Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/127

Rh of the idea, any newness in the form of religion. These educational forces will teach you evanescent principles which seem to suit your present and partial interests, not eternal principles, which really suit your universal and everlasting interests. In Jerusalem these forces might educate a Gamaliel,—never a Jesus. Charles River flows two miles an hour ; chips and straws on its surface, therefore, if there be no wind, will float with that velocity. But if a man in a boat wishes to go ten miles an hour, he must row eight miles more than the stream will carry him. So we are all in the dull current of the popular religion, and may trust it to drift us as fast as it flows itself; we may rise with its flood, and be stranded and left dry when it ebbs out before some popular wickedness which blows from off the shore. The religious educational forces of a commercial town,—you see in the newspapers what religion they will teach you,—in the streets what men they would make. These educational forces tend to make average Christians, and their influence is of great value to the community,—like the discipline of a camp. But to be eminent eligious men you must depend on very different helps. Let us look at some of them.

There are religious men who, by the religious genius they were born to, and the religious use they have made thereof, have risen far above the average of Christians. Such men are the first help; and a most important one they are. It is a fortunate thing when such an one stands in a church whither the public current drives in the people, and to the strength of his nature adds the strength of position. But it is not often that such a man stands in a pulpit. The common ecclesiastical training tends to produce dull and ordinary men, with little individual life, little zeal, and only the inspiration of a sect. However, if a man of religious genius, by some human accident, gets into a pulpit, he is in great danger of preaching himself out of it. Still there are such men, a few of them, stationed along the line of the human march; cities set on a hill, which no cloud of obloquy can wholly hide from sight. Nay, they are great beacons on the shore of the world,—light-houses on the headlands of the coast, sending their