Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/212

196 an excellent institution; Christendom could no more dispense with them, than New England with her almshouses and jails; but the steadfast Protestant will say, "There can be no piety without accepting the Bible as the word of God, no saving religion without faith in the letter of Scripture." Not only has the Catholic his Shibboleth and the Protestant his, but each sect its own. The Calvinist says, "There is no piety without a belief in the Trinity." The Unitarians say, "There is no piety without a belief in the miracles of the New Testament." The Jews require a knowledge of Moses; Mahometans, a reverence for their prophet; and Christians, in general, agree there is no "saving piety" without submissive reverence to Christ. The late Dr Arnold, a most enlightened and religious man, declared that he had no knowledge of God except as manifested through Jesus Christ. Yet all the wide world over, everywhere, men know of God and worship Him,— the savage fearing, while the enlightened learns to love. Since compliance with the ritual and the creed is made the sole and exclusive test of piety, religious teachers aim to produce this compliance in both kinds, and succeeding therein, are satisfied that piety dwells in their disciples' heart. But the ritual compliance may be purely artificial; not something which grows out of the man, but sticks on. The compliance with the doctrine may be apparent, and not real at all. The word belief is taken in a good many senses. It does not always mean a total experience of the doctrine, a realizing sense thereof; not always an intellectual conviction. They often are the best believers of the creed who have the least experience in the love of God, but little intellect, and have made no investigation of the matter credited. Belief often means only that the believer does not openly reject the doctrine he is said to hold. So the thing thus believed is not always a new branch growing out of the old bole; nor is it a foreign scion grafted in, and living out of the old stock, as much at home as if a native there, and bearing fruit after its better kind; it is merely stuck into the bark of the old tree,—nay, often not even that, but only lodged in the branches,—fruitless, leafless, lifeless, and dry as a stick,—a deformity, and without use.

In this way it comes to pass that compliance with the