eness of handling.

But, indeed, we can hardly do justice either to the authors or the
audiences of those religious comedies; there being an almost
impassable gulf fixed between their modes of thought and ours. The
people were then just emerging from the thick darkness of Gothic
barbarism into what may be termed the border-land of civilization. As
such, their minds were so dominated by the senses, that they could
scarce conceive of any beings much more than one grade above
themselves. A sort of infantile unconsciousness, indeed, had
possession of them; so that they were really quite innocent of the
evils which we see and feel in what was so entertaining to them.
Hence, as Michelet remarks, "the ancient Church did not scruple to
connect whimsical dramatic rites with the most sacred doctrines and
objects."

So that the state of mind from which and for which those old plays
were produced goes far to explain and justify we are apt to regard as
a shocking contradiction between the subject-matter and the treatment.
The truth is, such religious farces, with all their coarse trumperies
and comicalities and sensuous extravagances, were in perfect keeping
with the genius of an age when, for instance, a transfer of land was
not held binding without the delivery of a clod. And so, what Mr. John
Stuart Mill describes as "the childlike character of the religious
sentiment of a rude people, who know terror, but not awe, and are
often on the most intimate terms of familiarity with the objects of
their adoration," makes it conceivable how that which seems to us the
most irreverent handling of sacred things, may notwithstanding have
been, to the authors and audiences in question, but the natural issue
of such religious thoughts and feelings as they had or were capable of
having. At all events, those exhibitions, so revolting to modern taste
and decorum, were no doubt in most cases full of religion and honest
delectation to the simple minds who witnessed them. Moreover, rude and
ignorant as the Miracle-Plays were in form, coarse and foul as they
were in language and incident, they nevertheless contained the germ of
that splendid dramatic growth with which the literature and life of
England were afterwards enriched and adorned.

Before leaving this branch of the subject, perhaps I ought to add
something further as to the part which was taken by the Clergy in
those old stage exhibitions. The register of the Guild of _Corpus
Christi_ at