Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/68

Rh who chronicled their awful thoughts in stone, shaping brute matter to a divine form, building up the Pyramid and Parthenon, or forcing the hard elements to swell into the arch, aspire into the dome or the fantastic tower,—whence did they draw their inspiration? All their greatest wonders are wrought in Religion's name. In the very dawn of time, Genius looks through the clouds and lifts up his voice in hymns and songs and stories of the Gods; and the Angel of Music carves out her thanksgiving, her penitence, her prayers for Man, on the unseen air, as a votive gift for her. Her sweetest note, her most majestic chant, she breathes only at Religion's call. Thus it has always been. A thousand men will readily become celibate monks for Religion. Would they for Gold, or Ease, or Fame?

The greatest sacrifices ever made are offered in the name of Religion. For this a man will forego ease, peace, friends, society, wife, and child, all that mortal flesh holds dearest; no danger is too dangerous, no suffering too stern to bear, if Religion say the word. Simeon the Stylite will stay years long on his pillar's top; the devotee of Budha tear off his palpitating flesh to serve his God. The Pagan idolater, bowing down to a false image of stone, renounces his possessions, submits to barbarous and cruel rites, shameful mutilation of his limbs; gives the firstborn of his body for the sin of his soul; casts his own person to destruction, because he dreams Baal, or Saturn, Jehovah, or Moloch, demands the sacrifice. The Christian idolater, doing equal homage to a lying thought, gives up Common Sense, Reason, Conscience, Love of his brother, at the same fancied mandate; is ready to credit most obvious absurdities; accept contradictions; do what conflicts with the moral sense; believe dogmas that make life dark, eternity dreadful, Man a worm, and God a tyrant; dogmas that make him count as cursed half his brother men, because told such is his duty, in the name of Religion. In this name Thomas More, the ablest head of his times, will believe a bit of bread becomes the Almighty God, when a lewd priest but mumbles his juggling Latin and lifts up his hands. In our day, heads as able as Thomas More's believe doctrines quite as absurd, because taught as Religion and God's command. In its behalf, the