440
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
man ; that guards the ritual and preserves the li-
turgy ; that pervades the social state and gives per-
manence to the natural, original political institu-
tions. I call this the sacerdotal faith, and I will
admit that to its teachers and professors we may
owe the frequent attempt of later periods to give an
abstract, philosophic meaning to mythus and tradi-
tion, and to make dawning science halt after religion.
The second creed I will call the heroic ; in this
I recognize the same gods, transformed into powers
of war and victory, crowners of the brave in fight,
coercers of the wild might of nature, conquerors of
the giants, the fiends and dragons ; founders of
royal families, around whom cluster warlike com-
rades, exulting in the thought that their deities
stand in immediate genealogical relation to them-
selves, and share in the pursuits and occupations
which furnish themselves with wealth and dignity
and power. Let it be admitted that a complete
separation never takes place between these different
forms of religion ; that a wavering is perceptible
from one to the other ; that the warrior believes
his warrior god will bless the produce of his pas-
tures ; that the cultivator rejoices in the heroic
legend of Woden and of Baldr, because the culti-
vator is himself a warrior when the occasion de-
mands his services : still, in the ultimate develop-
ment and result of the systems, the original distinc-
tion may be traced, and to it some of the conclu-
sions we observe must necessarily be referred : it
is thus that spells of-healing and fruitfulness sur-
vive when the great gods have vanished, and that
CH. x∏∙]
HEATHENDOM. CONCLUSION.
441
the earth, the hills, the trees and waters retain a
portion of dimmed and bated divinity long after
the godlike has sunk into the heroic legend, or
been lost for ever.
I can readily believe that the warrior and the
noble were less deeply impressed with the religious
idea than the simple cultivator. In the first place,
the disturbed life and active habits of military ad-
venturers are not favourable to the growth of re-
ligious convictions: again, there is no tie more
potent than that which links sacred associations to
particular localities, and acts, unconsciously per-
haps but pervasively, upon all the dwellers near the
holy spots : the tribe may wander with all its wealth
of thought and feeling ; even its gods may accom-
pany it to a new settlement ; but the religio loci,
the indefinable influence of the local association,
cannot be transported. Habits of self-reliance, of
a proud and scornful independence, are not con-
sistent with the conviction of weakness, which is
necessary to our full admission of the divine pre-
eminence ; and the self-confident soldier often felt
that he could cope with gods such as his had been
described to be. In the Greek heroic lay Tydides
could attack, defeat, and even wound Ares : I do
not know that the Teutonic mythology ever went
so far as this ; but we have abundant record of
a contemptuous disregard with which particular
heroes of tradition treated the popular religion.
Some selected indeed one god in whom they placed
especial trust, and whom they worshipped (as far
as they worshipped at all) to the exclusion of the