Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/144

Rh show that greatness in the religious man is only needed to be found; that his Charity does not expire with the quiverings of his flesh; that this hero can end his breath with a “Father, forgive them.”

Man everywhere is the measure of man. There is nothing which the Flesh and the Devil can inflict in their rage, but the Holy Spirit can bear in its exceeding peace. The Art of the tormentor is less than the Nature of the suffering soul. All the denunciations of all that sat on Moses's seat, or have since climbed to that of the Messiah; the scorn of the contemptuous; the fury of the passionate; the wrath of a monarch, and the roar of his armies; all these are to a religious soul but the buzzing of the flies about that mountain oak. There is nothing that prevails against Truth.

Now in some men Religion is a continual growth. They are always in harmony with God. Silently and unconscious, erect as a palm tree, they grow up to the measure of a man. To them Reason and Religion are of the same birth. They are born saints; Aborigines of Heaven. Betwixt their Idea of Life and their Fact of Life there has at no time been a gulf. But others join themselves to the Armada of Sin, and get scarred all over with wounds as they do thankless battle in that leprous host. Before these men become religious, there must be a change,—well-defined, deeply marked,—a change that will be remembered. The Saints who have been sinners, tell us of the struggle and desperate battle that goes on between the Flesh and the Spirit. It is as if the Devil and the Archangel contended. Well says John Bunyan, The Devil fought with me weeks long, and I with the Devil. To take the leap of Niagara, and stop when half-way down, and by their proper motion reascend, is no slight thing, nor the remembrance thereof like to pass away.

This passage from sin to salvation; this second birth of the Soul, as both Christians and Heathens call it, is one of the many mysteries of Man. Two elements meet in the consciousness. There is a negation of the past; an affirmation of the future. Terror and Hope, Penitence and Faith, rush together in that moment and a new life begins. The character gradually grows over the wounds of sin. With bleeding feet the man retreads his way, but gains at last