The President
of the United States is only the engine-driver of our broad-gauge
mail-train; and every honest, independent thinker has a seat in the
first-class cars behind him.
----There is something in what you say,--replied the
divinity-student;--and yet it seems to me there are places and times
where disputed doctrines of religion should not be introduced. You would
not attack a church dogma--say, Total Depravity--in a lyceum-lecture,
for instance?
Certainly not; I should choose another place,--I answered.--But, mind
you, at this table I think it is very different. I shall express my
ideas on any subject I like. The laws of the lecture-room, to which my
friends and myself are always amenable, do not hold here. I shall not
often give arguments, but frequently opinions,--I trust with courtesy
and propriety, but, at any rate, with such natural forms of expression
as it has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me.
A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his
arguments. These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not
believe the proposition they tend to prove,--as is often the case with
paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,--brain,
heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped
for us by contact with the whole circle of our being.
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