Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/239

dent of on insurance office or a bank, or the agent of a cotton-mill; the judge deserts hie station on the bench, and presides over a railroad; the governor or senator wants a place in the post-office; the historian longs for a "chance in the custom house," The pen stoops to the office, that to the purse. The scholar would rather make a fortune by a balsam of wild cherry than write Hamlet or Paradise Lost for nothing; rather than help mankind by making & Paradise Regained. The well-endowed minister thinks how much mere money he might have made had ho speculated in stocks and not theology, and mourns that the Kingdom of heaven does not pay in this present, life fourfold. The professor of Greek is sorry he was not a surveyor and superintendent of a railroad, he should have so much more money; that is what he has learned from Plato and Diogenes. We estimate the skill of an artist like that of a pedler, not by the pictures he has made, but by the money. There is a mercantile way of determining literary merit, not by the author's books, but by his balance with the publisher. No church is yet called after a man who is merely rich, something in the New Testament might hinder that; but the ministers estimate their brother minister by the greatness of Ms position, not of his character; not by his piety and goodness, not even by his reason and understanding, the culture he has attained thereby, and the use he makes thereof, but by the wealth of his church and the largeness of his salary; so that ho is not thought the fortunate and great minister who has a large outgo of spiritual riches, rebukes the sins of the nation and turns many to righteousness, but he. who has a large material income, ministers, though poorly, to rich men,, and is richly paid for that function. The well-paid clergymen of a city tell the professor of theology that he must teach "such doctrines as the merchants approve," or they will not give money to the college, and he, it, and the "cause of the Lord," will all come to the ground at the same time and in kindred confusion. So blind money would put out the heavenly eyes of science, and lead her also to his own ditch. It mast not be forgotten that there use men in the midst of us, rich, respectable, and highly honoured with social rank and political power, who practically and in strict conformity with their theory, honour Judas, who made money by his