Thus the church, even
in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending us up her towers
and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the air of truth: that
her form too must pass away, while the truth that is embodied in her lives
beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining as the stars for ever and
ever. He whom the church does not lift up above the church is not worthy to
be a doorkeeper therein.
Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
church-tower, but for his sexton's wife. The old woman was a jewel. If her
husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed in her,
it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who answered on
being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that the three orders
of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and sexton, might not be
so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So in the ascent, and the
thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about the special object for
which I had requested the key of the tower, and led the way myself up to
the summit, where stepping out of a little door, which being turned only
heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim upon a curiously crooked key,
but opened to the hand laid upon the latch, I thought of the words of the
judicious Hooker, that "the assembling of the church to learn" was "the
receiving of angels descended from above;" and in such a whimsical turn as
our thoughts will often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for
a moment whether that was why the upper door was left on the latch,
forgetting that that could not be of much use, if the door in the basement
was kept locked with the crooked key.
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