Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF OF MANKIND. 427

“ All shall be afraid, and the watchers be terrified. Great fear and trembling shall seize even to the ends of the earth.

“The lofty mountains shall be troubled, and the exalted hills depressed, melting like honeycomb in the flame.

“The earth shall be émmerged, and all things which are in it perish. ...

“He shall preserve the elect, and toward them exercise clemency. . . . The whole earth is full of water.”

This is either history or prophecy.

Tn the Second Epistle General of Peter, (chap. iii,) we have some allusions to the past, and some prophecies based upon the past, which are very curious :

Verse 5. “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.”

That is to say, the earth was, as in Ovid and Ragnarok, and the legends generally, an island, “standing out of the water and in the water.”

Verse 6. “ Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”

This seems to refer to the island Atlantis, “ overflowed with water,” and destroyed, as told by Plato; thereby forming a very distinct connection between the Island of Poseidon and the Deluge of Noah.

We read on:

Verse 7. “ But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto Jive against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

Verse 10. “But the day of the Lord will come as ‘a thief in the night ; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”