Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/28

12 tried to make the man grown believe that they contained the finest poetry in the world, that the giant stories and the fairy tales therein were all true ; what effect would it have on his mind? Suppose you told him that the proof of his manhood consisted in his fondness for little boys' playthings, and the little story-books and the little games of little children, and kept him securely fastened to the apron-strings of the school-dame; suppose you could make him believe so! You must make him a fool first. What would work so bad in intellectual affairs works quite as ill in the matter of piety. The story of the flood has strangled a world of souls. The miracles of the New Testament no longer heal, but hurt mankind.

Then this method of procedure disgusts well-educated and powerful men with piety itself, and with all that bears the name of religion. "Go your ways," say they, "and cant your canting as much as you like, only come not near us with your grimace." Many a man sees this misdirection of piety, and the bigotry which environs it, and turns off from religion itself, and will have nothing to do with it. Philosophers have always had a bad name in religious matters; many of them have turned away in disgust from the folly which is taught in its name. Of all the great philosophers of this day, I think no one takes any interest in the popular forms of religion. Do we ever hear religion referred to in politics? It is mentioned officially in proclamations and messages ; but in the parliamentary debates of Europe and America, in the State papers of the nations, you find hardly a trace of the name or the fact. Honest men and manly men are ashamed to refer to this, because it has been so connected with unmanly dawdling and niggardly turning back, — they dislike to mention the word. So religion has ceased to be one of the recognized forces of the State. I do not remember a good law passed in my time from an alleged religious motive. Capital punishment, and the laws forbidding work or play on Sunday, are the only things left on the statute-book for which a strictly "religious motive" is assigned! The annual thanksgivings and fast- days are mementos of the political power of the popular religious opinions in other times. Men of great influence in America are commonly men of little apparent respect for religion; it seems to have no