TEN
SERMONS OF RELIGION,
B3Y
THEODORE  PARKER,
MINISTER OF TIlE TWENTY-EIGHTHI CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. IN BOSTON.
SECOND EDITION.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR  AND  FIELDS.
Ir DCCC LXI.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
THEODORE PARKER,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.




TO
RALPH WALDO EMERSON,
WITH ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS,
AND WITH KINDLY AFFECTION FOR WHAT IN HIM IS FAR NOBLER
THAN GENIUS,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
BY HIS FRIEND,
THEODORE PARKER.








PREFACE.
I HAVE often been asked by personal friends to publish
a little volume of Sermons of Religion, which might come
home to their business and bosoms in the joys and sorrows
of their daily life. And nothing loth to do so without
prompting, I have selected these which were originally
part of a much longer course, and send them out, wishing that they may be serviceable in promoting the religious
welfare of mankind on both sides of the ocean. They are
not Occasional Sermons, like most of those I have lately
published, which heavy emergencies pressed out of me; but
they have all, perhaps, caught a tinge from the events of
the day when they were preached at first. For as a country girl makes her festal wreath of such blossoms as the
fields offer at the time, - of violets and wind-flowers in the
spring, of roses and water-lilies in summer, and in autumn
of the fringed gentian and the aster, -so must it be with
the sermons which a minister gathers up under serene or
stormy skies. This local coloring from time and circumstances I am not desirous to wipe off; so the sad or joyous
aspect of the day will be found still tinging these printed




Vi                      PREFACE.
Sermons, as indeed it colored the faces and tinged the
prayers of such as heard them first.
Sometimes the reader will find the same fundamental
idea reappearing under various forms, in several places of
this book; and may perhaps also see the reason thereof in
the fact, that it is the primeval Rock on which the whole
thing rests, and of necessity touches the heavens in the
highest mountains, and, receiving thence, gives water to the
deepest wells which bottom thereon.
I believe there are great Truths in this book, — both
those of a purely intellectual character, and those, much
more important, which belong to other faculties nobler than
the mere intellect; truths, also, which men need, and, as I
think, at this time greatly need. But I fear that I have not
the artistic skill so to present these needful truths that a
large body of men shall speedily welcome them; perhaps
not the attractive voice which can win its way through the
commercial, political, and ecclesiastical noises of the time,
and reach the ears of any multitude.
Errors there must be also in this book. I wish they
might be flailed out and blown away; and shall not complain if it be done even by a rough wind, so that the precious Truths be left unbroke and clean after this winnowing,
as bread-stuff for to-day, or as seed-corn for seasons yet
to come.
August 24th, 1852.




CONTENTS.
I.
PAGE
OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO MANLY LIFE      3
II.
OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT..                   33
III.
OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.                     66
IV.
OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS...                 102
V.
OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL...    139
VI.
OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS..       185
VII.
OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH.   225
VIII.
OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF JOY...259
IX.
OF CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.. 312
X.
OF COMMUNION WITH GOD.364








SERMONS.








OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO
MANLY LIFE.
THOU SHALT LOVE THE LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THY HEART,
AND WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY MIND. —Matt.
xxii. 37.
THERE are two things requisite for complete and
perfect religion, -the love of God and the love of
man; one I will call Piety, the other Goodness. In
their natural development they are not so sharply
separated as this language would seem to imply;
for piety and goodness run into one another, so
that you cannot tell where one begins and the other
ends. But I will distinguish the two by their centre,
where they are most unlike; not by their circumference, where they meet and mingle.
The part of man which is not body I will call
the Spirit; under that term including all the faculties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake,




