easy Metaphor deserve that name;
whatsoever else the World terms Happiness, is to me a story out of
Pliny, a tale of Boccace or Malizspini, an apparition, or neat
delusion, wherein there is no more of Happiness than the name. Bless
me in this life with but peace of my Conscience, command of my
affections, the love of Thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be
happy enough to pity Caesar.[30]

Now it is safe to say that Sir Thomas Browne was in fact unable to
attribute to God and the angels any other happiness than these same
blessings which he covets for himself, saving only that they shall be
without stint, and joined with others like them.

Formalism, as we have seen, is never merely negative in its
consequences; for any moral untruth, since it replaces a truth, cannot
fail to pervert life. Thus one may be persuaded with the author whom I
have just quoted to count the world, "not an Inn, but an Hospital; and
a place not to live, but to dye in." [31] I do not suppose that any
one ever succeeded in wholly resisting the hospitality of this world,
and one suspects that Thomas Browne partook not a little of its good
cheer; but the opinion is false notwithstanding, and if false, then
confusing and misleading. This world is not a place to suffer in, nor
even a place to be mended in, but the only opportunity of achievement
and service that can be certainly {119} counted on. The good is in the
making here, if it is in the making anywhere. To neglect life here is
equivalent to forfeiting it altogether.

Religious formalism may induce not only a default of present
opportunity and responsibility, but also a substitution for good living
of an emotional improvisation on the theme of absolute perfection, like
that in the _Book of the Courtier_:

If, then, the beauties which with these dim eyes of ours we daily see
in corruptible bodies, . . . seem to us so fair and gracious that they
often kindle most ardent fire in us, . . . what happy wonder, what
blessed awe, shall we think is that which fills the souls that attain
to the vision of divine beauty! What sweet flame, what delightful
burning, must that be thought which springs from the fountain of
supreme and true beauty!--which is the source of every other beauty,
which never waxes nor wanes: ever fair, and of its own self most simple
in every part alike; like only to itself, and partaking of none other;
but fair in such wise that all other fair things are fair b