The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel BarkerHowells, William Dean
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The Minister's Charge; Or, The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker
Howells, William Dean
Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Poets -- Fiction
His mind, naturally enough in connection with Lemuel, was running upon
his friend Evans, and the subject they had once talked of in that room.
It was primarily in thinking of him that he begun to write his sermon
on Complicity, which made a great impression at the time, and had a more
lasting effect as enlarged from the newspaper reports, and reprinted in
pamphlet form. His evolution from the text, “Remember them that are
in bonds as bound with them,” of a complete philosophy of life, was
humorously treated by some of his critics as a phase of Darwinism,
but upon the whole the sermon met with great favour. It not only
strengthened Sewell's hold upon the affections of his own congregation,
but carried his name beyond Boston, and made him the topic of editorials
in the Sunday editions of leading newspapers as far off as Chicago.
It struck one of those popular moods of intelligent sympathy when the
failure of a large class of underpaid and worthy workers to assert their
right to a living wage against a powerful monopoly had sent a thrill of
respectful pity through every generous heart in the country; and it
was largely supposed that Sewell's sermon referred indirectly to the
telegraphers' strike. Those who were aware of his habit of seeking to
produce a personal rather than a general effect, of his belief that you
can have a righteous public only by the slow process of having righteous
men and women, knew that he meant something much nearer home to each
of his hearers when he preached the old Christ-humanity to them, and
enforced again the lessons that no one for good or for evil, for sorrow
or joy, for sickness or health, stood apart from his fellows, but each
was bound to the highest and the lowest by ties that centred in the hand
of God. No man, he said, sinned or suffered to himself alone; his error
and his pain darkened and afflicted men who never heard of his name. If
a community was corrupt, if an age was immoral, it was not because
of the vicious, but the virtuous who fancied themselves indifferent
spectators. It was not the tyrant who oppressed, it was the wickedness
that had made him possible. The gospel--Christ--God, so far as men had
imagined him,--was but a lesson, a type, a witness from everlasting
to everlasting of the spiritual unity of man. As we grew in grace,
in humanity, in civilisation, our recognition of this truth would be
transfigured from a duty to a privilege, a joy, a heavenly rapture. Many
men might go through life harmlessly without realising this, perhaps,
but sterilely; only those who had had the care of others laid upon them,
lived usefully, fruitfully. Let no one shrink from such a burden, or
seek to rid himself of it. Rather let him bind it fast upon his neck,
and rejoice in it. The wretched, the foolish, the ignorant whom we found
at every turn, were something more; they were the messengers of God,
sent to tell his secret to any that would hear it. Happy he in whose
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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