Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/198

182 were also represented, walking about in this varicoloured paradise of theology, arrayed in the natural costume of religion, "when unadorned, adorned the most," how different they would seem! Truly that gibbeting of theological folly in a picture would be a more instructive "Last Judgment" than even the great Michael ever thought of painting.

In all forms of religion hitherto there has been noticed, not merely the natural difference between right and wrong, good and evil, but also an artificial and conventional difference between things sacred and things profane. Some things are deemed common and laical; others are called holy and clerical. This conventional distinction begins early, extends wide, and will outlast you and me a great many years. Thus, what is now-a-days said under oath is officially thought a holy and clerical sort of truth; while what is said without oath, though equally correspondent with facts, is officially considered only a common and laical sort of truth. Some persons, as atheists and such as deny the immortality of the soul, are thought incapable of this clerical truth, and so not allowed to swear, or otherwise testify, in court.

In earlier ages of the world, and even now, this conventional distinction between laical and clerical, sacred and profane, applies to places, as groves, hill-tops, temples, and the like; to times, as new moons with one, full moons with another, Friday with the Turks, Saturday with the Jews, Sunday with the Christians; to things, as statues of saints and deities, the tools of public worship; to persons, and some are set apart from mankind as "the Lord's lot," and deemed holy; to actions, some of which are reckoned pleasing to God, not because they are naturally right, good, beautiful, or useful, but only as conventionally sacred ; and to opinions, which for the same reason were pronounced revealed, and so holy and clerical.

The laws of the land, for a long time, observed this artificial distinction. Thus a blow struck in a church or temple brought a severer punishment on the offender than if given elsewhere. Even now in Boston it is lawful to "gamble," except on Saturday night and Sunday; and all common work on that day is penal. Formerly it was