Churches,though proved false (as you had imagined),were still true (as you were to imagine):here was an Artist who could burn you up an old Church,root and branch;and then as the Alchemists professed to do with organic substances in general,distil you an "Astral Spirit"from the ashes,which was the very image of the old burnt article,its air-drawn counterpart,--this you still had,or might get,and draw uses from,if you could.Wait till the Book on the Logos were done;--alas,till your own terrene eyes,blind with conceit and the dust of logic,were purged,subtilized and spiritualized into the sharpness of vision requisite for discerning such an "om-m-mject."--The ingenuous young English head,of those days,stood strangely puzzled by such revelations;uncertain whether it were getting inspired,or getting infatuated into flat imbecility;and strange effulgence,of new day or else of deeper meteoric night,colored the horizon of the future for it.
Let me not be unjust to this memorable man.Surely there was here,in his pious,ever-laboring,subtle mind,a precious truth,or prefigurement of truth;and yet a fatal delusion withal.
Prefigurement that,in spite of beaver sciences and temporary spiritual hebetude and cecity,man and his Universe were eternally divine;and that no past nobleness,or revelation of the divine,could or would ever be lost to him.Most true,surely,and worthy of all acceptance.Good also to do what you can with old Churches and practical Symbols of the Noble:nay quit not the burnt ruins of them while you find there is still gold to be dug there.But,on the whole,do not think you can,by logical alchemy,distil astral spirits from them;or if you could,that said astral spirits,or defunct logical phantasms,could serve you in anything.What the light of your mind,which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty,pronounces incredible,--that,in God's name,leave uncredited;at your peril do not try believing that.No subtlest hocus-pocus of "reason"versus "understanding"will avail for that feat;--and it is terribly perilous to try it in these provinces!
The truth is,I now see,Coleridge's talk and speculation was the emblem of himself:in it as in him,a ray of heavenly inspiration struggled,in a tragically ineffectual degree,with the weakness of flesh and blood.He says once,he "had skirted the howling deserts of Infidelity;"this was evident enough:but he had not had the courage,in defiance of pain and terror,to press resolutely across said deserts to the new firm lands of Faith beyond;he preferred to create logical fata-morganas for himself on this hither side,and laboriously solace himself with these.
To the man himself Nature had given,in high measure,the seeds of a noble endowment;and to unfold it had been forbidden him.A subtle lynx-eyed intellect,tremulous pious sensibility to all good and all beautiful;truly a ray of empyrean light;--but embedded in such weak laxity of character,in such indolences and esuriences as had made strange work with it.Once more,the tragic story of a high endowment with an insufficient will.An eye to discern the divineness of the Heaven's spendors and lightnings,the insatiable wish to revel in their godlike radiances and brilliances;but no heart to front the scathing terrors of them,which is the first condition of your conquering an abiding place there.The courage necessary for him,above all things,had been denied this man.His life,with such ray of the empyrean in it,was great and terrible to him;and he had not valiantly grappled with it,he had fled from it;sought refuge in vague daydreams,hollow compromises,in opium,in theosophic metaphysics.Harsh pain,danger,necessity,slavish harnessed toil,were of all things abhorrent to him.And so the empyrean element,lying smothered under the terrene,and yet inextinguishable there,made sad writhings.For pain,danger,difficulty,steady slaving toil,and other highly disagreeable behests of destiny,shall in nowise be shirked by any brightest mortal that will approve himself loyal to his mission in this world;nay precisely the higher he is,the deeper will be the disagreeableness,and the detestability to flesh and blood,of the tasks laid on him;and the heavier too,and more tragic,his penalties if he neglect them.
For the old Eternal Powers do live forever;nor do their laws know any change,however we in our poor wigs and church-tippets may attempt to read their laws.To _steal_into Heaven,--by the modern method,of sticking ostrich-like your head into fallacies on Earth,equally as by the ancient and by all conceivable methods,--is forever forbidden.
High-treason is the name of that attempt;and it continues to be punished as such.Strange enough:here once more was a kind of Heaven-scaling Ixion;and to him,as to the old one,the just gods were very stern!The ever-revolving,never-advancing Wheel (of a kind)was his,through life;and from his Cloud-Juno did not he too procreate strange Centaurs,spectral Puseyisms,monstrous illusory Hybrids,and ecclesiastical Chimeras,--which now roam the earth in a very lamentable manner!