Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/28

24 theory which does that, is quite another thing. Large cities are alike the court and camp of the mercantile class, and what I have just said is more eminently true of the clergy in such towns. Lot me give an example. Not long ago the Unitarian clergy published a protest against American Slavery. It. was moderate, but firm and manly. Almost all the clergy in the country signed it. In the large towns few: they mainly young men and in the least considerable churches. The young men seemed not to understand their contract, for the essential, part of an ecclesiastical contract is sometimes written between tho lines and in sympathetic ink. Is a steamboat burned or lost on the waters, how many preach on that affliction 1 Yet how few preached against the war? A preacher may say he hates it as a man, no words could describe his loathing at it; but as a minister of Christ, he dares not say a word! What clergy-men tell of the sins of Boston,—of intemperance, licentiousness; who of the ignorance of the people; who of them lays bare our public sin as Christ of old; who tells the causes of poverty, and thousand-handed crime; who aims to apply Christianity to business, to legislation, politics, to all the nation's life! Once the church was the bride of Christ, living by His creative, animating love; her children were apostles, prophets, men by the same spirit, variously inspired with power to heal, to help, to guide mankind. Now she seems the widow of Christ, poorly living on the dower of other times. Nay, the Christ is not dead, and it is her alimony, not her dower. Her children—no such heroic sons gather about her table as before. In her dotage she blindly shoves them off, not counting men as sons of Christ. Is her day gone by? The clergy answer the end they were bred for, paid for. "Will they say, "We should lose our influence were we to tell of this and do these things?" It is not true. Their ancient influence is