no sound of the news-boy’s cry must mix with the echoes of solemn courts, and no reflection of wasting fires in which life and treasure melt can flash through their windows, and no deeds of manly heroism or womanly patriotism are to have applause before God and Christ in the temple,—­if nothing but some preexisting scheme of salvation, distinct from all living activity, must absorb the mind,—­then I totally misunderstand and am quite out of my place.  Then let me go.  It is high time I were away.  I have stayed too long already.”  Such should be the speech of the minister, knowing he is not tempted to be a partisan, and is possessed with but an over-kind sensibility to dread any ruffling of others’ feelings or discord with those that are dear.

In the first year of a young minister’s service, Dr. Channing besought him to let no possible independence of parochial support relax his industry:  a needless caution to one not constituted to feel seductions of sloth, in whom active energy is no merit, and who can have no motive but the people’s good.  What else is there for him to seek?  There is no by-end open, and no virtue in a devotedness there is no lure to forego.  There is no position he can covet, as politicians are said to bid for the Presidency.  But one thing is indispensable:  he must tell what he thinks; he is strong only in his convictions; the sacrifice of them he cannot make; it were but his debility, if he did; and the treasury of all the fortunes of the richest parish were no more than a cipher to purchase it from any one who, quick as he may be to human kindness, may have a more tremulous rapture for the approbation of God.

After all, to his profession and parish the preacher is in debt.  Exquisite rewards his work yields.  If controversy arise on some point with his friends, there may, after a while, be no remnant of hard feeling,—­as there are heavy cannonades, and no bit of wadding picked up.  Those who have striven with or defamed may come to cherish him all the more for their alienation.  Those who could not hear him, or, when they heard, thought him too long, or what they heard did not like, may own with him, out of their discontent, closer and sweeter bonds.  His business is expansive in its nature.  The seasons of human life in broad representation are always before him.  How many moral springs and summers, autumns and winters he sees, till he can hardly tell whether his musing on this curious existence be memory or hope, retrospect of earth or prospect of heaven! and he begins to think the spiritual world abolishes distinctions of spheres and times, as parents, that were his lambs, bring their babes to his arms, and, even in the flesh, his mortal passing into eternal vision, he beholds, as in vivid dreaming, other parents leading their children on other shores, unseen, though hard by.  Where, after a score or two of years, is his church?  He has several congregations,—­one within the dedicated walls, one of emigrants whom his fancy