Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/137

90 in days of ignorance but made his son's body pass through the fire to his God, what shall be said of them in an age of light, who systematically degrade the fairest gifts of men, God's dearest benefaction; who make life darkness, death despair, the world a desert, Man a worm, nothing but a worm, and God an ugly fiend, that made the most of men for utter wretchedness, death, and eternal hell? Alas for them. They are blind and see not. They lie down in their folly. Let Charity cover them up.

There is another morbid state of the religious Element. It consists in its union with Hatred and other malignant passions in men. Here it leads to Fanaticism. As the essence of Superstition is Fear coupled with religious feeling; so the essence of Fanaticism is Malice mingling with that sentiment. It may be called. The Superstitious man fears lest God hate him; the Fanatic thinks he hates not him but his enemies. Is the Fanatic a Jew?—the Gentiles are hateful to Jehovah; a Mahometan?—all are infidel dogs who do not bow to the prophet, their end is destruction. Is he a Christian?—he counts all others as Heathens whom God will damn; of this or that sect?—he condemns all the rest for their belief, let their life be divine as the prayer of a saint. Out of his selfish passion he creates him a God; breathes into it the breath of his Hatred; he worships and prays to it, and says “Deliver me, for thou art my God.” Then he feels—so he fancies—inspiration to visit his foes with divine vengeance. He can curse and smite them in the name of his God. It is the sword of the Lord, and the fire of the Most High that drinks up the blood and stifles the groan of the wretched.

Like Superstition, it is found in all ages of the world. It is the insanity of mankind. As the richest soils grow weightiest harvests, or most noxious weeds and poisons the most baneful; as the strongest bodies take disease the most sorely; so the deepest natures, the highest forms of worship, when once infected with this leprosy, go to the wildest excess of desperation. Thus the fanaticism of worshippers of one God has no parallel among idolaters