234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



phrases — *the Immensities,' 'the Eternities,' * the Silences,' 'the Infi- 

 nite Unnamable' — which we now think of, perhaps smilingly, as 

 peculiar forms of the Carlylian rhetoric, it was, as be himself tells us, 

 because 'the old Numen' had become as if obsolete to 'the huge idly 

 impious million of writing, preaching, and talking people,' and he 

 would employ any synonyms or verbal shifts by which he could hope 

 to bring back the essential notion. In his latter days, and always in 

 his own pious self- communings, he seems to have preferred the simple 

 old name he had learned from his father and mother, with its heart- 

 thrilling and hearc-softening associations." 



Professor Masson then enters upon the question of Carlyle's rela- 

 tion to Christianity, which is too fully treated for insertion here. The 

 curious reader is referred to the discussion itself, which is remarkably 

 interesting. Professor Masson distinguishes between the Ethic, or the 

 moral code of Christianity, and its Metaphysic, or body of supernatu- 

 rally derived beliefs. Carlyle accepted the former, but rejected the 

 latter, which, Professor Masson argues, is after all the essential and 

 distinguishing attribute of Christianity. On this point he thus rea- 

 sons : 



" The ethic without this metaphysic may call itself Christianity, but 

 is not, I hold, Christianity in any sense worth so special a name. To 

 tell men, however earnestly, not to tell lies, not to commit fraud, to be 

 temperate, honest, truthful, merciful, even to be humble, pious, and 

 God-fearing, is very good gospel ; but it did not require the events 

 of Judea, as Christian theology interprets them, to bring that gospel 

 into the world. The modern preacher who sermonizes always on the 

 ethic and omits the accompanying metaphysic may sophisticate him- 

 self into a belief that he is preaching Christianity, but is preaching no 

 such thing. Wherever Christianity has been of real effect in the 

 world, and has made real way for its own ethic, it has been by its 

 metaphysic — that set of doctrines respecting things supernatural which 

 was to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness. 

 Now, as Carlyle had wholly given up the metaphysic of Christianity, 

 he can not be classed among the Christians, and thought it honest to 

 avow that he could not be so classed. Indeed, more and more, his atti- 

 tude toward Christian theology in any of its known and orthodox 

 forms settled into positive antipathy, till at last he declared it to be 

 inconceivable to him that any man of real intellect could be found 

 in that camp without something of conscious insincerity, and looked 

 askance, therefore, on even such ecclesiastical friends of his own as Bish- 

 op Thirlwall and Bishop Wilberforce. This feeling found vent in such 

 violent phrases as shovel-hattedncss, the Jcxc- God, etc. ; and he had even 

 been so daring as to project a book or pamphlet to be called 'Exo- 

 dus from Iloundsditch,' the purport of which was to be that people 

 ought universally, as fast as they could, to come out of the land and 

 atmosphere of all Jewish forms and traditions, older or later, only tak- 



