in 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:--farseen,
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