434
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
every secret of creation, may be an earnest puri-
tanical age, a stern protestant age, one that will
not be fed with imaginative religions,' but it cannot
be one of implicit, trusting, fearing, rejoicing, trem-
bling belief : the age of faith ceased where the age
of knowledge began. Man knows too much, per-
haps believes too little : he will not, and he must
not, yield his privilege of calm, determined, obsti-
nate enquiry : he will, and should, judge for him-
self, weigh evidence, compare and reason, and de-
cide for himself how much or how little he will
receive as true. IIow can he wonder at the stars,
their rising, their setting or their eclipse 1 lie cal-
culates where new planets may be found : he weighs
them in his balances when found, and tells not only
their circumference or their density, but how long
the straggling ray of light that started from them
was on its journey, before it reached the eye of the
gazer. What can these wavering fragments of time
and space be to him who calculates duration by the
nutation of suns, or the scarcely appreciable differ-
ence of millennial changes 1 Let us remember what
our fathers were, and consider what we are. For
them there was indeed a time, a period to tell of,
“when the Sun
Knew not her dwelling, nor the Aloon his power,
And the Stars knew not where their place should be ! ”
We know their places, and their dwellings, and
their power. They are subordinated to a hjpo-
thesis of gravitation. For us there is no wavering
bridge of the Gods, no Bifrost or Bsirii ; our rain-
CH. x∏∙]
HEATHENDOM. CONCLUSION.
435
bow is a shadowy thing, a belt of deceptive colours,
the reflection of a sunbeam in the multitudinous
prisms of a shower-cloud. We have no Hammer,
wielded by the Thunder-god, and dreaded by the
σiants ; our Miolner has vanished into the indiffer-
ence of opposing electricities. Apothecaries’ Hall
prepares its simples without the aid of charms, or
invocation of divinities ; and though we stand as yet
but on the threshold of science, we have closed for
ever behind us the portals of mystery and belief. For
we arc raised upon the shoulders of the times gone
by, and cast a calm and easy view over the country
which our forefathers wandered through in fear
and trembling. We fear not what they feared; we
cling not to what they clung to, for relief and com-
fort; wc have set up our own idol, the Understanding,
fortified by laborious experience, taught by repeated
struggles and victories, firmly based on conquered,
catalogued and inventoried nature, on facts, the
stern children of a passionless reality. I know not
whether we have gained or lost in this inevitable
career of humanity ; I have faith only that He who
rules the purpose of the ages, has thus cast our lot
in the infinite love and wisdom of his own thought.
But not to us, or in our finite forms of thought,
can the world be as once it was, and the “ dull ca-
talogue of common things” admits no admixture of
a fancied dùinity; nay, so far arc we from seeking
to instil spirit into matter, that the informing soul
itself ceases to be the object of our contemplation,
while we are busied with the nerves and tendons,
2f 2