ng, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to a
harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of
our animality, which it is the glory of these religious organizations to
have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have often
been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has
been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that
they too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will not,
however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed
in morality, and morality is indispensable. And they have been punished
for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance.
They have been punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of beauty,
of sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides,
remains the true ideal of perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal
of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did
well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of
the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfection are
rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil,--souls
in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most
humane, were eminent,--accompanying them on their voyage, and think what
intolerable company Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! In the
same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all
around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have
accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of
human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never
bring humanity to its true goal. As I said with regard to wealth: Let us
look at the life of those who live in and for it,--so I say with regard
to the religious organizations. Look at the life imaged in such a
newspaper as the _Nonnconformist_,--a life of jealousy of the
Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and
then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing itself on all
sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and
perfection!

Another newspaper, representing, like the _Nonconformist_, one of the
religious organizations of this country, was a short time ago giving an
account of the crowd at Epsom[405] on the Derby day, and of all