The doctrine that a minister is to maintain some ethereal, unearthly
station, where, wrapt in divine contemplation, he is to regard with
indifference the actual struggles and realities of life, is a sickly
species of sentimentalism, the growth of modern refinement, and
altogether too moonshiny to have been comprehended by our stout-hearted
and very practical fathers. With all their excellences, they had nothing
sentimental about them; they were bent on reducing all things to
practical, manageable realities. They would not hear of churches, but
called them meeting-houses; they would not be called clergymen, but
_ministers_ or servants,--thereby signifying their calling to real,
tangible work among real men and things.
As we have already said, in the beginnings of New England, the Church
and State were identical, and the clergy _ex officio_ the main
counsellors and directors of the Commonwealth; and when this especial
prerogative was relinquished, they naturally retained something of the
bent it had given them.
An interesting portion of these sketches comprises the lives of
ministers during our Revolutionary struggle, showing how ardently and
manfully at that time the clergy headed the people. Many of them went
into the army as chaplains; one or two, more zealous still, even took up
temporal arms; while the greater number showered the enemy with sermons,
tracts, and pamphlets.
Pages:
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294