Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/222

 Christian Religion! Unity, Indivisibility, Brotherhood or Death, did indeed stand printed on all Houses of the Living; also on Cemeteries, or Houses of the Dead, stood printed, by order of Procureur Chaumette, Here is Eternal Sleep: but a Christian Religion realised by the Guillotine and Death-Eternal 'is suspect to me,' as Robespierre was wont to say, 'm'est suspecte.'

Alas, no, M. Roux! A Gospel of Brotherhood, not according to any of the Four old Evangelists, and calling on men to repent, and amend each his own wicked existence, that they might be saved; but a Gospel rather, as we often hint, according to a new Fifth Evangelist Jean-Jacques, calling on men to amend each the whole world's wicked existence, and be saved by making the Constitution. A thing different and distant toto cœlo, as they say: the whole breadth of the sky, and farther if possible!—It is thus, however, that History, and indeed all human Speech and Reason does yet, what Father Adam began life by doing: strive to name the new Things it sees of Nature's producing,—often helplessly enough.

But what if History were to admit, for once, that all the Names and Theorems yet known to her fall short? That this grand Product of Nature was even grand, and new, in that it came not to range itself under old recorded Laws of Nature at all, but to disclose new ones? In that case, History, renouncing the pretension to name it at present, will look honestly at it, and name what she can of it! Any approximation to the right Name has value: were the right Name itself once here, the Thing is known henceforth; the Thing is then ours, and can be dealt with.

Now surely not realisation, of Christianity or of aught earthly, do we discern in this Reign of Terror, in this French Revolution of which it is the consummating. Destruction rather we discern,—of all that was destructible. It is as if Twenty-five millions, risen at length into the Pythian mood, had stood up simultaneously to say, with a sound which goes