The pride of his order makes it humiliating for the priest to admit that what he does not know is worth knowing. Claiming to be the authorized expounder of God’s will, how can he admit that he can possibly be in error in any matter relating to religion? In view of the high pretensions of his order, founded, as he claims, upon a plenarily-inspired and infallible book-revelation, and he professing to be specially called and sanctified by God himself as his representative, it would be ecclesiastical treason to admit, even by implication, that he is not in possession of all truth. Regarding his creed as a finality, his mind becomes narrow, circumscribed, and unprogressive. He was taught from childhood that “to doubt is to be damned,” and through all his novitiate he was warned against being unsettled by the delusions of reason and the wiles of infidelity. His professional education has been narrow, one-sided, sectarian. He has seldom, if ever, read anything outside of his own denominational literature, and has heard little from anybody but his own theological professors and associates. He suspects that Humboldt, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall are all infidels, and that the sum and substance of Evolution, as taught by Darwin, is that man is the lineal descendant of the monkey. Some persons think that ministers are often selected from among weaklings in the family fold. However, this may be, the absorption of the “holy-orders” idea, and the natural self-assurance and self-satisfaction that belong to a caste profession, render delusive the hope that anything original can ever come from such a source. Whether weak at first or not, the habits of thought and the peculiar training of young ecclesiastics are almost sure to dwarf them intellectually for life. The theological student has become the _butt_ in wide-awake society everywhere, and his appearance in public is the occasion for jests and ridicule over his sanctimonious vanity and silly pride. The extreme clerical costume which he is sure to assume excites the disgust of sensible people, though he may march through the street and up the aisle with the regulation step of the “order,” and suppose himself to be the object of reverent admiration on the part of all beholders. No wonder that the churches complain that few young men of ability enter the ministry in these modern times.