THE RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS.

    FROM “HUDIBRAS,” PART I.

    He was of that stubborn crew
  Of errant saints, whom all men grant
  To be the true church militant;
  Such as do build their faith upon
  The holy text of pike and gun;
  Decide all controversies by
  Infallible artillery,
  And prove their doctrine orthodox
  By apostolic blows and knocks;
  Call fire, and sword, and desolation
  A godly, thorough Reformation,
  Which always must be carried on
  And still be doing, never done;
  As if religion were intended
  For nothing else but to be mended. 
  A sect whose chief devotion lies
  In odd perverse antipathies;
  In falling out with that or this,
  And finding somewhat still amiss;
  More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
  Than dog distract, or monkey sick;
  That with more care keep holiday
  The wrong than others the right way;
  Compound for sins they are inclined to,
  By damning those they have no mind to;
  Still so perverse and opposite,
  As if they worshipped God for spite;
  The self-same thing they will abhor
  One way, and long another for.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

* * * * *

THE PROBLEM.

    I like a church; I like a cowl;
  I love a prophet of the soul;
  And on my heart monastic aisles
  Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
  Yet not for all his faith can see
  Would I that cowled churchman be. 
  Why should the vest on him allure,
  Which I could not on me endure?

    Not from a vain or shallow thought
  His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
  Never from lips of cunning fell
  The thrilling Delphic oracle: 
  Out from the heart of nature rolled
  The burdens of the Bible old;
  The litanies of nations came,
  Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,
  Up from the burning core below,—­
  The canticles of love and woe. 
  The hand that rounded Peters dome,
  And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
  Wrought in a sad sincerity;
  Himself from God he could not free;
  He builded better than he knew;—­
  The conscious stone to beauty grew.

    Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest
  Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? 
  Or how the fish outbuilt her shell. 
  Painting with morn each annual cell? 
  Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
  To her old leaves new myriads? 
  Such and so grew these holy piles,
  Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 
  Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
  As the best gem upon her zone;
  And Morning opes with haste her lids,
  To gaze upon the Pyramids;
  O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,
  As on its friends, with kindred eye;
  For, out of Thought’s interior sphere,
  These wonders rose to upper air;
  And Nature gladly gave them place,
  Adopted them into her race,
  And granted them an equal date
  With Andes and with Ararat.