Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/111

64 into the gulf that yawns wide and deep between the Ideal and the Actual, before the successful man comes in the fulness of time, at God's command, to lead men into the promised land, reaping what they did not sow. These men have risen up in all countries and every time. In the rudest ages as in the most refined, they look through the glass of Nature, seeing clearly the invisible things of God, and by the things that are made and the feelings felt, understanding his eternal power and Godhead. They adored Him as the Spirit who dwells in the sun, looks through the stars, speaks in the wind, controls the world, is chief of all powers, animal, material, spiritual, and Father of all men—their dear and blessed God. In his light they loved to live, nor feared to die.

There is a great advance from the Fetichism of the Canaanite to the Theism of Moses; from the rude conceptions of the New Zealander to the refined notions of an enlightened Christian. Ages of progress and revolution seem to separate them, so different is their theology. Yet the Religion of each is the same, distinguished only by the more and less. The change from one of these three religious types to the other is slow; but attended with tumult, war, and suffering. In the ancient civilized nations, little is known of their passage from Fetichism to Polytheism. It took place at an early age of the world, before written documents were common. We have, therefore, no records to verify this passage in the history of the Greeks, Egyptians, or Hebrews. Yet in the earliest periods of each of these nations we find monuments which show that Fetichism was not far off, and furnish a lingering but imperfect evidence of the fierce struggle which had gone on. The wrecks of Fetichism strew the shores of Greece and Egypt. Judea furnishes us with some familiar examples.