Excerpt from Social Classes in a Republic
In "Past and Present" Carlyle had a pungent word about the function of preaching. "This speaking man," he said, "whom have we to compare with him?... The Speaking Function, this of Truth, coining to us with a living voice, nay, in a living shape, and as a concrete practical exemplar; this, with all our Writing and Printing Functions, has a perennial place... Will he discover our new real Satan,
whom he has to fight; or go on droning through his nose-spectacles about old extinct Satans, and never see the real one, till he feel him at his own throat and ours? That is the question."
Theodore Parker's conception and use of the office of the preacher gives the answer to that question. No powerful pulpit can ever hold aloof from the moral life of the community. A sermon is a poor, untimely thing if, when clear decisions about right and wrong are needed or when sordid selfishness and mean passions control men's actions, it has no clarifying or rebuking word. The "sweet reasonableness," which Matthew Arnold commended but did not always practise, will not do all of the work of reform or insure moral growth and progress. To destroy the idols of the market place, to drive the money-changers from the temple, to break up the traditional usages that block the way of freedom and justice and truth, - that is a task which needs something more than soft words or gentle protests.
Theodore Parker was keenly interested in the reformatory movements of his time.
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