Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/215

168 morose, jealous, vindictive, loving the little corner of space called Judea above all the rest of the world; fancying themselves the “chosen people” and special favourites of God; in the midst of a nation wedded to their forms, sunk in ignorance, precipitated into sin, and, still more, expecting a Deliverer, who would repel their political foes, reunite the scattered children of Jacob, and restore them to power, conquer all nations, reestablish the formal service of the Temple in all its magnificent pomp, and exalt Jerusalem above all the cities of the earth for ever,—amid all this, and the opposition it raised to a spiritual man, Jesus fell back on the moral and religious Sentiment in Man; uttered manifold Oracles of Humanity, as the Infinite spoke in his noble soul; stirred men to deep emotions; laid down some principles of conduct wide as the Soul of man and true as eternal God; taught a form of Religion,—Piety and Morality,—far before anything known then to the world of men; but yet mistook himself for that miraculous and impossible deliverer of his nation whom the people waited for in vain.

In an age full of vengeance he makes love the pivotal Principle which all things must turn upon. Take one example as it stands in the Synoptics. A man asks what he shall do to fulfil the idea of Man, and have “eternal life?” He bids him keep the moral law, written eternally in the nature of man; specifies some of its plainest prohibitions, and adds, Love your neighbour as yourself. When asked the greatest commandment of the Law, he thus sums up all the Law and the Prophets also: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Here is the sum of religious doctrine. He gives the highest aim for man: Be perfect as God. He declares the blessedness, present and eternal, of such as do the Will of God. The Spirit of God shall be in them, revealing Truth; the Kingdom of God shall be theirs.

He gives no extended form of his views in Theology, Anthropology, Politics, or Philosophy. But the great truth of God's goodness, and man's spiritual nature, are implied in all his teachings. He says little of the Immortality of the Soul; much less than some “Heathens” before him;