pierced at the Cross. The Holy Ghost baked the
cake in the Virgin's womb, in which the sugar of His divinity
amalgamated with the dough of our humanity. In the Virgin's womb the
Holy Ghost also spiced the mead and prepared it from wine; the spice is
divine virtue, the wine is human blood. In addition He caused the holy
capon to issue from the egg; the yolk of the egg is the deity, the white
is humanity, the shell is the womb of the Virgin Mary ...," etc.

The religion of Christ was lost, man had become a stranger to his own
soul--celestial warnings, signs of the Judgment Day, daemonic
temptations, surrounded him, as far as he paid heed to anything
super-sensuous on all sides. The French chronicler, Radulf Glaber (about
A.D. 1000), might have been writing a satire on antiquity when he warned
his contemporaries of the demons lurking everywhere, but more especially
dwelling in trees and fountains. Of a learned man who was studying the
classic poets, he said: "This man, confused by the magic of evil
spirits, had the impudence to propound doctrines contradictory to our
holy faith. In his opinion everything the ancient poets had maintained
was true. Peter, the bishop of the town, condemned him as a heretic. At
that time there were many men in Italy believing this false doctrine;
they perished by the sword or at the stake." We have a letter, written
at the same time by Gerbert, who later on became Pope Sylvester II., to
a friend, beseeching him to obtain for him manuscripts of the Latin
philosophers and poets. He wrote textbooks of astronomy, geometry and
medicine, and introduced the Arabic numbers and the decimal system into
Europe. In consequence he, too, was accused of magic and intercourse
with Arabian pagans. A chronicler relates that he sold his soul to the
devil and became pope through the devil's agency; and that, when he was
on the point of death, he ordered his body to be cut to pieces so that
the devil should not carry it away.

To-day we find it difficult to realise such a state of mind. Every man
of our period who takes the smallest interest in things spiritual--be he
the most orthodox ecclesiastic--at least knows that there are capable
people in the world whose opinions differ from his, who seek fresh
knowledge; he knows it, even though he may pretend that they are people
who have gone astray and have been abandoned by God. No one can be
entirely blind to the new values created by human intellect. But the men
of