a spiritual guide whose
fingers taper to a fine point, and one who could wear, if need be, a lady's
shoe. Get out, with your great paws and clodhoppers! We want in this church
a Pulpit that will talk about heaven, and make no allusion to the other
place. I have a highly educated nose, and can stand the smell of garlic and
assafoetida better than brimstone. We want an oleaginous minister, commonly
called oily. We want him distinguished for his unctuosity. We want an
ecclesiastical scent-bag, or, as you might call him, a heavenly nosegay,
perfect in every respect, his ordinary sneeze as good as a doxology. If he
cry during some emotional part of his discourse, let it not be an
old-fashioned cry, with big hands or coat sleeve sopping up the tears, but
let there be just two elegant tears, one from each eye, rolling down
parallel into a pocket-handkerchief richly embroidered by the sewing
society, and inscribed with the names of all the young ladies' Bible class.
If he kneel before sermon, let it not be a coming down like a soul in want,
but on one knee, so artistically done that the foot shall show the
twelve-dollar patent leather shoe, while the aforesaid pocket-handkerchief
is just peeping from the coat pocket, to see if the ladies who made it are
all there--the whole scene a religious tableau. We want a Pulpit that will
not get us into a tearing-down revival, where the people go shouting and
twisting about, regardless of carpets and fine effects, but a revival that
shall be born in a band-box, and wrapped in ruffles, and lie on a church
rug, so still that nobody will know it is there. If we could have such a
Pulpit as that, all my fellow-Pews would join me, and we would give it a
handsome support; yes, we would pay him; if we got just what we want, we
could afford to give, in case he were thoroughly eloquent, Demosthenic and
bewitching--I am quite certain we could, although I should not want myself
to be held responsible; yes, he should have eight hundred dollars a year,
and that is seven hundred and sixty dollars more than Milton got for his
'Paradise Lost,' about which one of his learned contemporaries wrote: 'The
old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the
fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other.'
Nothing spoils ministers like too big a salary. Jeshurun waxed fat and
kicked; if it had not been for the wax and the fat, he would not have
kicked. Sirloin steaks an