Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/42

26 shake the ill-bottomed fabric to the ground ; men in pul- pits are still more fearful. It is a strange fear, that the mind should drive the soul out of us, and our knowledge of God annihilate our love of God. Yet some earnest men quake with this panic terror, and think it is not quite safe to follow the records writ in the great Bible of Nature, its world-wide leaves laid open before us, with their "millions of surprises."

Let me say a word in behalf of the largest culture of the intellect, of all faculties thereof,—understanding, imagination, reason. I admit there have been men of able mind and large intellectual development who have turned off from religion, their science driving them away from the doctrines taught in this name. But such men have been few. Did they oppose the truths of religion ? Oftener the follies taught in its name. All the attacks made on religion itself by men of science, from Celsus to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring religion into contempt as a single persecution for witchcraft, or a Bartholomew massacre, made in the name of God. At this day, in America, the greatest argument against the popular form of religion is offered by the churches of the land, a twofold argument: first, the follies taught as religious doctrine, the character assigned to God, the mode of government ascribed to him, both here and hereafter, the absurdities and impossibilities taught as the history of God's dealing with mankind; next, the actual character of these churches, as a body never rebuking a popular and profitable sin, but striking hands by turns with every popular form of wrong. Men of science, as a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness, and the piety that are taught as religion, only on the errors, the evil, the impiety, which bear its name. Science is the natural ally of religion. Shall we try and separate what God has joined? We injure both by the attempt. The philosophers of this age have a profound love of truth, and show great industry and boldness in search thereof. In the name of truth they pluck down the strong-holds of error, venerable and old. But what a cry has been raised against them! It was pretended that they would root out religion from the hearts of mankind! It seems to me it would be better for men who love religion to understand philosophy before they declaim against "the impiety of