Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/139

Rh says nothing against him that understandeth not. Belief on hearsay is better than knowledge by reason and conscience. You can get things by rote, if you cannot by heart. Comply with the ceremony, confess and do penance; bring your babies to baptism, else they are damned for your neglect, and you for their ruin; pay the tithes and other Church dues; and then mind your own business. Leave it for us to make the catechism; you are only to commit it to memory; for us to administer the ceremonies, and propitiate God with our prayers and self-mortification of the flesh: so shall it go well with you hereafter, and we will put you through this life into the kingdom of heaven. We are responsible to God for you; and the roar of hell is in our ears all day long and all night; but you are responsible to us for your deeds, words, thoughts, feelings, belief; and you shall hear the crackling of fagots unless you do as we bid. Don't talk to us about your ‘souls:’ human nature is good for nothing. God is our religion, and we are yours.”

This sacerdotal vicariousness likewise ran through all society. No church-doctrines held under humanity, either of reason or instinct, individual or collective; all held under the priesthood, which had eminent domain over human consciousness. Salvation depended on the Church, not on the faith or works of saint or sinner. The priest opened and shut the gates of heaven: tickets of entrance were to be bought at his office, and could not be had elsewhere, either of man or God.

Such was once the theory of the Divine State and Divine Church, the twofold kingdom of God on earth. It was the best thing men had in those days: let us not grumble. Man is honest always, and does the best he knows how. You and I were as faithful when we stumbled and babbled, as to-day when we talk and go alone. Mankind was a baby once—a stupid boy, it seems to you and me—but he turns out a pretty promising child. Let us not quarrel with the hole in which our fathers once burrowed, nor the rude wigwam which they built over it and named the Divine Church and State. Each was once the best of its kind on earth; and if our building be better, it is because theirs was worse and came earlier.

So much for these vicarious institutions.