A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his arguments.These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not believe the proposition they tend to prove,--as is often the case with paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,--brain, heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped for us by contact with the whole circle of our being.
--There is one thing more,--said the divinity-student,--that I wished to speak of; I mean that idea of yours, expressed some time since, of depolarizing the text of sacred books in order to judge them fairly.
May I ask why you do not try the experiment yourself?
Certainly,--I replied,--if it gives you any pleasure to ask foolish questions.I think the ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be laid, but I don't know that you have any right to ask me to go and lay it.But, for that matter, I have heard a good deal of Scripture depolarized in and out of the pulpit.I heard the Rev.
Mr.F.once depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son in Park-Street Church.Many years afterwards, I heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized version in Rome, New York.I heard an admirable depolarization of the story of the young man who "had great possessions" from the Rev.Mr.H.in another pulpit, and felt that I had never half understood it before.All paraphrases are more or less perfect depolarizations.But I tell you this: the faith of our Christian community is not robust enough to bear the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents.You have only to look back to Dr.Channing's famous Baltimore discourse and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to satisfy yourself on this point.Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified.Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault of his; but sooner or later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden calf,--word-images as well as metal and wooden ones.Rough work, iconoclasm,--but the only way to get at truth.It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation;veritas odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be busie with voe vobis, let him looke shortly for coram nobas."The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
--Think what we like! --said the divinity-student;--think what we like! What! against all human and divine authority?
Against all human versions of its own or any other authority.At our own peril always, if we do not like the right,--but not at the risk of being hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled on green fagots for ecclesiastical treason! Nay, we have got so far, that the very word heresy has fallen into comparative disuse among us.
And now, my young friend, let-us shake hands and stop our discussion, which we will not make a quarrel.I trust you know, or will learn, a great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to teach them the one, and a Pope to teach them the other!
That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student.
The next morning we got talking a little on the same subject, very good-naturedly, as people return to a matter they have talked out.
You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your democratic notions get into print.You will be fired into from all quarters.
If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's name on it! --I said.
--I can't stop to pick out the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers.
Right, Sir! right!--said the Little Gentleman.The scamps! I know the fellows.They can't give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they must have it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it reaches him,--and forty cents of it gets spilt, like the water out of the fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;--but when it comes to anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then advertising those people through the country as the authors of them,--oh, then it is that they let not their left hand know what their right hand doeth!
I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir.He comes along with a very sanctimonious look, Sir, with his "secret errand unto thee," and his "message from God unto thee," and then pulls out his hidden knife with that unsuspected hand of his,---(the Little Gentleman lifted his clenched left hand with the blood-red jewel on the ring-finger,)--and runs it, blade and haft, into a man's stomach!
Don't meddle with these fellows, Sir.They are read mostly by persons whom you would not reach, if you were to write ever so much.
Let 'em alone.A man whose opinions are not attacked is beneath contempt.
I hope so,--I said.--I got three pamphlets and innumerable squibs flung at my head for attacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former years.When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the sneers of those whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins.--What would you do, if the folks without names kept at you, trying to get a San Benito on to your shoulders that would fit you?--Would you stand still in fly-time, or would you give a kick now and then?