t, nay even though
he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful
and wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity;
unrecognized, because never questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau,
Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon: all the Great Men I ever heard of have
this as the primary material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are
debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they
have learned by logic, by rote, at second-hand: to that kind of man all
this is still nothing. He must have truth; truth which _he_ feels to be
true. How shall he stand otherwise? His whole soul, at all moments, in
all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the noble
necessity of being true. Johnson's way of thinking about this world is
not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I recognize the everlasting
element of _heart-sincerity_ in both; and see with pleasure how neither
of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as _chaff_ sown; in both
of them is something which the seedfield will _grow_.

Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all
like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a
kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little
is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching.
"A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not
sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched
god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad:
how could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and
taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great
Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the
cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn
shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, I
call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest
perhaps that was possible at that time.

Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are
now as it were disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful;
Johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking
and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in
Johnson's Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great
heart;--ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever.
They are _since