character, rather as
Reformers than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally
notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of
Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from
Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as
under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when
this same _way_ was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the
spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who
live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. He
is the warfaring and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet
faithful labor as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict,
in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more
memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our
best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask,
Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a _Priest_ first of
all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible
force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is
a believer in the divine truth of things; a _seer_, seeing through the
shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine
truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will
never be good for much as a Reformer.

Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building
up Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories
of Life worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a
Shakspeare,--we are now to see the reverse process; which also is
necessary, which also may be carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious
how this should be necessary: yet necessary it is. The mild shining
of the Poet's light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the
Reformer: unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot
fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but
the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its
fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaid Eremites, there had been
no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavor, Scandinavian and other,
from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare
to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that
his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before
long there will be a new epoch,