Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/126

110 has itself learned and possessed, not that which it has not learned and does not possess. Not only can it not teach a religion higher than its own, but it hinders you in your attempt to learn a new and better mode of religion.

For several things we may trust these public educational forces in religion.

They teach you in the general popular fear of God, and a certain outward reverence which comes of that; the popular sacraments of our time,—to give your bodily presence in a meeting-house, perhaps to join a sectarian church, and profess great reverence for the Bible. They will teach you the popular part of your practical duties,—personal, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and political. But of course they can teach you only the popular part.

They may be relied on to teach the majority of men certain great truths, which are the common property of Christendom, such as the existence of a God, the immortality of the soul, the certainty of a kind of retribution, and the like. Then each sect has certain truths of its own which it will commonly teach. Thus the Catholics will learn to reverence the Roman Church; the Protestants to venerate the Bible; the Calvinists to believe in the Trinity; and the Unitarians in the Oneness of God. All the sects will teach a certain decorum, the observance of Sunday,—to honour the popular virtues, to shun the unpopular vices.

The educational forces tend to produce this effect. You send your boys to the public schools of Boston, they learn the disciplines taught there,—to read, write, and calculate. What is not taught they do not learn. In Saxony the children learn German; Dutch, in Holland. In the same way the majority of men learn the common religion of the community, and profess it practically in their markets, their houses, their halls of legislature, their courts, and their jails. The commercial newspapers, the proceedings of Congress, the speeches of public men,—these are a part of the national profession of faith, and show what is the actual object of worship, and what the practical creed of the nation.

But for any eminence of religion you must look elsewhere; for any excellence of the sentiment, any superiority