It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.  I know of no book that has so few readers.  There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular.  To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block.  There are, indeed, severe things in it which no man should read aloud more than once.—­“Seek first the kingdom of heaven.”—­“Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.”—­“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.”—­“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”—­Think of this, Yankees!—­“Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”—­Think of repeating these things to a New England audience! thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly, till there are three barrels of sermons!  Who, without cant, can read them aloud?  Who, without cant, can hear them, and not go out of the meeting-house?  They never were read, they never were heard.  Let but one of these sentences be rightly read, from any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one stone of that meeting-house upon another.

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even.  I have not the most definite designs on the future.  Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver.  An honest man would have but little occasion for it.  It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.  The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.  Christ was a sublime actor on the stage of the world.  He knew what he was thinking of when he said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”  I draw near to him at such a time.  Yet he taught mankind but imperfectly how to live; his thoughts were all directed toward another world.  There is another kind of success than his.  Even here we have a sort of living to get, and must buffet it somewhat longer.  There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must make shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity.  The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days.  He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours.  The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams.