Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/376

330 talk; it is not in the heart, nor the hand, nor the head, but only in the tongue. Could that great man, whose soul bestrides the world to bless it, come back again, and speak in bold words, to our condition, follies, sins, his denunciation and his blest beatitudes, rooting up with his “Woe-unto-you, Hypocrites,” what was not of God's planting, and calling things by right names—how should we honour him? As Annas, and Caiaphas, and their fellows honoured that “Galilean, and no prophet,”—with spitting and a cross. But it costs little to talk and to pray.

A divine manliness is the despair of our Churches. No man is reckoned good who does not believe in sin, and human inability. We seem to have said:—“Alas for us! We defile our week-days by selfish and unclean living; we dishonour our homes, by low aims and lack of love; by sensuality and sin. We debase the sterling word of God in our soul; we cannot discern between good and evil, nor read Nature aright; nor come at first-hand to God; therefore let us set one day apart from our work; let us build us a house which we will enter only on that day trade does not tempt us; let us take the wisest of books, and make it our oracle; let it save us from thought, and be to us as a God; let us take our brother to explain us this book, to stand between us and God; let him be holy for us, pray for us, represent a divine life. We know these things cannot be, but let us make believe.” The work is accomplished, and we have the Sabbath, the Church, the Bible, and the Ministry; each beautiful in itself, but our ruin, when made the substitutes for holiness of heart and a divine life.

In Absolute Religion we have what is wide as the East and the West; deep and high as the Nadir and Zenith; certain as Truth, and everlasting as God. But in our life we are heathens. He that fears God becomes a prey. To be religious, with us, in speech and action, a man must take his life in his hand, and be a lamb among the wolves. Does our Christianity enter the counting-room; the senate-house; the jail? Does it look on ignorance and poverty, seeking to root them out of the land? The religious doctrine of work and wages is a plain thing; he that wins the