The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Throughout the year, churches summon their congregants with the ringing of bells. The ringing of bells marks the hours, important times, and also those times when the faithful are called to church. This meaningful ringing of bells, this ringing at set times, ceases in certain church communities during these days, which begin with the celebration of the burial, of Christ’s sacrificial death, and does not resume until the feast of the Resurrection of that power which we have often spoken of in our Spiritual Science reflections as the power that gives meaning to the earth. The intervening period is celebrated in its significance by the fact that, in a sense, the discordant sounds of the wooden instruments used in these days in place of the bells are meant to replace this meaningful tolling of the bells during the time when souls are to remember that the power that gives meaning to the development of the Earth has, through his sacrificial death, united itself with the depths of existence. The renewed ringing of the bells on the Feast of the Resurrection is meant to suggest how bell music is to be consecrated and imbued with meaning through this sense of the Earth, and how the bells, with their meaningful chime marking the passage of time, are then to resound throughout the rest of the year—a year permeated by Christ for the believing consciousness—through this sense of the Earth.

[ 2 ] We have attempted to approach the meaning and nature of that power—which, through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the impulses of Earth’s evolution—from a wide variety of perspectives. However, you will have seen from the various reflections that every path of the soul toward this power can be only one of the paths that, in a sense, unilaterally awaken the soul’s sensations and feelings, so that it may receive in a worthy and understanding manner that which is to be revealed when the name of Christ is spoken, that which is to be revealed when one speaks of the Mystery of Golgotha. Today we shall attempt to choose such a path once again. It will again be only one of the paths, for only by bringing together the many paths that lead to the Mystery of Golgotha can one arrive at an understanding of it—an understanding that is, to some extent, appropriate to the time in which one is incarnated. Let us choose today the path that is to lead us before the soul, as it were, of peoples who knew nothing yet of the Mystery of Golgotha—how the peoples of Europe had to receive this Mystery of Golgotha in accordance with what they had undergone in their hearts, in their souls, as it were, as a preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 3 ] I have already hinted at this in some of my previous lectures: how European development during a certain period was linked to—I would say—a tragic sense of nature that is radically different from the sense of nature that spread throughout the southern countries of Europe in the early Christian era, precisely as a result of Christianity. This latter sense of nature was, in a certain way, connected to a kind of flight from nature, a kind of turning away from nature. In these southern lands, where Christianity spread into Greek and Roman culture, the concept of sin, the concept of guilt intimately and closely linked to that which is felt to flow into the human being, into the human soul, from nature. Away from nature into the realms of spiritual life, into the realms from which Christ descended to bring salvation to humanity and meaning to the development of the earth; to free oneself from what is merely natural in human beings, and to turn toward what in human beings can be sanctifying—that is, healing from the sin of nature—these are words that can to some extent express this first Christian sense of nature.

[ 4 ] The Celtic-Germanic peoples of Europe were inwardly inspired by a very different sense of nature when they embraced Christianity. It was impossible for them to simply flee from nature or to associate nature solely with the concepts of sin and guilt. For them, the European peoples, nature had become far, far too significant over many, many centuries for them to simply flee from it. It had become something with which they had grown so intertwined that, when they embraced Christianity, they were indeed able to turn toward a world other than the world of nature, but they could not simply say: Away from nature! — This “away from nature,” this looking toward and striving for the realms of the spirit, caused them grief and pain of the soul, caused them gloom, for always in the background of the glories of the Kingdom of Heaven lay the sorrow over what had to be lost within the realms of nature. And if one asks the reason why such a feeling lay at the bottom of the soul, then one finds that the manner in which these souls were connected to nature in a past that was not yet far behind them—a past that lay far closer behind them than was the case with the Oriental or Southern peoples—still lingered as an echo. It was as if something of all that sacred sense of well-being—of being at one with nature, and also with the divine in nature—still lived on in their hearts and souls. And the grief, the pain, the lament—they arose from the feeling that, through a necessity, through an ironclad cosmic necessity, one had lost what had once connected one to the sacred, to the divine in nature. It was not merely a feeling that nature was tainted with sin and guilt; rather, it was the feeling that, along with nature, one had lost something once infinitely precious. It was not the feeling that one should turn away from nature, but rather the sorrowful feeling that something sacred in nature had itself turned away from the human heart, from the human soul, and that one now had to experience what one had formerly revered in connection with nature in a different way, through the elevation to the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 5 ] The feeling with which Christianity was received in these regions was infinitely more real, and at the same time infinitely more tragic, than could have been the case in the regions south of the Alps and in the East. Nothing better illustrates the meaning of these ancient perceptions of nature than a glance at what can be regarded as a kind of foreshadowing of Christ’s divine sacrificial death among the European peoples—a glance at what the death of Baldur and his descent into the underworld, into the realm of Hel, into Niflheim, signifies.

