Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:CHAPTER XI. MISSIONARIES TO THE SWISS AND THE SOLA VS. T NTEREST must be felt respecting the diffusion of Christianity amongst pagan nations. Reliable history is vague, but legends are specific. The historian pulls them to pieces, puts aside what is incredible, and weaves into some reasonable pattern what remains. It is curious to place, side by side, the narrative of an old chronicler, and the sketchy generalization of a modern essayist. I select from a large mass a small handful touching Swiss and Sclavonic tribes, binding them together with a strip or two picked up in the Black Forest. In the first I take, there occurs a name I do not find in any authentic history or in the " Lives of the Saints." The name is that of St. Beat, familiar enough to people who tarry in Swiss scenes and search after legendary and local tales. M. Valayre, in his " Legendes and Chroniques Suisses," tells us that St. Beat, a native of Bretagne, converted from Druidism, went to Helvetia that he might preachthe Gospel there. He was accompanied by one called Achates, a name which reminds one of Virgil's " fidus Achates." The missionary declared to the natives the Advent of our Lord, and the salvation He had wrought, also the Divine anger against sin, as shown in the Deluge, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—types of punishment in the future world. The people, alarmed, made a profession of Christianity, destroyed their idol temples, and worshipped the true God. When the prefect of Soleure received tidingsof the destruction of heathen gods he was filled with anger. Beat and his companion fled to the mountains. After a journey of some days they reached the smiling vale of Unterseen. The richness of surrounding vegetation, the neighbourhood of the lakes of Thun and Brienz, and the abu...