CHURCH-CLOTHES.
Not less questionable is his Chapter on _Church-Clothes_, which has the
farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here translate
it entire:--
"By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean infinitely more
than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher
Sunday Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes are,
in our vocabulary, the Forms, the _Vestures_, under which men have at
various periods embodied and represented for themselves the Religious
Principle; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a
sensible and practically active Body, so that it might dwell among them as
a living and life-giving WORD.
"These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and
garnitures of Human Existence. They are first spun and woven, I may say,
by that wonder of wonders, SOCIETY; for it is still only when 'two or three
are gathered together,' that Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed
indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself
(as with 'cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be embodied in a visible
Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than magical, is that
Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward: here properly Soul
first speaks with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what
sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call Union,
mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis:
'It is certain, my Belief gains quite _infinitely_ the moment I can
convince another mind thereof'! Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in
those eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where
rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul is
straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and
reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of
embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what miraculous
virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied
hulls of our Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the Divine Life we
speak, and inmost ME is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost ME!
"Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are first spun and woven by
Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes possible
by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and present,
may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or other of
these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying Church,
which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach and prophesy,
but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church
gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to
dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapter-houses and
Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let
him," says the oracular Professor, "read on, light of heart (_getrosten
Muthes_).
"But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially
recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without
such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not
exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body
Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your
Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the
Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying _under_ such
SKIN), whereby Society stands and works;--then is Religion the inmost
Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circulation
to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and Muscles (of
Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic vitality; the SKIN
would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting rawhide; and Society itself
a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but
Gregarious; which latter state also could not continue, but must gradually
issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and
dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say, the very dust and dead
body of Society would have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so
all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes to civilized or even
to rational men.
"Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church-Clothes have gone
sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become mere
hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer
dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive
their trade; and the mask still glares on you with its glass eyes, in
ghastly affectation of Life,--some generation-and-half after Religion has
quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new
Vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons.
As a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all
men, so is a Sham-priest (_Schein-priester_) the falsest and basest;
neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will
one day be torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or
even to burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes.
"All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second Volume,
_On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society_; which volume, as treating
practically of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues,
or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the Transcendental or ultimate
Portion of this my work on _Clothes_, and is already in a state of
forwardness."
And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, does
Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular chapter on
Church-Clothes!