spiritual accountant

Father Purdon’s “spiritual accountant” is the governing metaphor of his sermon to the business and professional men in the congregation: he presents religious self-examination as an audit of a life’s accounts, measured against conscience and corrected through honest admission. The figure makes spiritual counsel sound practical and familiar, while its commercial language exposes a tension between worldly calculation and moral responsibility.

The metaphor and its audience

Father Purdon begins from a difficult scriptural text about making friends from the mammon of iniquity. He argues that it is not at odds with Christ’s broader moral teaching, but offers guidance to people who must live in the world and nevertheless wish not to live as worldlings. The sermon is expressly directed towards business men and professional men, whose worldly obligations distinguish them from those called to religious life.

Within this argument, the “spiritual accountant” is not merely a decorative comparison. Father Purdon adopts the role of a man of the world addressing fellow men of the world, and says he has come without a terrifying or extravagant purpose. The commercial register accommodates his audience: spiritual life can be examined in terms they know, as a set of accounts that must be checked for accuracy. By calling himself their accountant, he frames the preacher as a guide to that examination rather than as an agent of terror.

Opening and checking the books

The central action assigned to the metaphor is an inward review. Father Purdon asks each hearer to open the books of his spiritual life and see whether they tally accurately with conscience. The familiar procedure of keeping and checking accounts gives a definite form to an otherwise abstract demand: the worshipper must look into his own conduct and judge whether it balances morally.

The sermon also makes the accounting image a model of personal agency. Hearers are not asked simply to accept an external verdict; they are told to inspect the books themselves. The test is whether the account agrees with conscience, and the metaphor makes that test both individual and exacting: each person must confront the details of his own spiritual life.

Discrepancy, confession, and repair

Father Purdon tempers the demand for an accurate account by acknowledging human weakness. Christ, he says, is not a hard taskmaster and understands people’s failings, temptations, and fallen nature. That reassurance does not abolish moral responsibility. The one thing he asks is that his hearers be “straight and manly with God,” and the accounting figure clarifies what such frankness requires.

If the books tally, a person can say, “Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.” If discrepancies appear, the appropriate response is not concealment but admission: “Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts.” The repeated language of looking, finding, and setting right turns repentance into a sequence of recognition and intended repair. The account is not made right by pretending no fault exists; it begins to be set right by naming the fault and committing to correct it with God’s grace.

Rhetorical force and significance

The metaphor persuades partly through practical reasoning: if spiritual life is an account, it can be examined, discrepancies identified, and correction planned. It also draws on the preacher’s identification with his listeners as a man of the world, making his counsel sound adapted to their circumstances. The account-book language carries an ethical irony as well: a congregation accustomed to worldly calculation is asked to apply exact scrutiny to an inward life, where honesty matters more than appearances or a claim of being in balance.

The image’s force rests on its double meaning. Accounting suggests worldly business, but the audit is directed towards conscience and God; the commercial method becomes a vehicle for religious self-knowledge. Father Purdon does not present moral accounting as proof that a person can purchase spiritual security. Instead, his sequence distinguishes an honest reckoning from the work that follows it: the worshipper must admit what is wrong and resolve, “with God's grace,” to set it right. “Spiritual accountant” thus names the sermon’s practical rhetoric of examination, candour, and repair.