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efforts to get rid of him. He remained in heaven, an element 
of evil and discord. 
6. Such, briefly sketched, were the cosmogony and mytho- 
logy of the North. Conscious of the presence of evil, of the 
limited power of their gods to check or divert it, they waited 
for a happier condition in the dim future. A horrible age, 
they thought, would come at last, when all the fountains of 
the ocean would break up, the demon wolves would devour 
the sun and moon, horror would fall on all things, and the 
world be overwhelmed with ruin. Then, as the grim poem of 
the A^bluspa tells us, Iieimdall will stand up and blow his great 
horn. Through all the crash of worlds and chaos of dying 
men, the horn will thunder, and the JEsir, gathering up 
their robes for death, will meet before Heimdall in council. 
The ash Yggdrasil will tremble to the core. Clad in their 
golden armour, the iEsir will go out to fight with the powers 
of destruction. Odin will die first, and then all the rest. At 
last Loki will stand alone with Iieimdall, wickedness face to 
face with holiness, and they will slay one another ; then black- 
ness and conflagration will engulf the universe. 
7. But out of chaos and death a new and beautiful world 
will arise. The good ./Esir, renewed in youth and loveliness, 
will come to inhabit it for ever, and thither the souls of good 
men will come when they are dead. Loki alone will not revive. 
There will be no jarring elements in the new heavens, and the 
renovated earth will exist in peace and holiness, a reflection of 
the calm of heaven. One single God, the Mighty One, will 
rule all things with beneficent wisdom, and will make firm his 
reign in perpetual peace. Such was the dream that comforted 
these virtuous pagans in their sorrowful struggle against con- 
scious evil and error ; a baseless dream, indeed, and the specu- 
lation of an ignorant people, but one not ignoble in itself, and 
not wholly unworthy to prepare their minds for the pure light 
of gospel truth. 
8. It is necessary, in realizing the condition of a race of men 
separated by many centuries from ourselves, to be careful to 
avoid measuring them too much by our own standard, and 
judging them by opinions that spring from prejudice and 
custom. In the very outset of our examination of the habits of 
life in the North, we are confronted by a fact so truly obnoxious 
to our feelings, that we run the risk of being hopelessly 
scandalized at once. Immediately after the birth of a child, 
before the ceremony of initiation was performed, the infant’s 
body was carefully examined, and if it showed signs of deformity 
