Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/329

282 off before the flood,—the Church stood up against the tide; shed oil on its wildest waves; cast the seed of truth on its waters, and as they gradually fell, saw the germ send up its shoot, which growing while men watch and while they sleep, after many days, bears its hundred-fold, a civilization better than the past, and institutions more beneficent and beautiful.

The influence of the Church is perhaps greater than even its friends maintain. It laid its hand on the poor and down-trodden; they were raised, fed, and comforted. It rejected, with loathing, from its coffers, wealth got by extortion and crime. It touched the shackles of the slave, and the serf arose disenthralled, the brother of the peer. It annihilated slavery, which Protestant cupidity would keep for ever. It touched the diadem of a wicked king, and it became a crown of thorns; the monarch's sceptre was a broken reed before the crosier of the Church. Its rod, like the wand of Moses, swallowed up all hostile rods. Like God himself, the Church gave, and took away, rendering no reason to man for its gifts or extortions. It sent missionaries to the east and the west, and carried the waters of baptism from the fountains of Nubia to the roaring Geysers of a Northern isle. It limited the power of kings; gave religious education to the people, which no ancient institution ever aimed to impart; kept on its sacred hearth the smouldering embers of Greek or Roman thought; cherished the last faint sparkles of that fire Prometheus brought from Gods more ancient far than Jove. It had ceremonies for the sensual; confessionals for the