CHAPTER III THE CHURCH IN THE MIDST OF WAR W HEN Augustine with his monks reached Kent in the year 597, he had many dangers to face and many difficulties to solve, so he needed all the help that could be given by his complete trust in the genius of the new Faith. One problem may have seemed almost insuperable. There was a repugnance native in pagan minds for the brief eloquence of the Gospels. The New Testament left a great deal unsaid, while the Saxons, like all primitive races, had a masterful passion for thrilling stories abundant in details, in special circumstances, in particularities of time and place and action. Their minds, as fiercely vehement as the mythology of their nature-worship, revelled in blood, and saw in carnage an eternal future: through bravery in war, and death on the field of battle, they hoped to reach their paradise in the Hall of Slaughter. During the one hundred and forty-eight years which separated their arrival at Ebbsfleet from the coming of Augustine, these Teutonic barbarians had enjoyed a reign of terror, judgment and execution going hand in hand in all their actions. Under the Romans some form of Christianity had prevailed in Britain; under the Saxons it had vanished utterly, like most of the Roman towns. It is true, no doubt, that this delight in slaughter and destruction grew weaker through excess of use. By the end of the sixth century, trade and commerce had begun to return; and a lust of gain acted as a slow antidote on the lust of bloodshed. This was favourable to Augustine's mission; but even with this help, and supported also by the sympathy and influence of Bertha, Ethelbert's Christian wife, the Benedictines were harassed by numberless trials. The victory won in Kent, with the baptism of the king and people, required qualities of character other than patience, gentleness, courage, and the flame of religious ardour. Tact was essential, and concession too, a gift for compromise, and with it an imagination as alert as Bunyan's, ready at a moment's notice to turn short truths into winning and exciting narratives. Dante's minute imagery of terror-something of that was essential also, since the battle was one of Christian tongues against the ferocity of Saxon minds. And there is evidence to prove that Christian teachers, in all parts of Europe, bent their appeal to suit their hearers' tastes and temperaments. They stooped to conquer, and by so doing they got leverage enough to lift up their listeners. There was nothing of falsehood in this; for the missionaries had much in common with the heathen. By nature they were children, fond of |