s a king for several years;--and this man confirms the truth of my
thoughts. Yet my wife declares I have not been absent from this house
more than the usual time; and I believe her, for she does not look any
older, neither is the place changed in any way." Thus were the gods
teaching him that the soul passes through various stages of existence
according to a man's thoughts, words, and acts, and in the great
Hereafter a day is equal to a thousand years, and a thousand years are
equal to a day.[167]

We may now turn to the types in which the spell is believed to be still
powerful over heroes once mighty but now hidden within the hills, or in
some far-off land, awaiting in magical sleep, or in more than human
delight, the summons that shall bid them return to succour their
distressed people in the hour of utmost need. As to the personality of
these heroes there can be no doubt. Grimm long ago pointed out that the
red-bearded king beneath the Kyffhaeuser can be no other than Thor, the
old Teutonic god of thunder, and that the long beard--sometimes
described as white--attributed to other leaders was a token of Woden.
The very name of Woden is preserved in the Odenberg, to which several of
such legends attach; and the hidden king there is sometimes called Karl
the Great, and sometimes Woden. In other countries Quetzalcoatl and
Vishnu, we know, are gods of the native cults. Oisin, Merlin, and King
Arthur all belong to the old Celtic Pantheon. And if some other sleeping
or vanished heroes bear the names of personages who once had a real
existence, they are but decked in borrowed plumes. In short, all these
Hidden Heroes are gods of the earlier faiths, vanquished by Christianity
but not destroyed.

If this be so, it may be inferred that these gods were at one time
conceived as presently active, and that it is only since the
introduction of the new faith that they have been thought to be retired
beneath the overhanging hills or in the Islands of the Blest. But this
was not so. In all regions the chief activity of the deities has always
been placed in the past. Upon the stories told of the deeds of yesterday
the belief of to-day is founded. Whether it be creation, or strife
against evil spirits, or the punishment of men, or the invention of the
civilizing arts, or the endless amours of too susceptible divinities,
all is looked upon as past and done. The present is a state of rest, of
suspension of labour, or at least of cessation