A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 261 



prophets. He predicts nothing, foretells nothing, 

 except death and destruction to those who depart 

 from the ways of the Lord, or, in modern phrase, 

 from nature and truth. He shared the Hebraic 

 sense of the awful mystery and fearfulness of life 

 and the splendor and inexorableness of the moral 

 law. His habitual mood was not one of contem- 

 plation and enjoyment, but of struggle and "des- 

 perate hope. " The deep biblical word fear, — fear 

 of the Lord, — he knew what that meant, as few 

 moderns did. 



He was antagonistic to his country and his times, 

 and who would have had him otherwise 1 Let him 

 be the hammer on the other side that clinches the 

 nail. He did not believe in democracy, in popular 

 sovereignty, in the progress of the species, in the 

 political equality of Jesus and Judas; in fact, he 

 repudiated with mingled wrath and sorrow the 

 whole American idea and theory of politics: yet 

 who shall say that his central doctrine of the sur- 

 vival of the fittest, the nobility of labor, the exal- 

 tation of justice, valor, pity, the leadership of char- 

 acter, truth, nobility, wisdom, etc., is really and 

 finally inconsistent with, or inimical to, that which 

 is valuable and permanent and formative in the 

 modern movement ? I think it is the best medicine 

 and regimen for it that could be suggested, — the 

 best stay and counterweight. For the making of 

 good democrats, there are no books like Carlyle's, 

 and we in America need especially to cherish him, 

 and to lay his lesson to heart. 



