ve mankind
proceeds in the same way as that of the individual man. And thus,
in the expression of the biographer of Charles V., the barbarous
nations when converted to Christianity changed the object, not
the spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas of the
old religion were consciously tolerated by the first propagators
of Christianity, who justly deemed that the new dogmas would be
more readily insinuated into the rude and simple minds of their
neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. Both past and
present facts testify to this compromise. It was a maxim with
some of the early promoters of the Christian cause, to do as
little violence as possible to existing prejudices[33]--a
judicious method still pursued by the Catholic, though condemned
by the Protestant, missionaries of the present day.[34] It was
not seldom that an entire nation was converted and christianised
by baptism almost in a single day: the mass of the people
accepting, or rather acquiescing in, the arguments of the
missionaries in submission to the will or example of their
prince, whose conduct they followed as they would have followed
him into the field. Such was the case at the conversion of the
Frankish chief Clovis, and of the Saxon Ethelbert. But if St.
Augustin or St. Boniface, and the earlier missionaries, had more
success in persuading the simple faith of the Germans, without a
written revelation and miracles, than the modern emissaries have
in inducing the Hindus to abandon their Vedas, it was easier to
convince them of the facts, than of the reason, of their faith.
Nor was it to be expected that such raw recruits (if the
expression may be allowed) should lay aside altogether prejudices
with which they were imbued from infancy.

[33] The remark of a late Professor of Divinity in the
University of Cambridge. 'The heathen temples,' says
Professor Blunt, 'became Christian churches; the altars of
the gods altars of the saints; the curtains, incense,
tapers, and votive-tablets remained the same; the
_aquaminarium_ was still the vessel for holy water; St.
Peter stood at the gate instead of Cardea; St. Rocque or St.
Sebastian in the bedroom instead of the Phrygian Penates;
St. Nicholas was the sign of the vessel instead of Castor
and Pollux; the Mater Deum became the Madonna; alms pro
Matre Deum became alms for the Madonna; the festival of the
Mater Deum the festival of the Madonna, or _Lady Day_; the
Ho