itself after some centuries of contact with the heathenism of Northern Europe. Observe the forest-like darkness and height of the building, the roof scarcely visible, the building so shaped and so arranged with its countless pillars that you never seem to see the whole of it; and I protest if you were put down in one of these cathedrals for the first time you would have no idea of its extent. Worship in such a place must be as near a counterpart as worship in any building could be, so far as the impression on the senses goes, to the worship in the sacred groves of our heathen forefathers. So far, then, the medieval cathedral seems to symbolize that very thing of which we are speaking to-day, the survival of heathen belief in medieval Christianity. But it does not do this only. Look a little nearer. In the centre of this gloomy forest of pillars stands a lighted altar. I might devote the whole of a lecture merely to showing how much the imagination of men in the middle ages dwelt upon the ideas of light and of candles as symbols of the light of religion; so that when anybody who had recovered from sickness, or been saved from danger, made a dedication to a saint, it was ten to one that the dedication took the form of candles to be lighted on the altar of that saint. These candles, then, are as necessary a part of the symbolism of the cathedral as its vastness, its stupendous height, its gloom and mystery. Above the altar where these lights are always burning, the peaceful faces of saints and angels look down upon the worshipper.

But pass away from this lighted altar and the sacred presence which is believed always to abide there, or go outside of the cathedral altogether, and look at its architecture from without. Here we have no more angels' faces, but in every corner and under every arch you will detect some symbol of the powers of darkness-dragons or devil's heads-or if there are representations of human faces, they are contorted, as if in torment Do not imagine that these architectural figures (in architecture they are commonly called gargoils) are placed where they are merely by chance. No, they symbolize the lost condition of all men outside the church. cat off from the light of faith which burns on the altar inside.

I need not say how central this belief is in the whole religion of the Middle Ages. "No salvation outside the Church" was, and still is, the watchword of the Catholic Church.

If I have carried you with me at all in what I have been trying to put into words-and we are dealing with thoughts and feelings very difficult to express in words-you will perhaps understand what I meant when I said just now that the medieval cathedral symbolized both the material and spiritual world of men in those days. For side by side with the spiritual notion, "no salvation outside the Church," went that material notion which gave over all the wild uncultured parts of the material world to the diabolical presences which had once been the ruling spirits in the world of our heathen forefathers.

In these various ways, verv difficult to define in exact words, directle

and indirectly, both by attraction and by repulsion, the belief of our heathen forefathers lived on in the belief of the medieval Christianity.

Remember that this is the most vital way in which one creed can survive in another. Dogmas and formulas matter little if the same sort of images, the same sort of ideas of the supernatural powers, continue to hold captive the popular imagination. You know how the Scotch ballad-monger said, "I care not who makes a nation's laws if I may make their ballads." And just in the relation in which ballads stand to formulated laws the appeals to popular imagination made by such things as the vast and gloomy medieval cathedral, its echoing chants, the wind-like voice of the organ, or again, all the fragments of popular superstition concerning the power of Satan, the assertions of those who swore that they had heard him hunting out there on the moor, in the forest, with the troops of the damned—just in this relation stand such beliefs as these to the former decrees of councils, or to the established articles of the Christian creed.

Beside the general sense of diabolical presence which pervades all the literature of the Middle Ages there are certain definite myths, certain stories touching the doings of Satan which stand out pre-eminent over the rest. Almost all these stories have survived to our day, and if they are not precisely believed in they excite a certain feeling of superstitious awe.

One of these is the story of the Wild Huntsman. We know him best as Herne the Hunter. Among other places he is supposed to haunt Windsor Forest, as any reader of Harrison Ainsworth's novel with that name will remember. I believe, however, that the old oak called Herne's oak no longer stands. He is a fiend huntsman, with two horns sticking out from his head like Satan, only in the case of Herne they are stag's horns. The story told of him in the Middle Ages was that he had been a wicked noble who cared for nothing but hunting, and hunted even on the Sunday, not only profaning the day himself, but compelling the peasantry on his estate to aid him by beating up the game. So one day there joined him two horsemen, one on a white steed and one on a black, and the latter breathed fire from its nostrils. The horseman on the white steed, who was Herne's good angel, tried to dissuade him from going to the hunt, but he would not listen, and went off with the bad angel on the black horse, saying that he wished he could go on hunting till Doomsday. And that he is now condemned to do. As the storm goes by the peasant of Germany deems that he hears this wild hunt careering through the air, that he distinguishes the shouting of men and barking of dogs, sometimes even it happens (so superstitious belief asserts) that a rain of blood falls from the clouds to the earth. In many parts of England and of France this wild hunt is known as Arthur's Chase. In Germany the huntsman goes by the name of Hackelberg.

By whatever name it may be called it is not difficult to recognise in the wild hunt a slightly transformed picture of the old supreme god of the heathens riding through the air as Wodin rides. In place of the battle in

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which Wodin indulges we have a hunt, an idea more familiar to the average peasant. This is almost the sole difference between the myth of Hackelberg, or Herne the Hunter, and the myth of Wodin.

