Aden

“ All the chosen guests of Odin Daily ply the trade of war; From the fields of festal fight Swift they ride in gleaming arms, And gaily, at the board of gods, Quaff the cup of sparkling ale And eat Sæhrimni's vaunted flesh. ”

“ As men and gods owed the priceless gift to Odin, they were ever ready to express to him their gratitude, and they not only called it by his name, but they worshipped him as patron of eloquence, poetry, and song, and of all scalds. ”

“ When we inquire whom Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday are named after, and press questions in reference to Tyr, Odin, Thor and Freyja, we get at best but a wise and knowing look. Are we, then, as a nation, like the ancient Jews, and do we bend the knee before the gods of foreign nations and forsake the altars of our own gods? What if we then should suffer the fate of that unhappy people—be scattered over all the world and lose our fatherland? In these Eddas our fathers have bequeathed unto us all their profoundest, all their sublimest, all their best thought. ”

“ The sword turns this way and that for ever.
'What of Adam cast out of Eden?
(And O the bower and the hour!)
Lo! with care like a shadow shaken,
He tills the hard earth whence he was taken.
'What of Eve too, cast out of Eden?
(Eden bower's in flower.)
Nay, but she, the bride of God's giving,
Must yet be mother of all men living.
'Lo, God's grace, by the grace of Lilith! ”

“ It is a mean price for which he has sold his peace of conscience—“the sweetness of the cup that is charged with poison, the beauty of the serpent whose bite is death.”
Eden, who is seated reading on one of the benches by the wall, has recovered from his illness, but he is not, and never will be, what, but for Harpour’s brutality, he might have been. He is a nervous, timid, intellectual boy. No game, unfortunately, has any attraction for him. ”

“ Not the man of mortal race Knows the words which thou hast spoken To thy son in days of yore. I hear the coming tread of death; He soon shall raze the runic lore, And knowledge of the rise of gods, From his ill-fated soul who strove With Odin's self the strife of wit, Wisest of the wise that breathe: Our stake was life, and thou hast won. ”

“ Here you trace one winding and creeping, by soft and subdued steps, through the labyrinth of sweet sounds; then another drops, with delicious trickling falls, from the highest compass to the level of the rest; then one seems at length to extricate itself; then another, in imitative successive cadences; they seem as silver threads that gradually unravel themselves, and then wind round the fine deep-toned bass which has scarcely swerved from its steady dignity during all their modulations, and filling up the magnificent diapason, burst into a swelling final cadence, which has no name upon earth. ”

“ The Younger Edda once calls him Allfather, for he is to the new world what Odin was to the old. He was before the beginning of time, and at the end of time he enters upon his eternal reign.
The reward is eternal. Is the punishment also eternal? When light and darkness (Balder and Hoder) can live peaceably together,—when darkness can resolve itself into light,—cannot then the evil be dissolved in the good; cannot the eternal streams of goodness wash away the evil? We think so, and the Edda seems to justify us in this thought; at least the Elder Edda seems to 435take this view of the subject. ”

“ ODIN The Father of Gods and Men ODIN, Wuotan, or Woden was the highest and holiest god of the Northern races. He was the all-pervading spirit of the universe, the personification of the air, the god of universal wisdom and victory, and the leader and protector of princes and heroes. ”

“ Odin—a wise and virtuous warrior, whose beneficence procured him among the early Scythians, deification. As a divinity, the father of gods and men, he is the husband of Frea (the earth) , and from the union of divine love and the earth, spring light, heat, the elements, the seasons, strength, and genius, typified by Balder, Thor, Frey, Hoder, and Balder again, as orator and poet. Odin, mounted upon his horse Sleipner, represents active benevolence. ”

“ When the king learned of the coming of those men of Asia, who were called Æsir, he went to meet them, and made offer to them that Odin should have such power in his realm as he himself wielded. And such well-being followed ever upon their footsteps, that in whatsoever lands they dwelt were good seasons and peace; and all believed that they caused these things, for the lords of the land perceived that they were unlike other men whom they had seen, both in fairness and also in wisdom. ”

