THE RANDALL FAMILY 1 33
me, being little fickle or capricious, so that those who once have me find it as dif^cult to lose me as, once lost, to regain me.
It is true I thought ill of your going to the Divinity School, as I should still, not on account of my private opinions, which, being of a negative character, are not likely to create a passion for proselytizing like any posi- tive enthusiasm. I knew you could not afford the luxury of the thing, and, if you should have doubts upon graduat- ing, must either elect bankruptcy, hypocrisy, or stultifica- tion, all of which I knew would be as painful to you as , ever to me. I knew, also, from experience, that we may become hypocrites without knowing it. I knew that, being nervous, reaction would be violent in you, and that what we call a morbid conscientiousness is generally the result of having done wrong rather than of fearing to do so, and that an obtuse person may escape the penalty of great errors better than one of sensibility can that of small ones. Furthermore, I never thought, more than the Greeks and Romans did, that boys were well adapted to instruct ma- ture people in morals or politics, and still less so when either were made a business. I felt sure that the author of Christianity did not authorize salaried preachers, but only itinerant ones, because a religion for the poor requires preachers in the condition of the people to whom they preached, and that this habit was not greatly varied from, till the Bishops of Rome usurped the throne of the Em- perors ; also, that the declaration that "the laborer is worthy of his hire " applied only to food and raiment — in which opinion I am still more confirmed by the recent careful reperusal of the so-called four gospels. I knew, also, from many instances, that those persons who sought literary ease in the church necessarily fell between two
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