he perception of
virtue; he must fight against precedent and tradition and custom; he
must realize that one point of union is more important than a hundred
points of difference. He must set himself against upholsteries and
uniforms, against formalities and rituals. He must abjure wealth and
position, in favour of humble kindliness and serviceableness. He must
have a sense of poetry and romance and beauty about life; where other
men are artists in words, in musical tones, in pigments or sculptured
stone, he must be an artist in virtue. He must be the friend and lover
of humble, inefficient, inarticulate, unpleasing persons; and he must
be able to show that there is a desirable quality of beauty in the most
sordid and commonplace action, if faithfully performed.

Against such an ideal are arrayed all the forces of the world. Christ
and Christ-like men have held up such an ideal to humanity; and the
sorrow of it is that, the moment that such thoughts have won for
themselves the incredible and instant power that they do win among
mortals, men of impure motive, who have desired the power more than the
service, have seized upon the source, have fenced it off, have
systematized its distribution, have enriched themselves by withholding
and denying it to all but those who can pay a price, if not of wealth,
at all events of submission and obedience and recognition.

A man who desires the true priesthood may perhaps find it readiest to
his hand in some ecclesiastical organization; yet there he is
surrounded by danger; his impulses are repressed; he must sacrifice
them for the sake of the caste to which he belongs; he is told to be
cautious and prudent; he is praised and rewarded for being
conventional. But a man may also take such a consecration for himself,
as a king takes a crown from the altar and crowns himself with might;
he need not require it at the hands of another. If a man resolves not
to live for himself or his own ambitions, but to walk up and down in
the earth, praising simplicity and virtue and the love of God wherever
he sees it, protesting against tyranny and selfishness, bearing others'
burdens as far as he can, he may exercise the priesthood of God. Such
men are to be found in every Church, and even holding the highest
places in them; but such a priesthood is found, though perhaps few
suspect it, by thousands among women where it is found by tens among
men. Perhaps it may be said that if a man adds the tendernes