LITTLE FOXES.—PART V.
INTOLERANCE.
"And what are you going to preach about this month, Mr. Crowfield?"
"I am going to give a sermon on Intolerance, Mrs. Crowfield."
"Religious intolerance?"
"No,—domestic and family and educational intolerance,—one of the seven deadly sins on which I am preaching,—one of 'the foxes.'"
People are apt to talk as if all the intolerance in life were got up and expended in the religious world; whereas religious intolerance is only a small branch of the radical, strong, all-pervading intolerance of human nature.
Physicians are quite as intolerant as theologians. They never have had the power of burning at the stake for medical opinions, but they certainly have shown the will. Politicians are intolerant. Philosophers are intolerant, especially those who pique themselves on liberal opinions. Painters and sculptors are intolerant. And housekeepers are intolerant, virulently denunciatory concerning any departures from their particular domestic creed.
Mrs. Alexander Exact, seated at her domestic altar, gives homilies on the degeneracy of modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations of Dr. Holdfast as to the falling off from the good old faith.