Methodism with its eye forever turned on its own navel; asking itself with torturing anxiety of Hope and Fear, "Am I right? am I wrong? Shall I be saved? shall I not be damned?"—what is this, at bottom, but a new phasis of Egoism, stretched out into the Infinite; not always the heavenlier for its infinitude! Brother, so soon as possible, endeavour to rise above all that. "Thou art wrong; thou art like to be damned:" consider that as the fact, reconcile thyself even to that, if thou be a man;—then first is the devouring Universe subdued under thee, and from the black murk of midnight and noise of greedy Acheron, dawn as of an everlasting morning, how far above all Hope and all Fear, springs for thee, enlightening thy steep path, awakening in thy heart celestial Memnon's music!
But of our Dilettantisms, and galvanised Dilettantisms; of Puseyism—O Heavens, what shall we say of Puseyism, in comparison to Twelfth-Century Catholicism? Little or nothing; for indeed it is a matter to strike one dumb.
That certain human souls, living on this practical Earth, should think to save themselves and a ruined world by noisy theoretic demonstrations and laudations of the Church, instead of some unnoisy, unconscious, but practical, total, heart-and-soul demonstration of a Church: this, in the circle of revolving ages, this also was a thing we were to see. A kind of penultimate thing, precursor of very strange consummations; last thing but one? If there is no atmosphere, what will it serve a man to demonstrate the excellence of lungs? How much profitabler, when you can, like Abbot Samson, breathe; and go along your way!