you call
Heathenism, Secularity! On the whole, I, in an obscure but most rooted
manner, feel that I cannot comply with you. Western Thibet and
perpetual mass-chanting,--No. I am, so to speak, in the family-way;
with child, of I know not what,--certainly of something far different
from this! I have--_Per os Dei_, I have Manchester Cotton-trades,
Bromwicham Iron-trades, American Commonwealths, Indian Empires, Steam
Mechanisms and Shakspeare Dramas, in my belly; and cannot do it, Right
Reverend!"--So accordingly it was decided: and Saxon Becket spilt his
life in Canterbury Cathedral, as Scottish Wallace did on Tower-hill,
and as generally a noble man and martyr has to do,--not for nothing;
no, but for a divine something other than _he_ had altogether
calculated. We will now quit this of the hard, organic, but limited
Feudal Ages; and glance timidly into the immense Industrial Ages, as
yet all inorganic, and in a quite pulpy condition, requiring
desperately to harden themselves into some organism!

Our Epic having now become _Tools and the Man_, it is more than
usually impossible to prophesy the Future. The boundless Future does
lie there, predestined, nay already extant though unseen; hiding, in
its Continents of Darkness, 'gladness and sorrow:' but the supremest
intelligence of man cannot prefigure much of it:--the united
intelligence and effort of All Men in all coming generations, this
alone will gradually prefigure it, and figure and form it into a seen
fact! Straining our eyes hitherto, the utmost effort of intelligence
sheds but some most glimmering dawn, a little way into its dark
enormous Deeps: only huge outlines loom uncertain on the sight; and
the ray of prophecy, at a short distance, expires. But may we not say,
here as always, Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof! To shape
the whole Future is not our problem; but only to shape faithfully a
small part of it, according to rules already known. It is perhaps
possible for each of us, who will with due earnestness inquire, to
ascertain clearly what he, for his own part, ought to do: this let
him, with true heart, do, and continue doing. The general issue will,
as it has always done, rest well with a Higher Intelligence than ours.

One grand 'outline,' or even two, many earnest readers may perhaps, at
this stage of the business, be able to prefigure for themselves,--and
draw some guidance from. One prediction, or even two, are already
possible. For the Life-t