Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/255

208 never change. It shines perennial like the stars. Its testimony is in man's heart. None can outgrow it; none destroy. For eighteen hundred years, this Christianity of Christ has been in the world, to warn and encourage. Violence and Cunning, allies of Sin, have opposed. Every weapon Learning could snatch from the arsenals of the past, or Science devise anew, or Pride, and Cruelty, and Wit invent, has been used by mistaken men to destroy this fabric. Not a stone has fallen from the heavenly arch of real Religion; not a loophole been found where a shot could enter. But alas, vain doctrines, follies, absurdities, without count, have been piled against the temple of God, marring its beauteous shape. That Religion continues to live, spite of the traditions, fables, doctrines wrapped about it—is proof enough of its truth. Reason never warred against love of God and Man, never with the absolute Religion, but always with that of the Churches. There is much destructive work still to be done, which scoffers will attempt, if wise religious men withhold the medicative hand.

Can Man destroy Absolute Religion? He cannot with all the arts and armies of the world destroy the pigment that colours an emmet's eye. He may obscure the Truth to his own mind. But it shines for ever unchanged. So boys of a summer's day throw dust above their heads, to blind the sun; they only hide it from their blinded eyes.