Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/301

254 the straiter and more numerous sects confirms the damnation of all who think more liberally. Men who expose to scorn the folly of their assumptions, the Bayles, the Humes, the Voltaires; men who will not accept their pretensions, the Newtons, the Lockes, the Priestleys, the Channings, have their warrant of eternal damnation made out and sealed; not because their life was bad, but their faith not orthodox! Supported by this claim of superiority on the churches' part, canonized Ignorance may blast Learning; ecclesiastical Dulness condemn secular Genius; and surpliced Impiety, with shameless forehead, may damn Religion, meek and thoughtful, who out of the narrow church, walks with beautiful feet on the rugged path of mortal life, and makes real the kingdom of Heaven.

For many centuries it has been a heresy in the Christian churches to believe that any man out of their walls could expect less than damnation in the next world; it is still a heresy. It is taught with great plainness by the majority of Christians, that God will damn to eternal torments the majority of his children, because they are not in any of the Christian churches. If we look into the value of this claim of superiority, we shall find the foundation on which it rests. It must be either in the Idea of a Church, or in the Fact of the Christian Church receiving this delegated power from a human or a divine founder.

We do not speak, except figuratively, of a Church of Moses or Mahomet. It seems to be necessary to the idea of a visible and historical Church, that there should be a model-man for its central figure, around whom others are to be grouped. He must be an example of the virtues Religion demands; an incarnation of God, to adopt the phrase of ancient India, which has since become so prevalent among the Christians. Now Moses, viewed as a mythological character, and Mahomet, as an historical