him one.

But indeed, when men and reformers ask for 'a religion,' it is
analogous to their asking, 'What would you have us to do?' and
such like. They fancy that their religion too shall be a kind of
Morrison's Pill, which they have only to swallow once, and all
will be well. Resolutely once gulp down your Religion, your
Morrison's Pill, you have it all plain sailing now; you can
follow your affairs, your no-affairs, go along money-hunting,
pleasure-hunting, dilettanteing, dangling, and miming and
chattering like a Dead-Sea Ape: your Morrison will do your
business for you. Men's notions are very strange!--Brother, I
say there is not, was not, nor will ever be, in the wide circle
of Nature, any Pill or Religion of that character. Man cannot
afford thee such; for the very gods it is impossible. I advise
thee to renounce Morrison; once for all, quit hope of the
Universal Pill. For body, for soul, for individual or society,
there has not any such article been made. _Non extat._ In
Created Nature it is not, was not, will not be. In the void
imbroglios of Chaos only, and realms of Bedlam, does some shadow
of it hover, to bewilder and bemock the poor inhabitants _there._

Rituals, Liturgies, Creeds, Hierarchies: all this is not
religion; all this, were it dead as Odinism, as Fetishism, does
not kill religion at all! It is Stupidity alone, with never so
many rituals, that kills religion. Is not this still a World?
Spinning Cotton under Arkwright and Adam Smith; founding Cities
by the Fountain of Juturna, on the Janiculum Mount; tilling
Canaan under Prophet Samuel and Psalmist David, man is ever man;
the missionary of Unseen Powers; and great and victorious, while
he continues true to his mission; mean, miserable, foiled, and
at last annihilated and trodden out of sight and memory, when he
proves untrue. Brother, thou art a Man, I think; thou are not a
mere building Beaver, or two-legged Cotton-Spider; thou hast
verily a Soul in thee, asphyxied or otherwise! Sooty
Manchester,--it too is built on the infinite Abysses;
overspanned by the skyey Firmaments; and there is birth in it,
and death in it;--and it is every whit as wonderful, as fearful,
unimaginable, as the oldest Salem or Prophetic City. Go or
stand, in what time, in what place we will, are there not
Immensities, Eternities over us, around us, in us:

'Solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal:--
S