It must be fenced in, and whatever is
fenced in is narrow. You cannot have arctic and tropical plants growing
together in it, except by the forcing system, which is a mighty narrow
piece of business. You can't make a village or a parish or a family
think alike, yet you suppose that you can make a world pinch its
beliefs or pad them to a single pattern! Why, the very life of an
ecclesiastical organization is a life of _induction_, a state of
perpetually disturbed equilibrium kept up by another charged body in
the neighborhood. If the two bodies touch and share their respective
charges, down goes the index of the electrometer!
Do you know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself?
Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of
knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown
has from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him,
to anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth of
knowledge, truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a
pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint.
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