Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/87

 Divinity, the same, precisely the same, whatever be the mode of expressing it? But the pagan, the idolater, the ignorant even of the Catholic church, worship these stocks and stones; and instead of regarding them as signs only shadowing forth what, in its intellectual state, the human mind cannot otherwise express of its religious sentiments, take the signs for the things they represent, and worship them as such. So do we, in all our pride of knowledge and intellectual development. We too worship our signs—our words. Let any man set himself to the task of examining the state of his knowledge on the most important subjects, divine or human, and he will find himself a mere word-worshipper; he will find words without ideas or meaning in his mind venerated, made idols of—idols different from those carved in wood or stone only by being stamped with printers' ink on white paper. This is perhaps the just view which the philosopher and the humble Christian should take, of all the natural forms of religion which have ever existed beyond the pale of the religion revealed to us in the Scriptures.

This necessity of man's expressing in his uncultivated mental condition, by the material visible means of idols, the innate sentiment of religion which he has no other language for, will, if it do not reconcile, render very unimportant the various speculations of antiquaries relative to Odin. Some find that Odin was a real personage, who, on the fall of Mithridates, migrated with his nation from the borders of the Tanais, to escape the Roman yoke, about seventy years before our era. This is the opinion of Snorro Sturleson; and, as far as regards the Asiatic origin of the Northmen, it is confirmed by all the traditions, mythological or historical, of the scalds. Torfæus, reckoning from scaldic genealogies, finds that there must have been an older Odin; and if we are to admit that the god called Odin