ious knowledge, whom even gods consult, and by whom
men swear; she has also to do with marriage, and the childless appeal
to her. Etymologically she is scarcely to be distinguished from
Freya, wife of Odur, who, however, is lighter in character, and is
rather a goddess of love. The goddesses in the Eddas are more shadowy
figures than the gods; there are others, and an attempt is made to
reckon up twelve of them to answer to the twelve chief gods, but
their names are taken from the qualities they represent, and they
have little reality.

The story of the death of Baldur, brought about by the evil mind of
Loki in defiance of the whole divine family, sounds the note of
tragedy in the divine family of the Eddas. The gods themselves
suffer, and are unable to retrieve the misfortune which has come upon
them. With one accord they try to get Baldur brought back from the
under-world, but they are foiled by the same agency of evil which
carried him off. With the death of Baldur the gods feel that their
rule, which, we saw, had a beginning, and with it the world they
govern, for the two are inseparably bound up with each other, is
coming to an end. The gods perish in the ruin of the world; and this
is well, for sin cleaves to them and to their house, and they are not
fit to endure. Ragnaroek, the twilight of the gods, comes on; the
universe is burnt up in a mighty conflagration, and while there are
abodes of bliss and abodes of misery where some survive, the universe
as a whole is entirely changed, and a milder race of gods will rule
over a better world.

If this mythology were found to be of native Scandinavian growth, it
would prove that Teutonic religion was capable of lofty development,
and would throw back an interesting light upon its previous history.
Here, it has been maintained, we see the Teutonic faith rising to
monotheism. Odin has among his other titles that of All-father; he is
rising above the other gods to a position of supremacy, which will
fit him, if the process were allowed, as it was not, to advance
somewhat further, to represent pure deity and to attract to himself
an undivided reverence. Here also we find a religion which was
formerly a rude intercourse between barbarous men and savage gods,
clothing itself with an ideal element. As the Greeks found religion
in beauty and the Romans in utility, so did the Germans find it at
last in pathos. They attain to the conception of suffering deity; in
Baldur a god