"'This was the foundation of the Christian Church in our valley of the Oerze; and as Landolf had come from Minden, the whole Oerze valley was attached to the see of Minden, while the rest of the Lüneburg country came to belong to the see of Verden.
"'Now the faithful Landolf laboured on indefatigably. He sent one of his new converts to Minden and Münster, to get more helpers from thence for his work. Twelve came, who were put under Landolf; and now for the first time the work could be taken hold of vigorously. Landolf must have lived and laboured until 830 or 840, and so blessed was his agency that the whole country of the Horzsahzen was converted to Christianity. It is brought forward as a proof of this, that at the great May diets held at the stone-houses the following laws were unanimously enacted: no more horse's flesh to be eaten; no more human sacrifices to be brought; no more dead to be burned; and all Woden's oaks to be hewn down. And in truth these laws do show the dominance of Christianity, for precisely these things named were the peculiar marks of heathenism. Of the interior condition of Christianity, little is told; only it is remarked that the entire change in the country was so great and manifest, that the bishops Willerich of Bremen and Helingud of Verden sent priests to convince themselves with their own eyes whether what they had heard with their ears was true; and these messengers had found not a single heathen left in the whole region. As a good general, Landolf moreover understood how everywhere to seize the right points where with the most effect heathenism might be grappled with and overthrown. He always went straight to the heart of the old religion. We have already seen how his first church was built by the Billing's sacrifice stone. Westward from Hermannsburg is what is called the Winkelberg, upon which was the burying-place of the heathen priests, for the most part cultivated land now, but the twice seven so-called Hühnen graves are still to be seen there. At the foot of this hill he established what was called the Pfarrwohrt, where the spiritual courts should be holden; and close by this place he laid the foundation-stone of the Quänenburg, a house surrounded with a moat, in which the young girls of the country might be taught and educated (Quäne or Kwäne meant a young girl). Both places, Pfarrwohrt and Quänenburg, are arable fields now, still belonging to the parsonage.
"'An hour above Hermannsburg the two rivers Oerze and Wieze flow into each other. At that place, in an oak wood, the idol Thor was worshipped. There Landolf was equally prompt to build a chapel, that the idol worship might be banished. As he had consecrated the church in Hermannsburg to Peter and Paul, so he consecrated this chapel to Lawrence. Around this chapel the village Müden sprang up, so called because the two rivers there flow into one another, or Münden. Then he went further up the Oerze and erected a cloister and a chapel at a place which was sacred to the goddess Freija. At that time a cloister was called a munster. The village of Munster grew up around this cloister. In the same way he went further up the Weize, where there was a wood sacred to Hertha. In its neighbourhood he built a chapel which was consecrated to Bartholomew. Around this chapel Wiezendorf arose. About an hour and a half distant from Hermannsburg, there was a very large, magnificent wood of oaks and beeches; such a forest was then called a wohld. In this forest the heathen priests, the so-called Druids, were specially at home; there, too, they kept the white horses which were used in soothsaying. The wood extended for hours in length and breadth. He could not give that the go-by; and that he might dash right into the midst of it, he built at the spot where it was narrowest a chapel on the one side to Mary in valle, and on the other side a chapel to Mary in monte. The first means Mary in the valley, the second, Mary on the hill. The villages Wohlde and Bergen have thence arisen. So he grappled with heathenism just there where its strongest points were, and always, by God's grace, got the victory; for the Lord indeed says: "My glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." And as once the Philistine's idol Dagon fell speechless upon the ground before the ark of the covenant of God, so in our Oerze valley everywhere fell the altars of the idols before the sign of the Cross.
"'Besides all this, Landolf and his companions were skilled husbandmen, who themselves shunned no manual labour nor painstaking, and who knew right well how to eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. So they introduced agriculture universally, of which our forefathers at that time knew little or nothing; and thus they were not only the spiritual but also the material benefactors of the whole district. How much a single man can do, who is wholly given to the Lord, and who is moved by burning love to the Lord and to his fellows! God give all preachers and teachers, and especially all messengers to the heathen, such a mind, such a brave heart, such a single eye, such will to work! that some good may be done.
"'About the next hundred years I have found nothing said in the chronicle. Probably things went on in such a quiet way that there was nothing particular to say concerning them. But then comes the relation of a noteworthy occurrence.'"
Meredith shut up his book.
"Well, aren't you going on?" said Maggie.
"Presently. I want a run down to the shore and see how the water looks."
"Why, it always looks just the same way," said Esther.
"Does it? I am afraid something must be the matter with your eyes."