Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/328

at his best estate not having where to lay his head; who died at the hangman's hand, but who was at last seated at the right hand of God, and in his low estate was deemed God in humiliation come down into the flesh, to take its humblest form, and show He was no respecter of persons,—the Church did not fail to espouse the cause of the people, with whom Christianity found its first adherents, its apostles, and defenders. With somewhat in its worst days of the spirit of him who gave his life a ransom for many, with much of it really active in its best days, and its theory at all times, the Church stood up, for long ages, the only bulwark of freedom; the last hope of man struggling but sinking as the whelming waters of barbarism whirled him round and round. It came to the Baron, haughty of soul, and bloody of hand, who sat in his clifftower, a hungry giant; who broke the poor into fragments, ground them to powder, and spurned them like dust from his foot; it came between him and the captive, the serf, the slave, the defenceless maiden, and stayed the insatiate hand. Its curse blasted as lightning. Even in feudal times, it knew no distinction of birth; all were “conceived in sin,” “shapen in iniquity,” alike the peasant and the peer. The distinction of birth, station, was apparent, not real. Yet were all alike children of God, who judged the heart, and knew no man's person; all heirs of Heaven, for whom prophets and apostles had uplifted their voice; yes, for whom God had worn this weary, wasting weed of flesh, and died a culprit's death. Then while nothing but the accident of distinguished birth, or the possession of animal fierceness, could save a man from the collar of the thrall, the Church took to her bosom all who gave signs of talent and piety; sheltered them in her monasteries; ordained them as her priests; welcomed them to the chair of St Peter; and men who from birth would have been companions of the Galilean fisherman, sat on the spiritual throne of the world, and governed with a majesty which Cæsar might envy, but could not equal. Priests came up from no Levitical stock, but the children of captives and bondmen as well as prince and peer. When northern barbarism swept over the ancient world; when temple and tower went to the ground, and the culture of old time, its letters, science, arts, were borne