Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/203

156 every faculty of the spirit; perfect Love towards God and Man, exhibited in a life allowing and demanding a harmonious action of all Man's faculties, so far as they act at all.

But to answer the historical question, Did Jesus of Nazareth teach Absolute Religion ? is a matter vastly more difficult, which it requires learning, critical skill, and no little painstaking to make out. To answer the first question, What is Christianity? is a very difficult thing. No two men seem agreed about it; the wickedest of wars have been fought to settle it. To answer the query, are we to take what is popularly called Christianity? No Protestant thinks the Christianity of the Catholic Church is Absolute Religion; nor will the Catholic think better of the Protestant faith. A pious man, free from bigotry, and capable of judging, would surely make very short work of the question, and decide that Christianity, as popularly taught by both these churches, taken together, is not Absolute Religion.

But we must look deeper than Protestantism and Popery. We must distinguish Christianity from the popular Conceptions of Christianity; from its Proof and its Form. To do this, we must go back, historically, to the fountain-head, the words of Jesus. We must then take these words in the abstract, separate from any church; apart from all authority, real or pretended; without respect of any application thereof to life, that was made by its founder or others. If all churches have believed it, if miracles have been wrought in its favour, if its application have been good in this or that case, it does not follow that Christianity is absolute and final. The Church has been notoriously mistaken on many points. Miracles are claimed for Judaism, Mahometanism, and Idolatry; each heresy is thought by its followers to work well. We must look away from all these considerations. If Jesus of Nazareth lived out his idea, and was the greatest of saints, it does not follow that his Idea was absolute, and therefore final. If he did not perfectly live it out, the reverse does not follow. The good life of a teacher proves nothing of any speculative doctrine he entertains, either in morals or mathematics. A man would be thought insane who should say Euclid's demonstration of the forty-seventh problem was true, because Euclid lived a good life, and raised men from the dead; or that it was false,