September 26. I know I haven’t regarded ministers as others do, yet it seems to me that there are few “ministers” or “pastors” nowadays,--real ones,--such as the apostolic times knew. A “preacher” does not mean the thing, for he may preach himself only. I wonder whether the relations between pastor and people can ever be again as they have been? People are becoming their own judges and guides in religious things; this is a necessity of Protestantism, I think. And yet my “liberal” Mr. Maurice says that the “right of private judgment” only makes every man his own pope. The true idea of a church has not yet been shown the world,--a visible Church, I mean,--unless it was in the very earliest times; yes, the twelve disciples bound to their Lord in love, to do his work forever,--that was a church,--a Christian family. But then they had no system of theology to which all were expected to conform; love was all their theology. And then, afterwards, while they took the wisest and best as teachers, and called no one Master or Head but Christ, they were a true Church. I don’t believe we can look upon our ministers as the early disciples did upon Paul and John, unless they have the spirit of Paul and John. The ministry is trifled with too much by ministers themselves, and it sometimes seems to me as if this was so, because it is made a _business_. September 29. “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” This is the blessing of life: to be in the light and harmony of the love of God and reveal it. To “know the mysteries” of the kingdom of Heaven,--what is it, but to be in God’s universe with a soul opened, by love, to truth; unto such only “it is given.” Yet we have hearing and vision and the spiritual sense, all of us, and for the use of each, or misuse, or neglect, and consequent loss, every one is to blame. Oh, for a heart always opened; to read all parables in the light in which they were born! November 10. I have actually forgotten to write for months in this book. I fear me, “my heart is nae here.” I have lived a good deal in the past week, and the world has been doing a great business,--our country in particular. The Prince has turned the heads of our democratic people, and Republicans have chosen a President at last. That is glorious! Freedom takes long strides in these better days. The millennium is not so far off as we feared. While there is so much to be lived outside, who cares for the little self-life of a journal? But I never meant it to be a “subjective” one, and when it has been so, it has been so because I was living below my ideal. Yet this shall be just the book my thoughts shape from their various moods; when the thought is for myself, I will write it, and when it is for another, I will write it too. “Whose window opened towards the rising sun.”