orruptible justice," and forbade its followers to
represent Him under any corporeal form. They were not even to think of
confining Him within the enclosure of walls, but were taught that it
was within woods and consecrated forests that they could serve Him
properly. There He seemed to reign in silence, and to make Himself felt
by the respect which He inspired.[5] ... From this Supreme God were
sprung (as it were emanations from His divinity) an infinite number of
subaltern deities and genii, of which every part of the visible world
was the seat and the temple.... To serve this divinity with sacrifices
and prayers, to do no wrong to others, and to be brave and intrepid in
themselves, were all the moral consequences they derived from these
doctrines. Lastly, the belief of a future state cemented and completed
the whole building.[6] ... Perhaps no religion ever attributed so much
to a Divine Providence as that of the northern nations.'[7]

It was not among the Scandinavians only that the religion of the North
retained long these vestiges of its original purity, and elevation. 'All
the Teutonic nations held the same opinions, and it was upon these that
they founded the obligation of serving the gods, and of being valiant
in battle.... One ought to regard in this respect the Icelandic
mythology as a precious monument, without which we can know but very
imperfectly this important part of the religion of _our fathers_.'[8]

The earlier and purer doctrine seems to have long survived the
incrustations of later times in the case of a select few. Harold
Harfraga, the first king of all Norway, thus addressed an assembly of
his people: 'I swear and protest in the most sacred manner that I will
never offer sacrifice to any of the gods adored by the people, but to
Him only who hath formed this world, and everything we behold in it.' A
belief in the divine Love, as well as the divine power, knowledge and
justice, though probably not held by the many at a later day, is yet
distinctly expressed, as well as the kindred belief in an endless reign
of peace, by the earliest and most sacred document of the Northern
religion, viz. the 'Voeluspa Prophecy.' That prophecy, after foretelling
the destruction of all things, including the Odin gods themselves, by
the Supreme God and His ministers, proceeds: 'There will arise out of
the sea, another earth most lovely and verdant with pleasant fields
where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali, s