Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/373

Rh burnt men for doubting the truth of their theology!” This is the defence of the popular theology. We have freedom in civil affairs, can revise our statutes, change the administration, or amend the constitution. Have we freedom in theological affairs, to revise, change, amend a vicious theology? We have always been doing it, but only by halves, not looking at the foundation of the matter. We have applied good sense to many things, Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, and with distinguished success; not yet to Theology. We make improvements in science and art every year. Men survey the clouds, note the variations of the magnetic needle, analyze rocks, waters, soils, and do not fear truth shall hurt them though it make Hipparchus and Cardan unreadable. Our Method of theology is false no less than its assumptions. What must we expect of the conclusion? What we find.

If a school were founded to teach Geology, and the professors of that science wore required to subscribe the geological symbol of Aristotle or Paracelsus, and swear solemnly to interpret facts by that obsolete creed, and maintain and inculcate the geological faith as expressed in that creed, in opposition to Wernerians, Bucklandians, Lyellians, and all other geological “heresies,” ancient or modern; if the professors were required to subscribe this every five years, and no pupil was allowed the name of Geologist, or permitted peacefully to examine a rock, unless he professed that creed, what would men say to the matter? No one thinks such a course strange in theology; our fathers did so before us. In plain English, we are afraid of the truth. “God forbid,” said a man famous in his day, “that our love of truth should be so cold as to tolerate any erroneous opinion”—but our own. Any change is looked on with suspicion. If the drift-weed of the ocean be hauled upon the land, men fear the ocean will be drank up, or blown dry; if the pine-tree rock, they exclaim, the mountain falling cometh to nought. How superstitiously men look on the miracle-question, as if the world could not stand if the miracles of the New Testament were not real! The popular theology does not aim to prove Absolute Religion, but a system of doctrines made chiefly of words. Now the problem of theology is continually changing. In the time of Moses it was this: To separate Religion from