download - Sage's Lore Library

318 EELIGION OF THE NORTHMEN.
CHAPTEE XXVni.
DECLINE OF THE ASA-FAITH.
A msTOEioAL representation of the development of
the Asa-raith cannot be given. As its origin is en-
veloped in total darkness, so is the period of its
highest glory unknown to ns, and it is in fact only
in ite decline and fall that history reveals it to us as
appearing in the popular life and acting upon it. We
_know not what revolutions and changes the syeteia
may possibly have undergone during the long course
of centuries in which the faith was cherished by the
liTorthmen, but that these changes were not wholly
unimportant, and moreover, that the religion was
very differently understood at different times—^now
with greater warmth and a more special reference
to its deep fundamental ideas, now with more cold-
ness and more immediately in reference to its exter-
nal form, its symbolic dress— ^the very character of
the religion leads us to presume.
The religion which draws man into reflective
meditation, which, as it were, strives to separate
him from the finite world in order to absorb him in
the contemplation of the Infinite, can maintain