Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/207

Rh cial faults of tho particular party; the theological journals have tho common failings of the church, intensified by tho bigotry of tho sects they belong to; tho commercial journals represent the bad qualities of business. Put all three together, and it is not their aim to toll the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but tho truth, nor to promote justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and ideas which prevail in tho State, the church, and business. It brings those sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little directly to promote a higher form of human character.

So, notwithstanding the good influence of these four modes of national activity in educating the grown men of America, they yet do not afford the highest teaching which the people require, to realize individually the idea of a man, and jointly that of a democracy. The State does not teach perfect justice; the church does not teach that, or love of truth. Business does not teach perfect morality; and the average literature, which falls into the hands of the million, teaches men to respect public opinion more than the word of God, which transcends that. Thus, these four teach only the excellence already organized or incorporated in the laws, the theology, the customs, and the books of the land. I cannot but think these four teachers are lees deficient here than in other lands, and have excellences of their own, but the faults mentioned are inseparable from such institutions. An institution is an organized thought; of course, no institution can represent a truth which is too new or too high for the existing organizations, yet that is the truth which it is desirable to teach. So there will always be exceptional men, with more justice, truth, and love than is represented by the institutions of the time, who seem therefore hostile to these institutions, which they seek to improve, and not destroy. Contemporary with the priests of Judah and Israel were the prophets thereof, antithetic to one another as the centripetal and centrifugal forces, but, like them, both necessary to the rhythmic movement of the orbs in heaven, and the even poise of the world.

In Rome and in England the idea of a theocracy and an