Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/226

Rh One is bread—the bread of life; the other poison—the poison of death.

Look first a moment at some deeds which are called religion. (I will not go out from the Christian and Hebrew church.) I go back three or four thousand years, and I find an old man—more than seventy years old—standing by a pile of split wood, with a brand of fire beside him; he lays hold of his little son with one hand, and grasps a large crooked knife with the other. "What are you going to do with the boy, and with that knife?" I ask. "I am going to kill and then burn him on that pile of split wood, as an offering to God." "What do you do that for?" "Why, it is religion. Only three days ago, God said to me, ’Abraham, take thou thine only son, and offer him a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell thee of.' This is one of the grandest acts of my life. Glory to God, who demands the sacrifice of my only boy!"

Next I come down two hundred years, and I find an old man sitting still on a rough seat, out of doors, with a mob of furious men close beside him. They have just killed one of their countrymen;—stoned him to death. His body lies there, life hardly extinct, the mangled flesh yet warm and quivering. "Why did you kill this man?" I ask. And seventy elders, bearded to the girdle, exclaim at once. "Why, he picked up sticks Saturday afternoon? Would you let a man live who gathered firewood on Saturday—the seventh day—when God himself rested from his work, and was refreshed? Why, it was an act of religion to kill such a wretch. God himself told us, in good Hebrew speech, 'that man shall die the death outside the camp. The congregation shall stone him with stones,’ Glory to God!"

I come down a little further, and I find a Hebrew filibuster, with an army of men more savage than the Camanche Indians. He has just conquered a territory, killed thirty-one kings, burned all their cities, killing the men, the women, and the children. He smote them with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed them. He left none to breathe. Temple and tower went to the ground. He butchered men by the hundred thousand. Their cities yet smoke with fire. The blackened corpses