It is well said that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. I do not mean the Church creed which he professes, but the thing that he does practically believe, the manner in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the unseen world. Was it heathenism, a plurality of gods, a mere sensuous representation of the mystery of life, and for chief recognised element therein physical force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible as the only reality; time ever resting on eternity; pagan empire of force displaced by the nobler supremacy of holiness? Was it scepticism, uncertainty, and inquiry whether there was an unseen world at all, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? The answer to these questions gives us the soul of the history of the man or nation.
Odin, the central figure of Scandinavian paganism, shall be our emblem of the hero as divinity. And in the first place I protest against the theory that this paganism or any other religion has consisted of mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all. Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies, and paganism, to its followers, was at one time earnestly true. Nor can we admit that other theory, which attributed these mythologies to allegory, or to the play of poetic minds. Pagan religion, like every other, is indeed a symbol of what men felt about the universe, but a practical guiding knowledge of this mysterious life of theirs, and not a perfect poetic symbol of it, has been the want of men. The "Pilgrim's Progress" is a just and beautiful allegory, but it could never have preceded the faith which it symbolises. Men never risked their soul's life on allegories; there was a kind of fact at the heart of paganism.
To the primitive pagan thinker, who was simple as a child, yet had a man's depth and strength, nature had as yet no name. It stood naked, flashing in on him, beautiful, awful, unspeakable; nature was preternatural. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. Still more was the body of man, and the mystery of his consciousness, an emblem to them of God, and truly worshipful.
How much more, then, was the worship of a hero reasonable--the transcendent admiration of a great man! For great men are still admirable. At bottom there is nothing else admirable. Admiration for one higher than himself is to this hour the vivifying influence in man's life, and is the germ of Christianity itself. The greatest of all heroes is One whom we do not name here.