Hard Words for the World

Henry David Thoreau’s book A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers was published in 1849, but it contains a passage up to date for this materialistic world: “It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received . . . there is no hospitality shown to it, there is no appreciation of the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. . . . There are, indeed, severe things in it. . . . ‘Seek first the kingdom of heaven.’ ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.’ ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.’ ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ . . . Think of repeating these things to a New England audience! . . . Let but one of these sentences be rightly read, from any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one stone of that meeting-house upon another.”