Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/249

202 would they not have found in it; what blasphemy against Moses and the Law, and the Ark of the Covenant, and the Urim and the Thummim, and the Meat-offering and the New-moons; what neglect to mention the phylacteries, and the shew-bread and the Levite, and the priest and the tithes, and the other great “essentials of Religion;” what “infidelity” must these pious souls have detected! How must they have classed him with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the mythological “Tom Paines” of old time; with the men of Sodom and Gomorrah! The popular praise of the young Nazarene, with his divine life and lip of fire; the popular shout, “Hosannah to the Son of David,” was no doubt “a stench in the nostrils of the righteous.” “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Find Faith? He comes to bring it. It is only by crucified redeemers that the world is “saved.” Prophets are doomed to be stoned; apostles to be sawn asunder. The world knoweth its own and loveth them. Even so let it be; the stoned prophet is not without his reward. The balance of God is even.

Yet there were men who heard the new word. Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the Soul of Man, the seed, however broadcast, will catch somewhere, and produce its hundred-fold. Some kept his sayings and pondered them in their heart. Others heard him gladly. Did priests and Levites stop their ears? Publicans and harlots went into the kingdom of God before them. Those blessed women, whose hearts God has sown deepest with the orient pearl of faith; they who ministered to him in his wants, washed his feet with tears of penitence, and wiped them with the hairs of their head, was it in vain he spoke to them? Alas for the anointed priest, the child of Levi, the son of Aaron, men who shut up inspiration in old books, and believed God was asleep. They stumbled in darkness, and fell into the ditch. But doubtless there was many a tear-stained face that brightened like fires new stirred as Truth spoke out of Jesus' lips. His words swayed the multitude as pendant vines swing in the summer wind; as the spirit of God moved on the waters of chaos, and said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. No doubt many a rude fisherman of Gennesareth heard his words with a heart bounding and