from office.

Few if any members of any body of clergy, it may be added, would
avowedly seek an increase of salary for gain's sake; and if such avowal
were openly made by a clergyman, it would be found obnoxious to the
sense of propriety among his congregation. It may also be noted in this
connection that no one but the scoffers and the very obtuse are not
instinctively grieved inwardly at a jest from the pulpit; and that there
are none whose respect for their pastor does not suffer through any mark
of levity on his part in any conjuncture of life, except it be levity
of a palpably histrionic kind--a constrained unbending of dignity. The
diction proper to the sanctuary and to the priestly office should also
carry little if any suggestion of effective everyday life, and should
not draw upon the vocabulary of modern trade or industry. Likewise,
one's sense of the proprieties is readily offended by too detailed and
intimate a handling of industrial and other purely human questions at
the hands of the clergy. There is a certain level of generality below
which a cultivated sense of the proprieties in homiletical discourse
will not permit a well-bred clergyman to decline in his discussion
of temporal interests. These matters that are of human and secular
consequence simply, should properly be handled with such a degree of
generality and aloofness as may imply that the speaker represents
a master whose interest in secular affairs goes only so far as to
permissively countenance them.

It is further to be noticed that the non-conforming sects and variants
whose priesthood is here under discussion, vary among themselves in the
degree of their conformity to the ideal scheme of sacerdotal life. In
a general way it will be found that the divergence in this respect is
widest in the case of the relatively young denominations, and especially
in the case of such of the newer denominations as have chiefly a lower
middle-class constituency. They commonly show a large admixture of
humanitarian, philanthropic, or other motives which can not be classed
as expressions of the devotional attitude; such as the desire of
learning or of conviviality, which enter largely into the effective
interest shown by members of these organizations. The non-conforming or
sectarian movements have commonly proceeded from a mixture of motives,
some of which are at variance with that sense of status on which the
priestly office rests. Sometimes, indeed, the mot