f formal
causeway--Thoreau's highly developed spiritual life felt, apparently
unconsciously, less need of it than most men. But he might have been
more charitable towards those who do need it (and most of us do) if he
had been more conscious of his freedom. Those who look today for the
cause of a seeming deterioration in the influence of the church may
find it in a wider development of this feeling of Thoreau's; that the
need is less because there is more of the spirit of Christianity in the
world today. Another cause for his attitude towards the church as an
institution is one always too common among "the narrow minds" to have
influenced Thoreau. He could have been more generous. He took the arc
for the circle, the exception for the rule, the solitary bad example
for the many good ones. His persistent emphasis on the value of
"example" may excuse this lower viewpoint. "The silent influence of the
example of one sincere life ... has benefited society more than all the
projects devised for its salvation." He has little patience for the
unpracticing preacher. "In some countries a hunting parson is no
uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd dog but is far
from being a good shepherd." It would have been interesting to have
seen him handle the speculating parson, who takes a good salary--more
per annum than all the disciples had to sustain their bodies during
their whole lives--from a metropolitan religious corporation for
"speculating" on Sunday about the beauty of poverty, who preaches:
"Take no thought (for your life) what ye shall eat or what ye shall
drink nor yet what ye shall put on ... lay not up for yourself treasure
upon earth ... take up thy cross and follow me"; who on Monday becomes a
"speculating" disciple of another god, and by questionable investments,
successful enough to get into the "press," seeks to lay up a treasure
of a million dollars for his old age, as if a million dollars could
keep such a man out of the poor-house. Thoreau might observe that this
one good example of Christian degeneracy undoes all the acts of
regeneracy of a thousand humble five-hundred-dollar country parsons;
that it out-influences the "unconscious influence" of a dozen Dr.
Bushnells if there be that many; that the repentance of this man who
did not "fall from grace" because he never fell into it--that this
unnecessary repentance might save this man's own soul but not
necessarily the souls of the million head-line rea