Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/4

 progress of religious belief, from a less to a more enlightened stage, is carried on apparently by a series of waves of thought, which sweep over the minds of men at distant intervals. There are periods of comparative calm and stagnation, and then times of gradual swelling and upheaving of the deep, till some great billow slowly rears its crest above the surface higher and still higher to the last; when, with a mighty convulsion, amid foam and spray, and “noise of many waters,” it topples over and bursts in thunder up the beach, bearing the flood-line higher than it had ever reached before. A great national reformation has been accomplished.

In the eyes of those who have watched intelligently the signs of the times, it seems that some such wave as this is even now gathering beneath us, a broader and a deeper wave than yet has ever arisen. No partial and temporary rippling of the surface is it now, but the whole mass of living thought seems slowly and steadily upheaved, and the ocean is moved to its depths. Such a phenomenon, if true, bears the highest promise ever held out to humanity, and we cannot but hail it with faith and joy, conscious that the sudden uprising of even the purest reforming sect, carrying us forward for the moment with earthquake violence, would afford no such reason for hopeful confidence in the future.

But this universal upheaving of thought, along with its vast promise of good, brings with it also forebodings of changes which it is impossible to contemplate without grave anxiety. When this wave breaks, if break it will, it will reach a point which has never been disturbed hitherto, and in whose conservation or engulfment some of the most sacred interests of the human race are concerned. The old temple of Traditional