done, for one that thou doest! _Do_ one of them; this of itself will
show 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 posture-makings, 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 g