om his own, whose processes of mind
have therefore been different, are utterly unintelligible to him.
Even a cordial desire for sympathy is not able to break through the
prickly hedge of habits, notions, and technicalities which separates
them. Oftentimes the desire itself is extinguished in those who
ought to cherish it most, by the fear of meeting with something
portentous or dangerous. Nor can he defend a dogma better than he
communes with men; for he knows not that which attacks it. He
supposes it to be a set of book arguments, whereas it is something
lying very deep in the heart of the disputant, into which he has
never penetrated.

Hence there is a general complaint that we 'are ignorant of the
thoughts and feelings of our contemporaries'; most attribute this to
a fear of looking below the surface, lest we should find hollowness
within; many like to have it so, because they have thus an excuse
for despising us. But surely such an ignorance is more inexcusable
in us, than in the priests of any nation: we, less than any, are
kept from the sun and air; our discipline is less than any contrived
merely to make us acquainted with the commonplaces of divinity. We
are enabled, nay, obliged, from our youth upwards, to mix with
people of our own age, who are destined for all occupations and
modes of life; to share in their studies, their enjoyments, their
perplexities, their temptations. Experience, often so dearly
bought, is surely not meant to be thrown away: whether it has been
obtained without the sacrifice of that which is most precious, or
whether the lost blessing has been restored twofold, and good is
understood, not only as the opposite of evil, but as the deliverance
from it, we cannot be meant to forget all that we have been
learning. The teachers of other nations may reasonably mock us, as
having less of direct book-lore than themselves; they should not be
able to say, that we are without the compensation of knowing a
little more of living creatures.

A clergyman, it seems to me, should be better able than other men to
cast aside that which is merely accidental, either in his own
character, or in the character of the age to which he belongs, and
to apprehend that which is essential and eternal. His acceptance of
fixed creeds, which belong as much to one generation as another, and
which have survived amid all changes and convulsions, should raise
him especially above the temptation to exalt the fashi