Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/314

Rh ment, — we should think it the midnight of the Christian Church, did we not know that after this “woe was past,” there came another woe; that there was a refuge of lies remaining where the blackness of darkness fell, and the shadow of death lingered long and would not be lifted up.

It is not necessary to go into the painful task of tracing the obvious decline of Christianity, and its absorption in the organization of the Church, which assumed the Keys of Heaven, and bound and tortured men on earth. It is beautiful to see the free piety of Paul, amid all his dogmatic subtleties,—a man to whom the world owes so much, —and the happy state of the earlier churches; when no one controlled another, except by Wisdom and Love; when each was his own priest, with no middle-man to forestall inspiration, and stand between him and God; when each could come to the Father, and get truth at first hand if he would. Jesus would break every yoke, but new yokes were soon made, and in his name. He bade men pray as he did, with no mediator, nothing between them and the Father of all; making each place a temple and each act a divine service. With the doctrines of his Religion on their tongue; the example of Jesus to stimulate and encourage them; the certain conviction that Truth and God were on their side; going into the world of men sick of their worn-out rituals, and hungering and thirsting after a religion they could confide in, live and die by; having stout hearts in their bosoms which danger could not daunt, nor gold bribe, nor contempt shame, nor death appal, nor friends seduce—no wonder the Apostles prevailed! An earnest man, though rude as Böhme, and Bunyan, and Fox, even in our times, coming in the name of Religion, speaking its word of fire, and appealing to what is deepest and divinest in our heart, never lacks auditors. How the zeal of the Mormons makes converts. No wonder the Apostles conquered the world. It were a miracle if they had not put to flight “armies of the aliens,” the makers of “silver shrines,” and “them that sold and bought in the temple.” Man moves man the world round, and Religion multiplies itself as the Banian tree. Men with all the science of the nineteenth century, but no Religion, can scarce hold a village together, while every re-