[ 6 ] I have often hinted that it is difficult today to reawaken in people’s souls all that was connected with the Baldur myth, with the myth of this peculiar ancient sun deity who was revered and worshipped by the peoples of Northern Europe. And it is indeed difficult to make this clear in an age when people believe that the human soul, throughout the entire course of human development, has always looked exactly as it does today and has always experienced exactly what it experiences today. One must really open oneself to the idea that in ancient times, the soul was capable of experiences far, far different from those that became possible for that same soul in later times, and that this is connected to an overall experience of natural existence. Just create a mental image for a moment of the human soul looking out at nature through the ancient human eye, which would have seen things differently than it does today when it looks at nature through the modern eye, and that, listening to nature through the ancient ear, it would have heard things differently than it does today when it listens to nature. And make this transition clear to yourself by choosing a parable—a parable that, even if somewhat radical in its choice, can nevertheless make the difference clear to us. Today you look out into nature through your eyes, seeing the green of the plants, the green-blue of the forests, the blue of the sky, the colorful variety of the carpet of flowers. Imagine that a revolution in human existence on Earth were to occur through an ironclad necessity, such that people would no longer be able to see colors, and that all of nature would appear only as gray upon gray; that you would look up at the sky and see a slightly different shade of gray than when you look at gray meadows; that you would see only different shades of gray, black, and white when you look at the colorful carpet of flowers. Imagine that such a revolution were to occur in people’s perception of nature, and you have a comparison with what actually happened at the time when the ability for people to see, in the expanse of the meadow, all the manifold elemental beings connected with the growth, weaving, and being of the flowers and blossoms began to fade away. At that time, a tremendous revolution in the perception of nature had put an end to the possibility of looking up at the stars and seeing in them the spiritually living planetary spirits weaving around the stars in the ether.

[ 7 ] I have often emphasized this: one of the most untrue statements is the claim that nature does not make leaps. — This statement is untrue, for just as there is a leap from the green leaf of the plant to the petal, so was it a tremendous leap in human development when, from the old clairvoyance—where one saw the elemental spirits weaving and living where today one sees only the colorful blanket of flowers spread out—humanity transitioned to the later mode of perception. That was a tremendous leap! And those people who made up the European peoples had, in times that coincide entirely with the period in which the Mystery of Golgotha was already unfolding in the East, still had a vivid sense that such an ancient vision had once existed, that their ancestors had lived under the condition that they could see the weaving beings in meadows and forests and in the infinitely vast starry sky, and that all of this had vanished, decayed, and faded away. They had a feeling that when people in the past raised their eyes to the moon at night, this moon did not merely appear in the form of a bright crescent, that this bright crescent was surrounded by a living planetary spirituality that spoke much to the human soul, and that this had faded away in the times in which one now had to live.

[ 8 ] When the human soul asked what had happened to cause nature to become so devoid of divinity, so that darkness spreads where spiritual light once shone, the one who guided the people as their leader said: There once was a Baldur in the world of the gods who united within himself the power of sunlight. But because of the hatred of the dark elements, Baldur had to move his domain—which he had spread across the human horizon—to Hel in the underworld. The radiant power of ancient times has vanished. The bright sunshine has faded, the bright radiance of the old gods has faded, and the dead glow of sunlight shines back only through the light of the crescent moon. — The world has become material. Like the grieving widow who was once united with the divine and sent the divine radiance into all souls, so nature appears—the nature over which one laments, over which one mourns, which one sought to burden with the concepts of sin and guilt alone. — And so the feeling was aroused that one might have felt regarding the death of the old sun god Baldur. He is no longer out there surrounding our powers of vision, the god Baldur; he has gone down into the underworld; he has left us with nature in mourning. But where has he gone? Where, in actual reality, is the realm of Hel, that realm of darkness into which Baldur has entered? Where is it? I would say that our materialistic age will only be able to prepare itself for such feelings by appropriating the corresponding concepts.

