henceforth she worked not by
missionaries and apostles, but by crusades and bulls. Now she raised
mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the Holy Sepulchre, or
to annihilate heretic Albigenses. Now she established great orders,
Templars and Hospitallers, whose pride and luxury, and pomp, brought
swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities. Now she
became feudal,--she owned land instead of hearts, and forgot that the
true patrimony of St Peter was the souls of men. No wonder that, with
the barbarism of the times, she soon fulfilled the Apostle's words,
'She that liveth in luxury is dead while she liveth', and became
filled with idle superstitions and vain beliefs. No wonder, then,
that instead of completing her conquest over the heathen, and
carrying out their conversion, she became half heathen herself; that
she adopted the tales and traditions of the old mythology, which she
had never been able to extirpate, and related them of our Lord and
his Apostles. No wonder, then, that having abandoned her mission of
being the first power of intelligence on earth, she fell like Lucifer