also to the discovery of future events by various processes of
divination and augury practised among the priests.

[Sidenote: Their priesthood,]

Although the priests had thus charge of the religious rites, they do not
seem to have been organized in such a manner as to be able to act with
unanimity or to pursue a steady system of policy. A class of female
religious officials--prophetesses--joined in the ceremonials. These
holy women, who were held in very great esteem, prepared the way for the
reception of Mariolatry. Instead of temples--rock-altars, cromlechs, and
other rustic structures were used among the Celtic nations by the
Druids, who were at the same time priests, magicians, and medicine-men.
Their religious doctrines, which recall in many particulars those of the
Rig-Veda, were perpetuated from generation to generation by the aid of
songs.

[Sidenote: and objects of adoration.]

[Sidenote: Influence of Roman Christianity upon them.]

The essential features of this system were its purely local form and its
want of a well-organized hierarchy. Even the Celts offer no exception,
though they had a subordination from the Arch-Druid downward. This was
the reason of the weakness of the old faith and eventually the cause of
its fall. When the German nations migrated to the south in their warlike
expeditions, they left behind them their consecrated groves and sacred
oaks, hallowed by immemorial ages. These objects the devotee could not
carry with him, and no equivalent substitute could be obtained for them.
In the civilized countries to which they came they met with a very
different state of things; a priesthood thoroughly organized and
modelled according to the ancient Roman political system; its objects of
reverence tied to no particular locality; its institutions capable of
universal action; its sacred writings easy of transportation anywhere;
its emblems moveable to all countries--the cross on the standards of its
armies, the crucifix on the bosom of its saints. In the midst of the
noble architecture of Italy and the splendid remains of those Romans who
had once given laws to the world, in the midst of a worship
distinguished by the magnificence of its ceremonial and the solemnity of
its mysteries, they found a people whose faith taught them to regard the
present life as offering only a transitory occupation, and not for a
moment to be weighed against the eternal existence hereafter--an
existence very different