Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/363

316 which must be reached if they are not already. Both represent great truths, out of which their excellence and power proceed, but both great falsehoods, which impoverish their excellence. Each is too narrow for the Soul; should the persons who sit in these Churches rise to the stature of men, they must carry away roof and steeple, for Man is greater than the Churches he allows to tyrannize over him.

party has an Idea wider and deeper than that of the Catholic or Protestant, namely, that God still inspires men as much as ever; that he is immanent in spirit as in space. For the present purpose, and to avoid circumlocution, this doctrine may be called. This relies on no Church, Tradition, or Scripture, as the last ground and infallible rule; it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters; helps, if they help us, not authorities. It relies on the divine presence in the Nature of Man; the eternal Word of God, which is, as it speaks through the faculties he has given. It believes God is near the soul, as matter to the sense; thinks the canon of revelation not yet closed, nor God exhausted. It sees him in Nature's perfect work; hears him in all true Scripture, Jewish or Phoenician; feels him in the aspiration of the heart; stoops at the same fountain with Moses and Jesus, and is filled with living water. It calls God Father and Mother, not King; Jesus brother, not Redeemer; Heaven home; Religion nature. It loves and trusts, but does not fear. It sees in Jesus a man living manlike, highly gifted, though not without errors, and living with earnest and beautiful fidelity to God, stepping thousands of years before the race of men; the profoundest religious genius God has raised