Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/367

320 works his witness. The early Christians fell back on the authority of Jesus; their successors, on the Bible, the work of the apostles and prophets; the next generation on the Church, the work of apostles and fathers. The world retreads this ground. Protestantism delivers us from the tyranny of the Church, and carries us back to the Bible. Biblical criticism frees us from the thraldom of the Scripture, and brings us to the authority of Jesus. Philosophical Spiritualism liberates us from all personal and finite authority, and restores us to God, the primeval fountain, whence the Church, the Scriptures, and Jesus have drawn all the water of life, wherewith they fill their urns. Thence, and thence only, shall mankind obtain Absolute Religion and spiritual well-being. Is this a retreat for mankind? No, it is progress without end. The race of men never before stood so high as now; with suffering, tears, and blood they have toiled, through barbarism and war, to their present height, and we see the world of promise opening upon our eye. But what is not behind is before us.

Institutions arise as they are needed, and fall when their work is done. Of these things nothing is fixed. Institutions are provisional, man only is final. Corporeal despotism is getting ended; will the spiritual tyranny last for ever? A will above our puny strength, marshals the race of men, using our freedom, virtue, folly, as instruments to one vast end—the harmonious development of Man. We see the art of God in the web of a spider, and the cell of a bee, but have not skill to discern it in the march of Man. We repine at the slowness of the future in coming, or the swiftness of the past in fleeing away; we sigh for the fabled “Millennium” to advance, or pray Time to restore us the Age of Gold. It avails nothing. We cannot hurry God, nor retard him. Old schools and new schools seem as men that stand on the shore of some Atlantic bay, and shout, to frighten back the tide, or urge it on. What boots their cry? Gently the sea swells under the moon, and, in the hour of God's appointment, the tranquil tide rolls in, to inlet and river, to lave the rocks, to bear on its bosom the ship of the merchant, the weeds of the sea. We complain, as our fathers; let us rather rejoice, for