tter Christian, with his "bastard
Christianity," than the most of us shovel-hatted? I guess than
almost any of you!--Not so much as Oliver Cromwell ("the Hero as
King") would I allow to have been a Quack. All quacks I asserted
to be and to have been Nothing, _chaff_ that would not grow: my
poor Mahomet "was _wheat_ with barn sweepings"; Nature had
tolerantly hidden the barn sweepings; and as to the _wheat,_
behold she had said Yes to it, and it was growing!--On the whole,
I fear I did little but confuse my esteemed audience: I was
amazed, after all their reading of me, to be understood so ill;--
gratified nevertheless to see how the rudest _speech_ of a man's
heart goes into men's hearts, and is the welcomest thing there.
Withal I regretted that I had not six months of preaching,
whereby to learn to preach, and explain things fully! In the
fire of the moment I had all but decided on setting out for
America this autumn, and preaching far and wide like a very lion
there. Quit your paper formulas, my brethren,--equivalent to old
wooden idols, _un_divine as they: in the name of God, understand
that you are alive, and that God is alive! Did the Upholsterer
make this Universe? Were you created by the Tailor? I tell you,
and conjure you to believe me literally, No, a thousand times No!
Thus did I mean to preach, on "Heroes, Hero-worship, and the
Heroic"; in America too. Alas! the fire of determination died
away again: all that I did resolve upon was to write these
Lectures down, and in some way promulgate them farther. Two of
them accordingly are actually written; the Third to be begun on
Monday: it is my chief work here, ever since the end of May.
Whether I go to preach them a second time extempore in America
rests once more with the Destinies. It is a shame to talk so
much about a thing, and have it still hang _in nubibus:_ but I
was, and perhaps am, really nearer doing it than I had ever
before been. A month or two now, I suppose, will bring us back
to the old nonentity again. Is there, at bottom, in the world or
out of it, anything one would like so well, with one's whole
heart _well,_ as PEACE? Is lecturing and noise the way to get at
that? Popular lecturer! Popular writer! If they would
undertake in Chancery, or Heaven's Chancery, to make a wise man
Mahomet Second and Greater, "Mahomet of Saxondom," not reviewed
only, but worshiped for twelve centuries by all Bulldom, Yankee-
doodle-doodom, Fe