Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/129

82 fluential schools. No doubt it was often connected with absurd notions, in jest or earnest. But when or where has its fate been different? Bishop Warburton thinks it no part of Natural Religion; Dodwell thinks immortality is only coëxtensive with Christian baptism, and is super-induced upon the mortal soul by that dispensation of water. Could a heathen be more absurd? If the popular doctrine of the Christian Church, which dooms the mass of men to endless misery, be true, then were immortality a misfortune to the race. The wisest of the Heathen taught such a dogma as little as did Jesus of Nazareth. We must always separate the doctrine from its proof and its form; the latter is often imperfect while the doctrine is true.

Since the time of Bishop Warburton, it has been common to deny that the Heathen were acquainted with this doctrine. “It was one guess among many,” has often been said. But a man even slightly acquainted with ancient thought and life, knows it is not so. God has not made truth so hard to come at, that the world of men continued so many thousand years in ignorance of a future life. Before the time above named, it was taught by scholars, even scholars of the clerical order, that the doctrine was well known to the Heathen. Cudworth and