“The sooner such men are out of the church, the better.”

“The youth-time of churches produces enterprise; their age, indolence; but even this might be borne, did not these dead men sit in the door of their sepulchres, crying out against every living man who refuses to wear the livery of death.  In India, when the husband dies, they burn his widow with him.  I am almost tempted to think, that, if, with the end of every pastorate, the church itself were disbanded and destroyed, to be gathered again by the succeeding teacher, we should thus secure an immortality of youth.”

“A religious life is not a thing which spends itself.  It is like a river which widens continually, and is never so broad or so deep as at its mouth, where it rolls into the ocean of eternity.”

“God made the world to relieve an over-full creative thought,—­as musicians sing, as we talk, as artists sketch, when full of suggestions.  What profusion is there in his work!  When trees blossom, there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits, that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long.  What unnumbered cathedrals has he reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music! and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of his hand, faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!”

“Oh, let the soul alone!  Let it go to God as best it may!  It is entangled enough.  It is hard enough for it to rise above the distractions which environ it.  Let a man teach the rain how to fall, the clouds how to shape themselves and move their airy rounds, the seasons how to cherish and garner the universal abundance; but let him not teach a soul to pray, on whom the Holy Ghost doth brood!”

He recognizes the difference between religion and theology.

“How sad is that field from which battle hath just departed!  By as much as the valley was exquisite in its loveliness, is it now sublimely sad in its desolation.  Such to me is the Bible, when a fighting theologian has gone through it.

“How wretched a spectacle is a garden into which the cloven-footed beasts have entered!  That which yesterday was fragrant, and shone all over with crowded beauty, is to-day rooted, despoiled, trampled, and utterly devoured, and all over the ground you shall find but the rejected cuds of flowers and leaves, and forms that have been champed for their juices and then rejected.  Such to me is the Bible, when the pragmatic prophecy-monger and the swinish utilitarian have toothed its fruits and craunched its blossoms.

“O garden of the Lord! whose seeds dropped down from heaven, and to whom angels bear watering dews night by night!  O flowers and plants of righteousness!  O sweet and holy fruits!  We walk among you, and gaze with loving eyes, and rest under your odorous shadows; nor will we, with sacrilegious hand, tear you, that we may search the secret of your roots, nor spoil you, that we may know how such wondrous grace and goodness are evolved within you!”