are truer, simpler, more of common sense than balances at bankers'
or preference shares. He is a protest against the money-heaping
tendencies of men, against the desire of rank or estimation or any kind
of social distinction. With him all men are equal, as in the Church
all have equal rights, and rank ceases on the threshold of the same,
overpowered by the presence of the Son of Mary, who was married to a
carpenter--overpowered by the presence of the God of the whole earth,
who wrote the music for the great organ of the spheres, after he had
created them to play the same." Such was the calling of the clergyman,
as Mr. Fuller saw it. Rather a lofty one, and simply a true one. If
the clergyman cannot rouse men to seek his God and their God, if he
can only rest in his office, which becomes false the moment he rests
in it, being itself for a higher end; if he has no message from the
infinite to quicken the thoughts that cleave to the dust, the sooner he
takes to grave-digging or any other honest labor, the sooner will he
get into the kingdom of heaven, and the higher will he stand in it. But
now came the question--from the confluence of all these considerations,
"Why should the church be for Sundays only? And of all places in the
world, what place wanted a week-day reminder of truth, of honesty,
of the kingdom of heaven, more than London? Why should the churches
be closed all the week, to the exclusion of the passers-by, and open
on the Sunday to the weariness of those who entered? Might there not
be too much of a good thing on the Sunday, and too little of it on a
week-day?" Again Mr. Fuller said to himself, "What is a parson?" and
once more he answered himself, that he was a man to keep the windows of
heaven clean, that its light might shine through upon men below. What
use, then, once more, could he make of the church of St. Amos?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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