joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity (Ps. cxxxiii., verse 1).

All over South-Western France has spread the popular legend, that on Easter day, when the words "Lift up your heads, O ye gates" (Ps. xxiv.) are being sung in church, the treasure-houses marked by dolmens, cromlechs, and menhirs, or concealed, as at Boussac, in the walls of castles, spring open, and men may, for a brief space, enter and enrich themselves unharmed by their infernal guardians. It is the recurring moment of which Drummond of Hawthornden sings:

Bright portals of the sky,

Emboss'd with sparkling stars;

Doors of Eternity,

With diamantine bars,

Your arras rich uphold,

Loose all your bolts and springs,

Ope wide your leaves of gold,

That in your roofs may come the King of Kings."

But the prevalence of the legend in France, and elsewhere, is probably due to the popularity of the Golden Legend in devotional literature. In that book is enshrined the religious heart of the Middle Ages, with its fears and fancies, its longings, its child-like yet soaring faith. In it is revealed the soul of those cathedrals which still stand in our midst, like beings of another world. In it, too, are unlocked the secrets of the intuitive glories and imaginative mysteries of mediæval painting and architecture. As Caxton says of it: “In like wise as gold is most noble above all other metals, in like wise is this Legend holden most noble above all other works." The following is the story of Our Lord's visit to Hell, condensed from the version of the Golden Legend :

The news of the Resurrection struck Jerusalem with consternation. While the priests and princes of the people were holding counsel, there were brought into the assembly two sons of the aged Simeon, Leucius and Carinus, who had risen with Jesus and returned from death to life. Each asks that tablets should be given them, and each wrote thereon his tale. We were, they wrote, in the dim place of Shadow with our fathers the Patriarchs, when suddenly a great light of gold and crimson, as it had been the sun in his glory, shone round

about us. Then, straightway, Adam, the father of the human race, rejoiced and said, "This light is that of the Author of all light, who has promised to send us His eternal day." And Isaiah cried aloud, "This light is that of God, of whom I foretold that the people which walked in darkness should see a great light." Then came to us the aged Simeon, and with him John the Baptist, and they both bore witness to the Saviour the one, that he had carried Him in his arms; the other, that he had baptised Him, and that His coming was nigh. And all the Patriarchs were filled with joy unspeakable.

Then Satan, the prince of Death, said unto Hell, “make ready to receive Jesus, who boasted Himself to be the Son of God, but who is only a man in fear of death, for He hath said, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.' Behold how I have tempted Him! I have stirred up the people against Him! I have sharpened the lance; I have mingled the gall and vinegar; I have made ready the tree of the cross. The time is at hand, when I shall bring Him hither

a captive."

Then Hell asked, Is it this same Jesus who raised up Lazarus?' And Satan made answer, "It is He." Then Hell cried, "I adjure thee, by thy power and by mine, that thou bring Him not hither; for when I heard the command of His word, I trembled, and I could not hold Lazarus, but he, wresting himself from me, took flight like an angel and escaped out of my hands."

Now, while Hell was thus speaking, there came a voice, like the crash of thunder, which said, " Open your gates, ye Princes, lift up your everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in." At the sound of this mighty voice, the devils hastened to close the brazen gates with bars of iron. But when he saw what they did, the prophet David said, “ Have I not prophesied that He would break the gates of brass, and smite in sunder the bars of iron?" Again the voice sounded, Open ye your gates, and the King of Glory shall come in." Then Hell, hearing that the voice had thus twice spoken, asked, "Who then is this King of Glory?" And the prophet David made answer; "It is the Lord Strong and Mighty, even the Lord mighty in battle; He is the King of Glory."

Even as David spake, the King of Glory appeared, His splendour shining through all the halls of shadows, and he stretched forth His right hand and took the right hand of Adam, saying, "Peace be with thee, and with all thy sons that have been just." And so the Lord passed forth from the gates of Hell, and in His train followed all the just.

Leucius and Carinus ceased to write, and, becoming white as snow, disappeared.

CHAPTER V

THE REFORMATION ERA

The influence of the Psalms among pioneers of the ReformationWyclif, John Hus, Jerome of Prague; among mediæval reformers -Savonarola; among Protestant leaders-Luther and Melancthon; among champions of the Papacy-the Emperor Charles V.; among discoverers of New Worlds-Christopher Columbus; among men of the New Learning-Erasmus, Pico della Mirandola, Sir Thomas More; John Fisher; John Houghton; among leaders of the Catholic Reaction-Xavier, and St. Teresa; among Protestant and Catholic Martyrs-Hooper, Ridley, and Southwell.

ON St. Sylvester's day, 1384, John Wyclif lay dying at Lutterworth. The friars, so runs the story, crowded round him, urging him to confess the wrongs that he had done to their Order. But the indomitable old man caused his servant to raise him from the pillow, and, gathering all his remaining strength, exclaimed with a loud voice, "I shall not die, but live; and declare the evil deeds of the Friars (Ps. cxviii., verse 17).

Before Wyclif's day, devout men had assailed the corruption of the Church, or disputed her doctrines of the Sacraments. Some had protested against the claims of the Papacy, or upheld the rights of national churches. Others had demanded the preaching of the true Gospel. Others had deplored the worldliness of the clergy, denounced the wealth of the Monastic Orders, or preached the blessings of poverty. But all had remained loyal to the Pope; none had looked beyond existing agencies for the reform of the Church and of society. Wyclif's attitude marks an advance so distinct as to proclaim a new epoch. He not only attacked practical abuses, but aimed at erecting an ecclesiastical fabric which should differ from the old in doctrine as well as in organisation. In the last years of his life, he urged complete separation from the Papacy as Antichrist, established his "Poor

Priests," aspired to reform England by the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, and, in religion, politics, and society, insisted on the freedom of the human conscience from every restraint except Christ's written law. His importance as the centre of all pre-Reformation history was instinctively recognised. When the Bishop of Lincoln ordered his body to be exhumed and burned, and its ashes thrown into the river Swift-or when Walsingham, the Chronicler, calls him "that weapon of the Devil, that enemy of the Church, that sower of confusion among unlearned people, that idol of heresy, that mirror of hypocrisy, that father of schism, that son of hatred, that father of lies "-the one by his action, the other by his language, expresses his sense of the fact that Wyclif was not a reformer of the medieval monastic type, but had introduced a new era.

Wyclif's attitude was, in part, produced by changed circumstances. Traditions of universal empire were obscured by the rise of separate nations, one in race, language, and religion; the temporal claims of the Pope had increased as his spiritual hold on the world relaxed, and both became intolerable, when claimants of the papal throne excommunicated their opponents or doomed their rivals to eternal damnation. In part, it expressed profound discontent with the corruptions of religious life, intensified by the horrors of the plague. Even the most vicious were terrified into paying that vicarious homage to virtue which demands from the clergy an elevated moral standard. In part, it resulted from political or social conditions. The English nation was at war with France; the Pope was the puppet of the French king, and papal tributes fed the French treasury with English money. The nobles desired to oust the clergy from public affairs, the commons to lighten their own burdens by taxing ecclesiastical property, the people to relieve their poverty by appropriating the wealth of the Church. But the peculiar position which Wyclif adopted was even more the effect of his own temperament. To his austere piety, logical intellect, unimaginative nature, the faith of the Middle Ages made but weak appeal. Blind to its beauties, he saw with exaggerated clearness only its deformities. He chafed against the fetters it imposed upon his mental inde