otherwise such would certainly have been the first to operate, and would
have found the greatest scope in any alteration. We may hope that nothing
but a true growth in such religion as needs and seeks new expression for
new depth and breadth of feeling, will ever be permitted to lay the hand
of change upon it—a hand, otherwise, of desecration and ruin.
The sermon was chiefly occupied with proving that God is no respecter of
persons; a mark of indubitable condescension in the clergyman, the rank in
society which he could claim for himself duly considered. But,
unfortunately, the church was so constructed, that its area contained
three platforms of position, actually of differing level; the loftiest, in
the chancel, on the right hand of the pulpit, occupied by the gentry; the
middle, opposite the pulpit, occupied by the tulip-beds of their servants;
and the third, on the left of the pulpit, occupied by the common
parishioners. Unfortunately, too, by the perpetuation of some old custom,
whose significance was not worn out, all on the left of the pulpit were
expected, as often as they stood up to sing—which was three times—to
turn their backs to the pulpit, and so face away from the chancel where
the gentry stood. But there was not much inconsistency, after all; the
sermon founding its argument chiefly on the antithetical facts, that
death, lowering the rich to the level of the poor, was a dead leveller;
and that, on the other hand, the life to come would raise the poor to the
level of the rich. It was a pity that there was no phrase in the language
to justify him in carrying out the antithesis, and so balancing his
sentence like a rope-walker, by saying that life was a live leveller. The
sermon ended with a solemn warning: “Those who neglect the gospel-scheme,
and never think of death and judgment—be they rich or poor, be they
wise or ignorant—whether they dwell in the palace or the hut—shall
be damned. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,”
&c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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