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As an influence in stimulating school and college students, Macaulay
must be given a foremost place, but greater than Macaulay, because of
his spiritual fervor and his moral force, stands Thomas Carlyle, the
great prophet and preacher of the nineteenth century, whose influence
will outlast that of all other writers of his time. And this spiritual
potency, which resides in his best work, is not weakened by his love
of the Strong Man in History or his fear of the rising tide of popular
democracy, in which he saw a dreadful repetition of the horrors of the
French Revolution. It was the Puritan element in his granite
character which gave most of the flaming spiritual ardor to
Carlyle's work. It was this which made him the greatest preacher of
his day, although he had left behind him all the old articles of faith
for which his forefathers went cheerfully to death on many a bloody
field.
[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE FROM THE WORLD-FAMED MASTERPIECE OF
PORTRAITURE BY JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER]
Carlyle believed a strong religious faith was vital to any real and
lasting work in this world, and from the day he gave out _Sartor
Resartus_ he preached this doctrine in all his books. He was born into
a generation that was content to accept the forms of religion, so long
as it could enjoy the good things of this world, and much of Carlyle's
speech sounded to the people of his day like the warnings of the
prophet Isaiah to the Israelites of old.
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