[ 9 ] Let us ask ourselves: What did it mean in ancient times when one could say, turning toward nature, “Baldur is here”? What did that mean? It meant something truly real—something that those who believe human development has always been the same as it is today will not understand. When people in ancient times went out and perceived things in the meadow—they could not always do so, they could only do so at certain times, but since they could do so at certain times, they knew that those life-giving elemental spirits of which I have spoken were revealing themselves to them—what was it like when people could see these elemental spirits at certain times? It was not merely looking; it was not a lifeless reception of a vision, but it was connected with a living feeling, with a living sensation. One walked through the forests, one looked upon the spirits, the elemental beings. But one did not merely look at them; I would say one drank their essence into one’s soul, one felt their breath as a spiritual and soulful refreshment, one felt the breath drawn into oneself through the etheric body, emanating from the elemental spirits one saw in the forest and in the meadow. They make one young—that is how one could feel when one went out in the morning and the lingering twilight still made them visible, the elemental spirits of the forest and the meadow—they make one young, they give one strength! And this strength then lives on within one. One was present when, rejuvenated, one was in the elemental nature. One was present. But what had become of all these rejuvenating forces? They had vanished from the outer world; one could now have only a sad, half-conscious connection with them. Where had they gone? They continued to work, but they worked, so to speak, in the invisible, in the inaudible; they worked, but they worked upon human nature in such a way that the human being was no longer present with his consciousness.

[ 10 ] And the time came when human beings, upon gaining knowledge, had to admit to themselves: There, within my nature, these forces are at work—forces of which I could not merely know that they were acting upon me in the dark, but rather forces I could perceive, whose influence from the outside world I could sense and take in. — The god Baldur had entered the realm of Hel, into humanity’s own darkness, into the depths of the human soul. Where is Baldur? The priest, who had to explain the mystery to people when they asked, “Where is Baldur?”—he had to say: Baldur is not in the visible world. Because you, as a human being, needed those formative forces, those rejuvenating formative forces that you were once allowed to absorb with half-knowledge, they now work within you without your knowledge, so that you do not take anything away from them through your knowledge. Because you needed these forces in your invisible realm, Baldur has disappeared from the realm of the visible, has withdrawn to where the world of your own subconscious inner self lies.

[ 11 ] Then a mood came over the person that could be described with the following words: “So this is how I stand as a human being in the realm of Hel with a part of my being.” I cannot see how the formative forces of my life from the realm of Hel intervene in my soul and body; the god Baldur is in the underworld, he is with Hel, he acts upon me in the unseen. Baldur’s sun-gazing realm has sunk and faded away. — This is the mood of lamentation, of mourning, which may evoke the pains of the soul, for this is not a frivolous, selfish human lament; it is a lament that the human being feels in connection with the cosmos. This is cosmic lamentation, this is cosmic mourning, this is cosmic pain.

[ 12 ] And now came the news that that which had thus withdrawn into the realm of Hel has been revived by another power—the power that can be rediscovered by looking deeply into one’s own inner self, into which the ancient power of Baldur had indeed vanished. Baldur is in the realm of Hel, but Christ has descended into the realm of Hel, into the realm of one’s own subconscious human being; there he revives Baldur. And when a person delves deeply enough into what they have become in the course of Earth’s evolution, there they find once again the rejuvenating creative power. What you have lost, you will find again, for the old Baldur has descended into your own realm of darkness. There the Christ found him and revived that which once became yours through Baldur and his power. — Thus could the priest proclaim this to those who sensed the deep mysteries of the message of the Mystery of Golgotha in these regions.

[ 13 ] The Easter message appeared like a sacred remembrance of ancient, holy times, yet it was a remembrance that also gave new life. One had to admit: The power of the ancient Baldur was too small to suffice for the entire course of human development. A higher power had to intervene to restore to humanity what they had lost, what only Baldur possessed. — Thus the news of Christ resounded into the memory of the ancient Baldur and his death; thus the resurrection of ancient glory resounded into the human soul, into which it had descended through Baldur’s death—the power that has now been raised anew.

[ 14 ] One must approach the Mystery of Golgotha—which is the very meaning of Earth’s evolution—by asking oneself: With what sentiments, with what feelings did historical humanity encounter the historical Christ? — For what matters is not that one acquires an abstract concept of the nature of Christ or the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather that one is able to answer the question for oneself: What can that impulse—the impulse that passed through the Mystery of Golgotha—stir to life in the deepest depths of the human soul?

