Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/84

Rh tions of Religion. Thus War, cruel and hideous monster as he is, has yet rocked Art and Science in his bloody arms. God makes the wrath of man to praise him;

As civilization goes forward in this rough way, the voice of humanity begins to speak more loudly, Morality is wedded to Religion, and a new progeny is born to bless the world. It begins to be felt that if the captive consents to serve his conqueror's God, the service will be more acceptable than his death. Hence he is spared; still worships his own Deity perhaps, but confesses the superiority of the victorious God. The God of the conquered party becomes a Devil, or a strange God, or a servant of the controlling Deity. Thus the Gibeonites and the Helots who once would have been sacrificed to the conquering God, became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Hebrews and the Spartans, and served to develope the directly useful and creative faculties of man. The Gods demand the service, not the life-blood, of the stranger and captive. No doubt the anointed priesthood opposed this refinement with a “Thus saith the Lord,” and condemned such as received the blessing of men ready to perish. But it would not do. Samuel hews Agag in pieces, though Saul would have saved him; but the days of Samuel also are numbered, and the theocratic power pales its ineffectual ray before a rising light.

II. is the next stage in the religious development of mankind. Here reflection begins to predominate over sensation. As the laws of Nature, the habits and organization of animals, begin to be understood, they cease to represent the true object of worship. No man ever deified Weight and Solidity. But as men change slowly from form to form, and more slowly still from the form to the substance, coarse and material Fetichism must be idealized before it could pass away. No doubt men, for the sake of example, bowed to the old stock and stone when they knew an idol was nothing. It might offend the weak to give up the lie all at once.