e upon Europe. He can pile story
upon story of carnage and divided homes until you may possibly conclude
that it would have been better for the world if the cross of Golgotha
had never been heard of. A wrong conclusion, most certainly; but one
that has oceans of facts to back it.

Outside the cases in which retribution has seemed to follow close upon
wrongdoing, where can we find a momentous event of history which we can
point out to ourselves and say with confidence, "That, certainly, was
brought about by the will of God." If amalgamation of hostile baronies
into one dominant nation and the acquirement of many civil advantages
may be regarded as a blessing, then some will point back to an immensely
picturesque figure of history and claim that the Norman William was one
specially produced by the divine will for an event from which issued
peculiarly valuable results. But here we have to face a question which
is continually prominent when historical events are attributed to the
will of God: "Is it necessary," we are driven to ask ourselves, "that
God's purposes be brought to a culmination through trickery, perjury,
manslaughter, and every kind of falsity?" Personally I feel totally
unable to think this. I wish to mention the difficulties which everyone
who thinks honestly must encounter, and to do so reverently. History
thus seems to enforce acceptance of one of two conclusions: Either that
the justice of God is not what we are glad to suppose it to be; or else
that these matters were not conducted according to the divine will. For
in William's case we find all these difficulties: the claim to be acting
on Harold's promise, the prior mortgaging of the intended results to the
church of Rome in order to gain the assistance of foreign hordes by
calling the proposed invasion a holy war, and other trickeries which
need not now be set out. He brought his newly-made England into the
bondage of a hierarchy, and in buying Romish aid established a precedent
that was followed by other kings until priestcraft gained the unlimited
power which drained the coffers of Europe, impoverished Italy, beggared
Spain, revelled in the demoniacal Inquisition, subsequently degraded the
Lower Canadians to almost the ignorance of the beasts, and is now using
the whole of its political power to fasten its vampire clutch upon the
fair virgin provinces of the Canadian Northwest.

If William could have foreseen some results of his handiwork he could
ha