moment that his battle would not only be against Pagan priests and their heathen hordes, but also against the dark unseen powers, who were not easily to be dislodged from the fair land of Britain. And in his contest, as in the contest of many another missionary from Rome, the labours of S. Boniface in Germany, of S. Francis Xavier in Malacca and Japan, and thousands more, he might literally have cried with S. Paul: “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” That the inhabitants of Britain already knew and dreaded the influences of these demon powers is shown by the fact that King Aethelberht at first suspected that this stranger from Italy, the southern land far over the seas, might be some mighty magician, and therefore he insisted that their first meeting should take place under a mighty oak, since here no baleful charm or horrid incantation could prevail. For the oak above all the forest is the sacred tree, throughout all lands and in all ages. The famous grove of Dodona, where Zeus was worshipped in the oracular oak, was the primeval sanctuary of Greece; and in primitive Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Latin counterpart of Zeus. The God of the oak, who spake in the roll and crash of thunder, was the supreme deity of the Savage Aryans who dwelt in the heart of the virgin woods. Many scholars, indeed, believe that the word “Druids” means nothing more than “oak men,” and, though the name was not derived from the Greek, they say that Pliny was substantially right when he connected Druid With δρῦς, and wrote: “Nihil habent Druidae (ita suos appellant magos) uisco, et arbore,
