Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF OF MANKIND. 429

woe and disaster ; it is a dreadful threat shining in the heavens ; it is “ God’s rod,” even as it was in Job’s day.

IT could fill pages with the proofs of the truth of this statement.

An ancient writer, describing the great meteoric shower of the year 1202, says :

“The stars flew against one another like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until daybreak ; people were thrown into consternation and cried to God, the Most High, with confused clamor.” *

The great meteoric display of 1366 produced similar effects. An historian of the time says :

“Those who saw it were filled with such great fear and dismay that they were astounded, imagining that they were all dead men, and that the end of the world had come.” +

How could such a universal terror have fixed itself in the blood of the race, if it had not originated from some ereat primeval fact? And all this terror is associated with a dragon.

And Chambers says :

“The dragon appears in the mythical history and legendary poetry of almost every nation, as the emblem of the destructive and anarchical principle; . . . as misdirected physical force and untamable animal passions.

The dragon proceeds openly to work, running on its feet with expanded wings, and head and tail erect, violently and ruthlessly outraging decency and propriety, spouting fire and fury from both mouth and tail, and wasting and devastating the whole land.” t

This fiery monster is the comet.

* “Popular Science Monthly,” June, 1882, p. 193. + Ibid., p. 193. $ “ Chambers’s Encyclopedia,” vol. iii, p. 655.