4          THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
distribute these faculties of the human spirit into
four classes: the intellectual, -including the  esthetic,  moral, affectional, and religious.  Let Mind
be the name of the intellectual faculty, - including
the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination,
and understanding; Conscience shall be the short
name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and
Soul for the religious faculties.
I shall take it for granted that the great work of
mankind on earth is to live a manly life, to use,
discipline, develop, and enjoy every limb of the
body, every faculty of the spirit, each in its just
proportion, all in their proper place, duly coordinating what is merely personal, and for the present
time, with what is universal, and for ever. This
being so, what place ought piety, the love of God,
to hold in a manly life?
It seems to me, that piety lies at the: basis of all
manly excellence. It represents the universal action
of man according to his nature.  This universal
action, the bent of the whole man in his normal
direction, is the logical condition of any special
action of man.in: a right direction, of any particular bent that way. If I have a universal idea of
universal causality in my mind, I can then understand a special cause; but without that. universal
idea: of causality in my mind, patent or latent,
I could not understand any particular cause what



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.         5
ever. My eye might see the fact of a man cutting down a tree, but my mind would comprehend
only the conjunction in time and space, not their
connection in causality. If you have not a universal idea of beauty, you do not know that this
is a handsome and that a homely dress; you notice
only the form and color, the texture and the fit, but
see no relation to an ideal loveliness. If you have
not a universal idea of the true, the just, the holy,
you do not comprehend the odds betwixt a correct
statement and a lie, between the deed of the priest
and that of the good Samaritan, between the fidelity of Jesus and the falseness of Iscariot. This
rule runs through all human nature. The universal
is the logical condition of the generic, the special,
and the particular. So the love of God, the universal object of the human spirit, is the logical conditioh of all manly life.
This is clear, if you look at man acting in each
of the four modes just spoken of,  intellectual,
moral, affectional, and religious.
The Mind contemplates God as manifested in
truth; for truth -in the wide meaning of the word
including also a comprehension of the useful and
the beautiful-is the universal category of intellectual cognition. To love. God with the mind, is
to love him as manifesting himself in the truth, or
to the mind; it is to love truth, not for its uses, but
1*




6          THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
for itself, because it is true, absolutely beautiful
and  lovely to  the  mind.  In  finite things we
read the infinite truth, the absolute object of the
mind.
Love of truth is a great intellectual excellence;
but it is plain you must have the universal love
of universal truth before you can have any special
love for any particular truth whatsoever; for in all
intellectual'affairs the universal is the logical condition of the special.
Love of truth in general is the intellectual part
of piety.  We see at once that this lies at the
basis of all intellectual excellence,  at love of
truth in art, in science, in law, in common life.
Without it you may love the convenience of truth
in its various forms, useful or beautiful; but that.
is quite different from loving truth itself. You often
find men who love the uses of truth, but not truth;
they wish to have truth on their side, but not to
be on the side of truth. When it does not serve
their special and selfish turn, they are offended, and
Peter breaks out with his "I know not the man,"
and "the wisest, brightest" proves also the "meanest
of mankind."
The Conscience contemplates God as manifested
in right, in justice; for right or justice is the universal category of moral cognition. To love God




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.           7
with the conscience, is to love him as- manifested
in right and justice; is to love right or justice, not
for its convenience, its specific uses, but for itself,
because it is absolutely beautiful and lovely to the
conscience.  In  changeable things we read the
unchanging and eternal right, which is the absolute
object of conscience.
To love right is a great moral excellence; but it
is plain you must have a universal love of universal
right before you can have any special love of a particular right; for, in all moral affairs, the universal
is the logical condition of the special.
The love of right is the moral part of piety. This
lies at the basis of all moral excellence whatever.
Without this you may love right for its uses; but
if only so, it is not right you love, but only the
convenience it may bring to you in your selfish
schemes.  None was so ready to draw the sword
for Jesus, or look after the money spent upon him,
as the disciple who straightway denied and betrayed
him.  Many wish right on their side, who take
small heed to be on the side of right.  You shall
find men enough who seem to love right in general,
because they clamor for a specific, particular right;
but erelong it becomes plain they only love some
limited or even personal convenience they hope
therefrom.  The people of the United States claim
to love the unalienable right of man to life, lib



