Morrison Again
Nevertheless, O Advanced Liberal, one cannot promise thee any
'New Religion,' for some time; to say truth, I do not think we
have the smallest chance of any! Will the candid reader, by way
of closing this Book Third, listen to a few transient remarks on
that subject?
Candid readers have not lately met with any man who had less
notion to interfere with their Thirty-Nine, or other Church-
Articles; wherewith, very helplessly as is like, they may have
struggled to form for themselves some not inconceivable
hypothesis about this Universe, and their own Existence there.
Superstition, my friend, is far from me; Fanaticism, for any
_Fanum_ likely to arise soon on this Earth, is far. A man's
Church-Articles are surely articles of price to him; and in
these times one has to be tolerant of many strange 'Articles,'
and of many still stranger 'No-articles,' which go about
placarding themselves in a very distracted manner,--the numerous
long placard-poles, and questionable infirm paste-pots,
interfering with one's peaceable thoroughfare sometimes!
Fancy a man, moreover, recommending his fellow men to believe in
God, that so Chartism might abate, and the Manchester Operatives
be got to spin peaceably! The idea is more distracted than any
placard-pole seen hitherto in a public thoroughfare of men! My
friend, if thou ever do come to believe in God, thou wilt find
all Chartism, Manchester riot, Parliamentary incompetence,
Ministries of Windbag, and the wildest Social Dissolutions, and
the burning up of this entire Planet, a most small matter in
comparison. Brother, this Planet, I find, is but an
inconsiderable sandgrain in the continents of Being: this
Planet's poor temporary interests, thy interests and my interests
there, when I look fixedly into that eternal Light-Sea and Flame-
Sea with _its_ eternal interests, dwindle literally into Nothing;
my speech of it is--silence for the while. I will as soon think
of making Galaxies and Star Systems to guide little herring-
vessels by, as of preaching Religion that the Constable may
continue possible. O my Advanced-Liberal friend, this new second
progress, of proceeding 'to invent God,' is a very strange one!
Jacobinism unfolded into Saint-Simonism bodes innumerable blessed
things; but the thing itself might draw tears from a Stoic!--As
for me, some twelve or thirteen New Religions, heavy Packets,
most of them unfranked, having arrived here from various parts of
the world, in a space of six calendar months, I have instructed
my invaluable friend the Stamped Postman to introduce no more of
them, if the charge exceed one penny.
Henry of Essex, duelling in that Thames Island, near to Reading
Abbey, had a religion. But was it in virtue of his seeing armed
Phantasms of St. Edmund 'on the rim of the horizon,' looking
minatory on him? Had that, intrinsically, anything to do with
his religion at all? Henry of Essex's religion was the Inner
Light or Moral Conscience of his own soul; such as is vouchsafed
still to all souls of men;--which Inner Light shone here 'through
such intellectual and other media' as there were; producing
'Phantasms,' Kircherean Visual-Spectra, according to
circumstances! It is so with all men. The clearer my Inner
Light may shine, through the _less_ turbid media; the _fewer_
Phantasms it may produce,--the gladder surely shall I be, and not
the sorrier! Hast thou reflected, O serious reader, Advanced-
Liberal or other, that the one end, essence, use of all religion
past, present and to come, was this only: To keep that same
Moral Conscience or Inner Light of ours alive and shining--which
certainly the 'Phantasms' and the 'turbid media' were not
essential for! All religion was here to remind us, better or
worse, of what we already know better or worse, of the quite
_infinite_ difference there is between a Good man and a Bad; to
bid us love infinitely the one, abhor and avoid infinitely the
other,--strive infinitely to _be_ the one, and not to be the
other. 'All religion issues in due Practical Hero-worship: He
that has a soul unasphyxied will never want a religion; he that
has a soul asphyxied, reduced to a succedaneum for salt, will
never find any religion, though you rose from the dead to preach
him one.
