elf into war with the Dragon who is wasting fairyland.
I will not enter on the theology behind the symbol; but I
am sure it was of this that all the symbols were symbolic.
I remember distinguished men among the liberal theologians,
who found it more difficult to believe in one devil than in many.
They admitted in the New Testament an attestation to evil spirits,
but not to a general enemy of mankind. As some are said
to want the drama of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark,
they would have the drama of Hell without the Prince of Darkness.
I say nothing of these things, save that the language of the
Gospel seems to me to go much more singly to a single issue.
The voice that is heard there has such authority as speaks to an army;
and the highest note of it is victory rather than peace.
When the apostles were first sent forth with their faces to the four
corners of the earth, and turned again to acclaim their master,
he did not say in that hour of triumph, "All are aspects of one
harmonious whole" or "The universe evolves through progress
to perfection" or "All things find their end in Nirvana"
or "The dewdrop slips into the shining sea." He looked up and said,
"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."

Then I looked up and saw in the long jagged lines of road and rock
and cleft something of the swiftness of such a thunderbolt.
What I saw seemed not so much a scene as an act; as when
abruptly Michael barred the passage of the Lord of Pride.
Below me all the empire of evil was splashed and scattered
upon the plain, like a wine-cup shattered into a star.
Sodom lay like Satan, flat upon the floor of the world. And far away
and aloft, faint with height and distance, small but still visible,
stood up the spire of the Ascension like the sword of the Archangel,
lifted in salute after a stroke.

CHAPTER X

THE ENDLESS EMPIRE

One of the adventures of travel consists, not so much in finding
that popular sayings are false, as that they mean more than they say.
We cannot appreciate the full force of the phrase until we have
seen the fact. We make a picture of the things we do not know
out of the things we know; and suppose the traveller's tale
to mean no more abroad than it would at home. If a man acquainted
only with English churches is told about certain French churches
that they are much frequented, he makes an English picture.
He imagines a definite dense crowd of people in their best
clothes going all toge