Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/137

Rh circle of readers, Buckminster, Charming, and Ware have comforted the souls of men. Herbert and Watts have here and there a "gem of purest ray serene," and now and then a flower blooms into beauty in the desert air of liturgies, breviaries, and collections of hymns. The religious influence of Wordsworth's poetry has been truly great. With no large poetic genius, often hemmed in by the narrowness of his traditionary creed and the puerile littleness of men about him, he had yet an exceeding love of God, which ran over into love of men, and beautified his every day; and many a poor girl, many a sad boy, has been cheered and lifted up in soul and sense by the brave piety in his sonnets and in his lyric sweeps of lofty song. A writer of our own time, with large genius and unfaltering piety, adorning a little village of New Eng- land with his fragrant life, has sent a great religious influence to many a house in field and town, and youths and maids rejoice in his electric touch. I will leave it to posterity to name his name,—the most original, as well as religious, of American writers.

But the great vice of what is called "religious literature" is this. It is the Work of narrow-minded men, sectarians, and often bigots, who cannot see beyond their own little partisan chapel; men who know little of anything, less of man, and least of all of real religion. What criticism do such men make on noble men? The criticism of an oyster on a thrush; nay, sometimes, of a toad "ugly and venomous," with no "jewel in its head," upon a nightingale. Literature of that character is a curse. In the name of God it misleads common men from religion, and it makes powerful men hate religion itself; at least hate its name. It bows weak men down till they tremble and fear all their mortal life. I lack words to express my detestation of this trash,—concocted of sectarian cant and superstitious fear. I tremble when I think of the darkness it spreads over human life, of the disease which it inoculates mankind withal, and the craven dread it writes out upon the face of its worshippers. Look at the history of the Athanasian Creed and the Westminster Catechism. They have done more, it seems to me, to retard the religious development of Christendom, than all the ribald works of confessed infidels, from Lucian,