Christendom at the Opening of the Sixteenth Century - James Aitken Wylie

adapting themselves to new forms of life, and
surrendering themselves to the guidance of great
principles. What was to be done? Must the building
which God purposed to erect be abandoned,
because a foundation sufficiently strong and sound
could not be found for it? Should Christianity
remain the half-finished structure, or rather the
defaced ruin, which the fourth and fifth centuries
beheld it?
An answer was given to this question when the
gates of the North were opened, and new and hardy
races, issuing from the obscure regions of
Germany, spread themselves over Southern and
Western Europe. An invisible Power marched
before these tribes, and placed each – the Huns, the
Vandals, the Burgundians, the Franks, the
Lombards – in that quarter of Christendom which
best suited the part each was destined to play in
that great drama of which the stamping out of the
laws, the religion, and the government of the old
world was the first act. The same Power which
guided their march from the remote lands of their
birth, and chose for them their several habitations,
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