When society
has once fairly dissolved the New Testament, which it never has done
yet, it will perhaps crystallize it over again in new forms of
language.
----I didn't know you was a settled minister over this parish,--said
the young fellow near me.
A sermon by a lay-preacher may be worth listening to,--I replied,
calmly.--It gives the _parallax_ of thought and feeling as they appear
to the observers from two very different points of view. If you wish to
get the distance of a heavenly body, you know that you must take two
observations from distant points of the earth's orbit,--in midsummer
and midwinter, for instance. To get the parallax of heavenly truths,
you must take an observation from the position of the laity as well as
of the clergy. Teachers and students of theology get a certain look,
certain conventional tones of voice, a clerical gait, a professional
neckcloth, and habits of mind as professional as their externals. They
are scholarly men and read Bacon, and know well enough what the "idols
of the tribe" are. Of course they have their false gods, as all men
that follow one exclusive calling are prone to do.--The clergy have
played the part of the fly-wheel in our modern civilization.
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