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Updated: June 24, 2025
Had I not really condemned them as unspiritual, barely because of their creed? On trying to reproduce the past to my imagination, I could not condemn myself quite as sweepingly as I wished; but my heart smote me on account of one. I had a brother, with whose name all England was resounding for praise or blame: from his sympathies, through pure hatred of Popery, I had long since turned away.
The handsome carved chairs, cushioned with fine leather, the beautiful landscape by Rousseau above the mantel, the bronze and silver of the writing-table, had been given to the popular pastor by enthusiastic admirers, however, and perhaps the Savonarola better expressed his own inner feelings. Mr. Strathmore's face, it is true, was in itself somewhat unspiritual.
The tone could not be interpreted as devotion to her husband's memory; it meant, plainly and simply, that she had had enough of marriage, and delighted in her freedom. Christian could not say another word. Disillusion was complete. The voice, the face, were those of as unspiritual a woman as he could easily have met with, and his life's story was that of a fool.
I do wish out-and-out Protestants would seriously lay to heart where they stand when they would write a history of Christianity. Are there any traces of Luther before Luther? Is there anything to show that what they call the religion of the Bible was ever professed by any persons, Christians, Jews, or heathen? Again, are there any traces in history of a process of change in Christian belief and practice, so serious, or so violent, as to answer to the notion of a great corruption or perversion of the Primitive Religion? Was there ever a time, what was the time, when Christianity was not that which Protestants protest against, as if formal, unspiritual, self-righteous, superstitious, and unevangelic? If that time cannot be pointed out, is not "the Religion of Protestants" a matter, not of past historical fact, but of modern private judgment? Have they anything to say in defence of their idea of the Christianity of the first centuries, except that that view of it is necessary to their being Protestants. "Christians," they seem to say, "must have been in those early times different from what the record of those times shows them to have been, and they must, as time went on, have fallen from that faith and that worship which they had at first, though history is quite silent on the subject, or else Protestantism, which is the apple of our eye, is not true. We are driven to hypothetical facts, or else we cannot reconcile with each other phenomena so discordant as those which are presented by ancient times and our own. We claim to substitute
Be sure that, in dealing with any truth, its symbol, however high, must come short of the glorious meaning itself holds. It is the low stupidity of an unspiritual nature that would interpret the Lord's meaning as less than his symbols.
Within a few days after their arrival, every cottage in the "coombe" had been "visited," and both Mr. and Mrs. Arbroath had made up their minds as to the neglected, wholly unspiritual and unregenerate nature of the little flock whom they had offered, for sake of their own health and advantage, to tend. The villagers had received them civilly, but without enthusiasm.
On asking to be shut up in a cell, he had said to himself: "The thought of Glory is a temptation of my unquickened and unspiritual nature. It has already betrayed me into an act of cowardice and inhumanity, and it will drive me out into the world and fling me back again, as it drove out and flung back Brother Paul." But the result of his solitude was specious and deceitful.
Cold, calculating and unspiritual as most of us are, we are not wholly insensible to real greatness; and when we are brought in contact with a man of commanding mold, towering high and alone above the millions, free from all conventional fetters, true to his own moral convictions, a "law unto himself," ready to suffer misconstruction, ignoring torture and death for what he believes to be right, we are compelled to do him homage.
Donkey-races, croquet, and other unspiritual diversions varied the order of proceedings; and as for the one-and-ninepenny teas, I can only say I should think the Garden Committee did not get much profit out of them, for the Spiritualists regaled themselves in the most material fashion. During the afternoon the arrivals were fast and frequent.
"So far as that goes, Church-work is pleasant to me all, indeed, I care for or am fit for; but North Aston is stony ground," said Alick. "Can you wonder? When the husbandman-in-chief is such a man as Mr. Birkett, you must make your account with stones and weeds. The spiritual cannot flourish under the hand of the unspiritual; and, considering the pastor, the flock is far from bad."
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