IT will hardly be questioned that the influence of the priesthood is waning. Why this is so, it is not within the province of a mere book-collector to discuss; but the fact will, I think, be admitted. In the past, however, every country and almost every generation has produced a type of priest which seems to have been the special product of its time. The soothsayer of old Rome, concealed, perhaps, in a hollow wall, whispered his warning through the marble lips of a conveniently placed statue, in return for a suitable present indirectly offered; while to-day Billy Sunday, leaping and yelling like an Apache Indian, shrieks his admonitions at us, and takes up a collection in a clothes-basket. It is all very sad and, as Oscar Wilde would have said, very tedious.
Priests, prophets, parsons, or preachers! They are all human, like the rest of us. Too many of them are merely insurance agents soliciting us to take out policies of insurance against fire everlasting, for a fee commensurate, not with the risk, but with our means. It is a well-established trade, in which the representatives of the old-line companies, who have had the cream of the business, look with disapproval upon new methods, as well they may, their own having worked so well for centuries. The premiums collected have been enormous, and no evidence has ever been produced that the insurer took any risk whatever.
And the profession has been, not only immensely lucrative, but highly honorable. In times past priests have ranked with kings: sometimes wearing robes of silk studded with jewels; on fortune’s cap the topmost button, exhibit Wolsey; sometimes appearing in sackcloth relieved by ashes; every man in his humor. But it is not my purpose to inveigh against any creed or sect; only I confess my bewilderment at the range of human interest in questions of doctrine, while simple Christianity stands neglected.
The subject of this paper, however, is not creeds in general or in particular, but an eighteenth-century clergyman of the Church of England. It will not, I think, be doubted by those who have given the subject any attention that religious affairs in England in the eighteenth century were at a very low ebb indeed. Carlyle, as was his habit, called that century some hard names; but some of us are glad occasionally to steal away from our cares and forget our present “efficiency” in that century of leisure. Perhaps not for always, but certainly for a time, it is a relief to
... live in that past Georgian day
When men were less inclined to say
That “Time is Gold,” and overlay
And to quote Austin Dobson again, with a slight variation:—
Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine:—
That is the date of this tale of mine.
First great George was buried and gone;
George the Second was plodding on.
Whitefield preached to the colliers grim;
Bishops in lawn sleeves preached at him;
Walpole talked of “a man and his price”;
Nobody’s virtue was over-nice:—