[ 15 ] Let us consider this mystery of Golgotha, as it is still celebrated by the various religious traditions of the ancient world. On Good Friday, the burial of Christ is commemorated. The bells fall silent; a stillness spreads across the earth. Those who lived in the centuries of which I speak said to themselves: The world has become silent, soundless. Christ has descended into those parts of human soul life and cosmic existence into which Baldur had to descend, because his power was not sufficient for the complete elevation of the human soul. There he is below, down in the mysterious depths where I myself stand when I look upon the subconscious formative forces within me. — It can mysteriously pierce the human heart when this human heart considers: The impulse of Golgotha has gone forth from this silent world. Down there he rests, wherever you may be. Wait, wait, and this impulse from Golgotha will unite with Baldur in the spiritual worlds to which your soul may belong, if only it is willing to walk the path into its own depths. It will enliven Baldur in these days. And within you, O human, you will rediscover what, with Baldur’s fading from the world, has sunk and grown dim into your own depths. Receive, O human being, the living concept of the Christ who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, who will not be able to rise again outwardly before your eyes, but certainly before your soul, if it becomes truly conscious of its inner self, descending from the moon, emerging from the sun—as that elemental force, that soul-animating creative power. Wait, wait until he rises, the re-awakener of Baldur. You once had a world; in this world you need only direct your senses toward the surrounding nature, and the life-giving, soul-stirring power flowed toward you from the elemental forces of this outer nature without any effort on your part. A realm of the spirit interwove all natural existence, and you yourself lived—if only you waited for the right moments—not merely in spiritless nature; you lived in that which lies behind nature, of which it is but an expression; you lived in the existence of nature. Now you no longer find the spiritual in nature; you must seek it through the deepening enlivenment of your own inner being with the power that has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Nature, you were once expressive, oh, so expressive, that through your forms the true, genuine home of the human being appeared. It has taken Baldur with it; it is no longer here, but in regions beyond the reach of your outer gaze. Yet this ancient realm still exists—the realm whose form was once the surrounding nature. You simply cannot find it if you walk the path of nature alone; you find it when you connect with the impulse that passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Nature is not merely sinful and guilty; she is forsaken, forsaken by the home that one must seek, must seek, inwardly permeated with the power of Christ.

[ 16 ] One might think that, even in Christian times, there was still something lingering in people’s memories of the ancient legend of Baldur’s death, which they had absorbed and linked to the message of the Mystery of Golgotha. It seems as if the tone of lamentation, the tone of mourning toward nature, as it has just been characterized, had only gradually faded away and died out. Certainly, the Christian conception is also permeated by that mood which looks solely and exclusively toward the self-sacrificing Christ, looks solely and exclusively toward the heavenly homeland. And in this European culture, too, the mood gradually becomes audible that regards nature, as it were, as the lesser child, not as the abandoned child. But if one listens not merely to the meaning of the words, but to the way the words are shaped there, as already in the 8th century, in the 9th century, as the news of the Mystery of Golgotha spread across certain regions of Europe—if one listens to the way it is spoken of, that one cannot find the true home of the human soul in the earthly world—then one can still sense something of the old tragic mood toward a nature devoid of Balder. As I said, one need only listen—not merely to the words and their abstract meaning, but to the way in which the words convey what is felt about nature, and what is felt about a home for the human soul other than what nature can now be.

[ 17 ] That something like this was still being heard, after Christianity had spread, after people were there who sought to spread Christianity in the form in which it had just been received from the East—this can be seen, as I said, in the most diverse expressions of the 8th and 9th centuries, if one only listens through them, through these expressions, to what was felt. From these times we have, so to speak, Europeanized Gospels, and one of these Europeanized Gospels is the so-called “Gospel Harmony” by Otfried, a monk who lived in Alsace, who had learned the mysteries of Christianity from Hrabanus Maurus, and who then attempted to convey into the language of his homeland what the Gospel—what the message of Christ’s death and resurrection—had become to him. Otfried was born in Weißenburg in Alsace. He translated what the Gospel had become to him—in his own feelings—into the language spoken in Alsace at that time. Let us listen to just a few examples of what might interest us in our present context from this 9th-century Alsatian monk’s message of Christ, and let us try not merely to hear the abstract meaning of the words, but to listen through the words to what might be felt as a sense of mourning for humanity’s abandoned natural homeland. Therefore, I will first present this in the language of that time, and then, as best I can, render it into modern language.

