The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 3/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
THE ESSENTIAL EXCELLENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Let us call the religious teachings of Jesus Christianity; it agrees generically with all other forms in this, that it is a Religion. Its peculiarity is not in its doctrine of one Infinite God, of the Immortality of Man, nor of future Retribution. It is not in particular rules of Morality, for precepts as true and beautiful may be found in Heathen writers, who give us the same view of Man's nature, duty, and destination. The great doctrines of Christianity were known long before Jesus, for God did not leave man four thousand years unable to find out his plainest duty. There is no precept of Jesus, no real duty commanded, no promise offered, no sanction held out, which cannot be paralleled by similar precepts in writers before him. The pure in heart saw God before as well as after him. Every imperfect form of Religion was, more or less, an anticipation of Christianity. So far as a man has real Religion, so far he has what is true in Christianity.[1] By its light Zoroaster, Confucius, Pythagoras, Socrates, with many millions of holy men, walked in the early times of the world. By this they were cheered when their souls were bowed down, and they knew not which way to turn. They and their kindred, like Moses, were schoolmasters to prepare the world for Christianity; shadows of good things to come; the dayspring from on high; the Bethlehem star announcing the Perfect Religion which is to follow. Modern Christians love to deny that there are points of agreement between Christianity and its predecessors. The early apologists took just the opposite course.
1. The religious teachings of Jesus have this chief
excellence, they allow men to advance indefinitely beyond
him. He does not foreclose human consciousness against
the income of new truth, nor make any one fact of human
history a bar to the development of human nature. I do
not find that he taught his doctrines either as a Finality,
or as one of many steps in the progressive Development
of mankind: he gives no opinion. The author of the
fourth Gospel makes him tell his disciples that he had
other things to make known; that the Comforter would
teach them all things, and they should do greater works
than he. Paul, professing to receive new revelation from
the immortal Jesus, revolutionizes the doctrines of the
historical person; and notwithstanding the profession of
“following Jesus”, as the sole authority, the Christian
Church has built up a “Scheme of Divinity” and a “Plan
of Salvation” as much at variance with the recorded words
of Jesus in the Synoptics, as repugnant to common sense.
No sect has practically taken the words of Jesus for a
finality, though each counts its own doctrine as the last
word of God.
Judaism and Mahometanism each sets out from the alleged words of one man, which are made the only measure of Truth for the whole human race. There can be no progress. The devotee of Judaism or Mahometanism must logically believe his form of Religion perpetual: so if a man teach what is hostile to it, he must be put to death, though his doctrine be true.
Whatever is consistent with Reason, Conscience, and the Religious Faculty, is consistent with the Christianity of Jesus, all else is hostile; whoever obeys these three oracles is essentially a Christian, though he lived ten thousand years before Jesus, or living now, does not own his name. Let men improve in Reason, Conscience, Heart, and Soul, in what most becomes a man—they outgrow each form of worship; they pass by all that rests on historical things, signs, wonders, miracles, all that does not rest on the eternal God, ever acting in Man; yet they are not the further from this Christianity, but all the nearer by the change. These things are left behind, as the traveller leaves the mire and stones of the road he travels, and shakes off the dust of his garments as he approaches some queenly city, throned amid the hills, and looks back with sorrow on the crooked way he has traversed, where others still drag their slow and lingering length along. Men must come to such Christianity when they come to real manly excellence. This proposes no partial end, but an absolute Object—the perfection of Man, or oneness with God. Therefore it leaves men perfect freedom; the liberty that comes of obedience to the Law of the Spirit of Life. Other forms of worship, ancient and modern, confine men in a dungeon; make them think the same thought, and speak the same word, and worship in the same way; Jesus would leave them the range of the world, scope and verge enough. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty; the liberty of perfect obedience; the largest liberty of the sons of God. Reason and Love are hostile to every limited form of religion, which says, Believe, Believe; they welcome that Religion of Jesus which says, Be perfect as God.
2. A second excellence is this : It is not a System of theological or moral Doctrines, but a Method of Religion and Life. It lays down no positive creed to be believed in; commands no ceremonial action to be done; it would make the man perfectly obedient to God, leaving his thoughts and actions for Reason and Conscience to govern. It widens the sphere of thought and life: it reaffirms some of the great religious truths implied in Man's nature; shows their practical application and its result. A religious system, with its forms, and its ritual, lops off the sacred peculiarities of Individual Character; chains Reason and fetters the Will; seeks to unite men in arbitrary creeds and forms—where the union can be but superficial and worthless—and it lays stress on externals. This Christianity insists on rightness before God; ties no man down to worship in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem; on the first day of the week, or the last day; in the church or the fields; socially or in private; with a creed, ritual, priest, symbol, spoken prayer, or without these. It breaks every yoke, seen or invisible; bids men worship in love. It does not ask man to call himself a Christian, or his Religion Christianity. It bids him be perfect; never says to Reason, Thus far and no further; forbids no freedom of inquiry, nor wide reach of thought; fears nothing from the Truth, or for it. It never encourages that cowardice of soul which dares not think, nor look facts in the face, but sneaks behind altars, texts, traditions, because they are of the fathers; that cowardice which counts a mistake of the apostles better than truth in you and me, and which reads both Piety and Common Sense out of its church because they will not bow the knee nor say the creed. Christianity asks no man to believe the Old Testament, or the New Testament, the divine infallibility of Moses or Jesus, but to prove all things; hold fast what is good; do the will of the Father; love Man and God.
