never shuffles through his work, but does it faithfully and sincerely, with a man’s heart and hand.  This outward sincerity in the conduct of his executive faculty has its counterpart in the inmost recesses of his nature.  We feel that this man and falsehood are impossible companions, and our faith in his integrity is perfect and absolute.  Herein lies his power; and here also lies the power of all men who have ever moved the world.  For it is in the nature of truth to conserve itself, whilst falsehood is centrifugal, and flies off into inanity and nothingness.  It is by the cardinal virtue of sincerity alone—­the truthfulness of deed to thought, of effect to cause—­that man and nature are sustained.  God is truth; and he who is most faithful to truth is not only likest to God, but is made a participator in the divine nature.  For without truth there is neither power, vitality, nor permanence.

Carlyle was fortunate that he was comparatively poor, and never tempted, therefore, as a student, to dissipate his fine talents in the gay pursuits of university life.  Not that there would have been any likelihood of his running into the excesses of ordinary students, but we are pleased and thankful to reflect that he suffered no kind of loss or harm in those days of his novitiate.  It is one of the many consolations of poverty that it protects young men from snares and vices to which the rich are exposed; and our poor student in his garret was preserved faithful to his vocation, and laid up day by day those stores of knowledge, experience, and heavenly wisdom which he has since turned to so good account.  It would be deeply interesting, if we could learn the exact position of Carlyle’s mind at this time, with respect to those profound problems of human nature and destiny which have occupied the greatest men in all ages, ceaselessly and pertinaciously urging their dark and solemn questions, and refusing to depart until their riddles were in some sort solved.  That Carlyle was haunted by these questions, and by the pitiless Sphinx herself who guards the portals of life and death,—­that he had to meet her face to face, staring at him with her stony, passionless eyes,—­that he had to grapple and struggle with her for victory,—­there are proofs abundant in his writings.  The details of the struggle, however, are not given us; it is the result only that we know.  But it is evident that the progress of his mind from the bog-region of orthodoxy to the high realms of thought and faith was a slow proceeding,—­not rolled onward as with the chariot-wheels of a fierce and sudden revolution, but gradually developed in a long series of births, growths, and deaths.  The theological phraseology sticks to him, indeed, even to the present time, although he puts it to new uses; and it acquires in his hands a power and significance which it possessed only when, of old, it was representative of the divine.