“ Bid me not depart, Adonijah, or at least not here, where gratitude reminds me of the mighty debt I owe you. It was here that you rebuked my blind idolatry, it was here you avowed your love. Yes, beloved Adonijah, you shook here my trust in the superstition to which I had been dedicated, and brought me from pagan darkness to the worship of the one true God. We are about to part—we who have prayed so often together—we who have vowed eternal love, hopeless though that love may be. ”

“ The first clay that she licked these stones there sprang from them, towards evening, the hairs of a man, the second day a head, and on the third an entire man, who was endowed with beauty, agility and power. He was called Bur, and was the father of Bor, who took for his wife Besla, the daughter of the giant Bolthorn. And they had three sons, Odin, Vili, and Ve; and it is our belief that this Odin, with his brothers, ruleth both heaven and earth, and that Odin is his true name, and that he is the most mighty of all the gods. ”

“ That he had gone and left me, and they told me he was married!'
"Telling this, she began to sob again.
"'Lilly, dear, tell me truly—tell your sister, your very best friend—how it is you love your doctor?' I asked.
"'How?' she returned. 'Oh, Edna, more than all the world! He is all that I have lost and more; and if he should die, or I should lose him, I would not wish to live. I could not live. He loves me a little, does he not, Edna?'
"I could not reply. Just then there was a terrible struggle going on in my heart. ”

“ Not victory in the fight alone, but every other good gift came down from him and the Æsir. Odin's supreme will was that treasure-house of bounty towards which, in one shape or the other, all mortal desires turned, and out of its abundance showers of mercy and streams of divine favour constantly poured down to refresh the weary race of men. ”

“ Another hour limped away, and though an hour limps it may leave a balm behind. The lamps in the drawing-room had been lighted, but the servant had come and gone unobserved. Eden was still closeted in herself. "Surely, by eleven at the latest he will return," she reflected, "and then all will be explained. It is a thankless task this of building imaginary dungeons. There are hours in which I let fancies resolve themselves into facts and the facts fossilize into skeletons." An episode of her girlhood came back to her and she smiled. ”

“ Not the ghost of any memories but those proper to Eden could I raise.
“This way lies insanity!” I cried in my piping voice. I staggered to my feet, dragged my feeble, heavy limbs to the washhand-stand, and plunged my grey head into a basin of cold water. Then, towelling myself, I tried again. It was no good. I felt beyond all question that I was indeed Eden, not Elvesham. But Eden in Elvesham’s body.
Had I been a man of any other age, I might have given myself up to my fate as one enchanted. But in these sceptical days miracles do not pass current. ”

“ Lucius looked up at the glorious starry dome of heaven, and then down on the enthusiastic countenance of the slave, and smiled sceptically. “Chance or accident has placed these lights on high, Adonijah, which you superstitiously ascribe to the hand of an unknown God. This world and all things it contains, whether animate or inanimate, owes its existence to a fortuitous union of atoms, mysteriously attracted towards each other by some incomprehensible influence.” ”

“ For some time after the man had gone Eden remained in the drawing-room. She found her gloves and drew one on again, but the other she tormented abstractedly in her hand. In her enforced inaction she fell to consoling herself as children do, arguing with discomfiture as though its shadow was ineffectual, as though trouble and she were face to face, and yet too far removed one from another to ever really meet. An hour passed, and still she sat unassured, restless of thought and conscious only that an encroaching darkness had obscured a vista on which her eyes had loved to dwell. ”

“ Nine nights Odin hangs on the tree. Rome was not built in a day. Tantæ molis erat Romanas condere 261gentes! Neither is knowledge acquired in a day. The mind is developed by a slow process. He neither eats nor drinks, he fasts. You must also curb your bodily appetites, and, like Odin, look down into the depths and penetrate the mysteries of nature with your mind. Then will you learn all those wonderful songs that Odin learned crying before he fell from the tree. ”

