today got there by being filtered down from their
fountain-head, the gospel of Christ, through dramas and tragedies and
comedies on the stage, and through the despised novel and the Christmas
story, and through the thousand and one lessons, suggestions, and
narratives of generous deeds that stir the pulses, and exalt and augment
the nobility of the nation day by day from the teeming columns of ten
thousand newspapers, and not from the drowsy pulpit.

All that is great and good in our particular civilization came straight
from the hand of Jesus Christ, and many creatures, and of divers sorts,
were doubtless appointed to disseminate it; and let us believe that this
seed and the result are the main thing, and not the cut of the
sower's garment; and that whosoever, in his way and according to his
opportunity, sows the one and produces the other, has done high service
and worthy. And further, let us try with all our strength to believe
that whenever old simple-hearted George Holland sowed this seed, and
reared his crop of broader charities and better impulses in men's
hearts, it was just as acceptable before the Throne as if the seed had
been scattered in vapid platitudes from the pulpit of the ineffable
Sabine himself.

Am I saying that the pulpit does not do its share toward disseminating
the marrow, the meat of the gospel of Christ? (For we are not talking of
ceremonies and wire-drawn creeds now, but the living heart and soul of
what is pretty often only a specter.)

No, I am not saying that. The pulpit teaches assemblages of people twice
a week nearly two hours altogether--and does what it can in that time.
The theater teaches large audiences seven times a week--28 or 30
hours altogether--and the novels and newspapers plead, and argue, and
illustrate, stir, move, thrill, thunder, urge, persuade, and supplicate,
at the feet of millions and millions of people every single day, and
all day long and far into the night; and so these vast agencies till
nine-tenths of the vineyard, and the pulpit tills the other tenth.
Yet now and then some complacent blind idiot says, "You unanointed are
coarse clay and useless; you are not as we, the regenerators of
the world; go, bury yourselves elsewhere, for we cannot take the
responsibility of recommending idlers and sinners to the yearning mercy
of Heaven." How does a soul like that stay in a carcass without getting
mixed with the secretions and sweated out through the pores? Think of