any honor that men could pay us, if we remembered that
every day we sat at the table of the Great King? Yet must we not forget
that we are in strictest bonds His servants also; for there is no
impiety so abject as that which expects to be _deadheaded (ut ita
dicam)_ through life, and which, calling itself trust in Providence, is
in reality asking Providence to trust us and taking up all our goods on
false pretences. It is a wise rule to take the world as we find it, not
always to leave it so.

It has often set me thinking when I find that I can always pick up
plenty of empty nuts under my shagbark-tree. The squirrels know them by
their lightness, and I have seldom seen one with the marks of their
teeth in it. What a school-house is the world, if our wits would only
not play truant! For I observe that men set most store by forms and
symbols in proportion as they are mere shells. It is the outside they
want and not the kernel. What stores of such do not many, who in
material things are as shrewd as the squirrels, lay up for the spiritual
winter-supply of themselves and their children! I have seen churches
that seemed to me garners of these withered nuts, for it is wonderful
how prosaic is the apprehension of symbols by the minds of most men. It
is not one sect nor another, but all, who, like the dog of the fable,
have let drop the spiritual substance of symbols for their material
shadow. If one attribute miraculous virtues to mere holy water, that
beautiful emblem of inward purification at the door of God's house,
another cannot comprehend the significance of baptism without being
ducked over head and ears in the liquid vehicle thereof.

[Perhaps a word of historical comment may be permitted here. My late
reverend predecessor was, I would humbly affirm, as free from prejudice
as falls to the lot of the most highly favored individuals of our
species. To be sure, I have heard Him say that 'what were called strong
prejudices were in fact only the repulsion of sensitive organizations
from that moral and even physical effluvium through which some natures
by providential appointment, like certain unsavory quadrupeds, gave
warning of their neighborhood. Better ten mistaken suspicions of this
kind than one close encounter.' This he said somewhat in heat, on being
questioned as to his motives for always refusing his pulpit to those
itinerant professors of vicarious benevolence who end their discourses
by taking up a collection