III.

God's Laws.

(1) 'The Maker's Laws, whether they are promulgated in Sinai Thunder, to the ear or imagination, or quite otherwise promulgated, are the Laws of God; transcendent, everlasting, imperatively demanding obedience from all men. This, without any thunder, or with never so much thunder, thou, if there be any soul left in thee, canst know of a truth. The Universe, I say, is made by Law; the great Soul of the World is just and not unjust. Look thou, if thou have eyes or soul left, into this great shoreless Incomprehensible in the heart of its tumultuous Appearances, Embroilments, and mad Timevortexes, is there not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an All-beautiful; sole Reality and ultimate controlling Power of the whole ? This is not a figure of speech: this is a fact.'

14. 197.

'Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, Sinai Thunder: I know more or less the history of these; the rise, progress, decline and fall of these. Can thunder from all the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily

for centuries of years, make God's Laws more god-like to me? Brother, no. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now; and do not need the thunder and the terror any longer! Perhaps I am above being frightened; perhaps it is not Fear, but Reverence alone, that shall now lead me!-Revelations, Inspirations? Yes: and thy own god-created Soul; dost thou not call that "revelation"? Who made THEE? Where didst Thou come from? The Voice of Eternity, if thou be not a blasphemer and poor asphyxied mute, speaks with that tongue of thine! Thou art the latest Birth of Nature; it is "the Inspiration of the Almighty" that giveth thee understanding! My brother, my brother!...'

a

14. 198.

(2) Under baleful Atheisms, Mammonisms, Joe-Manton Dilettantisms, with their appropriate Cants and Idolisms, and whatsoever scandalous rubbish obscures and all but extinguishes the soul of man,-religion now is; its Laws, written if not on stone tables, yet on the Azure of Infinitude, in the inner heart of God's Creation, certain as Life, certain as Death! I say the Laws are there, and thou shalt not disobey them. It were better for thee not. Better a hundred deaths than yes. Terrible "penalties," withal, if thou still need "penalties," penalties," are there for dis

obeying.' 14. 198.

'Penalties enough, my brother!

This penalty

inclusive of all: Eternal Death to thy own

hapless Self, if thou heed no other. Eternal Death I say, with many meanings old and new, of which let this single one suffice us here: The eternal impossibility for thee to be aught but a Chimera, and swift-vanishing deceptive Phantasm, in God's Creation;—swift-vanishing, never to reappear: why should it reappear! Thou hadst one chance, thou wilt never have another. Everlasting ages will roll on, and no other be given thee. The foolishest articulatespeaking soul now extant, may not he say to himself: "A whole Eternity I waited to be born; and now I have a whole Eternity waiting to see what I will do when born!" This is not Theology, this is Arithmetic. And thou but half-discernest this; thou but half-believest it? Alas, on the shores of the Dead Sea, on Sabbath, there goes on a Tragedy!...' 14. 199.

'Alas, yes, my articulate-speaking friends; here, as so often elsewhere, the solution of the riddle is not Logic, but Silence. When a dark human Individual has filled the measure of his wicked blockheadisms, sins and brutal nuisancings, there are Gibbets provided, there are Laws provided; and you can, in an articulate regular manner, hang him and finish him, to general satisfaction. Nations too, you may depend on it as certain, do require the same process, and do infallibly get it withal; Heaven's Justice, with written Laws or without, being the most indispensable and the inevitablest thing I know

of in this Universe. it is sure to come :-and the Judges and Executioners, we observe, are not, in that latter case, escorted in and out by the Sheriffs of Counties and general ringing of bells; not so, in that latter case, but far otherwise!...' 31. 38.

No doing without it; and

'... Thou shalt was from of old the condition of man's being, and his weal and blessedness was in obeying that. Woe for him when, were it on the hest of the clearest necessity, rebellion, disloyal isolation, and mere I will, becomes his rule!' 3. 89.

'To know God, Oeós, the Maker,-to know the divine Laws and inner Harmonies of this Universe, must always be the highest glory for a man! And not to know them, always the highest disgrace for a man, however common it be!...' 15. 32.

IV.

The Philanthropic Movement.

(1) Philanthropy, emancipation, and pity for human calamity is very beautiful; but the deep oblivion of the Law of Right and Wrong: this indiscriminate mashing-up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle of the Philanthropic movement, is by no means beautiful; this, on the contrary, is altogether ugly and alarming.' 20. 43.

'To guide scoundrels by "love"; that is a false woof, I take it, a method that will not hold together; hardly for the flower of men will love alone do; and for the sediment and scoundrelism of men it has not even a chance to do.' 20. 48.

'Most sick am I, O friends, of this sugary disastrous jargon of philanthropy, the reign of love, new era of universal brotherhood, and not Paradise to the Well-deserving but Paradise to All-and-sundry, which possesses the benighted minds of men and women in our day. My friends, I think you are much mistaken about Paradise!