336 THE CHURCH
in the Church, "the Mother of us all". These beliefs were part
of his life, only counterbalanced to some degree by his fear of
the Devil and his agents, and by his credulous anxiety to do what
he could to avert the evil eye or the machinations of some malign
spirit. Whether his parish was served by a good or a bad parson,
and whether his own faith was strong or otherwise, he could
not resist the constantly recurring thought that he was living
in a world in which these clashing forces of good and evil were
ever at war—a war in which his own soul and eternal future
was the stake. Few men, if pressed, would have denied this; and,
as it coloured the whole of their thought, so we, in our turn, must
try to see the medieval peasant living under its dominating
shadow.