"laid the egg of the Reformation which
Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his _Naufragium_, or "Shipwreck,"
did you? Of course not; for, if you had, I don't think you would have
given me credit--or discredit--for entire originality in that speech
of mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of futurity he
illustrates by the extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking
vessel; that they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and making
promises to bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of similar
nonsense; that they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this
story: I will put it into rough English for you,--"I couldn't help
laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be
heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris--the monstrous statue in
the great church there--that he would give him a wax taper as big as
himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near
him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold
all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said
the fellow,--but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear
him,--'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get my foot on dry ground,
catch me giving him so much as a tallow candle!'"

Now, therefore, remembering that those who have been loudest in their
talk about the great subject of which we were speaking have not
necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have
very often been wanting in one or two or all of the qualities these
words imply, I should expect to find a good many doctrines current in
the schools which I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and
false.

----So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell us
your own creed!--said the divinity-student, coloring up with a spirit
for which I liked him all the better.

----I have a creed,--I replied;--none better, and none shorter. It is
told in two words,--the two first of the Paternoster. And when I say
these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will to a drop
in a crystal, and said I meant to _define_ moral obligations, and not
weaken them, this was what I intended to express: that the fluent,
self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency
in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course,
organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power
of the will to nothing,