sful pleroma of eternal being.

31 Mosheim, Comm., III. Century, sects. 44-52.

CHAPTER II.

MEDIAVAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

THE period of time covered by the present chapter reaches from the
close of the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, from
the first full establishment of the Roman Catholic theology and
the last general expectation of the immediate end of the world to
the commencing decline of mediaval faith and the successful
inauguration of the Protestant Reformation. The principal mental
characteristic of that age, especially in regard to the subject of
the future life, was fear. "Never," says Michelet, "can we know in
what terrors the Middle Age lived." There was all abroad a living
fear of men, fear of the State, fear of the Church, fear of God,
fear of the devil, fear of hell, fear of death. Preaching
consisted very much in the invitation, "Submit to the guidance of
the Church while you live," enforced by the threat, "or you shall
go to hell when you die." Christianity was practically reduced to
some cruel metaphysical dogmas, a mechanical device for rescuing
the devil's captives from him, and a system of ritual magic in the
hands of a priesthood who wielded an authority of supernatural
terrors over a credulous and shuddering laity. It is true that the
genuine spirit and contents of Christianity were never wholly
suppressed. The love of God, the blessed mediation of the
benignant Jesus, the lowly delights of the Beatitudes, the
redeeming assurance of pardon, the consoling, triumphant
expectation of heaven, were never utterly banished even from the
believers of the Dark Age. Undoubtedly many a guilty but repentant
soul found forgiveness and rest, many a meek and spotless breast
was filled with pious rapture, many a dying disciple was comforted
and inspired, by the good tidings proclaimed from priestly lips
even then. No doubt the sacred awe and guarded peace surrounding
their precincts, the divine lessons inculcated within their walls,
the pathetic prayers breathed before their altars, the traditions
of saintly men and women who had drawn angelic visitants down to
their cells and had risen long ago to be angels themselves, the
strains of unearthly melody bearing the hearts of the kneeling
crowd into eternity, no doubt these often made cathedral and
convent seem "islands of sanctity amidst the wild, roaring,
godless sea of the world." Still, the chief general feeling of the
time in relat