Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/65

18 different circumstances whereto they are exposed, but also of the different endowments with which they set out. If we watch in history the gradual development and evolu lu tion of the human race, we see that one nation takes the lead in the march of mind, pursues science, literature, and the arts; another in war, and the practical business of political thrift, while a third nation, prominent neither for science nor political skill, takes the lead in Religion, and in the comparative strength of its religious consciousness surpasses both.

Three forms of monotheistic Religion have, at various times, come up in the world's history. Two of them at this moment perhaps outnumber the votaries of all other religions, and divide between them the more advanced civilization of mankind. These three are the Mosaic, the Christian, and the Mahometan; all recognizing the unity of God, the religious nature of Man, and the relation between God and Man. All of these, surprising as it is, came from one family of men, the Shemitic, who spoke, in substance, the same language, lived in the same country, and had the same customs and political institutions. Even that wide-spread and more monstrous form of Religion, which our fathers had in the wilds of Europe, betrays its likeness to this Oriental stock; and that form, still earlier, which dotted Greece all over with its temples, filling the isles of the Mediterranean with its solemn and mysterious chant, came apparently from the same source. The beautiful spirit of the Greek, modified, enlarged, and embellished what Oriental piety at first called down from the Empyrean. The nations now at the head of modern civilization have not developed independently their power of creative religious genius, so to say; for each form of worship that has prevailed with them was originally derived from some other race. These nations are more scientific than religious; reflective rather than spontaneous; utilitarian more than reverential; and, so far as history relates, have never yet created a permanent form of Religion which has extended to other families of men. Their faith, like their