--the belief in a
divine rule and celestial destiny, and a high and fixed moral
purpose,--these appear in full strength in men of Shakspere's time, the
men of religion; but in their minds inextricably blent with a scheme of
the universe which it is plain was to Shakspere as unreal as the
mythology of the Greeks, and which he treats in much the same way, merely
borrowing it for a dramatic purpose. The men of religion had no such
consummate expression in literature as Shakspere, though they had their
Taylor and Herbert and Milton; but to appreciate them we must look at
them in action, and we may take the Puritan as their type.

But first let us note that in Catholicism as early as in Protestantism
appeared the sharp rift between intellect and belief. Montaigne, a man
of the world, is outwardly a conformist, but a real skeptic. A nominal
Catholic, he corresponds to Shakspere, a nominal Protestant. Montaigne
reveals the world of one personality as, frankly as Shakspere pictures a
world of humanity, and in each the purely religious element is almost
totally absent.

Shakspere shows the widest reach of the mind apart from a definite
religious purpose or a strong religious faith. In contrast with him is
the Puritan effort to apprehend and follow a divine rule and achieve a
divine destiny. The typical Puritan addressed himself to man's
foes,--all griefs and sufferings culminating in Death; all wrong-doing,
as Sin; and the retribution and woe hereafter, as Hell. To escape from
these was his supreme object, and to win what he as firmly believed
in--Holiness, Life, and Heaven.

The creed was accepted as the form of this truth, but the earnest men
sought to know its truths experimentally,--to take home the full sense of
them. This was found in the consciousness of man's supreme need; and,
responding to that, a divine command, an invitation, and a threat. The
result of this was to set man upon a struggle so intense that it was
indeed a warfare,--first, against his own lusts, then against the evils
in the world around him. These evils were to him embodied--in the Pope,
the head of a false religion, the oppressor of God's people; in the
imitation and approach to Popery in the church of England; in all false
belief and error, all wrong-doers, and Satan himself.

The Puritan believed that the sublimest possibility was open to man, and
purposed at every cost to achieve it. "Man's chief end is to glorify God
and enjoy him