, but, as it has
proved, more permanent kingdom; and the History of a United England had
begun.

While Christianity had been effaced by the Teuton invasion in England,
it had survived among the Irish-Britons. Ireland was never paganized.
With fiery zeal, her people not alone maintained the religion of the
Cross at home, but even drove back the heathen flood by sending
missionaries among the Picts in the Highlands, and into {24} other
outlying territory about the North Sea.

Pope Gregory the Great saw this Keltic branch of Christendom, actually
outrunning Latin Christianity in activity, and he was spurred to an act
which was to be fraught with tremendous consequences.

{25}

CHAPTER II

The same spot in Kent (the isle of Thanet), which had witnessed the
landing of Hengist and Horsa in 449, saw in 597 a band of men, calling
themselves "Strangers from Rome," arriving under the leadership of
Augustine.

They moved in solemn procession toward Canterbury, bearing before them
a silver cross, with a picture of Christ, chanting in concert, as they
went, the litany of their Church, Christianity had entered by the same
door through which paganism had come 150 years before.

The religion of Wodin and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul
of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm
consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness
encompassing man's past and future.

{26}

An aged chief said to Edwin, king of Northumbria, (after whom
"Edwins-borough" was named,) "Oh, King, as a bird flies through this
hall on a winter night, coming out of the darkness, and vanishing into
the darkness again, even so is our life! If these strangers can tell
us aught of what is beyond, let us hear them."

King Edwin was among the first to espouse the new religion, and in less
than one hundred years the entire land was Christianized.

With the adoption of Christianity a new life began to course in the
veins of the people.

Caedmon, an unlettered Northumbrian peasant, was inspired by an Angel
who came to him in his sleep and told him to "Sing." "He was not
disobedient unto the heavenly vision." He wrote epics upon all the
sacred themes, from the creation of the World to the Ascension of
Christ and the final judgment of man, and English literature was born.

"Paradise Lost," one thousand years later, was but the echo of this
poet-peasant, who was the Milton of the 7th Century.

{27}

I