Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/243

196 The Philosophers, the Poets, the Prophets, the Rabbis,—he rises above them all. Yet Nazareth was no Athens, where Philosophy breathed in the circumambient air; it had neither Porch nor Lyceum, not even a school of the Prophets. Doubtless he had his errors, his follies, faults, and sins even; it is idle and absurd to deny it. But there was a divine manhood in the heart of this youth. Old teachers, past times, the dead letter of forms a century deceased, enslaved his fellow-men, the great, the wise; what were they to him? Let the dead bury their dead. Men had reverence for institutions so old, so deep-rooted, so venerably bearded with the moss of age. Should not he, at least, with that sweet conservatism of a pious heart, sacrifice a little to human weakness, and put his zeal, faith, piety, into the old religious form, sanctified by his early recollections, the tender prayer of his mother, and a long line of saints? New wine must be put into new bottles, says the young man, triumphing over a sentiment, natural and beautiful in its seeming; triumphant where strife is most perilous, victory rarest and most difficult. The Priest said, Keep the Law and reverence the Prophets. Jesus sums up the excellence of both, Love man and love God, leaving the chaff of Moses, and the husk of Ezekiel, with their “Thus-saith-the-Lord,” to go to their own place, where the wind might carry them.

He looked around him and saw the wicked, men who had served in the tenth legion of sin, pierced with the lances and torn with the shot; men scarred and seamed all over with wounds dishonourably got in that service; men squalid with this hideous disease, their moral sense blinded, their nature perverse, themselves fallen from the estate of Godliness for which they were made, and unable, so they fancied, to lift themselves up; men who called good evil, and evil good,—he bade them rise up and walk, waiting no longer for a fancied redeemer that would never come. He told them they also were men; children of God, and heirs of Heaven, would they but obey. So corrupt were they, there was no open vision for them: the voice of God was a forgotten sound in their bosoms. To them he said, I am the good Shepherd; follow me. At the sight of their penitence he says, Thy sins are forgiven thee: go, and sin no more. Is not penitence itself the