Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you
sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. From us too no
Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a
wonder. What _is_ Flame?--_Frost_ the old Norse Seer discerns to be a
monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant _Thrym_, _Hrym_; or _Rime_, the old word
now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost.
_Rime_ was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or
Devil; the monstrous Jotun _Rime_ drove home his Horses at night, sat
"combing their manes,"--which Horses were _Hail-Clouds_, or fleet
_Frost-Winds_. His Cows--No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's
Cows are _Icebergs_: this Hymir "looks at the rocks" with his devil-eye,
and they _split_ in the glance of it.

Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the God
Donner (Thunder) or Thor,--God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder
was his wrath: the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of
Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rending
Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his loud chariot over the
mountain-tops,--that is the peal; wrathful he "blows in his red
beard,"--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begins.
Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom
the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun,
beautifullest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine still, after all
our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell
of is one of whom Grimm the German Etymologist finds trace: the God
_Wunsch_, or Wish. The God _Wish_; who could give us all that we _wished_!
Is not this the sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of man? The
_rudest_ ideal that man ever formed; which still shows itself in the latest
forms of our spiritual culture. Higher considerations have to teach us
that the God _Wish_ is not the true God.