Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/270

266 When the old South Church was built, when Christ's Church in Salem Street, when King's Chapel, when Brattle Square Church, they were respectively the costliest buildings in town. They were symbols of religion, as churches always are; symbols of tho popular esteem for religion. Out of the poverty of tho people, great Burns of money were given for these "Houses of God." They said, like David of old, "It is a shame that we dwell in a palace of cedars, and the ark of the Most High remains under the curtains of a tent." How is it now P A crockery shop overlooks the roof-tree of tho church where onco the eloquence of a Channing enchanted to heaven tho worldly hearts of worldly men. Now an hotel looks down on tho church which was once all radiant with the sweet piety of a Buckminster. A haberdasher's warehouse overtops the church of the Blessed Trinity; the roof of the shop is almost as tall as the very tower of the church. These things are only symbols. Let us compare Boston, in this respect, with any European city that you can name; let us compare it with gay and frivolous Vienna, the gayest and most frivolous city of all Europe, not setting Pans aside. For though the surface of life in Paris sparkles and glitters all over with radiant and iridescent and dazzling bubbles, .empty and ephemeral, yet underneath there flows a stream which comes from the great fountain of nature, and tends <pn to the ocean of human welfare. No city is more full of deep thought and earnest life. But in Vienna it is not so. Yet even there, above the magnifience of the Herrengasse, above the proud mansions of the Esterhazys and the Schwartzenbergs and the Lichtensteins, above the costly elegance of the imperial palace, St. Stephen's Church lifts its tall spire, and points to God all day long and all the night, a still and silent emolem of a power higher than any mandate of the kings of earth; ay, to the infinite God. Men look up to its cross overtowering the frivolous city, and take a lesson! Here trade looks down to find the church.

I am glad that the churches are lower than the shops. I have said it many times, and I say it now. I am glad they are less magnificent than our banks and hotels. I am glad that haberdashers' shops look down on them. Let the outward show correspond to the inward fact. If I am pinched and withered by disease, I will not disguise it from you by