But indeed, when men and reformers ask for 'a religion,' it is
analogous to their asking, 'What would you have us to do?' and
such like. They fancy that their religion too shall be a kind of
Morrison's Pill, which they have only to swallow once, and all
will be well. Resolutely once gulp down your Religion, your
Morrison's Pill, you have it all plain sailing now; you can
follow your affairs, your no-affairs, go along money-hunting,
pleasure-hunting, dilettanteing, dangling, and miming and
chattering like a Dead-Sea Ape: your Morrison will do your
business for you. Men's notions are very strange!--Brother, I
say there is not, was not, nor will ever be, in the wide circle
of Nature, any Pill or Religion of that character. Man cannot
afford thee such; for the very gods it is impossible. I advise
thee to renounce Morrison; once for all, quit hope of the
Universal Pill. For body, for soul, for individual or society,
there has not any such article been made. _Non extat._ In
Created Nature it is not, was not, will not be. In the void
imbroglios of Chaos only, and realms of Bedlam, does some shadow
of it hover, to bewilder and bemock the poor inhabitants _there._
Rituals, Liturgies, Creeds, Hierarchies: all this is not
religion; all this, were it dead as Odinism, as Fetishism, does
not kill religion at all! It is Stupidity alone, with never so
many rituals, that kills religion. Is not this still a World?
Spinning Cotton under Arkwright and Adam Smith; founding Cities
by the Fountain of Juturna, on the Janiculum Mount; tilling
Canaan under Prophet Samuel and Psalmist David, man is ever man;
the missionary of Unseen Powers; and great and victorious, while
he continues true to his mission; mean, miserable, foiled, and
at last annihilated and trodden out of sight and memory, when he
proves untrue. Brother, thou art a Man, I think; thou are not a
mere building Beaver, or two-legged Cotton-Spider; thou hast
verily a Soul in thee, asphyxied or otherwise! Sooty
Manchester,--it too is built on the infinite Abysses;
overspanned by the skyey Firmaments; and there is birth in it,
and death in it;--and it is every whit as wonderful, as fearful,
unimaginable, as the oldest Salem or Prophetic City. Go or
stand, in what time, in what place we will, are there not
Immensities, Eternities over us, around us, in us:
'Solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal:--
Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent'
Between _these_ two great Silences, the hum of all our spinning
cylinders, Trades-Unions, Anti-Corn-Law Leagues and Carlton Clubs
goes on. Stupidity itself ought to pause a little, and consider
that. I tell thee, through all thy Ledgers, Supply-and-demand
Philosophies, and daily most modern melancholy Business and Cant,
there does shine the presence of a Primeval Unspeakable; and
thou wert wise to recognise, not with lips only, that same!
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; transcendant, 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 Time-vortexes, 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. The fact of Gravitation known to all
animals, is not surer than this inner Fact, which may be known to
all men. He who knows this, it will sink, silent, awful,
unspeakable, into his heart. He will say with Faust: "Who
_dare_ name HIM?" Most rituals or 'namings' he will fall in with
at present, are like to be 'namings'--which shall be nameless!
In silence, in the Eternal Temple, let him worship, if there be
no fit word. Such knowledge, the crown of his whole spiritual
being, the life of his life, let him keep and sacredly walk by.
He has a religion. Hourly and daily, for himself and for the
whole world, a faithful, unspoken, but not ineffectual prayer
rises, "Thy will be done." His whole work on Earth is an
emblematic spoken or acted prayer, Be the will of God done on
Earth,--not the Devil's will, or any of the Devil's servants'
wills! He has a religion, this man; an everlasting Loadstar
that beams the brighter in the Heavens, the darker here on Earth
grows the night around him. Thou, if thou know not this, what
are all rituals, liturgies, mythologies, mass-chantings, turnings
of the rotatory calabash? They are as nothing; in a good many
respects they are as _less._ Divorced from this, getting half-
divorced from this, they are a thing to fill one with a kind of
horror; with a sacred inexpressible pity and fear. The most
tragical thing a human eye can look on. It was said to the
Prophet, "Behold, I will shew thee worse things than these:
women weeping to Thammuz." That was the acme of the Prophet's
vision,--then as now.
