And the very last
charity-sermon I heard was infected with it. After giving many good
reasons for charity, the preacher wound up with 'and, for all you give,
you will be repaid a thousandfold!' Oh the utter meanness of such a
motive, to be put before men who do know what self-sacrifice is,
who can appreciate generosity and heroism! Talk of Original Sin!"
he went on with increasing bitterness. "Can you have a stronger proof
of the Original Goodness there must be in this nation, than the fact
that Religion has been preached to us, as a commercial speculation,
for a century, and that we still believe in a God?"
"It couldn't have gone on so long," Lady Muriel musingly remarked,
"if the Opposition hadn't been practically silenced--put under what the
French call la cloture. Surely in any lecture-hall, or in private
society, such teaching would soon have been hooted down?"
"I trust so," said Arthur: "and, though I don't want to see 'brawling
in church' legalised, I must say that our preachers enjoy an enormous
privilege--which they ill deserve, and which they misuse terribly.
We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him 'Now, you may
stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour. We won't interrupt you by
so much as a word! You shall have it all your own way!' And what does
he give us in return? Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to
you over a dinner-table, you would think 'Does the man take me for a
fool?'"
The return of Eric from his walk checked the tide of Arthur's eloquence,
and, after a few minutes' talk on more conventional topics, we took our
leave.
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