Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/66

Rh choicer fruits, is an importation from abroad, not an indigenous plant, though now happily naturalized, and rendered productive in their soil. Of all nations hitherto known, these are the most disposed to reflection, literature, science, and the practical arts; while the Shemitish tribes in their early age were above all others religious, and have had an influence in religious history entirely disproportionate to their numbers, their art, their science, or their laws. Out of the heart of this ancient family of nations flowed forth that triple stream of pious life, which even now gives energy to the pulsations of the world. Egypt and Greece have stirred the intellect of mankind; and spoken to our love of the Grand, the Beautiful, the True, to faculties that lie deep in us. But this Oriental people have touched the Soul of men, and awakened reverence for the Good, the Holy, the Altogether Beautiful, which lies in the profoundest deep of all. The religious element appears least conspicuous, it may be, in some nations of Australia—perhaps the most barbarous of men. With savages in general it is in its infancy, like all the nobler attributes of Man, but as they develope their nature, this faculty becomes more and more apparent.

II. Again; this element is indestructible in human nature. It is not in the power of caprice within, nor external circumstances, war or peace, freedom or slavery, ignorance or refinement, wholly to abolish or destroy it. Its growth may be retarded, or quickened; its power misdirected, or suffered to flow in its proper channel. But no violence from within, no violence from without, can ever destroy this element. It were as easy to extirpate hunger and thirst from the sound living body, as this element from the spirit. It may sleep. It never dies. Kept down by external force to-day, it flames up to heaven in streams of light to-morrow. When perverted from its natural course, it writes, in devastation, its chronicles of wrongs,—a horrid page of human history, which proves its awful power, as the strength of the human muscle is proved by the distortions of the maniac. Sensual men, who hate the restraints of Religion, who know nothing of its en-