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    and jury to receive them as fak real , personal credence and feeling . He endeavours to east discredit on that which he knows to be true , and to produce belief in that which he knows to be

    false . It is a part of his trade to employ , fbr pay , all the acuteness of his intellect to enable the culprit to eaeape his legal p unishment , or the debtor to evade paying his creditor . A man had better play ten characters every night than , thus play upon his own character . The sacredness of truth must be sullied in

    his mind by its habitual violation , though that violation be only professional . At least , the tendency cannot be denied . And what shall we say of the honourable profession of arms ? Kill for hire ; is not that a rare improvement on the immorality of reciting speeches for hire ? We are speaking of the military profession , not of the use of arms by a people driven to the necessity

    of repelling force by force . The soldier is a slave , for whom all consideration of the justice of the cause is out of the question : his duty is to obey orders . In certain extreme cases has reward is ' booty and beauty . ' And he scorns the poor player ; but not so haughtily as does the clergyman . Well , let us look to the moral tendency of his profession . We will cast no doubts on his being

    ' moved by the Holy Ghost / but it is unfortunate that he is obliged to say so ; it is unfortunate for the morality of a profession that it holds out strong inducements for those to say so who are not sure of it . But pass this ; there are the Thirty-nine Articles to be subscribed ex animo . Now , we mean not to impugn or question any one iota of these articles ; we only say that they contain between two and three hundred distinct propositions ; that

    many of those propositions involve the profoundest subtilties of criticism , metaphysics , and scholastic theology ; that many of them relate to points which have been controverted by the ablest men through almost all the ages of the Christian era ; and that to have formed an honest individual opinion upon the half of them cannot have been possible for the subscriber in one case out of an hundred . And , then , what is the clergyman ' s office ? On

    certain days , nay , at certain hours , and even minutes , he is bound publicl y and solemnly to tell his God that he is in a particular state of mind and feeling , when perhaps he is in a very different state of mind and feeling . He modulates his voice , as he reads the liturgy , to the emotions of reverence , contrition , supplication , thanksgiving , sympathy , &c . ; but who is so totally ignorant of

    toe human mind as to imagine that these emotions either do or can arise within him at his bidding , and in their prescribed order ° f succession ? We will dismiss the clergyman here , and say nothing about the motives which bear upon the profession as to Preferment * We once heard a reverend gentleman wind up a wtter tirade against the stage b y saying , of an actress of unblemished character , who honourably supported an ag » d mother toy

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 535, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/5/