y of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost
bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach,
zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These break in
pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate,
as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches,
where the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience,
and minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the new had
formed itself beneath it?'

Perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit-up this
ravelled sleeve:

'But there is no Religion?' reiterates the Professor. 'Fool! I tell
thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies in this
immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE? Fragments of a genuine
Church-_Homiletic_ lie scattered there, which Time will assort: nay
fractions even of a _Liturgy_ could I point out. And knowest thou no
Prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age?
None to whom the God-like had revealed itself, through all meanest and
highest forms of the Common; and by him been again prophetically
revealed: in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and
rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be
divine? Knowest thou none such? I know him, and name him--Goethe.

'But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalm-worship;
feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, the people
perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake
we not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying
and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic
Sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands,
and out of all times, as a sacred _Miserere_; their heroic Actions
also, as a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that
thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol
of the Godlike; is not Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and
Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music thou
wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together.'

CHAPTER VIII

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM

It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_,
that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such
as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory
Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof