drank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror of
desolation and darkness,--all that the gloomy Northern imagination could
superadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:
volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost,
boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and huge
jokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies,
crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life,--a
region of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery
and courage in murder.

What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the
Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century!--to substitute in rude,
savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the
Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility
of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power of
that Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse heart
has been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the best
illustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates is
afforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middle
centuries? No one can read the accounts which such travellers as Sir
George Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peaceful
disposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectual
cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a
grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our
race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst
elements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed its
work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has
caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into
an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded the