The great Danish invasion of England in the ninth century is one of
those facts which meet us at every turn in the life of the world,
raising again and again the deepest of all questions. At first sight it
stands out simply as the triumph of brute force, cruelty, and anarchy,
over civilization and order. It was eminently successful, for the
greater part of the kingdom remained subject to the invaders. In its
progress all such civilization as had taken root in the land was for
the time trodden out; whole districts were depopulated; lands thrown
out of cultivation; churches, abbeys, monasteries, the houses of nobles
and peasants, razed to the ground; libraries (such as then existed) and
works of art ruthlessly burnt and destroyed. It threw back all Alfred’s
reforms for eight years. To the poor East Anglian or West Saxon, churl
or monk, who had been living his quiet life there, honestly, and in
the fear of God, according to his lights—to him hiding away in the
swamps of the forest, amongst the swine, running wild now for lack of
herdsmen, and thinking bitterly of the sack of his home, and murder of
his brethren, or of his wife and children by red-handed Pagans, the
heavens would indeed seem to be shut, and the earth delivered over to
the powers of darkness. Would it not seem so to us if we were in like
case? Have we any faith which would stand such a strain as that?
Who shall say for himself that he has? And yet what Christian does not
know, in his heart of hearts, that there is such a faith for himself
and for the world—the faith which must have carried Alfred through
those fearful years, and strengthened him to build up a new and better
England out of the ruins the Danes left behind them? For, hard as it
must be to keep alive any belief or hope during a time when all around
us is reeling, and the powers of evil seem to be let loose on the
earth, when we look back upon these “days of the Lord” there is no
truth which stands out more clearly on the face of history than this,
that they all and each have been working towards order and life, that
“the messengers of death have been messengers of resurrection.”