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 godlike 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 a
`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!--
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,' are there for disobeying.
Dost thou observe, O redtape Politician, that fiery infernal
Phenomenon, which men name FRENCH REVOLUTION, sailing, unlooked-
for, unbidden; through thy inane Protocol Dominion:--far-seen,
with splendour not of Heaven? Ten centuries will see it. There
were Tanneries at Meudon for human skins. And Hell, very truly
Hell, had power over God's upper Earth for a season. The
cruelest Portent that has risen into created Space these ten
centuries: let us hail it, with awestruck repentant hearts, as
the voice once more of a God, though of one in wrath. Blessed be
the God's-voice; for _it_ is true, and Falsehoods have to cease
before it! But for that same preternatural quasi-infernal
Portent; one could not know what to make of this wretched world,
in these days' at all. The deplorablest quack-ridden, and now
hunger-ridden, downtrodden Despicability and _Flebile Ludibrium,_
of redtape Protocols, rotatory Calabashes, Poor-Law Bastilles:
who is there that could think of _its_ being fated to continue?--
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 articulate-speaking 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!--
But we will leave this of 'Religion;' of which, to say truth, it
is chiefly profitable in these unspeakable days to keep silence.
Thou needest no 'New Religion;' nor art thou like to get any.
Thou hast already more 'religion' than thou makest use of. This
day, thou knowest ten commanded duties, seest in thy mind ten
things which should be done, for one that thou doest! Do one of
them; this of itself will skew thee ten others which can and
shall be done. "But my future fate?" Yes, thy future fate,
indeed? Thy future fate, while thou makest _it_ the chief
question, seems to me--extremely questionable! I do not think it
can be good. Norse Odin, immemorial centuries ago, did not he,
though a poor Heathen, in the dawn of Time, teach us that, for
the Dastard there was and could be no good fate; no harbour
anywhere, save down with Hela, in the pool of Night! Dastards,
Knaves, are they that lust for Pleasure, that tremble at Pain.
For this world and for the next, Dastards are a class of
creatures made to be 'arrested;' they are good for nothing else,
can look for nothing else. A greater than Odin has been here. A
greater than Odin has taught us--not a greater Dastardism, I
hope! My brother, thou must pray for a _soul;_ struggle, as
with life-and-death energy, to get back thy soul! Know that
'religion' is no Morrison's Pill from without, but a reawakening
of thy own Self from within:--and, above all, leave me alone of
thy 'religions' and 'new religions' here and elsewhere! I am
weary of this sick croaking for a Morrison's-Pill religion; for
any and for every such. I want none such; and discern all such
to be impossible. The resuscitation of old liturgies fallen
dead; much more, the manufacture of new liturgies that will
never be alive: how hopeless Stylitisms, eremite fanaticisms and
fakeerisms; spasmodic agonistic posturemakings, and narrow,
cramped, morbid, if forever noble wrestlings: all this is not a
thing desirable to me. It is a thing the world _has_ done once,
--when its beard was not grown as now!
And yet there is, at worst, one Liturgy which does remain forever
unexceptionable: that of _Praying_ (as the old Monks did withal)
_by Working._ And indeed the Prayer which accomplished itself in
special chapels at stated hours, and went not with a man, rising
up from all his Work and Action, at all moments sanctifying the
same,--what was it ever good for? 'Work is Worship:' yes, in a
highly considerable sense,--which, in the present state of all
'worship,' who is there that can unfold! He that understands it
well, understands the Prophecy of the whole Future; the last
Evangel, which has included all others. Its cathedral the Dome
of Immensity,--hast thou seen it? coped with the star-galaxies;
paved with the green mosaic of land and ocean; and for altar,
verily, the Star-throne of the Eternal! Its litany and psalmody
the noble acts, the heroic work and suffering, and true Heart-
utterance of all the Valiant of the Sons of Men. Its choir-music
the ancient Winds and Oceans, and deep-toned, inarticulate, but
most speaking voices of Destiny and History,--supernal ever as of
old. Between two great Silences:
'Stars silent rest o o'er us,
Graves under us silent!'
