Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/8

Rh perishing away. The outward energies at work against them, the European missions and efforts at proselytism, are almost ludicrously inefficient to move a feather of their gigantic weight. But from within the change everywhere appears; the old life is gone, a new one is gradually arising, and that not by the formation of purer sects, but by the gradual enlightenment of the masses. Now, this vast movement throughout the world may possibly be of a more transitory nature than it now appears. The wave by which we are ourselves upborne is hardly in our power to measure aright, and it may be within the compass of events that it may subside ere long, leaving things everywhere nearly as they have been in the centuries gone by. In particular, as regards Christianity and the English branch thereof, it may be that all that is true in modern criticism and philosophy may be capable of adaptation, in ways we see not now, to its fundamental ideas; and the Church, by enlarging its formularies, may be found capable of absorbing them all, and arising with renewed life like a giant refreshed. These things may be so, we say, but it must be admitted that it is hard for us to see how any such reconciliation can take place. The tendency observable is all the other way. At the very utmost, so vast a modification of the popular creed must in such case ensue, as to render it hardly recognizable by its present adherents, while the interval of transition must be one of danger and difficulty, almost equal to that of the entire destruction of the old and reconstruction of a new belief. To enable men to pass through such transition with safety, an independent standing ground for faith in God and duty would be as needful as in the case of the most complete cataclysm and reformation.

But if the contrary prove true, if (as to all human prevision seems most probable) it be found impossible to achieve any compromise between the old and the new, then it is clear that a catastrophe of vast importance is inevitably approaching. The Churches of Christendom, and above all the Protestant Churches, have hitherto stood upon the honest belief of intelligent men, Whatever hypocrisy or pious frauds may at