Otfried 111,19-30:

Let us now live, dear friends,
for we have endured bitter times here.
Now let us spend the morning with joy here in the land
and dwell in abundance with our loved ones;
Much work awaits us here,
we do not wish to return home, for we know little of the way.
O noble lady, your heart is hard,
yet you are so very kind, that I tell you this in all sincerity.
With work we strive, the homelands we long for;
I have found a fountain within me, yet I found no love in them.
I found in them no other good but rose-scented air,
the scent of hearts, oh, manifold sorrow.

[ 18 ] Let’s try to render this as closely as possible in modern language:

We suffer and endure hardship because of so much that was dear to us,
And now we endure bitter times here,
Now we are here in this land, mourning our pain
— he means on this earth
In manifold bondage because of our sins.
Work—work, in the language of old, means more “worry, toil”—, the
many tasks are now prepared for us,
We can know nothing of our homeland, we who, seeking lamentation, are forsaken orphans.
Woe to you, foreign land—thus he addresses the earth!—O, how harsh you are!
You are truly quite heavy, I tell you this everywhere.
Bearing sorrows—thus wandering—are those who now lack a homeland.
I have felt it myself; I never found anything loving in you,
I never found in you any other good than a mind ripe for lamentation,
A heart full of sorrow and manifold and great pain.

[ 19 ] This is how the monk’s soul expresses what he now feels toward nature. And this is how one felt toward the power that passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 20 ] Even today, it is difficult—quite difficult—to revive the way the great festivals used to stand out from the everyday horizon of life in times when people felt more keenly what they had to remember—such as the death of Baldur—and what they, having passed through the sorrowful time of abandonment, had now received through the One who had gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. One had, so to speak, only truly recognized the full bitterness of death when the old elemental life forces no longer sprang forth from the earth for human sight, when the earth itself appeared in its forms as shaping only death, the death with which Baldur had united. And now, as one contemplated Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and on up to Resurrection Sunday, as one contemplated this death, the bitterness of which one had only just learned to feel, now one sensed that it harbors the victorious power of life, which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and which is to pass again and again through the soul of humanity, which on these days is in a mood of mournful festivity, in which, according to the words of Angelus Silesius, the death of Christ and the Resurrection of this Christ are to be celebrated.

[ 21 ] The power of Christ’s death and his sacrificial death were infinitely more alive in the times when this sacrificial death, this power of death, was still associated with the deceased Baldur. In the realm of the Aesir, looking down upon the earth from Breidablik—such was the name of Baldur’s castle—looking down upon the earth like the silver light of sun and moon; such was he once, Baldur, in his power enlivening the elemental essence of the earth. Into dark depths he had gone, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Holy Saturday night. There the gaze turned toward Baldur’s new realm of death, yet knowing: down there in the realm of death, there rests the seed that connects with the Earth’s developmental impulses, and that will bring forth new life when it rises again. This is the death that is felt in the germinative power of plants, decaying in the depths of the Earth, which brings forth the new plant once more.

[ 22 ] Like mighty words from God, the news had reached the people, who had come to understand death through the fate of their Baldur. For three days they could feel the full effect of that which had killed Baldur—that which Baldur himself could not overcome. That is why the feeling that animates our soul in the world’s silence of these three days, which surrounds us, must be unique. This feeling must be unique; it must express itself in such a way that, for the sake of humanity’s further development, death had to intervene ever more intensely in the development of the earth, that the nature once as bright as paradise had to become dark and death-silent around humanity, yet that the eternally victorious life force matures in the death-field of being. Thus we look upon them—these three days: There he rests below, the Christ, in the death-soaked abyss of being. We follow him into it, because we know that we reach into this abyss of worldly existence with a part of our own being, and because we know: we will carry up that part of ourselves which reaches down into the abyss of the world of death only if we unite ourselves with that which would otherwise be death alone within us, through the power that has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 23 ] So we descend into the depths, knowing that we must distinguish between our feelings, that we do ourselves a disservice if we do not become aware of our nuanced feelings on certain days. Rather, we must learn to recognize: Now are the days when the soul must connect with what it can learn about death—about the death that made it necessary, that brought with it an iron necessity, for Christ to descend to it. Tomorrow we will turn our gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha from a different angle. But, as I said, many paths lead up to the summit, where the deep meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha gradually becomes understandable to us, and ever more so. It can only become understandable to us if we do not merely set before us the victorious Christ, the one-sidedly victorious Christ, but if we also set before our soul the Christ who unites himself with death. And what death means for the whole of human life might perhaps become a little clearer to us if we immersed ourselves in the feelings one can have regarding the myth of Baldur, regarding what Baldur is—that is, the life-giving solar power working through the elemental world—after it has passed through death. If we can still awaken this feeling in our souls—this feeling of Baldur’s downfall—by saying to ourselves: How must we feel in a future world in which we remember: Gods were there; they once let us see the surrounding world in a colorful radiance; now everything is gray upon gray! That this will not be so—and it would be so if Christ had not come into the world—will be brought about by the victorious power of Christ. What people do not yet believe today, they will one day believe: that what today can only work as the Christ-force within human hearts themselves will be felt as an active force permeating the entire cosmos, specifically permeating the earthly part of the cosmos, insofar as this cosmos gives humanity a rejuvenating, life-giving force.

