of imperfection on its forehead as this.  And men have got such a habit of giving to the language of religion a special application, of making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation which religion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious organizations they have no ear; they are sure to cheat themselves and to explain this condemnation away.  They can only be reached by the criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a language not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing these organizations by the ideal of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies to them.

But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our animality, which it is the glory of these religious organizations to have helped us to subdue.  True, they do often so fail.  They have often been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puritan’s faults that they too much neglected the practice of his virtues.  I will not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan’s expense.  They have often failed in morality, and morality is indispensable.  And they have been punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance.  They have been punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of perfection still; just as the Puritan’s ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded.  Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers’ voyage, they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil,—­souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane, were eminent,—­accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them!  In the same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all around us.  Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true goal.  As I said with regard to wealth:  Let us look at the life of those who live in and for it,—­so I say with regard to the religious organizations.  Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonnconformist,—­a life of jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection!