Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/251

204 follow him who has the word of eternal life; and when that young carpenter asks Peter, Whom sayest thou that I am? it had been revealed to that poor unlettered fisherman, not by flesh and blood, but by the word of the Lord, and he can say, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Pharisee went his way, and preached a doctrine that he knew was false; the fisherman also went his way, but which to the Flesh and the Devil?

We cannot tell, no man can tell the feelings which the large free doctrines of such humane Religion awakened when heard for the first time. There must have been many a Simeon waiting for the consolation; many a Mary longing for the better part; many a soul in cabins and cottages and stately dwellings, that caught glimpses of the same truth as God's light shone through some crevice which Piety made in that wall Prejudice and Superstition had built up betwixt Man and God; men who scarce dared to trust that revelation—“too good to be true”—such was their awe of Moses, their reverence for the priest. To them the word of Jesus must have sounded divine; like the music of their home sung out in the sky, and heard in a distant land, beguiling toil of its weariness, pain of its sting, affliction of despair. There must have been men, sick of forms which had lost their meaning; pained with the open secret of sacerdotal hypocrisy; hungering and thirsting after the truth, yet whom Error, and Prejudice, and Priestcraft had blinded so that they dared not think as men, nor look on the sunlight God shed upon the mind.

But see what a work it has wrought. Men could not hold the word in their bosoms; it would not be still. No doubt they sought—those rude disciples—after their teacher's death, to quiet the matter and say nothing about it; they had nerves which quivered at the touch of steel; wives and children whom it was hard to leave behind, to the world's uncertain sympathy; respectable friends, it may be, who said, The old Law did very well; let well enough alone; the people must be deceived a little; the world can never be much mended! No doubt the Truth stood on one side, and Ease on the other; it has often been so.