The
inward being wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. Belief died
away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The builder cast _away_ his plummet; said
to himself, "What is gravitation? Brick lies on brick there!" Alas, does
it not still sound strange to many of us, the assertion that there _is_ a
God's-truth in the business of god-created men; that all is not a kind of
grimace, an "expediency," diplomacy, one knows not what!--
From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, "You, self-styled _Papa_,
you are no Father in God at all; you are--a Chimera, whom I know not how to
name in polite language!"--from that onwards to the shout which rose round
Camille Desmoulins in the Palais-Royal, "_Aux armes_!" when the people had
burst up against _all_ manner of Chimeras,--I find a natural historical
sequence. That shout too, so frightful, half-infernal, was a great matter.
Once more the voice of awakened nations;--starting confusedly, as out of
nightmare, as out of death-sleep, into some dim feeling that Life was real;
that God's-world was not an expediency and diplomacy! Infernal;--yes,
since they would not have it otherwise.
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