Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/89

76 abuse of Sunday and Scripture was only the reaction against other abuses, ancient, venerated, and enforced by the Catholic church itself.

Every sect has some institution which is the symbol of its religious consciousness, though not devised for that purpose. With the early Christians, it was their love-feasts and communion; with the Catholics, it is their gorgeous ritual with its ancient date and divine pretensions—a ritual so imposing to many ; with the Quakers, who scorn all that is symbolic, the symbol equally appears in the plain dress and the plain speech, the broad brim, and thee and thou. With the Puritans, this symbol was the Sabbath, not the Sunday. Their Sabbath was like themselves, austere, inflexible as their "divine decrees;" not human and of man, but Hebrew and of the Jews, stern, cold, and sad. The Puritans were possessed with the sentiment of fear before God; they had ideas analogous to that sentiment, and wrought out actions akin to those ideas. They brought to America their ideas and sentiments. Behold the effect of their actions. Let us walk reverently backward, with averted eyes, to cover up their folly, their shame, and their sin, as they could not walk to conceal the folly of their progenitors. The Puritans are the fathers of New England and her descendant States ; the fathers of the American idea ; of most things in America that are good; surely, of most that is best. They seem made on purpose for their work of conquering a wilderness and founding a State. It is not with gentle hands, not with the dalliance of effeminate fingers, that such a task is done. The work required energy the most masculine, in heart, head, and hands. None but the Puritans could have done such a work. They could fast as no men; none could work like them; none preach; none pray; none could fight as they fought. They have left a most precious inheritance to men who have the same greatness of soul, but have fallen on happier times. Yet this inheritance is fatal to mere imitators, who will go on planting of vineyards, where the first planter fell intoxicated with the fruit of his own toil. This inheritance is dangerous to men who will be no wiser than their ancestors. Let us honour the good deeds of our fathers; and not eat, but reverently bury their honoured bones.