possible--what should we say of
a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of
upholsterer-mummery? Such a man--let him depart swiftly, if he love
himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without
even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral
Games for him in the manner of the Greeks!

Such mummery is not only not to be accepted--it is hateful, unendurable.
It is what the old Prophets called "Idolatry," worshipping of hollow
_shows_; what all earnest men do and will reject. We can partly
understand what these poor Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St.
Catherine Creed's Church in the manner we have it described, with his
multiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations: surely it
is rather the rigorous formal _Pedant_, intent on his "College-rules,"
than the earnest Prophet, intent on the essence of the matter!

Puritanism found _such_ forms insupportable; trampled on such forms;--we
have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood
preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand.
Nay, a man preaching from his earnest _soul_ into the earnest _souls_ of
men: is not this virtually the essence of all Churches whatsoever? The
nakedest, savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance,
however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with _due_ semblance
by and by, if it be real. No fear of that; actually no fear at all.
Given the living _man_, there will be found _clothes_ for him; he will
find himself clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that _it_ is
both clothes and man--!--We cannot "fight the French" by
three-hundred-thousand red uniforms; there must be _men_ in the inside
of them! Semblance, I assert, must actually _not_ divorce itself from
Reality. If Semblance do--why, then there must be men found to rebel
against Semblance, for it has become a lie! These two Antagonisms at
war here, in the case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the
world. They went to fierce battle over England in that age; and
fought-out their confused controversy to a certain length, with many
results for all of us.

In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or
themselves were little likely to have justice done them. Charles Second
and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what
the worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could b