8           THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
erty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the longcontinued cry of three million slaves, groaning under
the American yoke, shows beyond question or cavil
that it is not the universal and unalienable right
which they love, but. only the selfish advantage it
affords them. If you love the right as right, for
itself, because it is absolutely just and beautiful
to your conscience, then you will no more deprive
another of it than submit yourself to be deprived
thereof.  Even the robber will fight for his own.
The man who knows no better rests in the selfish
love of the private use of a special right.
The Heart contemplates God as manifested in
love, for love is the universal category of affectional
cognition.  To love God wvith the heart, is to love
him as manifested in love; it is to love Love, not
for its convenience, but for itself, because it is absolutely beautiful and lovely to the heart.
Here I need not reiterate what has already been
twice said, of mind and of conscience.
Love of God as love, then, is the affectional part
of piety, and lies at the basis of all affectional excellence.  The mind and the conscience are content
with ideas, with the true and the right, while the
heart demands not ideas, but Beings, Persons; and
loves them. It is one thing to desire the love of a
person for your own  use and convenience, and




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.            9
quite different to  have your personal delight in
him, and desire him  to have his personal delight
in you.  From  the nature of the case, as persons
are concrete and finite, man never finds the complete
satisfaction of his affectional nature in them, for no
person is absolutely lovely, none the absolute object
-of the affections. But as the mind and conscience
use the finite things to help learn infinite truth and
infinite right, and ultimately rest in that as their
absolute object, so our heart uses the finite persons
whom we reciprocally love as golden letters in the
book of life, whereby we learn the absolutely lovely,
the infinite object of the heart. As the philosopher
has the stars of heaven, each lovely in itself, whereby to learn the absolute truth of science,-as the
moralist has the events of human history, each of
great moment to mankind, whereby to learn the
absolute right of ethics,- so the philanthropist has
the.special persons of his acquaintance, each one a
joy to him, as the rounds of his Jacob's ladder
whereby he goes journeying up to the absolutely
lovely, the infinite object of the affections.
The. Soul contemplates God as a being who
unites all these: various modes of action, as manifested in truth, in right, and in love. It apprehends him, not merely as absolute truth, absolute
right, and absolute love alone, but as all these uni



10        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
fled into one complete and perfect Being, the Infinite God. He is the absolute object of the soul,
and corresponds thereto, as truth to the mind, as
justice to the conscience, as love to the heart. He
is to the soul absolutely true, just, and lovely, the
altogether beautiful.  To him  the soul turns instinctively at first; then also, at length, with conscious and distinctive will.
The love of God in this fourfold way is the
totality of piety, which comes from the normal use
of all the faculties named before. Hence it appears
that piety of this character lies at the basis of all
manly excellence whatever, and is necessary to a
complete and well-proportioned development of the
faculties themselves.
There may be an unconscious piety: the man
does not know that he loves universal truth, j.ustice, love; loves God.  He only thinks of the
special truth, justice, and love, which he prizes.
He does not reflect upon it; does not aim to love
God in this way, yet does it, nevertheless. Many a
philosopher has seemed without religion even to
a careful observer; sometimes has passed for an
atheist. Some of them have to themselves seemed
without any religion, and have denied that there




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.        11
was any God. But all the while their nature was
truer than their will;; their instincts kept their personal wholeness better than they were aware. These
men loved absolute truth, not for its uses, but for
itself; they laid down their lives for it, rather than
violate the integrity of their intellect. They had
the intellectual love of God, though they knew
it not; though they denied it. No man ever has
a complete and perfect intellectual consciousness
of all his active nature; something instinctive germinates in us, and grows under ground, as it were,
before it bursts the sod and shoots into the light
of self-consciousness. Sheathed in unconsciousness
lies the bud, erelong to open a bright, consummate
flower.  These philosophers, with a real love of
truth, and yet a scorn of the name of God, understand many things, perhaps, not known to common
men, but this portion of their being has yet escaped
their eye; they have not made an exact and exhaustive inventory of the facts of their own nature.
Such men have unconsciously much of the intellectual part of piety.
Other men have loved justice, not for the personal convenience it offered to them, but for its
own sake, because it married itself to their conscience, -have loved it with a disinterested, even a
self-denying love,- who yet scorned religion, denied
all consciousness of God, denied his providence,




