our Gospels, were mendicant monks, leading lives of asceticism and poverty. There is no evidence that one of them ever received a salary; they made themselves entirely dependent on public charity and hospitality. The idea of a “church living” or “beneficed clergy” or a salaried ministry never entered into the mind of Him of whom it is said he “had not where to lay his head.”
It is enough for the present argument to emphasize the point that, in the very nature of things, it is not reasonable to expect the whole truth from a salaried ministry. Those who have a large salary naturally desire to retain it; those who have small and insufficient salaries naturally desire to have them increased.
This can only be done by carefully preserving a good orthodox standing according to the sectarian shibboleth, and in pleasing the people who rent the pews or who dole out their penurious subscriptions for “the support of the gospel.” High-salaried ministers are most likely to be proud, arrogant, bigoted, sectarian. Starveling ministers become broken in spirit, fawning, and crouching, and they generally have an unconscious expression of appeal for help, of importunity and expectancy, stamped upon their faces. The millstone of pecuniary dependence hangs so heavily about their necks that they seldom hold up their heads like men, and they can never utter a new truth or a startling sentiment without pausing to consider what effect it may have on the bread and butter of a dependent and generally numerous family. Ministers with high salaries are almost sure to be spoiled, and those with low ones are sure to be stultified and dwarfed intellectually and morally; so that we cannot depend upon either class for the highest and latest truths. Those who have a “living,” provided in a State Church, and those who depend upon voluntary contributions from the people, are alike manacled and handicapped. We must look elsewhere than to the modern pulpit for that truth which alone can give freedom and true manliness. Perfect indifference as to ecclesiastical standing, backed by pecuniary independence, is an essential condition for untrammelled investigation and the fearless proclamation of the whole truth.
It was noticed in the recent convention of scientists in this city (the American Association) that it was the salaried professors in Church colleges who professed to find no conflict between Geology and Genesis. It will always be so until the ecclesiastical tyranny is greatly weakened or destroyed, and men can utter their boldest thoughts without fear or favor, and when teachers can afford to have a conscience by making themselves free from Church control and menial dependence upon those to whom they minister for the necessaries of a mere livelihood. Science itself has made progress only as it has been fearless of priestly maledictions; and when it shall throw off the incubus of Church patronage it will astonish the world in showing the eternal antagonisms between the dogmas of the dominant theology and the essential truths of natural religion and morality.
CONCLUSIONS.
The following conclusions follow from what has been said:
The clerical fraternity claims to be more than a mere profession. It is essentially a caste, a “holy order,” borrowed from the ancient paganism, but somewhat modified by Judaism and a perverted Christianity.
From such a caste or order the whole truth is not to be expected, especially when the truth would show the order to be an imposture. The assumptions of peculiar sanctity, official pre-eminence, functional prerogatives, and special spiritual authority make such a hope unnatural and quite impossible.
The church system, with its tests of orthodoxy, its ecclesiastical handcuffs, and its worse than physical thumb-screws, puts an end to all independent thinking, and results in an enforced conformity inconsistent with intellectual progress and the discovery and full publication of the whole truth.
The pecuniary stipend upon which professional preachers are dependent has a demoralizing and degrading influence, so that the doctrinal teaching of the pulpit should not be received without hesitation and distrust. The common law excludes the testimony of interested witnesses, and, though modern statutes admit such testimony, the courts take it for what it is worth, but always with many grains of allowance. “A gift perverteth judgment,” and self-interest may sway the convictions of a man who intends and desires to be fairly honest.
The existing systems of ministerial education and support deter many superior men from entering the profession, and have placed preaching upon a commercial or mercantile basis, which has manacled and crippled the pulpit, and must sooner or later result in the consideration of the question whether the services of the clergy are worth what they cost, and whether the truth must not be sought for in some other direction. More than two hundred and fifty thousand priests and ministers (of whom about one hundred thousand are in the United States) are maintained at an annual expense of more than five hundred millions of dollars; and, as a rule, where priests are most numerous, people are poorest and public morality lowest.
A member of the Canadian Parliament (Hon. James Beatty) has recently published a book in which he opposes the whole system of a salaried clergy on scriptural and other grounds; and many other thoughtful men are beginning to inquire how it is that the Society of Friends get along so well without a “hireling ministry.”
It is a great mistake to suppose that we must look mainly to professional clergymen for instruction in divine things. It is a significant fact that the most able and important books that have been published within the last decade have been written by laymen or by persons, like Emerson, who have outgrown the narrow garments of a caste profession and have laid them off. How to get along without professional ministers has been well answered by Capt. Robert C. Adams (quoted in the writer’s book, Man—Whence and Whither? pp. 218, 219).
If ministers would give up the holy-orders idea, cast into the sea the millstone incumbrance of pecuniary dependence, engage earnestly in some legitimate work to support themselves, they would then for the first time begin to realize what soul-freedom is, and they could then preach with an intelligence and power and with a satisfaction to themselves of which they now know nothing. Let them try it for themselves and learn a lesson. Whether the clerical order is so divine an institution that we have no right to call it into question or to abolish it altogether, is a question that must be practically considered soon.
There is a deep impression widely prevailing among thoughtful and sincerely religious persons that the infidelity of the pulpit is largely responsible for the prevailing skepticism of the age. The word “infidelity” is here specially used in a strict philological sense—infidele, not faithful, unfaithfulness to a trust—but it is also used in its more general sense of disbelief in certain religious dogmas.
We impeach and arraign the clergy (admitting a few honorable exceptions) on the general charge of infidelity in the strictest and broadest sense of the word—
1st. In that they fail to qualify themselves to be the leaders of thought in the great, living questions affecting religion and morality. We have elsewhere said: “Not one minister in a thousand ‘discerns the signs of the times’ or is prepared for the crisis. Few pastors ever read anything beyond their own denominational literature. Their education is partial, one-sided, professional. They cling to mediaeval superstitions with the desperate grasp of drowning men. The great majority of the clergy are not men of broad minds and wide and deep research, and have not the ability to meet the vexed questions of to-day.”
It is an admitted policy, especially among the orthodox clergy (so called), not to read or to listen to anything that might unsettle their faith in what they have accepted as a finality; whereas no man can intelligently believe anything until he has candidly considered the reasons assigned by other men for not believing what he does. “He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.”
Professor Fisher, the champion of Yale-College orthodoxy, has recently admitted in the North American Review that at least one of the causes of the decline of clerical authority and influence is the increased intelligence of the laity. If the people cannot get what they desire from the pulpit, they will seek it from
