Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/102

86 thing written in the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, is thus made to pass current with their respective worshippers. In the name of religion men sacrifice reason. St James says, "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." Thousands of men, in the name of religion, believe that this medical advice of a Hebrew fisherman was given by the infallible inspiration of God; and it is clerically thought wicked and blasphemous to speak of it as I do this day. I only mention these facts to show the natural strength of the religious instinct, working in a perverted and unnatural form, and against the natural action of the mind. In like manner religion is made to silence the moral faculties. The Hebrews will kill the Canaanites by thousands; Catholic Spaniards will build the Inquisition for their countrymen; English Protestants, under the bloody Elizabeth, will dip their hands in their Catholic brothers' blood; Puritan Boston has had her Autos da Fe, hanging Quakers for "non-resistance" and the "inner light," or witches for a "compact with the Devil." Do we not still hang murderers throughout all Christendom as an act of worship? This is not done as political economy, but as "Divine service;" not for the conversion of man, but in the name of God,—one of the few relics of human sacrifice. "Reason is carnal," says one priest,—men accept a palpable absurdity as a "revealed truth;" "Conscience must not be trusted," says another,—and human sacrifice is readily assented to. Nothing is so unjust, but men, meaning to be pious, will accept and perform it, if commanded in the name of religion. In such cases even interest is a feeble ally to conscience, and money is sometimes sacrificed in New England. The religious instinct is thus made to trample on the affections. At the priest's command men renounce the dearest joys of the heart, degrading woman to a mere medium of posterity, or scoffing at nature, and vowing shameful oaths of celibacy. Puritan mothers feared lest they should "love their children too much." How many a man has made his son "pass through the fire unto