again; but the people, though willing to be baptized, frequently continued Pagans, and only by degrees renounced, with their old worship, their habits of piracy.  The Icelanders embraced Christianity at their All-Thing in the year 1000, but with the condition that they might also continue their old worship, and be permitted the eating of horse-flesh and exposition of infants.  When the All-Thing broke up, the assembled multitudes went to the hot-baths to be baptized, preferring for this rite hot water to cold.  The Scandinavians seem at this period to have lost their faith in their old religion, and to have been in a transition state.  One warrior says that he relies more on his own strength and arms than upon Thor.  Another says, “I would have thee know that I believe neither in idols nor spirits, but only in my own force and courage.”  A warrior told King Olaff in Norway, “I am neither Christian nor Pagan.  My companions and I have no other religion than confidence in our own strength and good success.”  Evidently Christianity for a long time sat very lightly on these nations.  They were willing to be baptized and accept some of the outward ceremonies and festivals of the Catholic Church, which were considerately made to resemble their old ones.

Nevertheless Christianity met many of the wants of this noble race of men; and, on the other hand, their instincts as a race were as well adapted to promote an equal development of every side of Christian life.  The Southern races of Europe received Christianity as a religion of order; the Northern races, as a religion of freedom.  In the South of Europe the Catholic Church, by its ingenious organization and its complex arrangements, introduced into life discipline and culture.  In the North of Europe Protestant Christianity, by its appeals to the individual soul, awakens conscience and stimulates to individual and national progress.  The nations of Southern Europe accepted Christianity mainly as a religion of sentiment and feeling; the nations of Northern Europe, as a religion of truth and principle.  God adapted Christianity to the needs of these Northern races; but he also adapted these races, with their original instincts and their primitive religion, to the needs of Christianity.  Without them, we do not see how there could be such a thing in Europe to-day as Protestantism.  It was no accident which made the founder of the Reformation a Saxon monk, and the cradle of the Reformation Germany.  It was no accident which brought the great Gustavus Adolphus from the northern peninsula, at the head of his Swedish Protestants, to turn the tide of war in favor of Protestantism and to die on the field of Lutzen, fighting for freedom of spirit.  It is no accident which makes the Scandinavian races to-day, in Sweden and Norway, in Denmark and North Germany and Holland, in England and the United States, almost the only Protestant nations of the world.  The old instincts still run in the blood, and cause these races to ask of their religion, not so much the luxury of emotion or the satisfaction of repose, in having all opinions settled for them and all actions prescribed, as, much rather, light, freedom, and progress.  To them to-day, as to their ancestors,