ii THE ARREST OF ENQUIRY 65 



group wherein human hopes fix eyes on the return 

 of long - sleeping heroes ; of Arthur and Olger 

 Dansk, of Vainamoinen and Quetzalcoatl, of Charle- 

 magne and Barbarossa, of the lost Marko of Servia 

 and the lost King Sebastian. We speak of it as 

 1 casual/ because among the two hundred and eighty- 

 odd sects scheduled in an early Whitakers Almanack 

 the curious in such enquiries will note only three dis- 

 tinctive bodies of Adventists. 



All changes in popular belief have been, and, 

 practically, remain superficial ; the old animism per- 

 vades the higher creeds. In our own island, for ex- 

 ample, the Celtic and pre-Celtic paganism remained 

 unleavened by the old Roman religion. The legions 

 took back to Rome the gods which they brought 

 with them. The names of Mithra and Serapis occur 

 on numerous tablets, the worship of the one that 

 ' Sol invictus ' whose birthday at the winter solstice 

 became (see p. 39) the anniversary of the birth of 

 Christ had ranged as far west as South Wales and 

 Northumberland ; while the foundations of a temple 

 to the other have been unearthed at York. The 

 chief Celtic gods, in virtue of common attributes 

 as elemental nature - deities, were identified with 

 certain dii majores of the Roman pantheon, and the 

 deae matres equated with the gracious or malevolent 

 spirits of the indigenous faith. But the old names 

 were not displaced. Neither did the earlier Chris- 

 tian missionaries effect any organic change in popular 

 beliefs, while, during the submergence of Christianity 

 under waves of barbaric invasion, there was infused 

 into the old religion kindred elements from oversea 

 which gave it yet more vigorous life. The eagle 



F 



