tisfaction with a religion
which he had found utterly disappointing and useless; and when other
chief counsellors had given the same testimony, and a unanimous vote had
been taken to adopt the Christian faith, he was the first to commence
the destruction of the idols.[20]

The still earlier missionaries among the Druid Celts of Britain and
France, though they found in Druidism a more elaborate faith than that
of the Norsemen, encountered no such resistance as we find in the great
religious systems of our day. Where can we point to so easy a conquest
as that of Patrick in Ireland, or that of the Monks of Iona among the
Picts and Scots?

The Druids claimed that they already had many things in common with the
Christian doctrines,[21] and what was a still stronger element in the
case, they made common cause with the Christians against the wrongs
inflicted on both by pagan Rome. The Roman emperors were not more
determined to extirpate the hated and, as they thought, dangerous
influences of Christianity, than they were to destroy every vestige of
Druidism as their only hope of conquering the invincible armies of
Boadicea. And thus the mutual experience of common sufferings opened a
wide door for the advancement of Christian truth.

The conquests of Welsh and Irish missionaries in Burgundy, Switzerland,
and _Germany_, encountered no elaborate book religions, and no profound
philosophies. They had to deal with races of men who were formidable
only with weapons of warfare, and who, intent chiefly on conquest and
migration, had few institutions and no written historic records. The
peaceful sceptre of the truth was a new force in their experience, and
the sympathetic and self-denying labors of a few missionaries tamed the
fierce Vikings to whom Britain had become a prey, and whose incursions
even the armies of Charlemagne could not resist.

How different is our struggle with the races now under the sceptre of
Islam, for example--inflated as they are with the pride of wide
conquest, and looking contemptuously upon that Christian faith which it
was their early mission to sweep away as a form of idolatry! How
different is our task in India, which boasts the antiquity of the noble
Sanskrit and its sacred literature, and claims, as the true
representative of the Aryan race, to have given to western nations their
philosophy, their religion, and their civilization! How much more
difficult is our encounter with Confucianism, which cla