re'), and seeks to be
embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than
magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward:
here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking
heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward,
does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible.
How true is that of Novalis: 'It is certain, my Belief gains quite
_infinitely_ the moment I can convince another mind thereof'! Gaze thou
in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire
of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger;
feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with
the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all
one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling
Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But
if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much
more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it
were, brought into contact with inmost ME!

"Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are first spun and woven
by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes
possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and
present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or
other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying
Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach
and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and
worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium
prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant
Chapter-houses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere
speech and chanting, let him," says the oracular Professor, "read on,
light of heart (_getrosten Muthes_).

"But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially
recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without
such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not
exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body
Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your
Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the
Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying _under_ such
SKIN), whereby Society stands an