In Germany to the Leipsic Disputation - James Aitken Wylie

world, stood up.
So was it when the world was being prepared to
become the abode of pure Churches and free
nations. From the fall of the Western Empire to the
eleventh century, there intervened a period of
unexampled torpor and darkness. The human mind
seemed to have sunk into senility. Society seemed
to have lost the vital principle of progress. Men
looked back to former ages with a feeling of
despair. They recalled the varied and brilliant
achievements of the early time, and sighed to think
that the world's better days were past, that old age
had come upon the race, and that the end of all
things was at hand. Indeed a belief was generally
entertained that the year One thousand would usher
in the Day of Judgment. It was a mistake. The
world's best days were yet to come, though these –
its true golden age – it could reach not otherwise
than through terrible political and moral tempests.
The hurricane of the crusades it was that first
broke the ice of the world's long winter. The frozen
bands of Orion being loosed, the sweet influences
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