[ 24 ] Today we wish to call upon our souls to consider how justified it is, in the face of such a feeling that connects the human soul with the cosmic Christ, to reflect on what the Gospel proclaims regarding the cosmic power of Christ, when it seeks to illustrate how Christ is a universal, cosmic power, how he commanded the wind and the waves. It was precisely in this vision of Christ working through wind and waves that the peoples of the 8th and 9th centuries still sensed much. They said: It was Baldur who once enabled us to see the wonderfully active, living elemental world around us. Baldur is dead. But Christ has the power to reawaken through our soul-power—by taking him into our soul-power—Christ has the power to reawaken what was lost through Baldur’s death. Just as Baldur appeared through wind and waves, so too does Christ appear in wind and waves. It is not an abstract soul-power; it is a power working through wind and waves.

[ 25 ] And so, if one listens closely to the Gospel text of the *Heliand*—a second Gospel poem from the 9th century, alongside that of Otfried—one can still sense something, even if it was not explicitly stated: Yes, out there in nature lived Baldur. — Certainly, the poet of the “Heliand” had long since dismissed him, this Baldur. Nor did he have any interest in using abstract reason to reintroduce this idea to his people. It was, after all, meant to be eradicated. But in the way he shapes the words, in the way he becomes particularly heartfelt precisely where he can make vivid how the power of Christ works through nature, through wind and waves—it feels as though one must bring it into one’s consciousness, even if he himself did not bring it into his own: Yes, through wind and waves has worked the power that is greater than Baldur’s power, the power that has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. — And one senses something of this in the words with which he describes the scene where Christ, according to the Gospel, calms the winds and the waves of the sea. This makes a special impression on him. There he chooses—especially when he wishes to turn the soul, in his mystical way, toward what it can sense there, so to speak, in the activity of nature, in the deification of nature through Christ—there he chooses special words through which Christ’s greatness can be particularly imprinted on the soul, words through which Christ’s very special power in the world can speak to the soul.

[ 26 ] “Since the people have seen how Christ commanded the winds, commanded the waves of the sea...” — here the *Heliand* expresses with particular warmth what the people felt toward this Christ-power, this Christ-essence, this Christ-personality that had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha — «.... then the people began to wonder among themselves, the crowd began to marvel, and some spoke, saying: What a mighty man this must be, that the wind and the waves obey his words so. Both heed his message. There the child of God—namely, there the people—had been protected by the child of God, saved from distress. The little boat swam on, the horned ship; the disciples came, the people came ashore, said: “Praise be to God!” and proclaimed his—namely God’s—superior power.”

[ 27 ] So says this poet of the *Heliand* in one of the first proclamations that spoke of the greatness of Christ, who today lies symbolically in the depths of death. And at that time, it sounded like this:

From 8:30–38 of the *Heliand*:

Then the people gathered around him,
and were amazed, and some spoke to him,
wondering who this mighty man was,
that the wind and the waves were held in check by him,
as was his will. Then they, the children of God,
were saved from their distress: They went on their way,
high above the waves; they arrived safely,
and the people in the land praised God—they said: Praise be to God!
maridun—that is: to be “fairy-tale-like”; today one might say:
proclaimed—maridun is megincraft—proclaimed his superhuman power.

[ 28 ] So, the people who came ashore proclaimed his mighty power!

O land, sing the praises of God, for His power is mighty!