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 Chapterhouses 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 recognised 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 raw-hide; 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 civilised 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 Teufelsdröckh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular
chapter on Church-Clothes!