“ She clutched her throat as though to tear some invisible grasp away. "No, no," she murmured, "it cannot be."
"Look at me, Eden," some one was saying; "look at me; I love your eyes. Youth is inconstant. It is with age—"
It was her husband reassuring her even in his absence. "Speak to me; I love your voice." And memory, continuing its office of mercy, served as ægis and exorcised advancing night. In her nervousness at the parried attack, she left her seat and paced the room, the opals glittering on her waist. ”

“ This murderer, a 'nameless worm,' was alone callous to the prelude of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is not dead nor sleeping, but 'has awakened from the dream of life.' Not he decays, but we. (41) Let not us, nor the powers of Nature, mourn for Adonais. (42) He is made one with Nature. ”

“ We see here, for example, a great Eastern lady, Naaman's wife, and her little Jewish maid, whom the fortunes of war had swept from her home "in the land of Israel." In the division of the spoil, this human mite had fallen to Naaman's share, and drifted into his lady's service. The slave-child has evidently reached the woman, perhaps the hungering mother's heart, in her mistress; and the sorrow of the woman, for alas! she is a leper's wife, has touched the servant's heart. The burning sense of the wrong to herself is cooled and quenched by the pity she feels for her master ”

“ After Odin had finished these glorious achievements he retired into Sweden, where, perceiving his end to draw near, he would not wait for a lingering disease to put an end to that life which he had so often and so valiantly hazarded in the battle-field, but gathering round him the friends and companions of his fortune, he gave himself nine wounds in the form of a circle with the point of a lance, and many other cuts in his skin with his sword. ”

“ When the portière fell behind him, Eden felt a momentary uneasiness at the unpremeditated invitation which she had just extended. One doesn't need to be a German to be stupid, she mused, and felt sure that her husband would disapprove. But when she told him he expressed himself as well pleased.
The next day happened to be Sunday, and on that afternoon Mr. Arnswald came to pay his dinner-call. Meanwhile Eden's imagination had been at work. Now imagination is a force of which the action is as varied as that of volition. ”

“ And somebody was in our parlor, making arrangements to carry away Aunt Edna. I knew it was he, when he met me at the hall door, and said:
"Edna—Miss Linden! can it be?"
"Yes and no, sir—both—Edna Linden; but, Doctor Graham, not your Edna. You will find her in the parlor," I answered, saucily, glad and sorry, both, at his coming.
Ah, she welcomed him with profound joy, I know. He knew all; papa had told him. And if he loved the beautiful girl, he then worshipped that noble woman. ”

“ Every competent and free scholar knows to-day that the story of the fall of man and the whole Eden story, is a Babylonian or a Persian legend that came into the life of the Jews about the time of their captivity, and was not known of till then among them, and did not take hold on the leading and highest minds of their own people. And there are, as you know, hundreds, if not thousands of clergymen in all the churches to- day who are ready to concede that the story of Eden is poetry or legend or tradition: they no longer treat it as serious history. ”

“ It is certain that the Eddas speak of them as distinct, but then, as we saw before, the Eddas are not really very old; compared with the religion they explain, they are almost young.
Simrock points out clearly the likenesses between the gods—a very few of them we touch upon. Let us begin, by putting in a line for ourselves to look at, Odin, Tyr, Heimdall, Thor, Frey, and Baldur. Odin—air, stormy and serene, the heavens with sun, moon and stars; Odin the wanderer; Odin on Air-throne, seeing over the whole world; Odin, the Summer, as Odur ”

“ Adonijah compared them together, and found the chain complete, till like Thomas he said of Jesus, “My Lord and my God.”
The life and doctrines of Jesus alone would declare his Divinity, even if it had not been confirmed by miracles or foreshown by prophecy. Human nature fallen and degenerate could never have produced fruits like these. Compare his brightest saints with the Son of God, and they only shine with beams reflected from his surpassing glory. ”