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During one presidential term previous to that time our ministers at three of the most important centers of Europe were making unedifying spectacles of themselves, whenever it was possible for them to do so, before the courts to which they were accredited.
Upon this foundation some build gold, silver, precious stones; that is, such preaching of the word, such administration of the sacraments, such a church discipline, and such a life as is according to the word, and savoureth of Christ: others build wood, hay, stubble; whereby is meant whatsoever in their ministry is unprofitable, unedifying, vain, curious, unbeseeming the gospel; for the ministers of Christ must be purified, not only from heresy, idolatry, profaneness, and the like, but even from that which is frothy and unedifying, which savoureth not of God’s Spirit, but of man’s.
And truly it now appeared as if mercy, and not cruelty, were to be the order of the hour, . . for just then the Priest Zel, after having exchanged a few inaudible words with Lysia, advanced again to the front of the Shrine and spoke in distinct tones of forced gentleness and bland forbearance: "Hear me, O King, Princes and People! ... Whereas it has unhappily occurred, to the wonder and sorrow of many, that the holy Spouse of the divine Nagaya is delayed in her desired departure, by the unforeseen opposition and unedifying contumacy of Sah-luma, Poet Laureate of this realm; and lest it may be perchance imagined by the uninitiated, that the maiden is in any way unwilling to fulfil her glorious destiny, the High and Immaculate Priestess of the Shrine doth bid me here pronounce a respite; a brief interval wherein, if the King and the People be willing, he who is named Sah-luma shall, by virtue of his high renown, be permitted to address the Virgin-victim and ascertain her own wishes from her own lips.
But, seeing that the thin veneer of modesty with which every woman of the world is furnished goes but a very little way below the surface, they began rather to enjoy this unedifying episode, and at bottom were hugely delighted feeling themselves in their element, furthering the schemes of lawless love with the gusto of a gourmand cook who prepares supper for another.
And so Pericles, at that time more than at any other, let loose the reins to the people, and made his policy subservient to their pleasure, contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please them, coaxing his countrymen like children, with such delights and pleasures as were not, however, unedifying.
I remember very little else of that evening than the coup d'oeil I have mentioned; besides, were my memory more retentive, I might scruple to trespass farther on my reader's patience, by the detail of those pleasures, which, like love-letters, however agreeable to the parties immediately concerned, are very unedifying to all others.
Miss Woolmer advised me to try the effect of this upon Dora, whose Sundays were a constant perplexity and reproach to me, since she always ran away into the plantations or went with Harold to see the horses; and if we did succeed in dragging her to church, there behaved in the most unedifying manner. "I don't like the principle of cutting religion down for children," said my old friend.
I have accordingly endeavoured to avoid such jangling, and such debates as are unprofitable and unedifying, making choice of such purposes as may edify, and not abuse the reader. Peradventure some will think I might have wholly saved myself this labour.
The Liturgy had been condemned for "giving encouragement to an idle and unedifying ministry, who had chosen rather to confine themselves to forms, made to their hands, than to exert themselves in the gift of prayer, which our Saviour furnishes all those He calls to that office." A warm discussion arose concerning the mode of receiving the Lord's Supper.
Indeed, the bare simplicity of my menu, had it been previously disclosed, would doubtless have disappointed more than one of my dinner-giving patronesses; but each item had been perfected to an extent never achieved by them. Their weakness had ever been to serve a profusion of neutral dishes, pleasing enough to the eye, but unedifying except as a spectacle.
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