however appointed, are a means to a means to the end; and here we have the rationale of the clerical office.
You can have true religion without sacraments or public worship, and again both without clergymen; just as you can have clergymen and sacraments without true religion. And if a part of the clergy think that they stand in a more intimate relation with the divine Spirit than the rest of the community do, then they both go against the first principles of Christianity, and moreover any one, who does not shut his eyes, can see that the facts of life confute them. What Christianity, if we mistake not, tells them is that, their gifts and functions being not those of others, they have the one spirit in another way from others; but when they want to go from an ‘other’ to a ‘higher,’ then we must tell them that there are steps wanted to reach that conclusion, and such steps as Christianity can not admit.
The sum of the matter is this. Practical faith is the end; and what helps that is good, because that is good; and where a religious ordinance does not help that, there it is not good. And often it may do worse than not help, and then it is positively hurtful.
So with religious exercises, and what too exclusively is called personal piety. They are religious if they are the simple expression of, or helps to, religion; and if not, then they are not religious, and perhaps even irreligious. Religion issues in the practical realizing of the reconcilement; and where there is no such realization, there is no faith, and no religion.
Neither against the clergy, nor the sacraments, nor private devotion am I saying one word; and the reader who so understands me altogether misunderstands me. For a large number of our clergy I have a sincere personal respect, and there is scarcely any office which in my eyes is higher than that of the minister. And I recognize fully the general necessity both for private devotion and public worship. It is the abuse, and the
