Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/285

272 God, which mixes their image also with the stars of heaven all the night, its varicoloured glories all the day!

A false method in science gave man astrology, alchemy, magic; a true method gives him astronomy, chemistry, the medicative and beautifying arts, mills, factories, railroads, steam engines and telegraphs, ether. A false method in politics gave him a military despotism, slavery of the Asiatic millions, crushed underneath a tyrant's bloody foot; a true method gives him an industrial democracy, the marriage of liberty to law, filling the world with happy daughters and progressive sons. A true method in theology marries the religious instinct to philosophical reflection, and they will increase and multiply, replenishing the earth, and subduing it ; toil and thought shall dwell in the same household, and desire and duty go hand and hand therein.

My friends, almost thirteen years ago I came here at the request of some of you whom I see before me to-day. You asked me to preach a true method of theology, to teach the pure and absolute religion, calling no man my master, but looking to the great Master, who is also Father and Mother. It was a dark, rainy Sunday, the 16th of February, 1845. I knew I was coming to a "thirty years' war," should I live so long, and I had enlisted till the fight should be over: I did not know how terrible the contest must be; you knew it still less. You remember how the churches roared at us ; only here and there some one said, is Good may come out of it, as out of another Nazareth; let us wait and see. Let both grow together till the harvest; try not to pluck up these tares, lest you also disturb the wheat." Since on the 22nd of January, 1845, you voted the resolution that it was expedient that "Theodore Parker should have a chance to be heard in Boston," a great change has taken place in the theology of New England, of all the Northern States. I think the humble labours of this little society have not been in vain. It was a great opportunity which this wide hall offered, with its open doors. There are strangers who came to scoff but depart not without having learned to pray.

My main object has never been to make a system of theology, still less to form a sect, or draw a crowd; an