Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/200

184 Church and got to the altar, his masters had no legal right to touch him but by permission of the priest. The bishop interfered, made terms with the masters, and then delivered him up or not as they promised well or ill. The spirit of religion was supposed to rule in the church, and to protect the outcast. Men counselled wiser than they knew. It was a good thing that religion, such a rude notion as men had of it, prevailed in that narrow spot. When the tyrant would not respect God in all space, it was well that he should tremble before the sanctuary of a stone altar in a meeting-house. He would not respect a man, let him learn by beginning with a priest. If a murderer or a traitor took refuge in the heathen temples, nobody could drive him away or disturb him, for only God had jurisdiction in the holy place. So was it with the Hebrew cities of refuge: without, the atrocity of the world prevailed; within was the humanity of religion. The great begins small.

I believe there is no nation acquainted with fire but makes this artificial distinction. It is the first feeble attempt of the religious faculty to assume, power in the outward world ; in due time it will extend its jurisdiction over all time and space, over all things, all thoughts, all men, all deeds.

It is curious to see how this faculty goes on enlarging its territory: one day religion watches over the beginning of human life; then over its end; next over its most eminent events, such as marriage, or the entrance upon an office, making a will, or giving testimony, all of which are connected with some act of religion. You see what it all points towards,—a coordination of all human faculties with the religious. Here is the great forest of human life,—a tangled brushwood, full of wild appetites and prowling calculations,—to be cleared up. Religion hews down a few trees, burns over a little spot, puts in a few choice seeds, and scares off therefrom the wild beasts of appetite, the cunning beasts of calculation. This is only the beginning of clearing up the whole forest. What pains the savage in New England took with his little patch of artichokes, beans, pumpkins, and corn! With his rude tools, how poorly he dug and watered it, and for what a stingy harvest! He often chose the worst spot, he knew no