here will at any rate be no difficulty in
providing them with a text. The classical instance of the contemptuous
rejection of ready-made clothing was, of course, David's refusal to
wear Saul's armour. There is a world of significance in that old-world
story. Saul's armour is a very fine thing--_for Saul_! But if David
feels that he can do better work with a sling, then, in the name of all
that is reasonable, give him a sling! If he has to fight Goliath, why
hamper him with ready-made clothes? I began by saying that Carlyle
omitted to deal, in _Sartor Resartus_, with this profound branch of his
subject. But he saw the importance of it for all that. In his
_Frederick the Great_, he tells us how the young prince's iron-handed
father employed a learned university professor to teach the boy
theology. The doctor dosed his youthful pupil with creeds and
catechisms until his brain whirled with meaningless tags and phrases.
And in recording the story Carlyle bursts out upon the dry-as-dust
professor. 'In heaven's name,' he cries, 'teach the boy nothing at
all, or else teach him something that he will know, as long as he
lives, to be eternally and indisputably true!'

Now what is this fine outburst of thunderous wrath but an emphatic
protest against the use of ready-made clothes? A man's faith should
fit him like the clothes for which he has been most carefully measured,
if not like the elastic silk to which the Harvard professor refers. A
man might as well try to wear his father's clothes as try to wear his
father's faith. It will never really fit him. There is a great
expression near the end of the brief Epistle of Jude that always seems
to me very striking. 'But ye, beloved,' says the writer, 'building up
yourselves on your most holy faith.' That is the only satisfactory way
of building--to build on your own site. If I build my house on another
man's piece of ground, it is sure to cause trouble sooner or later.
Build your own character on your own faith, says the apostle; and there
is sound sense in the injunction. It is better for me to build a very
modest little house of my own on a little bit of land that really
belongs to me than to build a palace on somebody else's soil. It is
better for me to build up my character, very unpretentiously, perhaps,
on my own faith, than to erect a much more imposing structure on
another man's creed. That is the philosophy of ready-made clothes,
disguised under a slight c