common among "the narrow minds" to have influenced Thoreau. He
could have been more generous. He took the arc for the circle,
the exception for the rule, the solitary bad example for the many
good ones. His persistent emphasis on the value of "example" may
excuse this lower viewpoint. "The silent influence of the example
of one sincere life...has benefited society more than all the
projects devised for its salvation." He has little patience for
the unpracticing preacher. "In some countries a hunting parson is
no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd dog but
is far from being a good shepherd." It would have been
interesting to have seen him handle the speculating parson, who
takes a good salary--more per annum than all the disciples had to
sustain their bodies during their whole lives--from a
metropolitan religious corporation for "speculating" on Sunday
about the beauty of poverty, who preaches: "Take no thought (for
your life) what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink nor yet what
ye shall put on...lay not up for yourself treasure upon
earth...take up thy cross and follow me"; who on Monday becomes a
"speculating" disciple of another god, and by questionable
investments, successful enough to get into the "press," seeks to
lay up a treasure of a million dollars for his old age, as if a
million dollars could keep such a man out of the poor-house.
Thoreau might observe that this one good example of Christian
degeneracy undoes all the acts of regeneracy of a thousand humble
five-hundred-dollar country parsons; that it out-influences the
"unconscious influence" of a dozen Dr. Bushnells if there be that
many; that the repentance of this man who did not "fall from
grace" because he never fell into it--that this unnecessary
repentance might save this man's own soul but not necessarily the
souls of the million head-line readers; that repentance would put