Carlyle does not, indeed, claim to be a Jew, or to reject Christ. On the contrary, he speaks of him with very sincere respect. He seems, however, to know nothing of him but what he has read in Goethe about the "worship of sorrow." The Gospel appears to him to be, essentially, a worship of sorrow. That Christ "came to save sinners,"--of that Carlyle has not the faintest idea. To him the notion of "saving sinners" is only "rose-water philanthropy." He does not wish them saved, he wishes them damned,--swept into hell as soon as convenient. But, as everything which is real has two sides, that of _truth_ and that of _love_,--it usually happens that he who only sees _one_ side at last ceases even to see that. All goodness, to Carlyle, is truth,--in man it is sincerity, or love of reality, sight of the actual facts,--in God it is justice, divine adherence to law, infinite guidance of the world and of every human soul according to a strict and inevitable rule of righteousness. At first this seems to be a providence,--and Carlyle has everywhere, in the earlier epoch, shown full confidence in Providence. But believe only in justice and truth,--omit the doctrine of forgiveness, redemption, salvation,--and faith in Providence becomes sooner or later a despairing fatalism. The dark problem of evil remains insoluble without the doctrine of redemption. So it was that Carlyle, seeing at first the chief duty of man to be the worship of reality, the love of truth, next made that virtue to consist in sincerity, or being in earnest. Truth was being true to one's self. In this lay the essence of heroism. So that Burns, being sincere and earnest, was a hero,--Odin was a hero,--Mohammed was a hero,--Cromwell was a hero,--Mirabeau and Danton were heroes,--and Frederick the Great was a hero. That which was first the love of truth, and caused him to reverence the calm intellectual force of Schiller and Goethe, soon became earnestness and sincerity, and then became power. For the proof of earnestness is power. So from power, by eliminating all love, all tenderness, as being only rose-water philanthropy, he at last became a worshiper of mere will, of force in its grossest form. So he illustrates those lines of Shakespeare in which this process is so well described. In "Troilus and Cressida" Ulysses is insisting on the importance of keeping everything in its place, and giving to the best things and persons their due priority. Otherwise, mere force will govern all things. "Strength would be lord of imbecility,"-- as Carlyle indeed openly declares that it ought to be,-- "And the rude son should strike his father dead," which Carlyle does not quite approve of in the case of Dr. Francia. But why not, if he maintains that strength is the measure of justice?