Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/84

he had not been long in this place. He began to talk of the office of preaching and of the skill that a preacher ought to have. He compared the good preacher to a chapman who cleverly puff's his wares and by his pleasant words makes himself agreeable to his customers. After dinner he kept up the conversation; and, as he stood with his left hand leaning on the table, he accompanied his remarks with his right, and, while he discoursed most eloquently on eloquence, appeared at the moment as if he wished to convince us that he himself was the clever chapman. We assented to his observations, and he came from the lecture to the thing itself. He panegyrised the Roman Catholic religion. "We must," he said, "have a rule of faith; and the great value of it consists in its being fixed, and as little as possible liable to change. We," he said, "had made Scripture the foundation of our faith; but it was insufficient. We ourselves would not venture to put it into the hands of common men; for holy as it is, and full as every leaf is of the Spirit of God, still the worldly-minded man is insensible of all this, and finds rather perplexities and stumbling-blocks throughout. What good can a mere layman extract from the histories of sinful men which are contained therein, and which the Holy Ghost has there recorded for the strengthening of the faith of the tried and experienced children of God? What benefit can a common man draw from all this, when he is unable to consider the whole context and connection? How is such a person to see his way clear out of the seeming contradictions which occasionally occur, out of the difficulties which arise from the ill arrangement of the books, and the differences of style, when the learned themselves find it so hard, and while so many passages make them hold their reason in abeyance? What ought we, therefore, to teach? A rule of faith founded on Scripture, and proved by the best of commentaries? But who,