Another still more striking example of a mediæval belief stolen from the bygone religion of our ancestors, and transformed in the stealing, is the great myth, as we may call it, of the Middle Ages, the Witches' Sabbath. This myth undoubtedly grew in precision and in detail as the Middle Ages advanced, but we can trace the germ of it very early. It is this germ which is taken from the myth of Wodin. The Witches' Sabbath told how on a certain day of the year Satan was wont to meet the witches of all the world at a certain place. Usually some well-known mountain was chosen for the scene of this Witches' Sabbath, and in Germany the place most recognised in tradition was the highest mountain of the Harz range in Saxony, the Brocken or Blocksberg. But as a matter of fact there are many mountains in Germany with this same name Blocksberg, and almost all seem to have been connected with the rites of the Witches' Sabbath. It would be impossible to enumerate all the mountains in Europe upon which the same rites were said to have been enacted. Heckla, in Iceland, is one; there were many in Norway and Sweden, others in France, Spain, Italy, the Carpathians, etc. The central figure of the myth is only Wodin, transformed into the Prince of Darkness, and the witches are only the helm-maidens or shield-maidens of Wodin, who have undergone a like transformation.

Observe that these two which I have related are connected with the two great festive seasons of heathen days, namely with Yule and with the May celebrations. Of the subject of the first myth, the Wild Huntsman, it was told that he and his following hunted throughout the year through the sky, except only during the twelve days, and then he hunted on earth. And the Witches' Sabbath, it was said to be held during the eight days following the first of May. Satan, we may suppose, was, during the rest of the year, banished to the molten pit, and allowed to return to earth again during the early days of May.

But what is this belief, put into different words, other than the belief that the ancient gods had been banished from earth by the new creed; but during two short seasons-seasons of the old heathen festivals, they were allowed to return to the earth once more.

One word more, in order if possible to clench in your memory the gist of what I have been trying to put before you. All this, all the foregoing lecture, I may say, is in a manner epitomized in one word-Heathen. I did not like, at the beginning, to trouble you with verbal distinctions, or I should have explained that the title of this lecture (though the most convenient to express in a popular form its subject) does not express it quite correctly according to the niceties of language. I would rather have used medieval catholicism in place of Christianity, and heathenism in place of Paganism. For Paganism, which is a word of Latin origin, is naturally

associated in our minds with the religion of what are called the classical peoples-the Greeks and Romans-and heathenism, which is a word of English origin, is appropriate to designate the creed of our own forefathers. And that very word symbolizes the past life of our ancestors, and the wild nature, in the midst of which they imagined their gods to dwell. The heathen is the dweller in the "heath," the wild uncultivated country far from human habitations. Therefore, in later days, when men had got to dwell more together, and the land was more cultivated, the heathen man was a sort of outlaw, a wild man of the woods, and the gods he persisted in worshipping were thought of by Christian folk no longer as gods, but as terrible fiends, as the Wild Huntsman careering through the forest, or as Satan holding his court on a lonely mountain top.

Wherefore I think you will see what I mean by saying that that one word "heathen," if we realize its full meaning, contains in itself almost all that I have been trying to say in this lecture, and quite alone affords the sort of glance which we have been trying to take into the remote past, into the dark and backward abysses of Time.

SLAVONIC RELIGION.

By W. R. MORFILL

THE subject which I propose to consider in the present lecture is the remains of the ancient beliefs, or superstitions if you will, on which were built up the doctrines of Christianity, when disseminated throughout Slavonic countries in the ninth century. I hope we shall find something to interest us, both in what the old chroniclers tell us of the paganism of their own and preceding times, and also in the many strange customs which have survived among the Slavonic peoples; for it may be boldly said that among no other races of the world have we such a rich fund of folk-song and folk-tale.

Slavonic mythology has been treated of by many Slavonic writers. Schwenk and other Germans have also written upon it, and it has even been discussed by some English authors. The works of the late Mr. Ralston on Russian Folk-tales and Russian Folk-songs may be read with advantage. They abound with allusions to the obscure mythology of the Slavonic peoples. A very interesting little book, also, is that published last year by Mr. Wratislaw, entitled "Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales," in which those curious about the matter may find the origin of many of the tales familiar to them from their infancy. Perhaps, however, before entering upon the question of the religious beliefs of the early Slavs, it might be as well to put before you a few facts about the Slavonic people, and, it must be confessed, that upon these points there exists a great deal of ignorance.

The Slavs inhabit the eastern part of Europe, and have been divided into two great families—a division based upon certain peculiarities in their languages. The south-eastern branch contains the Russians, Bulgarians, and Serbs, to whom may be added the Slovenes in Steiermark, and other southern provinces of Austria. The western Slavs include the Bohemians, or Chekhs, who, since the earlier part of the sixteenth century, have belonged to Austria-not by conquest, let us remember, but by a voluntary union-the Poles, whose country, at one time the greatest power of eastern Europe, is divided between Austria, Russia, and Prussia, and the numerically small people of the Lusatians or Sorbs, who are to be found partly in Saxony, living in the country districts round Bautzen, and partly in Prussia, near Cottbus. We may thus gain some idea of the geographical extent of the Slavonic peoples, who probably number something like a hundred millions. In a previous lecture here, I gave it as my opinion that panslavism, as it is called, that bugbear of our western states