Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/117

70 a prey? He must take his life in his hand, and become as a stranger to men. But if he fail and perish it is his gain. Is it not also the world's? It is the burning wood that warms men.

In passing judgment on those different religious states, we are never to forget, that there is no monopoly of religious emotion by any nation or any age. He that worships truly, by whatever form, worships the Only God; He hears the prayer, whether called Brahma, Jehovah, Pan, or Lord; or called by no name at all. Each people has its Prophets and its Saints; and many a swarthy Indian, who bowed down to wood and stone; many a grim-faced Calmuck, who worshipped the great God of Storms; many a Grecian peasant, who did homage to Phœbus-Apollo when the Sun rose or went down; yes, many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice, shall come from the East and the West, and sit down in the Kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus,—while men, who called daily on the only living God, who paid their tribute and bowed at the name of Christ, shall be cast out, because they did no more. Men are to be judged by what is given, not what is withheld.

theories have been connected with Religion, respecting origin and primitive condition of the human race. Many nations have claimed to be the primitive possessors of their native soil; Autochthones, who sprang miraculously out of the ground, were descended from stones, grasshoppers, emmets, or other created things.