The method of such Christianity is a very plain one. Obedience, not to that old teacher, or this new one; but to God, who filleth all in all, to His Law written on the tablets of the heart. It exhorts men to a divine life, not as something foreign but as something native and welcome to Man. It is the life of many Systems of Religion, Theology, and practical Morality, as the ocean has many waves and bubbles; but these are not Christianity more than a wreath of foam is the Atlantic.
3. It differs from others in its eminently practical character. It counts a manly life better than saying “Lord, Lord;” puts mercy before sacrifice, and pronounces a gift to man better than a gift to God. It dwells much on the brotherhood of men; annihilates national and family distinctions; all are sons of God, and brothers; Man is to love his brother as himself, and bless him, and thus serve God. It values Man above all things. Is he poor, weak, ignorant, sinful, it does not scorn him, but labours all the more to relieve the fallen. It sees the “archangel ruined” in the sickly servant of Sin. It looks on the immortal nature of Man, and all little distinctions vanish. It bids each man labour for his brother, and never give over till Ignorance, Want, and Sin are banished from the earth; to count a brother's sufferings, sorrows, wrongs, as our sufferings, sorrows, and wrongs, and redress them. It says, Carry the Truth to all. Before Jesus, the Greek, the Roman, and the Jew, went to other lands to learn their arts, customs, and laws, study their religion. Jesus sent his disciples to teach and serve; only Budha and his followers had done it before.
This Christianity allows no man to sever himself from the race, making this world an Inn for him to take his ease. It does nothing for God's sake, each good act for its own sake; sends the devotee from his prayers to make peace with his brother; does not rob a man's father to enrich God; nor fancy He needs anything, sacrifice, creeds, fasts, or prayers. It makes worship consist in being good, and doing good; faith within and works without; the test of greatness the amount of good done. Thus it is not a Religion of temples, days, ceremonies, but of the street, the fire-side, the field-side. Its temple is all space; its worship in spirit and truth; its ceremony a good life, blameless and beautiful; its priest the Spirit of God in the soul; its altar a heart undefiled. It places duty above cant. It promises, as the result of obedience—oneness with God, and inspiration from Him. It offers no substitute for this, for nothing can do the work of Goodness and Piety but Goodness and Piety. It offers no magic to wipe sin out of the soul, and insure the rewards of Religion without sharing its fatigues; knows nothing of vicarious goodness. Its Heaven is doing God's will now and for ever; thus it makes no antithesis between this and the next life. It puts nothing between men and God; makes Jesus our friend, not master; a teacher who blesses, not a tyrant who commands us; a brother who pleads with us, not an Attorney who pleads with God, still less a sacrifice for sins he never committed, and therefore could not expiate.
These are not the peculiarities oftenest insisted on, and
taught as Christianity; it is not the mystery, the miraculous
birth, the incarnation, the God-man, the miracles, the
fulfilment of prophecy, the transfiguration, the atonement,
the resurrection, the angels, the ascension, the “five
points;”—other religions have enough such things, Jesus
had but little.
Notwithstanding the anticipation of the doctrines of Jesus centuries before him,—Christianity was a new thing; new in its Spirit, proved new by the Life it wakened in the world. Alas, such is not the Christianity of the Churches at this day, nor at any day since the crucifixion; but is it not the Christianity of Christ, the one only Religion, everlasting, ever blest?[2]
- ↑ See Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, &c. See Lactantius, Hist. Div. Lib. VII. C. 7, Nos. 4 and 7, who admits that all the doctrines of Christianity were taught before, but not collected into one mass. See Clem. Alex. Strom. I. 13, p. 349. Dr Reginald Peacock, writing in the 15th century against the Lollards, says that Christianity added nothing at all (except the Sacraments) to the moral law, for all of that was primarily established, not on the Scriptures but on natural reason; and adds that natural Law must be obeyed, even if Christ and the apostles had taught what was opposed thereto. Wharton in Appendix to Cave, Historia literaria, &c., Lond. 1698, Vol. I. p. 136.
- ↑ See the Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Theodore Parker, Boston, 1843, Art. I. and X.; Sermons of Theism, Serm. III.— VI. Also, Relation between the Ecclesiastical Institutions and the Religious Consciousness of the American People; and Function of a Teacher of Religion.