Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/245

198 corn and relieves disease on the holy Sabbath day, when even God rested from his labours; he says, Worship the Father in spirit and in truth. They look out to their Law, its Festivals, its Levites, its Chief Priests, the Ancient and Honourable of the earth, the Temple and the Tithe; he looks in to the Soul, Purity, Peace, Mercy, Goodness, Love, Religion. The extremes meet often in this world. Comedy and Tragedy jostle each other in every dirty lane. But here it was the Flesh and the Devil on one side, and the Holy Spirit on the other.

often err in our estimate of this man. The image comes to us, not of that lowly one; the carpenter of Nazareth; the companion of the rudest men; hard-handed and poorly clad; not having where to lay his head; “who would gladly have stayed his morning appetite on wild figs, between Bethany and Jerusalem;” hunted by his enemies; stoned out of a city, and fleeing for his life. We take the fancy of poets and painters; a man clothed in purple and fine linen, obsequiously attended by polished disciples, who watched every movement of his lips, impatient for the oracle to speak. We conceive of a man who was never in sin, in error, or even in fear or doubt; whose course was all marked out before him, so that he could not miss the way. But such it was not, if the writers tell truly; nay, such it could not be. Did he say, I came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, and it is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass than for one jot or tittle of the Law to fail? Then he must have doubted, and thought often and with a throbbing heart, before he could say, I am not come to bring peace, but a sword; to light a fire, and would God it were kindled: many times before the fulness of peace