Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/237

224 the eye of the gossip and the pen of the newspaper reporter. The whole is said to be a miraculous outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the direct interposition of God. You look a little more closely, and you find the whole thing has been carefully got up, with the utmost pains. Look at the motive. Ecclesiastic institutions decay in England and America. This is well known. The number of church members in the United States is quite small—only three and a quarter millions. There are sixteen negro slaves to thirteen church members; the slaves increase, the church members do not. For two hundred years the number was never so small a fraction of the whole people. The number of births increases rapidly; the number of baptisms falls off. Belief in the ecclesiastic theology is fading out of the popular consciousness. Men begin to say, "God is not so ugly and so devilish as the ministers paint him." Hear an orthodox sermon, and then look at this, and then ask, "Is the God of the sermon, who is going to damn this whole congregation,—and is in haste to do it,—the God who made these flowers?" [pointing to the bouquet on the desk beside him]. Look up to the heavens. Men ask that, and they say, " The minister's God is a devilish dream. The God of nature and the God of man is no such thing."

They doubt the eternal torment of mankind. A father takes his baby in his arms, and says, "If the baby dies this moment, or if he died the day he was born, are you,' Dr Banbaby, going to make me believe God will damn this child? I shall not believe it." Men see contradictions in the Bible; the best men, the wisest, see them the most clearly. In short, New England men, who are famed for common sense, are applying to religion that common sense which wrought so well in farming, fishing, manufactures, everything else. Jealous ministers seek to change this state of things. No doubt they are as honest as lawyers, grocers, real estate holders in State-street and Summer-street. They want business kept at the old stand. They have invested in ecclesiastic corporations, and wish to keep up the stock, which is badly depreciated just now.

But what will they do? They will not mend their theology—their idea of God, man, religion. They will not manufacture an article suited to the demands of enlightened