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before you the habits of thought peculiar to the heathen 
nations of Scandinavia ; and to show in what respects they had 
learned, spontaneously, as one may say, the axioms of moral 
wisdom, and in what respects their condition left them with 
much of this quality to receive from the Gospel, In studying 
the relative conditions of Greece and Scandinavia, two famous 
collections of lyrical poems are of extreme, incalculable value 
in determining the state of the moral atmosphere at the in- 
troduction of the Christian religion; on the one hand, the 
Anthology of Meleager ; on the other, the Edda of Ssemund 
Sigfussen. As the one gives us the fullest and most minute 
account we possess of the sentiment of later Greece, so the 
other contains, if not so exhaustive a store, still the gravest 
and most suggestive thoughts of the wisest of Icelandic skalds, 
and throws a vast deal of light on the moral philosophy of 
their age. It will, therefore, in preference to any of the prose 
Sagas, be taken as in some sort the text of my discourse, and I 
may be allowed at once to remind you that this celebrated 
work, though collected by an ecclesiastic, consists almost entirely 
of Icelandic lyrics, composed long before the introduction of 
Christianity by bards whose very names are lost. Ssemund 
flourished in the 11th century, when the literature of Iceland 
was passing from the creative into the critical period, and 
when no pains were spared to preserve the relics of an earlier 
and, although pagan, precious inspiration. 
2, This is a convenient moment for acknowledging from what 
other sources I have drawn the information I lay before you 
to-night. Before all I must express my deep obligations 
to that masterpiece of learning, the Danmarks Historie in 
Hedenold of Professor Niels Matthias Petersen, a man of 
whom it was difficult to say whether he excelled more in 
graceful scholarship or in indefatigable patience of research, 
whose name is an honour to Denmark. Whatever this great 
work has not supplied me with, I have gathered from the 
Altnordischen Studien of Professor Weinhold, and from other 
useful books, whose names I need hardly specify. 
3. The moral conscience of a people is reflected in its popular 
religion. The earlier Doric races did not differ more from the 
Greeks of the decadence than the warrior-gods of Homer did 
from the Indian and Egyptian deities foisted on the luxurious 
contemporaries of Bufinus and Petronius. Buddha reflects the 
changeless, meditative temper of the Hindoo ; in Mohamma- 
danism we have a fit faith for the restless, austere tribes that 
founded and dispersed it. Christianity alone takes no colour 
