Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/114

 tower of Babel, and physiologists brushed off the miracles of the Jews, the Greeks, the Hindoos, and Christians, to the same dust-hole of the ages and repository of rubbish. It is complained that "morality is not religious," because it refuses to be comforted with the forms of religious ceremony, and thinks "divine service" is not merely sitting in a church, or listening to even the wisest words. The churches complain also that "philanthropy is not religious," but love of men dissuades us from love of God. The philanthropist looks out on the evils of society,—on the slavery whose symbol is the lash, and the slavery whose symbol is the dollar; on the avarice, the intemperance, the licentiousness of men; and calls on mankind in the name of God to put away all this wickedness. The churches say: "Rather receive our sacraments. Religion has nothing to do with such matters."

This being the case, men of powerful character no longer betake themselves to the Church as their fortress whence to assail the evils of the age, or as their hermitage wherein to find rest to their souls. In all England there are few men, I think, of first-rate ability who speak from a pulpit. Let me do no injustice to minds like three great men honouring her pulpits now, but has England a clerical scholar to rival the intellectual affluence of Hooker, and Barrow, and Taylor, and Cudworth, and South? The great names of English literature at this day, Carlyle, Hallam, Macaulay, Mill, Grote, and the rest, seem far enough from the Church, or its modes of salvation. The counting-house sends out men to teach political economy, looking always to the kitchen of the nation, and thinking of the stomach of the people. Does the Church send out men of corresponding power to think of the soul of the nation, and teach the people political morality? Was Bishop Butler the last of the great men who essayed to teach Britain from her established pulpit? Even Priestley has few successors in the ranks of religious dissent. The same may be said of Church poets: they are often well-bred; what one of them is there that was well-born for his high vocation?

In the American Church there is the same famine of men. Edwards and Mayhew belonged to a race now extinct,—great men in pulpits. In our literature there