an their
most pregnant speech; and Mr. Carlyle's unbroken silence upon the modern
validity and truth of religious creeds says much. The fact that he
should have taken no distinct side in the great debate as to revelation,
salvation, inspiration, and the other theological issues that agitate
and divide a community where theology is now mostly verbal, has been the
subject of some comment, and has had the effect of adding one rather
peculiar side to the many varieties of his influence. Many in the
dogmatic stage have been content to think that as he was not avowedly
against them, he might be with them, and sacred persons have been known
to draw their most strenuous inspirations from the chief denouncer of
phantasms and exploded formulas. Only once, when speaking of Sterling's
undertaking the clerical burden, does he burst out into unmistakable
description of the old Jew stars that have now gone out, and wrath
against those who would persuade us that these stars are still aflame
and the only ones. That this reserve has been wise in its day, and has
most usefully widened the tide and scope of the teacher's popularity,
one need not dispute. There are conditions when indirect solvents are
most powerful, as there are others, which these have done much to
prepare, when no lover of truth will stoop to declarations other than
direct. Mr. Carlyle has assailed the dogmatic temper in religion, and
this is work that goes deeper than to assail dogmas.

Not even Comte himself has harder words for metaphysics than Mr.
Carlyle. 'The disease of Metaphysics' is perennial. Questions of Death
and Immortality, Origin of Evil, Freedom and Necessity, are ever
appearing and attempting to shape something of the universe. 'And ever
unsuccessfully: for what theorem of the Infinite can the Finite render
complete?... Metaphysical Speculation as it begins in No or Nothingness,
so it must needs end in nothingness; circulates and must circulate in
endless vortices; creating, swallowing--itself.'[9] Again, on the other
side, he sets his face just as firmly against the excessive pretensions
and unwarranted certitudes of the physicist. 'The course of Nature's
phases on this our little fraction of a Planet is partially known to us:
but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely
larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow
every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident may have become
familiar; but does the Mi