Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/244

Rh forgiveness of sins, the dawn of reconciliation with God? He showed men their sin, the disease of the soul living false to its law; told them their salvation; bade them obey and be blessed.

He saw the oppressor, with his yoke and heavy burden for Man's neck; the iron that enters the soul; men who were the corrupters, the bane, the ruin of the land; base men with an honourable front; low men, crawling, as worms, their loathsome track in high places; deceitful hucksters of salvation, making God's house of prayer a den of thieves, fair as marble without, but all rottenness within. What wonder if Love, though the fairest of God's daughters, at sight of such baseness pours out the burning indignation of a man stung with the tyranny of the strong, ashamed at the patience of mankind; the word of a man fearless of all but to be false when Truth and Duty bid him speak? To call the Whelp of Sin a devil's child—is that a crime? Doubtless it is, in men stirred by passion; not in a soul filled to the brim and overflowing with love.

He looks on the nation, the children of pious Abraham; men for whom Moses made laws, and Samuel held the sceptre, and David prayed, and prophets admonished in vain, pouring out their blood as water; men for whom psalmist and priest and seer and kings had prayed and wept in vain,—well might he cry, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Few heard his cries. That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit of God, how it wrought in his bosom! What words of rebuke, of comfort, counsel, admonition, promise, hope, did he pour out; words that stir the soul as summer dews call up the faint and sickly grass! What profound instruction in his proverbs and discourses; what wisdom in his homely sayings, so rich with Jewish life; what deep divinity of soul in his prayers, his action, sympathy, resignation! Persecution comes; he bears it: contempt; it is nothing to him. Persecuted in one city, he flees into another. Scribes and Pharisees say, He speaketh against Moses; he replies, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. They look back to the past, and say, We have Abraham to our father; he looks to the Comforter, and says, Call no man your Father on Earth. They say, He eats bread with unwashed hands, plucks