in vain. Money he can be ordered to pay, but
nothing more. I have not heard in all Past History, and expect not to
hear in all Future History, of any Society anywhere under God's Heaven
supporting itself on such Philosophy. The Universe is not made so; it
is made otherwise than so. The man or nation of men that thinks it is
made so, marches forward nothing doubting, step after step; but
marches--whither we know! In these last two centuries of Atheistic
Government (near two centuries now, since the blessed restoration of
his Sacred Majesty, and Defender of the Faith, Charles Second), I
reckon that we have pretty well exhausted what of 'firm earth' there
was for us to march on;--and are now, very ominously, shuddering,
reeling, and let us hope trying to recoil, on the cliff's edge!--

For out of this that we call Atheism come so many other _isms_ and
falsities, each falsity with its misery at its heels!--A soul is not
like wind (_spiritus_, or breath) contained within a capsule; the
Almighty Maker is not like a Clockmaker that once, in old immemorial
ages, having _made_ his Horologe of a Universe, sits ever since and
sees it go! Not at all. Hence comes Atheism; come, as we say, many
other _isms_; and as the sum of all, comes Valetism, the _reverse_ of
Heroism; sad root of all woes whatsoever. For indeed, as no man ever
saw the above-said wind-element enclosed within its capsule, and finds
it at bottom more deniable than conceivable; so too he finds, in spite
of Bridgwater Bequests, your Clockmaker Almighty an entirely
questionable affair, a deniable affair;--and accordingly denies it,
and along with it so much else. Alas, one knows not what and how much
else! For the faith in an Invisible, Unnameable, Godlike, present
everywhere in all that we see and work and suffer, is the essence of
all faith whatsoever; and that once denied, or still worse, asserted
with lips only, and out of bound prayerbooks only, what other thing
remains believable? That Cant well-ordered is marketable Cant; that
Heroism means gas-lighted Histrionism; that seen with 'clear eyes' (as
they call Valet-eyes), no man is a Hero, or ever was a Hero, but all
men are Valets and Varlets. The accursed practical quintessence of all
sorts of Unbelief! For if there be now no Hero, and the Histrio
himself begin to be seen into, what hope is there for the seed of Adam
here below? We are the doomed everlasting prey of the Quack; who, now
in this guise, now in that,