Between which two great Silences, do not, as we said, all human
Noises, in the naturalest times, most preternaturally march
and roll?--
I will insert this also, in a lower strain, from Sauerteig's
_Aesthetische Springwurzel._ 'Worship?' says he: 'Before that
inane tumult of Hearsay filled men's heads, while the world lay
yet silent, and the heart true and open, many things were
Worship! To the primeval man whatsoever good came, descended on
him (as, in mere fact, it ever does) direct from God; whatsoever
duty lay visible for him, this a Supreme God had prescribed. To
the present hour I ask thee, Who else? For the primeval man, in
whom dwelt Thought, this Universe was all a Temple; Life
everywhere a Worship.
'What Worship, for example, is there not in mere Washing!
Perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has
it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were
it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there wash and be
clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This
consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that to thy skin there
now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, how it radiates in
on thee, with cunning symbolic influences, to thy very soul!
Thou hast an increase of tendency towards all good things
whatsoever. The oldest Eastern Sages, with joy and holy
gratitude, had felt it so,--and that it was the Maker's gift and
will. Whose else is it? It remains a religious duty, from
oldest times, in the East.--Nor could Herr Professor Strauss,
when I put the question, deny that for us at present it is still
such here in the West! To that dingy fuliginous Operative,
emerging from his soot-mill, what is the first duty I will
prescribe, and offer help towards? That he clean the skin of
him. _Can_ he pray, by any ascertained method? One knows not
entirely:--but with soap and a sufficiency of water, he can wash.
Even the dull English feel something of this; they have a
saying, "Cleanliness is near of kin to Godliness:"--yet never, in
any country, saw I operative men worse washed, and, in a climate
drenched with the softest cloud-water, such a scarcity of
baths!'--Alas, Sauerteig, our 'operative men' are at present
short even of potatoes: what 'duty' can you prescribe to them!
Or let us give a glance at China. Our new friend, the Emperor
there, is Pontiff of three hundred million men; who do all live
and work, these many centuries now; authentically patronised by
Heaven so far; and therefore must have some 'religion' of a
kind. T his Emperor-Pontiff has, in fact, a religious belief of
certain Laws of Heaven; observes, with a religious rigour, his
'three thousand punctualities,' given out by men of insight, some
sixty generations since, as a legible transcript of the same,--
the Heavens do seem to say, not totally an incorrect one. He has
not much of a ritual, this Pontiff-Emperor; believes, it is
likest, with the old Monks, that 'Labour is Worship.' His most
public Act of Worship, it appears, is the drawing solemnly at a
certain day, on the green bosom of our Mother Earth, when the
Heavens, after dead black winter, have again with their vernal
radiances awakened her, a distinct red Furrow with the Plough,--
signal that all the Ploughs of China are to begin ploughing and
worshipping! It is notable enough. He, in sight of the Seen and
Unseen Powers, draws his distinct red Furrow there; saying, and
praying, in mute symbolism, so many most eloquent things!
If you ask this Pontiff, "Who made him? What is to become of him
and us?" he maintains a dignified reserve; waves his hand and
pontiff-eyes over the unfathomable deep of Heaven, the 'Tsien,'
the azure kingdoms of Infinitude; as if asking, "is it doubtful
that we are right _well_ made? Can aught that is _wrong_ become
of us?"--He and his three hundred millions (it is their chief
'punctuality') visit yearly the Tombs of their Fathers; each man
the Tomb of his Father and his Mother: alone there, in silence,
with what of 'worship' or of other thought there may be, pauses
solemnly each man; the divine Skies all silent over him; the
divine Graves, and this divinest Grave, all silent under him;
the pulsings of his own soul, if he have any soul, alone audible.
