Certainly, so the true
minister's speech should run. Let him stand up and boldly say, or
always imply, "I so construe it; and if the _Church_ interpret it
otherwise, the Church is no place for me. If the _world_ will accept
no such method, the world is no place for me. I see not why I was
born, or what with Church or world I have to do. From Church and world
I should beg leave to retire, trusting that God's Universe, somewhere
beyond this dingy spot, is true to the persuasion of His mind. I must
apply religion universally to life, or not at all. If, when my country
is in peril, I cannot bring her to the altar and ask that she may be
lifted up in the arms of a common supplication,--if, in the terrible
game of honesty with political corruption, when '_Check_' is said
to the adverse power, I cannot wish and pray that '_Checkmate_' may
follow,--when some huge evil, sorely wounded, in its fierce throes
spreads destruction about, as the dying monster in Northern seas casts
up boat-loads of dying men who fall bruised and bleeding among the
fragments into the waves with the threshing of its angry tail, if
then I cannot hope that the struggle may be short, and the ship of the
Republic gather back her crew from prevailing in the conflict to sail
prosperous with all her rich cargo of truth and freedom on the voyage
over the sea of Time,--if no sound of the news-boy's cry must mix with
the echoes of solemn courts, and no reflection of wasting fires in
which life and treasure melt can flash through their windows, and
no deeds of manly heroism or womanly patriotism are to have applause
before God and Christ in the temple,--if nothing but some preexisting
scheme of salvation, distinct from all living activity, must absorb
the mind,--then I totally misunderstand and am quite out of my place.
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