Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/206

perance and thrift, full of strength, truth, and comeliness; not to educate men's minds, developing the intellectual power to know truth and beauty, and handsomely report and apply the same ; not to unfold the conscience so that we shall both know and k:eep the natural law which God enacts in the constitution of man; not to bring out the affections till we love each other in all the forms of human endearment—filial, connubial, parental, affiliated, friendly, and philanthropic; not to cultivate the soul so that we shall know the real God by heart—not merely trembling beneath a fabled Deity imported from some foreign consciousness and plied upon us—and taste, and see, and feel His infinite perfection, till we also partake of His excellence and become one with Him, inspired by his truth, justice, and love, communing with Him in all noble life, and having no fear, but serving with continual growth of our being to absolute love and absolute truth;—while they do none of these things, but as their chief and instantial function seek to administer what at best were only a foreign, old, and finished inspiration, if it could be even that; and communicate a salvation alleged to be wrought out by one who died two thousand years ago; while for ultimate authority they appeal, not to the spirit of God within me now, in my own mind and conscience, heart and soul, not even to that spirit outside of me in the green and transient beauty of this earthly spring, or the perennial loveliness of the heavens whose spring is eternal, but to an old revelation, impossible to verify, made, it is said, to men long since dead, of whom I know little, and that not wholly to their credit as teachers of truth, full of errors obvious not less than manifold; while they appeal to low motives in me, to mean and selfish fear, now bribing with heaven, now scaring with hell, bewildering history with capricious fable, and philosophy with shameful theologic myths, preaching up an imperfect God who hates and will damn all his creatures save a scanty few, they seldom the noblest—and thunder forth all this mad volley against a heart which they declare totally depraved, incapable of any good thing, fertile only of evil, how can they succeed in elevating mankind to the dignity of human nature? True, there are noble men in all the churches, noble ministers in every sect, but they work for a vain purpose, counting it their