Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/238

Rh the Roman, and the Jew, went to other lands to learn their arts, customs, and laws, study their religion. Jesus sent his disciples to teach and serve; only Budha and his followers had done it before.

This Christianity allows no man to sever himself from the race, making this world an Inn for him to take his ease. It does nothing for God's sake, each good act for its own sake; sends the devotee from his prayers to make peace with his brother; does not rob a man's father to enrich God; nor fancy He needs anything, sacrifice, creeds, fasts, or prayers. It makes worship consist in being good, and doing good; faith within and works without; the test of greatness the amount of good done. Thus it is not a Religion of temples, days, ceremonies, but of the street, the fire-side, the field-side. Its temple is all space; its worship in spirit and truth; its ceremony a good life, blameless and beautiful; its priest the Spirit of God in the soul; its altar a heart undefiled. It places duty above cant. It promises, as the result of obedience—oneness with God, and inspiration from Him. It offers no substitute for this, for nothing can do the work of Goodness and Piety but Goodness and Piety. It offers no magic to wipe sin out of the soul, and insure the rewards of Religion without sharing its fatigues; knows nothing of vicarious goodness. Its Heaven is doing God's will now and for ever; thus it makes no antithesis between this and the next life. It puts nothing between men and God; makes Jesus our friend, not master; a teacher who blesses, not a tyrant who commands us; a brother who pleads with us, not an Attorney who pleads with God, still less a sacrifice for sins he never committed, and therefore could not expiate.

These are not the peculiarities oftenest insisted on, and taught as Christianity; it is not the mystery, the miraculous birth, the incarnation, the God-man, the miracles, the fulfilment of prophecy, the transfiguration, the atonement, the resurrection, the angels, the ascension, the “five points;”—other religions have enough such things, Jesus had but little.

Notwithstanding the anticipation of the doctrines of Jesus centuries before him,—Christianity was a new thing; new in its Spirit, proved new by the Life it wakened in