As if to enable me to bring this story to a fitting close, I read in the papers only a few days ago: "Vice-Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was to-day promoted to the rank of Admiral, and Sir Hedworth Meux, who until now has been commander-in-chief at Portsmouth, was appointed Admiral of the Home Fleet."[12]
Good luck be with him! Accepting the burdens which properly go with rank and wealth, he is at this moment cruising somewhere in the cold North Sea, in command of perhaps the greatest fleet ever assembled. Upon the owner of Temple Bar, at this moment, devolves the duty of keeping watch and ward over England.
It will hardly be questioned that the influence of the priesthood is waning. Why this is so, it is not within the province of a mere book-collector to discuss; but the fact will, I think, be admitted. In the past, however, every country and almost every generation has produced a type of priest which seems to have been the special product of its time. The soothsayer of old Rome, concealed, perhaps, in a hollow wall, whispered his warning through the marble lips of a conveniently placed statue, in return for a suitable present indirectly offered; while to-day Billy Sunday, leaping and yelling like an Apache Indian, shrieks his admonitions at us, and takes up a collection in a clothes-basket. It is all very sad and, as Oscar Wilde would have said, very tedious.
Priests, prophets, parsons, or preachers! They are all human, like the rest of us. Too many of them are merely insurance agents soliciting us to take out policies of insurance against fire everlasting, for a fee commensurate, not with the risk, but with our means. It is a well-established trade, in which the representatives of the old-line companies, who have had the cream of the business, look with disapproval upon new methods, as well they may, their own having worked so well for centuries. The premiums collected have been enormous, and no evidence has ever been produced that the insurer took any risk whatever.
And the profession has been, not only immensely lucrative, but highly honorable. In times past priests have ranked with kings: sometimes wearing robes of silk studded with jewels; on fortune's cap the topmost button, exhibit Wolsey; sometimes appearing in sackcloth relieved by ashes; every man in his humor. But it is not my purpose to inveigh against any creed or sect; only I confess my bewilderment at the range of human interest in questions of doctrine, while simple Christianity stands neglected.