Men prayed in those days! says Mr Carlyle, "actually prayed! It was a capability old London and its preachers and populations had; to us the incredibilest." Beyond a doubt the Puritans and the Covenanters prayed, and in such a manner and at such a length, that the strange doctrine on which Southey has founded his "Curse of Kehama," of the essential and irresistible force of prayer, seems to have got mixed up with their Christianity.2 But we do not think that the voice of prayer has quite died out amongst us. It is curious to observe what a vivid perception this author has for the historical past, and what a voluntary blindness and deafness for the actually present. It is a fact! he frequently exclaims, with all the energy of a discoverer,a fact! that men in these ages prayed, and had a religious faith. Our churches and chapels are not facts. The controlnone the worse for being exercised without pike or musketwhich the religious public, meeting in that very Exeter Hall, have over the measures of government, and all political transactions,is not a fact. Were he writing, some centuries hence, the history of this our age, he would detect these facts. What facts, indeed, might he not detect, and what exaggerated significance might he not give to them! Why, in those days, he might exclaim, in his enthusiasm, the very beggars in the street, in asking charity, poured God's blessing on you! It was a credible thing, in those days, God's blessing!and men gave their money for it!
A passage in one of Cromwell's letters instances, in rather a touching manner, what school of piety this army of saints must have proved. At the battle of Marston Moor a Colonel Walton had lost his son. "He was a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious," and Cromwell, giving an account of his death, in his consolatory letter to the father, writes thus,"A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of his enemies!"
But nothing disturbs the equanimity of our editor, or interrupts his flow of rapture over the fanaticism of these times, especially when expressed in the letters of Cromwell. Over the theological effusions which the general of the Puritan army addresses, from his camp, to the Edinburgh clergy, Mr Carlyle thus expatiates:"Dryasdust, carrying his learned eye over these, and the like letters, finds them, of course, full of 'hypocrisy,' &c. Unfortunate Dryasdust! they are corruscations terrible as lightning, and beautiful as lightning, from the innermost temple of the human soul; intimations, still credible, of what a human soul does mean when it believes in the Highesta thing poor Dryasdust never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for 'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling, flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them. This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have human eyes can look at him; they that have only owl-eyes need not."
And then follows something upon light and lightning. "As lightning is to light, so is a Cromwell to a Shakspere. The light is beautifuller. Ah, yes; but, until by lightning and other fierce labour your foul chaos has become a world, you cannot have any light, or the smallest chance for any! The melodious speaker is great, but the melodious worker is greater than he. Our Time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer, and argumentatively jargon and recite the multiplication-table: neither, as yet, can it work, except at mere railroads and cotton-spinning. It will, apparently, return to chaos soon, and then more lightnings will be needed, lightning enough,to which Cromwell's was but a mild matter,to be followed by light, we may hope!"by another Shakspeare, as the tenor of the passage would imply.
Strange jumble this of Cromwell and Shakspeare, of light and lightning! There is one species of light which we are often reminded of here; a certain fitful, flickering beam, which partakes indeed of a luminous nature, but which chooses its path for ever over bottomless bog.
The sincerity of Oliver Cromwell, in these his letters and speeches, has been questioned and discussed; the sincerity of their present editor may become a question at least as difficult and perplexing. Is there any genuine conviction at the bottom of all this rant and raving? Our extravagant worshipper of the "old heathen" Goëthe, stands forth the champion and admirer of certain harsh, narrow-thoughted, impetuous sectaries, proclaims them the only "Reformers" of the world; descends to their lowest prejudices, to their saddest bigotries, to their gloomy puerilities; arguing with them solemnly against the sinfulness of drinking healths, and quite fraternising with them in all their animosity against Popery and Prelacy. What does he mean? Is it a case of conversion? Is it an outpouring merely, by a strange vent, of certain acrid humours? Is he honest, and in earnest? or is he making sport of those hapless Englishmen whom he pronounces "in human stupidity to have no fellow?"
Observers of a curious and speculative turn might, perhaps, explain it thus:Mr Carlyle is evidently a writer of strong religious feelings. Marry, when he would exhibit them to the world, he is under the necessity of borrowing a creed from some one else. His own philosophy has nothing palpable enough for ordinary vision; nothing, as we remember, but vague infinities and eternities, with an "everlasting yes," and an "everlasting no." As the choice lay quite open to him, there was no reason why he should not select the very hottest creed he could any where find lying about in our history. From contemporaries it was not likely that he should borrow: he loves nothing, praises nothing, esteems nothing of this poor visible present; but it was an additional recommendation to the Puritanic piety, that it had left a detestable memory behind it, and was in declared hostility with all contemporaneous ways of thinking. What could he better do, therefore, than borrow this old volcanic crater of Puritanism, and pour out from it his religion and his anger upon a graceless world?
Others, not given to such refinements, would explain the phenomenon upon more ordinary principles, and reduce the enigma to a case merely of literary monomania. Mr Carlyle, they would say, has been striving to understand these Puritans till he has grown, for the time, to resemble them. In the effort to project his mind into their mind, he has overshot the mark; he has not been able yet to get his own mind back again. It is a case, they would say, of mere imagination. Could you bring Mr Carlyle into contact with a live Puritan, the charm would be instantly dispelled. If one of Harrison's troopers would but ask him to step aside with him, under a hedge, to wrestle for a blessing, or would kindly undertake to catechise him on some point of divinity,on that notion of his, for instance, of "Right and Wrong bodying themselves into Hell and Heaven,"the alliance would be dissolved, not, perhaps, without violent rupture.
For ourselves, we sometimes think that Mr Carlyle is in earnest. Men should be honest. One who talks so loudly about faith, ought to be sincere in his utterances to the public. At other times, the mummery becomes too violent, grows too "fast and furious," to permit us to believe that what we witness is the sane carriage of a sane man. At all events, we can but look on with calm surprise. If our philosopher will tuck his robe high up about his loins, and play the merry-andrew, if he will grimace, and paint thick, and hold dialogue with himself, who shall hinder him?only we would rather not wear, on such an occasion, the docile aspect of admiring pupils; we prefer to stand aside, and look on with Mr Dryasdust.