Truly it may be a kind of worship! Truly, if a man cannot get
some glimpse into the Eternities, looking through this portal,--
through what other need he try it?
Our friend the Pontiff-Emperor permits cheerfully, though with
contempt, all manner of Buddhists, Bonzes, Talapoins and such
like, to build brick Temples, on the voluntary principle; to
worship with what of chantings, paper-lanterns and tumultuous
brayings, pleases them; and make night hideous, since they find
some comfort in so doing. Cheerfully, though with contempt. He
is a wiser Pontiff than many persons think! He is as yet the one
Chief Potentate or Priest in this Earth who has made a distinct
systematic attempt at what we call the ultimate result of all
religion, _'Practical_ Hero-worship:' he does incessantly, with
true anxiety, in such way as he can, search and sift (it would
appear) his whole enormous population for the Wisest born among
them; by which Wisest, as by born Kings, these three hundred
million men are governed. The Heavens, to a certain extent, do
appear to countenance him. These three hundred millions actually
make porcelain, souchong tea, with innumerable other things; and
fight, under Heaven's flag, against Necessity;--and have fewer
Seven-Years Wars, Thirty-Years Wars, French-Revolution Wars, and
infernal fightings with each other, than certain millions
elsewhere have!
Nay, in our poor distracted Europe itself, in these newest times,
have there not religious voices risen,--with a religion new and
yet the oldest; entirely indisputable to all hearts of men?
Some I do know, who did not call or think themselves 'Prophets,'
far enough from that; but who were, in very truth, melodious
Voices from the eternal Heart of Nature once again; souls
forever venerable to all that have a soul. A French Revolution
is one phenomenon; as complement and spiritual exponent thereof,
a Poet Goethe and German Literature is to me another. The old
Secular or Practical World, so to speak, having gone up in fire,
is not here the prophecy and dawn of a new Spiritual World,
parent of far nobler, wider, new Practical Worlds? A Life of
Antique devoutness, Antique veracity and heroism, has again
become possible, is again _seen_ actual there, for the most
modern man. A phenomenon, as quiet as it is, comparable for
greatness to no other! 'The great event for the world is, now as
always, the arrival in it of a new Wise Man.' Touches there are,
be the Heavens ever thanked, of new Sphere-melody; audible once
more, in the infinite jargoning discords and poor scrannel-
pipings of the thing called Literature;--priceless there, as the
voice of new Heavenly Psalms! Literature, like the old Prayer-
Collections of the first centuries, were it 'well selected from
and burnt,' contains precious things. For Literature, with all
its printing-presses, puffing-engines and shoreless deafening
triviality, is yet 'the Thought of Thinking Souls.' A sacred
'religion,' if you like the name, does live in the heart of that
strange froth-ocean, not wholly froth, which we call Literature;
and will more and more disclose itself therefrom;--not now as
scorching Fire: the red smoky scorching Fire has purified itself
into white sunny Light. Is not Light grander than Fire? It is
the same element in a state of purity.
My ingenuous readers, we will march out of this Third Book with a
rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; a word which perhaps
has already sung itself, in dark hours and in bright, through
many a heart. To me, finding it devout yet wholly credible and
veritable, full of piety yet free of cant; to me joyfully
finding much in it, and joyfully missing so much in it, this
little snatch of music, by the greatest German Man, sounds like a
stanza in the grand _Road-Song_ and _Marching-Song_ of our great
Teutonic Kindred, wending, wending, valiant and victorious,
through the undiscovered Deeps of Time! He calls it _Mason-
Lodge,_--not Psalm or Hymn:
The Mason's ways are
A type of Existence,
And his persistance
Is as the days are
Of men in this world.The Future hides in it
Good hap and sorrow;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us,--onward.And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal:--
Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent.While earnest thou gazest,
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error,
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.But heard are the Voices,--
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages:
"Choose well, your choice is
Brief and yet endless:Here eyes do regard you,
In Eternity's stilness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you;
Work, and despair not."