Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/288

Rh not the same cause—whatever be it—help to explain the visions of Paul, the angels, and miracles of the New Testament? It is not many years since the divines of New England made collections of accounts of the devil appearing to men. If a religious teacher should appear at the time and place as Jesus appeared, it would be surprising, almost beyond belief, if miraculous tales were not connected with his birth, life, and death. Antiquity is full of sons of God, and wonder-workers. The story of Lazarus, and even that of the Ascension, is not without its parallels.

But if all the charges against the New Testament are true, what then? Why, this: honest men; noble, pious, simple-hearted men; the zealous Apostles of Christianity; the first to espouse it; willing to leave all, comfort, friends, life for its sake, after all, were but men, such as are born in these days, fallible, like ourselves; often in intellectual and moral error; they shared, like us, the ignorance and superstition of the times, and though earnest in looking saw not all things, but, as the wisest of them said, “through a glass darkly,” and made some confusion among things they did see. Do we ask miraculous evidence to prove that Jesus lived a divine life? We can have no such testimony. We know that if he taught Absolute Religion, his Christianity is absolutely true; that if he did not teach it, still Absolute Religion remains, the everlasting Rock of Faith, in spite of the defects of historical evidence, or the limitations of this or that man. Has the New Testament exaggerated the greatness and embellished the beauty of Jesus? Measure his religious doctrine by that of the time and place he lived in, or that of any time and any place! Yes, by the doctrine of eternal truth. Consider what a work his words and deeds have wrought in the world; that he is still the Way, the Truth, and the Life to millions; that he is reckoned a by the mass of Christians, his Word their standard of truth, his Life the Ideal they see too far above them in the Heavens for their imitation; remember that though other minds have seen farther, and added new truths to his doctrine of Religion, yet the richest hearts have felt no deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of Religion; have set no loftier aim, no truer method than his of -