aching" religion, in the way of drill-exercise; which is a very
strange notion, though a common one, and not peculiar to Noltenius and
Friedrich Wilhelm. Piety to God, the nobleness that inspires a human
soul to struggle Heavenward, cannot be "taught" by the most exquisite
catechisms, or the most industrious preachings and drillings. No; alas,
no. Only by far other methods,--chiefly by silent continual Example,
silently waiting for the favorable mood and moment, and aided then by a
kind of miracle, well enough named "the grace of God,"--can that sacred
contagion pass from soul into soul. How much beyond whole Libraries of
orthodox Theology is, sometimes, the mute action, the unconscious look
of a father, of a mother, who HAD in them "Devoutness, pious Nobleness"!
In whom the young soul, not unobservant, though not consciously
observing, came at length to recognize it; to read it, in this
irrefragable manner: a seed planted thenceforth in the centre of his
holiest affections forevermore!

Noltenius wore black serge; kept the corners of his mouth well down; and
had written a Catechism of repute; but I know not that Noltenius carried
much seed of living piety about with him; much affection from, or for,
young Fritz he could not well carry. On the whole, it is a bad outlook
on the religious side; and except in Apprenticeship to the rugged and as
yet repulsive Honesties of Friedrich Wilhelm, I see no good element in
it. Bayle-Calvin, with Noltenius and Catechisms of repute: there is no
"religion" to be had for a little Fritz out of all that. Endless Doubt
will be provided for him out of all that, probably disbelief of all
that;--and, on the whole, if any form at all, a very scraggy form of
moral existence; from which the Highest shall be hopelessly absent; and
in which anything High, anything not Low and Lying, will have double
merit.

It is indeed amazing what quantities and kinds of extinct ideas apply
for belief, sometimes in a menacing manner, to the poor mind of man, and
poor mind of child, in these days. They come bullying in upon him,
in masses, as if they were quite living ideas; ideas of a dreadfully
indispensable nature, the evident counterpart, and salutary
interpretation, of Facts round him, which, it is promised the poor young
creature, he SHALL recognize to correspond with them, one day. At which
"correspondence," when the Facts are once well recognized, he has at
last to ask himself with amazement, "Did I eve