4th. That only the good are happy.
5th. That the foreknowledge of God does not conflict with Free-will.
These would seem to carry even now the pith and germ of the broadest theologic teachings.
It is a noble and a picturesque figure—that of King Alfred—which we see, looking back over the vista of a thousand years; better it would seem than that of King Arthur to weave tales around, and illumine with the heat and the flame of poesy. Yet poets of those times and of all succeeding times have strangely neglected this august and royal type of manhood.
After him came again weary Danish wars and wild blood-letting and ignorance surging over the land, save where a little light played fitfully around such great religious houses as those of York and Canterbury. It was the dreary Tenth Century, on the threshold of which he had died—the very core and kernel of the Dark Ages, when the wisest thought the end of things was drawing nigh, and strong men quaked with dread at sight of an eclipse, or comet, or at sound of the rumble of an earthquake. It was a time and a condition of gloom which made people pardon, and even relish such a dismal poem as that of “The Grave,” which—though bearing thirteenth century form—may well in its germ have been a fungal outgrowth of the wide-spread hopelessness of this epoch:—
For thee was a house built
Ere thou wert born;
For thee was a mold meant
Ere thou of mother cam’st.