Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
General
Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
American essays; English essays
We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to see and feed;
and, of all who do so it is said, "He that watereth, shall be watered
also himself." But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not,
shall be _withered_ himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself be
shut out of sight,--shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that
prison opens here, as well as hereafter: he who is to be bound in
heaven must first be bound on earth. That command to the strong
angels, of which the rock-apostle is the image, "Take him, and bind him
hand and foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against the
teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for
every falsehood enforced; so that he is more strictly fettered the more
he fetters, and farther outcast, as he more and more misleads, till at
last the bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as "the golden opes,
the iron shuts amain."
25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and much more is
yet to be found in them; but we have done enough by way of example of
the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is rightly
called "reading"; watching every accent and expression, and putting
ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our own
personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able assuredly
to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus _I_ thought, in mis-reading
Milton." And by this process you will gradually come to attach less
weight to your own "Thus I thought" at other times. You will begin to
perceive that what you thought was a matter of no serious
importance;--that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the
clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon:--in fact, that
unless you are a very singular person, you cannot be said to have any
"thoughts" at all; that you have no materials for them, in any serious
matters;[5]--no right to "think," but only to try to learn more of the
facts. Nay, most probably all your life (unless, as I said, you are a
singular person) you will have no legitimate right to an "opinion" on
any business, except that instantly under your hand. What must of
necessity be done, you can always find out, beyond question, how to do.
Have you a house to keep in order, a commodity to sell, a field to
plough, a ditch to cleanse. There need be no two opinions about these
proceedings; it is at your peril if you have not much more than an
"opinion" on the way to manage such matters. And also, outside of your
own business, there are one or two subjects on which you are bound to
have but one opinion. That roguery and lying are objectionable, and
are instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever discovered;--that
covetousness and love of quarreling are dangerous dispositions even in
children, and deadly dispositions in men and nations;--that in the end,
the God of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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