me accepted word of yesterday; but he
may also strike out on the path of originality, announcing a gospel
for to-morrow, constructed by his own fancy, which has no Divine
sanction. Neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy is a guarantee: the only
guarantee is a humble mind living in the secret of the Lord.

* * * * *

I have mentioned that the prophets subsisted on the contributions of
those to whom their oracles were supposed to be valuable. There is,
indeed, very little information on this head; but they are accused of
prophesying for bread, and avarice and a greedy appetite for the good
things of this life are reproaches frequently cast at them. It is not
likely that prophecy can ever have been a paying profession, but it
would appear to have been at least a means of livelihood; and there
are indications that those who enjoyed an exceptional popularity may
have occupied a high social standing. Ezekiel, whose characterizations
of the false prophets are remarkably striking, uses about them a
significant figure of speech. He says that, while a true prophet was
like a wall of fire to his country, standing in the breach when danger
threatened and defending it with his life, the false prophets were
like the foxes that burrow among the ruins of fallen cities. What
mattered it to them that their country was degraded, if only they had
found comfortable places for themselves?

This also is a painful side of the subject. It is inevitable that the
ministry should become a means of livelihood, and yet it is fatal to
pursue it with this in view. It is the least lucrative of the
professions, and yet, in the pressure of modern life, it may tempt men
to join it merely as a profession. Even if it has been entered upon
from higher motives, the attrition of domestic necessities may dry up
the nobler motives and convert the minister into a hireling who thinks
chiefly of his wages.[41] The commercial spirit is nearly omnipotent
in our day; and men who can buy everything for money think that
ministers are procurable in the same way. Thus they tempt men away
with bribes of money from work to which God has called them. I am far
from questioning the importance of the mission of the pulpit to the
wealthier classes; and we must have men of culture to preach to the
cultivated. I would no more think of setting up the poor against the
rich, as the exclusive objects of the Church's attention, than the
rich against the poor