12        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
perhaps his existence, and would have resolved
God into matter, and no more. Yet all the while
in these men, dim and unconscious, there lay the
religious element; neglected, unknown, it gave the
man the very love of special justice which made
him strong. He knew the absolutely just, but did
not know it as God.
I have known philanthropists who undervalued
piety; they liked it not, - they said it was moonlight, not broad day; it gave flashes of lightning,
all of which would not make light. They professed
no love of God, no knowledge thereof, while they
had the strongest love of love; loved persons, not
with a selfish, but a self-denying affection, ready to
sacrifice themselves for the completeness of another
man's delight.  Yet underneath this. philanthropy
there lay the absolute and disinterested love of other
men. They knew only the special form, not the
universal substance thereof, -the particular love of
Thomas or of Jane, not the universal love of the
Infinite. They had the affectional form of piety,
though they knew it not.
I have known a man full of admiration and of
love for the universe, yet lacking consciousness of
its Author. He loved the truth and beauty of the
world, reverenced the justice of the universe, and
was himself delighted at the love he saw pervading all and blessing all; yet he recognized no God,




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.        13
saw only a cosmic force, which was a power of
truth and beauty to his mind, a power of justice
to his conscience, and a power of love to his heart.
He had not a philosophic consciousness of the
deeper, nobler action which went on within him,
building greater than he knew. But in him also
there were the several parts of piety, only not joined
into one total and integral act, and not distinctly
known.
This unconsciousness of piety is natural with a
child. In early life it is unavoidable; only now
and then some rare and precious boy or girl opens
from out its husk of unconsciousness his childish
bud of faith, and blossoms right early with the consciousness of God, a " strong and flame-like flower."
This instinctiveness of piety is the beauty of childhood, the morning-red widely and gorgeously diffused before the rising of the sun.- But as a man
becomes mature, adds reflection to instinct, transmutes sentiments into ideas, he should also become
conscious of his religious action, of his love of God
in this fourfold form; when he loves truth, justice, love, he should know that it is God he-loves
underneath these special forms, and should unite
them all into one great act of total piety. As the
state of self-consciousness is a more advanced state
than unconsciousness; as the reflective reason of the
man is above the unreflective instinct of the child;
2




14,       THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
so the man's conscious piety belongs to a higher
stage of development, and is above the mere instinctive and unconscious piety of the girl. Accordingly, the philosopher who loved truth for its own
sake, and with his mind denied in words the God
of truth, was less a philosopher for not knowing
that he loved God. He had less intellectual power
because he was in an abnormal state of intellectual
religious growth. The man who loved justice for
its own sake, and would not for an empire do a
conscious wrong, whom the popular hell could not
scare, nor. the popular heaven allure from right,he had less power of justice for not knowing that in
loving right he loved the God of right. That philanthropist who has such love of love, that he would
lay down his life for men, is less a philanthropist;
and has less affectional power, because he knows
not that in his brave benevolence he loves the God
of love.  The man full of profound love of the
universe, of reverence for its order, its beauty, its
justice, and the love which fills the lily's cup with
fragrant loveliness, who wonders at the mighty cosmic force he sees in these fractions of power,he is less a man because he does not know it is
God's world that he admires, reverences, and worships; aye, far less a man because he does not
know he loves and worships God. When he becomes conscious of his own spiritual action, con



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.         15
scious of God, of loving God with mind and conscience, heart and soul, his special love will increase, he will see the defects there are in his
piety; if it be disproportionate, through redundance here or failure there, he can correct the deformity and make his entire inner life harmonious,
a well-proportioned whole. Then he feels that he
goes in and out, continually, in the midst of the
vast forces of the universe, which are only the
forces of God; that in his studies, when he attains
a truth, he confronts the thought of God; when
he learns the right, he learns the will of God laid
down as a rule of conduct for the universe; and
when he feels disinterested love, he kno)ws that he
partakes the feeling of the infinite God.  Then,
when he reverences the mighty cosmic force, it is
not a blind Fate in an atheistic or a pantheistic
world, it is the Infinite God that he confronts,
and feels, and knows. He is then mindful of the
mind of God, conscious of God's conscience, sensible of God's sentiment, and his own existence is in
the Infinite Being of God. Thus he joins into a
whole integral state of piety the various parts developed by the several faculties; there is a new
growth of each, a new development of all.
If these things be so, then it is plain what relation piety sustains to manly life;  it is the basis




