THE CROUCH OAK. 



and significant ; it occurs all the world 

 over, from Britain to the New Hebrides; 

 it is found in India, in Syria, in Germany, 

 in Ceylon, in civilized Rome, in barbaric 

 New Guinea. Wherever the sacred tree 

 spreads its brooding circle of welcome 

 shade, there under its huge boughs the 

 sacred stone bears witness to antique or 

 still surviving rites of human sacrifice. 



It is this, indeed, that gives our British 

 Gospel Oaks their unique interest amid 

 the public monuments of England. Alone 

 among the temples of our old heathen 

 faith they have outlived the overwhelming 

 deluge of Christianity. In the south of 

 Europe we have still the Parthenon and 

 the columns of Paestum to testify boldly 

 to the older creeds. In the north, where 

 temples made with hands were rarer, where 

 art had not learned to raise such colossal 

 piles as Karnak or Denderah, the sacred 

 oak alone remains to us now as a linger- 

 ing memorial of the cult of our ancestors. 

 177 N 



