civilised people. Charlemagne and Otto the Great
were called "Roman Emperors," but they had as little resemblance to a
real Roman Emperor (say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as "King" Wumba
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers of Sweden or
Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst glorious ruins but who
did not share the benefits of the civilisation which their fathers and
grandfathers had destroyed. They knew nothing. They were ignorant of
almost every fact which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged
to go to one single book for all their information. That was the Bible.
But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of the
human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which
teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness. As
a handbook of astronomy, zoology, botany, geometry and all the other
sciences, the venerable book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth
century, a second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great
encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the Greek
philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why the Christian
church should have been willing to accord such high honors to the
teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas they condemned all other Greek
philosophers on account of their heathenish doctrines, I really do
not know. But next to the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only
reliable teacher whose works could be safely placed into the hands of
true Christians.

His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout way. They had gone
from Greece to Alexandria. They had then been translated from the Greek
into the Arabic language by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the
seventh century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and the
philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of Stagira in
Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities of Cordova. The Arabic
text was then translated into Latin by the Christian students who had
crossed the Pyrenees to get a liberal education and this much travelled
version of the famous books was at last taught at the different schools
of northwestern Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all the
more interesting.

With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant men of the
Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things between Heaven and
Earth in their relation to the expressed will of God. T