ction arrived at by legitimate search, is
to him of no avail; and all merely historical and intellectual faith,
standing outside the man, and not absorbed in the life as a vital,
moving, and spiritual power, he places also amongst the chaff for
burning. This world is a serious world, and human life and business
are also serious matters,--not to be trifled with, nor cheated by
shams and hypocrisies, but to be dealt with in all truth, soberness,
and sincerity. No one can thus deal with it who is not himself
possessed of these qualities, and the result of a life is the test of
what virtue there is in it. False men leave no mark. It is truth
alone which does the masonry of the world,--which founds empires, and
builds cities, and establishes laws, commerce, and civilization. And
in private life the same law abides, indestructible as God. Carlyle's
teaching tends altogether in this direction; and whilst he belongs to
no church and no creed, he is tolerant of all, and of everything that
is heartily and unfeignedly believed in by his fellows. He is no
Catholic; and yet for years he read little else than the forty volumes
of the "Acta Sanctorum," and found, he says, all Christian history
there, and much of profane history. Neither is he a Mahometan; but he
nevertheless makes a hero of Mahomet, whom he loves for his Ishmaelite
fierceness, bravery, and religious sincerity,--and because he taught
deism, or the belief in one God, instead of the old polytheism, or the
belief in many gods,--and gave half the East his very good book,
called the Koran, for his followers to live and die by.

Whether this large catholicism, this worship of heroes, is the best of
what now remains of religion on earth is certainly questionable
enough; and if we regard it in no other light than merely as an
idolatry of persons, there is an easy answer ready for it. But
considering that religion is now so far dead that it consists in
little else than formalities, and that its divine truth is no longer
such to half the great world, which lies, indeed, in dire atrophy and
wickedness,--and if we further consider and agree that the awakened
human soul is the divinest thing on earth, and partakes of the divine
nature itself, and that its manifestations are also divine in
whomsoever it is embodied, we can see some apology for its adoption;
inasmuch as it is the divine likeness to which reverence and homage
are rendered, and not the person merely, but only so far as