Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/311

264 the “nature of God” and Christ. Thus the “mind of the Lord” was determined and laid down, so that he might read that ran. The mysticism of Plato, and the dialectic subtleties of the Stagirite, afforded matter for the pulpit and councils to discuss.

This method of deciding dark questions by plurality of votes has always been popular in Christendom. In some things the majority are always right; in some always wrong. The four hundred prophets of Baal have a “lying spirit” in them; Micaiah alone is in the right. The college of Padua and the Sorbonne would have voted down Galileo and Newton, a hundred to one; but what then? Majority of voices proves little in morals or mathematics. A single man in Jerusalem on a certain time had more moral and religious truth than Herod and the Sanhedrim. Synods of Dort and assemblies of Divines settle nothing but their own opinions, which will be reversed the next century, or stand, as now, a snare to the conscience of pious men.

In the early times of Christianity, the teachers in general were men of little learning, imbued with the prejudices and vain philosophies of the times; men with passions, some of them quite untamed, notwithstanding their pious zeal. In the first century no eminent man is reckoned among the Christians. But soon doctrines, that played a great part in the heathen worship, and which do not appear in the teaching of Jesus, were imposed upon men, on pain of damnation in two worlds. They are not yet extinct. Rites were adopted from the same source. The scum of idolatry covered the well of living water. The Flesh and the Devil sat down at the “Lord's Table” in the Christian Church, and with forehead unabashed, pushed away the worthy bidden guest. What passed for Christianity in many churches during the fourth and a large part of the third century was a vile superstition. The image of Christ was marred. Men paid God in Cæsar's pence. The shadows of great men, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato; yes, the shades of humbler men, of name unknown to fame, might have come up, disquieted like Samuel, from their grave, and spit upon the superstition of the Christians defiling Persia, and Athens, and Rome. It deserved