h religion and poetry are
one, in which the idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all
sides adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and works in the
strength of that, is on this account of such surpassing interest and
instructiveness for us, though it was,--as, having regard to the human
race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, we
must own,--a premature attempt, an attempt which for success needed the
moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more braced and developed
than it had yet been. But Greece did not err in having the idea of
beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, so present and
paramount. It is impossible to have this idea too present and paramount;
only, the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, because we have braced
the moral fibre, are not on that account in the right way, if at the
same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, is
wanting or misapprehended amongst us; and evidently it _is_ wanting or
misapprehended at present. And when we rely as we do on our religious
organizations, which in themselves do not and cannot give us this idea,
and think we have done enough if we make them spread and prevail, then,
I say, we fall into our common fault of overvaluing machinery.

Nothing is more common than for people to confound the inward peace and
satisfaction which follows the subduing of the obvious faults of our
animality with what I may call absolute inward peace and satisfaction,--
the peace and satisfaction which are reached as we draw near to complete
spiritual perfection, and not merely to moral perfection, or rather to
relative moral perfection. No people in the world have done more and
struggled more to attain this relative moral perfection than our English
race has. For no people in the world has the command to _resist the
devil_, to _overcome the wicked one_, in the nearest and most obvious
sense of those words, had such a pressing force and reality. And we have
had our reward, not only in the great worldly prosperity which our
obedience to this command has brought us, but also, and far more, in
great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me few things are more
pathetic than to see people, on the strength of the inward peace and
satisfaction which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection have
brought them, employ, concerning their incomplete perfection and the
religious organizations within which they have found it,