ABSTRACT
We say that the clergy are the appointed guardians of the public morals. Yet what clergyman in preaching a funeral discourse over an eminent or opulent parishioner, ever admits that he had a vice? Almost every Doctor of Divinity who now speaks publicly of Daniel Webster bows down before ‘the especial greatness of his moral nature,’ and utterly ignores or denies the questionable personal habits which were a matter of common notoriety, thirty years ago. It is needless to particularize about these habits; they were almost as notorious, though probably not so great, as those of Aaron Burr; and are, like his, now incapable of direct proof, since at a man’s hundredth birthday it is hard to produce personal evidence of misdeeds. Yet I have not seen a reference to these things among those clergymen who now celebrate his towering moral nature: and it is left for a layman, a literary man, a man of the world, like Henry Cabot Lodge, manfully to recognize and deplore these draw-backs to which the others have shut their eyes. This is surely no guardianship of the public morals. ‘One is almost led to ask,’ said a business man to me, the other day, ‘whether the clergy have really the same moral standard with other men?’
