The vision of the
mountain-peaks, however clouded, was worth the toil of the ascent; and there
was reason in the docility with which the vulgar bowed themselves before the
forms and ceremonies and rules of outward conduct which the visible Church prescribed;
since they believed that so they might find the way, in this life or a better,
to that higher rule of service, exemplified in the finest characters of their
experience, which as Scripture said and the saints testified was perfect life
and freedom. It is no wonder that they were disposed to go further still; to
stake their earthly fortunes and the future of society on the bidding of those
among the elect who from time to time descended among them, like Moses from the
mountain, with transfigured faces and the message of a new revelation. And if
the result was sometimes calamitous or pitiable, there were compensating gains;
a matter-of-fact prosperity is not altogether preferable to enlistment in the
forlorn hope of idealism. Had medieval society been more consistently secular
and sceptical, it might have been more prosperous, more stable, the nursery of
more balanced natures and the theatre of more orderly careers.
But there would
have been the less to learn from the ethical and political conceptions of the
age. What appeals to us in the medieval outlook upon life is, first, the idea
of mankind as a brotherhood transcending racial and political divisions, united
in a common quest for truth, filled with the spirit of mutual charity and
mutual helpfulness, and endowed with a higher will and wisdom than that of the
individuals who belong to it; secondly, a profound belief in the superiority of
right over might, of spirit over matter, of the eternal interests of humanity
over the ambitions and the passions of the passing hour. Without Christianity
these articles of faith could scarcely have passed into the common heritage of
men; and, without the Church, it is in the last degree improbable that Christianity
would have survived that age of semi-barbarism in which the foundations of the
modern world were laid.
