Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/197

Rh some approach to that alien type. But the tree is always stinted, ugly, and short-lived under such treatment. Pliant nature assumes the form thrust on her, and then dies. So the savage, who has not yet learned to clothe his body, colours it with gall-nuts or ochre, tattooes his fancy upon his skin, mutilates the members, and hangs "barbaric pearl and gold " where nature left no need nor room for ornament. Civilized nations cut off the manly beard, and scrimp and screw the female form, warping, twisting, distorting, and wasting the dear handiwork of God. So we see men, as those trees, walking in a vain show far astray from the guidance of nature, looking as if "nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well, they imitate humanity so abominably."

But man is not content to meddle with his body. He must try his hand on the soul, warping and twisting, tattooing and mutilating that also, colouring it with ochre and gall-nuts of more astringent bite, and hanging barbaric pendants thereon. Attempts are made to interfere with the religious faculty, and give it a conventional direction; to make it take on certain forms of human caprice, not human nature. Some monstrous fancy is adopted for the model man, and then common men are clipped, and pruned, and headed down, or bent in, and twisted into a resemblance to that type. Nay, men are thought to be religious, just as they conform to the unnatural abomination." God likes none but the clipped spirit," quoth the priest. "No natural man for Him. Away with your whole men. Mutilation is the test of piety!"

If some Apelles or Michael Angelo could paint the religious condition of mankind, and represent by form and colour to the eye all this mutilation, twisting, distorting, and tattooing of the invisible spirit, what a sight it would be,—these dwarfs and cripples, one-legged, one-eyed, one-handed, and half-headed, half-hearted men ! what a harlequin-show there would be! what motley on men's shoulders! what caps and bells on reverend heads, and tattooing which would leave Australia far behind ! What strange jewels are the fashionable theological opinions of Christendom! Surely such liveries were never invented before! In that picture men would look as striped as the Pope's guard. And if some Adamitic men and women