This description of the palace of Odin is a natural picture of the manners of the ancient Scandinavians and Germans. Prompted by the wants of their climate, and the impulse of their own temperament, they formed to themselves a delicious paradise in their own way; where they were to eat and drink, and fight. The women, to whom they assigned a place there, were introduced for no other purpose but to fill their cups.
The Mohammedan paradise differs from this. Women there, are for man's pleasure. The day is always serene, the air forever pure, and a soft celestial light clothes all things in transfigured beauty. Majestic groves, verdant meadows, and blooming gardens vary the landscape. There, in radiant halls, dwell the departed, ever blooming and beautiful, ever laughing and gay.
The American Indian calculates upon finding successful chases after wild animals, verdant plains, and no winter, as the characteristics of his "future life."
The red Indian, when told by a missionary that in the "promised land" they would neither eat, drink, hunt, nor marry a wife, contemptuously replied, that instead of wishing to go there, he should deem his residence in such a place as the greatest possible calamity. Many not only rejected such a destiny for themselves, but were indignant at the attempt to decoy their children into such a comfortless region.
All nations of the earth have had their heavens. As Moore observes:
"A heaven, too, ye must have, ye lords of dust—
A splendid paradise, poor souls, ye must:
That prophet ill sustains his holy call
Who finds not heavens to suit the tastes of all.
Vain things! as lust or vanity inspires,
The heaven of each is but what each desires."
Heaven was born of the sky,[391:1] and nurtured by cunning priests, who made man a coward and a slave.
Hell was built by priests, and nurtured by the fears and servile fancies of man during the ages when dungeons of torture were a recognized part of every government, and when God was supposed to be an infinite tyrant, with infinite resources of vengeance.
The devil is an imaginary being, invented by primitive man to account for the existence of evil, and relieve God of his responsibility. The famous Hindoo Rakshasas of our Aryan ancestors—the dark and evil clouds personified—are the originals of all devils. The cloudy shape has assumed a thousand different forms, horrible or grotesque and ludicrous, to suit the changing fancies of the ages.
But strange as it may appear, the god of one nation became the devil of another.