flown out of his hand, faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!”
“Oh, let the soul alone! Let it go to God as best it may! It is entangled enough. It is hard enough for it to rise above the distractions which environ it. Let a man teach the rain how to fall, the clouds how to shape themselves and move their airy rounds, the seasons how to cherish and garner the universal abundance; but let him not teach a soul to pray, on whom the Holy Ghost doth brood!”
He recognizes the difference between religion and theology.
“How sad is that field from which battle hath just departed! By as much as the valley was exquisite in its loveliness, is it now sublimely sad in its desolation. Such to me is the Bible, when a fighting theologian has gone through it.
“How wretched a spectacle is a garden into which the cloven-footed beasts have entered! That which yesterday was fragrant, and shone all over with crowded beauty, is to-day rooted, despoiled, trampled, and utterly devoured, and all over the ground you shall find but the rejected cuds of flowers and leaves, and Forms that have been champed for their juices and then rejected. Such to me is the Bible, when the pragmatic prophecy-monger and the swinish utilitarian have toothed its fruits and eraunached its blossoms.
“O garden of the Lord! whose seeds dropped down from heaven, and to whom angels bear watering dews night by night! O flowers and plants of righteousness! O sweet and holy fruits! We walk among you, and gaze with loving eyes, and rest under your odorous shadows; nor will we, with sacrilegious hand, tear you, that we may search the secret of your roots, nor spoil you, that we may know how such wondrous grace and goodness are evolved within you!’’
“What a pin is, when the diamond has dropped from its setting, is the Bible, when its emotive truths have been taken away. What a babe’s clothes are, when the babe has slipped out of them into death and the mother’s arms clasp only raiment, would be the Bible, if the Babe of Bethlehem, and the truths of deep-heartedness that clothed his life, should slip out of it.”
“There is no food for soul or body which God has not symbolized. He is light for the eye, sound for the ear, bread for food, wine for weariness, peace for trouble. Every faculty of the soul, if it would but open its door, might see Christ standing over against if, and silently asking by his smile, 'Shall I come in unto thee?’ But men open the door and look down, not up, and thus see him not. So it is that men sigh on, not knowing what the soul wants, but only that it needs something. Our yearnings are homesickness for heaven; our sighings are for God; just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slumber, know not that they sob for their parents. The soul’s inarticulate meanings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, but having no one to tell them what it is that ails them.”
“I feel sensitive about theologies. Theology is good in its place; but when it puts its hoof upon a living, palpitating, human heart, my heart cries out against it.”
“There are men marching along in the company of Christians on earth, who, when they knock at the gate of heaven, will hear God answer, 'I never knew you.’ —‘ But the ministers did, and the church-books did.’—‘ That may be. I never did.’
“It is no matter who knows a man on earth, if God does not know him.”}}
“The heart-knowledge, through God’s teaching, is true wealth, and they are often poorest who deem themselves most rich. I, in the pulpit, preach with proud forms to many a humble widow and stricken man who might well teach me. The student, spectacled and gray with wisdom, and stuffed with lumbered lore, may be childish and ignorant beside some old singing saint who brings the wood into his study, and who, with the lens of his own experience, brings down the orbs of truth, and beholds through his faith and his humility things of which the white-haired scholar never dreamed.”
He has eminent integrity, is faithful to his own soul, and to every delegated trust. No words are needed here as proof. His life is daily argument. The public will understand this; men whose taste he offends, and whose theology he shocks, or to whose philosophy he is repugnant, have confidence in the integrity of the man. He means what he says,—is solid all through.
“From the beginning, I educated myself to speak along the line and in the current of my moral convictions; and though, in later days, it has carried me through places where there were some batterings and bruisings, yet I have been supremely grateful that I was led to adopt this course. I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there
