Ch. 4 - Hero as Priest

[May 15, 1840.]
LECTURE IV.
THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.


Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We have
repeatedly endeavored to explain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically
of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine
Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to
sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring
manner; there is given a Hero,--the outward shape of whom will depend on
the time and the environment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as I
understand it, is a kind of Prophet; in him too there is required to be a
light of inspiration, as we must name it. He presides over the worship of
the people; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the
spiritual Captain of the people; as the Prophet is their spiritual King
with many captains: he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through
this Earth and its work. The ideal of him is, that he too be what we can
call a voice from the unseen Heaven; interpreting, even as the Prophet did,
and in a more familiar manner unfolding the same to men. The unseen
Heaven,--the "open secret of the Universe,"--which so few have an eye for!
He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful splendor; burning with mild
equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. This, I say, is the
ideal of a Priest. So in old times; so in these, and in all times. One
knows very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of
tolerance is needful; very great. But a Priest who is not this at all, who
does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a character--of whom we had
rather not speak in this place.

Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully
perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better here
to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as Reformers
than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in
calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship;
bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into
the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under God's
guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when this same _way_ was
a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who
led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his
leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfaring and battling
Priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labor as in smooth times,
but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a
more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or