Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/186

Rh Classic, Greek and Roman; the Zoroastrian; the Buddhistic; the Christian; and the Mahometan;—which have had a wide and deep influence on the welfare of mankind. They all have some things in common, while in others they widely differ.

The religious element—call it the soul—begins its activity with emotions—mere feelings; these lead to thoughts, and they to actions; and thus, little by little, Ecclesiastical Institutions get formed, the human instrument or machinery for expressing the idea, embodying the action, and thus attaining the object of the religious emotion. These institutions, like all others, are of gradual formation. Their influence, for good or ill, depends on the character of the idea embodied therein, and on their fitness for the special nation who accepts it. It is machinery in the human mill. When an Ecclesiastical Institution is fixed, and incapable of progressive amendment to suit the advancing consciousness of the people, it is a curse; and the nation which continually submits to it is first hindered and finally destroyed thereby. But while nations perish, mankind still survives; as the ocean endures for ever, while wave after wave rises successive and successive falls. If Spain be spiritually dead—the once noble tree killed by clipping its limbs, and girdling its trunk, and boring into its root—other trees spring out of the procreant earth and grow to mighty columns of green beauty. A living and progressive nation is continually altering its Ecclesiastic Institutions, as it improves its other machinery, industrial or political. Thus three thousand years ago the Ecclesiastic Institutions of the Teutonic people represented the old pagan ideas of Divinity, and suited the worship of Thor, Odin, or Hertha; the Teutons outgrew this form of religion, and accepted the Roman Christian ideas, with the Roman Christian institutions ; these were at length passed by, and now most of the Teutons have accepted the German Christian ideas with the corresponding institutions, and are preparing for another progressive step.

Now in our present Ecclesiastical Institutions there is an inherited and a newly-created part; the old must be revised, for while it contains what is true, and, therefore, permanently good and fair, it has also things good for once but not good for ever, and others not good at all.