Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/134

Rh lants, and similar Moss-troopers of Religion, whom Heaven yet turns to good account. This is the Superstition of the Flesh. It promises the favour of its God on condition of these most useless and arbitrary acts. It dwells on the absurdest of externals.

However, in a later day it goes to still more subtle refinements. The man does not mutilate his body, nor give up the most sacred of his material possessions. This was the Superstition of savage life. But he mutilates his soul; gives up the most sacred of his spiritual treasures. This is the Superstition of refined life. Here the man is ready to forego Reason, Conscience, and Love, God's most precious gifts; the noblest attributes of Man; the tie that softly joins him to the eternal world. He will think against Reason; decide against Conscience; act against Love; because he dreams the God of Reason, Conscience, and Love demands it. It is a slight thing to hack and mutilate the body, though it be the fairest temple God ever made, and to mar its completeness a sin. But to dismember the soul, the very image of God; to lop off most sacred affections; to call Reason a Liar, Conscience a devil's-oracle, and cast Love clean out from the heart, this is the last triumph of Superstition; but one often witnessed, in all three forms of Religion—Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism; in all ages before Christ; in all ages after Christ. This is the Superstition of the Soul. The one might be the Superstition of the Hero; this is the Superstition of the Pharisee.

A man rude in spirit must have a rude conception of God. He thinks the Deity like himself. If a Buffalo had a religion, his conception of Deity would probably be a Buffalo, fairer limbed, stronger, and swifter than himself, grazing in the fairest meadows of Heaven. If he were superstitious, his service would consist in offerings of grass, of water, of salt; perhaps in abstinence from the pleasures, comforts, necessities of a bison's life. His devil also would be a Buffalo, but of another colour, lean, vicious, and ugly. Now when a man has these rude conceptions, inseparable from a rude state, offerings and sacrifice are natural. When they come spontaneous, as the expression of a grateful or a penitent heart; the seal of a resolution; the sign of Faith, Hope, and Love, as an outward symbol which strengthens the in-dwelling sentiment—the sacrifice is