dom and truth of that which he is solemnly ministering: hence
that friend of Arnold's was wise in this world, who advised him
to take a curacy in order to settle his doubts concerning the
Trinity.--Nowhere from any body of priests, clergy, or ministers, as
an Order, is religious progress to be anticipated, until intellectual
creeds are destroyed. A greater responsibility therefore is laid upon
laymen, to be faithful and bold in avowing their convictions.

Yet it is not from the practical ministers of religion, that the great
opposition to religious reform proceeds. The "secular clergy" (as the
Romanists oddly call them) were seldom so bigoted as the "regulars."
So with us, those who minister to men in their moral trials have
for the most part a deeper moral spirit, and are less apt to place
religion in systems of propositions. The _robur legionum_ of bigotry,
I believe, is found,--first, in non-parochial clergy, and next in the
anonymous writers for religious journals and "conservative" newspapers;
who too generally[3] adopt a style of which they would be ashamed,
if the names of the writers were attached; who often seem desirous to
make it clear that it is their trade to carp, insult, or slander;
who assume a tone of omniscience, at the very moment when they show
narrowness of heart and judgment. To such writing those who desire
to promote earnest Thought and tranquil Progress ought anxiously to
testify their deep repugnance. A large part of this slander and insult
is prompted by a base pandering to the (real or imagined) taste of the
public, and will abate when it visibly ceases to be gainful.

* * * * *

The law of God's moral universe, as known to us, is that of Progress.
We trace it from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry;
to the more flexible Polytheism of Syria and Greece; the poetical
Pantheism of philosophers, and the moral monotheism of a few sages.
So in Palestine and in the Bible itself we see, first of all, the
image-worship of Jacob's family, then the incipient elevation of
Jehovah above all other Gods by Moses, the practical establishment
of the worship of Jehovah alone by Samuel, the rise of spiritual
sentiment under David and the Psalmists, the more magnificent views
of Hezekiah's prophets, finally in the Babylonish captivity the new
tenderness assumed by that second Isaiah and the later Psalmists. But
ceremonialism more and more encrusted the restored nat