Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/182

Rh velation is to last for ever, it has been recorded miraculously, and preserved for all coming time. The persons who received direct communication miraculously from God, are of course mediators between Him and the human race.

Now to live as religious men, we must have a knowledge of religious truth; for this we must depend alone on these mediators. Without them we have no access to God. They have established a new relation between Man and God. But they are mortal, and have deceased. However, their sayings are recorded by miraculous aid. A knowledge of God's will, of Morality and Religion, therefcre, is only to be got at, by studying the documents which contain a record of their words and works, for the Word of God has become the letter of Scripture. We can know nothing of God, Religion, or Morals at first hand. God was but transiently present in a small number of the race, and has now left it altogether.

This theory forgets that a verbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea, like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion, more than a word can give a deaf man an idea of sound. It makes inspiration a very rare miracle, confined to one nation, and to some scores of men in that nation, who stand between us and God. We cannot pray in our own name, but in that of the mediator, who hears the prayer, and makes intercession for us. It exalts certain miraculous persons, but degrades Man. In prophets and saints, in Moses and Jesus, it does not see the possibility of the race made real, but only the miraculous work of God. Our duty is not to inquire into the truth of their word. Reason is no judge of that. We must put faith in all which all of them tell us, though they contradict each other never so often. Thus it makes an antithesis between Faith and Knowledge, Reason and Revelation. It denies that common men, in the nineteenth century, can get at Truth, and God, as Paul and John in the first century. It sacrifices Reason, Conscience, and Love to the words of the miraculous men, and thus makes its mediator a tyrant, who rules over the soul by external authority, restricting Reason, Conscience, and Love; not a brother, who acts in the soul, by waking its dormant powers, disclosing truth, and leading others by a divine life to God, the Source of Light. It says the words of Jesus are true because he