supreme. "Her palace was Anguish, her table Famine, her waiters Expectation and Delay, the threshold of her door was Precipice, her bed was Leanness, and her look struck terror in every beholder."
Behind this grosser creed appears the dim shade of a more ancient faith. An almighty, omniscient Creator is spoken of who would one day manifest Himself. Then Odin and the whole Valhalla would disappear in a general conflagration, and from the chaos would spring forth a new heaven and a new hell. The final judgment would then take place, and each individual would receive an irreversible sentence determining his fate to all eternity.
Such was the faith by which the ancient South Saxon lived and died. More than a thousand years have passed away since the whole pantheon of Scandinavian gods and goddesses fell into the limbo of forgetfulness; but the primal characteristics of that faith appear in each succeeding generation, gathering round other names and permeating another theology. On this old vigorous Scandinavian stock the pure truth of Christ has been more than once grafted, producing for a time much precious fruit; but just as it is in the orchard, so is it amongst men—each generation of trees requires new grafting, or it will infallibly return to the original strain, and produce only crabs.
To such a condition the religious life of rural Sussex has long been tending, so that it would perhaps be easier now than in ages gone by to show that the faith of the typical Sussex man is marked by exactly the same characteristics as that of his pagan forefathers. It is true that he thinks that he worships only one God; but his conception of the Divine character is agreeable to ideas which seem to have become part of his nature during the long night of heathendom. The attributes of the eternal Creator have become mingled in his mind with those of Odin, the strong and severe god, who names those that are to be slain, and with those of the fates who determine and control the destinies of men. None but those whom Odin has selected, and who the fates have predestined to be slain, will reach the Valhalla; all others, even Balder, the beautiful god of light, are doomed to the miseries of Niflheim.
He pays his homage to Odin, he resigns himself to Odin's will;
