The Bible was a
divining-book to our ancestors, and is so still in the hands of some of
the vulgar. The Puritans went to the Old Testament for their laws; the
Mormons go to it for their patriarchal institution. Every generation
dissolves something new and precipitates something once held in solution
from that great storehouse of temporary and permanent truths.
You may observe this: that the conversation of intelligent men of the
stricter sects is strangely in advance of the formula that belong to
their organizations. So true is this, that I have doubts whether a large
proportion of them would not have been rather pleased than offended, if
they could have overheard our talk. For, look you, I think there is
hardly a professional teacher who will not in private conversation allow
a large part of what we have said, though it may frighten him in print;
and I know well what an under-current of secret sympathy gives vitality
to those poor words of mine which sometimes get a hearing.
I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira worth
from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own
premises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which he muddles his
brains.
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