Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/296

Rh drunkenness be justified out of the Old Testament; the very Solomon advising the poor man to drown his sorrows in wine? Jeremiah curses the man that will not fight. Is not Sarah commended by the Fathers of the church, and Abraham by the Sons? Men justify slavery out of the New Testament, because Paul had not his eye open to the evil, but sent back a fugitive! It is dangerous to rely on a troubled fountain for the water of life.

The good influence of the Bible, past and present, as of all religious books, rests on its religious significance. Its truths not only sustain themselves, but the mass of errors connected therewith. Truth can never pass away. Men sometimes fear the Bible will be destroyed by freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Let it perish if such be the case. Truth cannot fear the light, nor are men so mad as to forsake a well of living water. All the freethinking in the world could not destroy the Iliad; how much less the truths of the Bible. Things at last will pass for their true value. The truths of the Bible, which have fed and comforted the noblest souls for so many centuries, may be trusted to last our day. The Bible has already endured the greatest abuse at the hands of its friends, who make it an idol, and would have all men do it homage. We need call none our Master but the Father of All. Yet the Bible, if wisely used, is still a blessed teacher. Spite of the superstition and folly of its worshippers, it has helped millions to that fountain where Moses and Jesus, with the holy-hearted of all time, have stooped and been filled. We see the mistakes of its writers, for though noble and of great stature, they saw not all things. We reject their follies; but their words of truth are still before us, to admonish, to encourage, and to bless. From time to time God raises up a prophet to lead mankind. He speaks his word as it is given him; serves his generation for the time, and falls at last, when it is expedient he should give way to the next Comforter whom God shall send. But mankind is greater than a man, and never dies. The experience of the past lives in the present. The light that shone at Nineveh, Egypt, Judea, Athens, Rome, shines no more from those points; it is everywhere. Can Truth decease, and a good idea once made real ever