But if the Church as a scheme of government was a doubtful
blessing to those who gave her their allegiance, the Church as a home of
spiritual life was invested with a grandeur and a charm which were and are apparent,
even to spectators standing at the outer verge of her domain. We may compare
the religion of the Middle Ages to an alpine range, on the lower slopes of
which the explorer finds himself entangled in the mire and undergrowth of
pathless thickets, oppressed by a still and stifling atmosphere, shut off from
any view of the sky above or the pleasant plains beneath. Ascending through
this sheltered and ignoble wilderness, he comes to free and windswept pastures,
to the white solitude of virgin snowfields, to brooding glens and soaring peaks
robed in the light or darkness of a mystery which he is as little able to define
as to resist.
Far below him, illimitably vast and yet infinitely little,
extends the prospect of the lower levels which, whether beautiful or sordid,
are too remote to seem a part of the new world in which he finds himself, and
strike his senses only as a foil and a background to the severer hues, the more
majestic lines and contours of the snow-capped mountain-ranges. On such heights
of moral exaltation the medieval mystics built their tabernacles and sang their
Benedicite, calling all nature to bear witness with them that God in His
heaven was very near, and all well with a universe which existed only to fulfil
His word. It was a noble optimism; and those who embraced it are the truest
poets of the Middle Ages, none the less poets because they expressed their high
imaginings in life instead of language. Philosophers they neither were nor
sought to be; the temperament which feels the mystery of things most keenly is
not that which probes into the how and why; but the world of their dreams was
at least superior to ours in being founded upon an ever-present and
overwhelming reverence for the truth behind the veil.
