minds, and the emotions awakened by it in our hearts, that constitute our faith.
If the preachers of the Christian religion realized these truths more than they generally seem to do, they would perhaps speak with more charity and less scorn and contempt of people who differ from them in their religious views. They would recognize in the faith of others the same connecting link between God and man for them, as their own faith is for themselves. They would not hate the Jew because he, in accordance with the Mosaic commandment, offers his prayers in the synagogue to the God of his fathers; nor despise the heathen because he, in want of better knowledge, in childlike simplicity lifts his hands in prayer to an image of wood or stone; for, although this be perishable dust, he still addresses the prayer of his inmost soul to the supreme God, even as the child, that kisses the picture of his absent mother, actually thinks of her.
The old mythological stories of the Norsemen abound in poetry of the truest and most touching character. These stories tell us in sublime and wonderful speech of the workings of external nature, and may make us cheerful or sad, happy or mournful, gay or grave, just as we night feel, if from the pinnacle of Gausta Fjeld we were to watch the passing glories of morning and evening tide. There is nothing in these stories that can tend to make us less upright and simple, while they contain many thoughts and suggestions that we may be the better and happier for knowing. All the so-called disagreeable features of mythology are nothing but distortions, brought out either by ill-will or by a superficial knowledge of the subject; and, when these distortions are removed, we shall find only things beautiful, lovely and of good report. We shall find the
