Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/86

82 servedly hated by mankind, and there are some American names likely to be added to them. The traditionary respect entertained here for an office which has been graced by some of the noblest men in the land, doubles our danger.

But an attack is made on another safeguard of society, yet more important. We have been told that there is no law higher than a human statute, no law of God above an Act of the American Congress. You know how this doctrine of the supremacy of the lower law has been taught in the high places of the State, in the high places of the Church, and in the low places of the public press. You know with what sneers men have been assailed who appealed to conscience, to religion, and said, “The law of God is supreme, above all the enactments of mortal men.” You have been witness to attempts to howl down the justice of the Almighty. We have had declamation and preaching against the law of God. It is said the French Assembly, some fifty or sixty years ago, voted that there should be no public worship of God; that there was no God to worship; but it was left for politicians and preachers of America, in our time, to declare that there is no law above the caprice of mortal men. Did the French “philosophers” decree speculative Atheism? the American “wise men” put it in practice. They deny the function of God. “He has nothing to do with mankind.” This doctrine is one of the foulest ever taught, and tends directly to debauch the conscience of the people. What if there were no law higher than an Act of Parliament? What would become of the Parliament itself? There is such a thing conceivable as personal, speculative Atheism. I think it is a very rare thing. I have never known an Atheist: for with all about us speaking of God, all within us speaking of Him; every telescope revealing the infinite Mind in nebulæ resolved to groups of systems of suns; every microscope revealing the infinite Father, yea, Mother of the world, in a drop of water, a grain of perishing wood, or an atom of stone; every little pendulum revealing His unchanging law on a small scale; and this whole group of solar systems, in its slow and solemn swing through heavenly space, disclosing the same law on a scale which only genius at first can comprehend—it is not easy to arrive at personal, speculative