Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[255] more of a church than most of you do. I think the experience of centuries has shown that an organization of men for the culture of what you may consider the religious sentiment and devotional feeling, the unfolding of these two elements of our nature, is a good thing. I think that to a certain extent the “ordinances” of what are called churches are good. Understand me, I would never join one of those petty despotisms which usurp in our day the name of a Christian Church. I would never put my neck into that yoke of ignorance and superstition led by a Yankee Pope, and give my good name as a football for their spleen and bigotry. That lesson I learned of my father long before boyhood ceased.

I could never see any essential difference between the one portentious Roman Pope and the thousand petty ones who ape him in our pulpits. In the fervor of the Reformation, men dreamed they were getting rid of the claim to infallibility and the right to excommunicate. But the Protestant Church, in consequence of the original sin of its constitution, soon lapsed into the same dogmatism and despotism. Indeed, Macaulay does not seem to believe that there ever was any real intent in the Reformers to surrender these prerogatives. “The scheme was,” he says, “merely to rob the Babylonian enchantress of her ornaments, to transfer the cup of her sorceries to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the way.” But I quite agree with the last speaker who occupied this desk, Mr. Sanborn of Concord, when he intimated the eminent utility, perhaps necessity, of a pastor in the full sense of that term. The many needs of your daily domestic life in which he could aid you are evident.

But a pulpit has no connection with a church. The Roman Catholic Church, which makes seven sacraments and bases her whole religious life and purpose upon sacraments, gives very little or no importance whatever