andoned their Christian faith;[1] and
where they retained their independence, they hated the Saxon conquerors
too much to share their Christianity with them. Far from desiring their
conversion, they resisted all the overtures made to them by the Roman
missionaries who ardently desired their aid; and as a consequence of
that refusal, they eventually lost their country. The chief cause of
that refusal was hatred of the invader. The Irish as well as the British
had a passionate devotion to their own local traditions in a few matters
not connected with doctrine; but they notwithstanding worked cordially
with the Benedictines from St. Gregory's convent for the spread of the
Christian Faith. Had the Britons converted the Anglo-Saxon race they
would probably have blended with them, as at a later time that race
blended with their Norman conquerors. Three successive waves of the
Teuton-Scandinavian race swept over their ancient land, the Anglo-Saxon,
the Danish, and the Norman: against them all the British Celts fought
on. They fell back toward their country's western coasts, like the Irish
of a later day; and within their Cambrian mountains they maintained
their independence for eight centuries.

Yet the Anglo-Saxons' victory was not an unmixed one. Everywhere
throughout England they maintained during the seventh century two
different battles, a material and a spiritual one, and with opposite
results. Year by year that race pushed further its military dominion;
but yearly the Christian Faith effected new triumphs over that of Odin.
For this there were traceable causes. The character of the Teutonic
invader included two very different elements, and the nobler of these
had its affinities with Christianity. If, on the one hand, that
character was fierce, reckless, and remorseless, and so far in natural
sympathy with a religion which mocked at suffering and till the ninth
century offered up human sacrifices, it was marked no less by
robustness, simplicity, honesty, sincerity, an unexcitable energy and an
invincible endurance. It possessed also that characteristic which
essentially contradistinguishes the _ordo equestris_ from the _ordo
pedestris_ in human character, viz., the spirit of reverence. It had
aspirations; and, as a background to all its musings and all its hopes
there remained ever the idea of the Infinite. As a consequence, it
retained a large measure of self-respect, purity, and that veneration
for household ties attri