Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/340

Rh cians in the Egypt of the Church. It saw the ecclesiastical Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, with destruction opening its hungry jaws to devour them. But it had a mixed multitude in its own train, and left the people in the wilderness, wandering like the Gibeonites, with no power to get bread from Heaven, or water from the living rock. Its Jethros were philologists who knew nothing of the spiritual land of hills and brooks, and milk and honey. Its leaders—men noble as Moses, men of vast soul, and Herculean power to do and suffer, to speak and be silent—had a Pisgah view of the land of promise, and wished God would put his spirit on all the people; but they died and gave no sign. The nations are still wandering in the desert; carrying the Sanctuary, the Ark, the Table of the Law; sometimes sighing after the leeks and garlics left behind; now and then worshipping a calf of gold, of parchment, or spoken wind; murmuring and rebellious; with here and there a Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rising up in their ranks, clouds enough, but with no Moses nor Pillar of Fire. Still, God be praised, we are no longer slaves under the iron bondage of the Church. They were who dared to come out, those heroes of the Reformation. This Protest against the Roman Church was one of the noblest the world ever saw; perhaps never surpassed but once, and then by a single soul, big as yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Stout-hearted Martin Luther, with his face rugged, homely, and honest, with a soul of fire, and words like cannon-shot, a heart that feared neither Pope nor Devil, and a living faith which sang in his dungeon,—“The Lord our God is a castle strong,”—the greatest of the prophets and the “chiefest of apostles” seems little to him. We may thank God and take courage, remembering that such men have been, and may be. There is no tyranny like the spiritual—that of soul over soul; no heroism like that which breaks the bonds of such tyranny. You shall find men thick as acorns in autumn, who will wade neck-deep in blood, and charge up to the cannon's mouth, when it rains shot as snow-flakes at Christmas. Such men may be had for red coats and dollars, and “fame.” It requires only vulgar bravery for that, and men who are “food for powder.” But to oppose the institution which your fathers loved in centuries gone by; to sweep off the