Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments
for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the
pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. In all ways, it behooved
men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it might, that did
behoove to be done. With spurious Popes, and Believers having no private
judgment,--quacks pretending to command over dupes,--what can you do?
Misery and mischief only. You cannot make an association out of insincere
men; you cannot build an edifice except by plummet and level,--at
right-angles to one another! In all this wild revolutionary work, from
Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest result preparing itself: not
abolition of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a whole World of
Heroes. If Hero mean _sincere man_, why may not every one of us be a Hero?
A world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been; the like will
again be,--cannot help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers for
Heroes: never could the truly Better be so reverenced as where all were
True and Good!--But we must hasten to Luther and his Life.
Pages:
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258