16        TIHE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.:
of all the higher excellence of man, and when the
man is mature, what was instinctive at first becomes
a state of conscious love of God.
Now, when this universal fourfold force is once
developed and brought to consciousness, and the
man has achieved something in this way, his piety
may be left to take its natural form of expression,
or it may be constrained to take a form not natural.
Mankind has made many experiments upon piety;
books of history are full of them. Most of these,
as of all the experiments of man in progress, are
failures. We aim  many times before we hit the
mark. The history of religion is not exceptional
or peculiar in this respect. See how widely men
experiment in agriculture, navigation, government,
before they learn the one right way. The history of
science is the history of mistakes. The history of
religion and the history of astronomy are equally
marked by error. It is not surprising that mistakes
have been made in respect to the forms of piety
after it is procured.
For there are various helps which are needful,
and perhaps indispensable, in childhood, to the development of the love of God, but which are not
needed after the religious character is somewhat
mature. Then the man needs not those former out



THE, FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.        17
ward helps; he has other aids suited to his greater
strength. This is true of the individual, repeating
no more the hymns of his nursery,- true also of
mankind, that outgrows the sacrifices and the mythologies of the childhood of the world.  Yet it
is easy for human indolence to linger near these
helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the unadventurous nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his
flock in the same close-cropped circle where they
first learned to browse, while the progressive man
roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures new."
See how  parents help develop the body of the
child. The little boy is put into a standing-stool,
or baby-jumper, till he learns to walk. By and by
he has his hoop, his top, his ball;, each in turn is
laid aside. He has helps to develop his mind not
less,-little puzzles, tempting him  to contrive,prints set off with staring colors; he has his alphabet of wooden letters, in due time his primer, his
nursery rhymes, and books full of most wonderful
impossibilities.  He has his early reader, his first
lessons in arithmetic, and so goes on with new
helps proportionate to his strength. It is a long
slope from counting the fingers up to calculating
the orbit of a planet not yet seen. But the fingers
and the solar system are alike helps to mathematic
thought.  When the boy is grown up to man's
estate, his body vigorous and mature, he tries his
2*




18        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
strength in the natural work of society, is a merchant, a sailor, a mechanic, a farmer; he hews
stones, or lifts up an axe upon the thick timber.
For a long time his body grows stronger by his
work, and he gets more skill. His body pays for
itself, and refunds to mankind the cost of'its training up. When his mind is mature, he applies that
also to the various works of society, to transact
private business, or manage the affairs of the public;
for a long time his mind grows stronger, gaining
new knowledge and increase of power..Thus his
mind pays for its past culture, and earns its tuition
as it goes along.
In this case the physical or mental power of the
man assumes its natural form, and does its natural
work. He has outgrown the things which pleased
his childhood and informed his youth.  Nobody
thinks it necessary or beautiful for the accomplished
scholar to go back to his alphabet, and repeat it
over, to return to his early arithmetic and paradigms of grammar, when he knows them all; for
this is not needful to keep an active mind in a
normal condition, and perform the mental work of
a mature man. Nobody sends a lumberer from the
woods back to his nursery, or tells him he cannot
keep his strength without daily or weekly sleeping
in his little cradle, or exercising with the hoop, or
top, or ball, which helped his babyhood. Because




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.       19
these little trifles sufficed once, they cannot help him
now. Man, reaching forward, forgets the things that
are behind.
Now the mischief is, that, in matters of religion,
men demand that he who has a mature and wellproportioned piety should always go back to the
rude helps of his boyhood, to the A B C of religion
and the nursery books of piety. He is not bid to
take his power of piety and apply that to the common works of life. The Newton of piety is sent
back to the dame-school of religion, and told to
keep counting his fingers, otherwise there is no
health in him, and all piety is wiped out of his consciousness, and he hates God and God hates him.
He must study the anicular lines on the schooldame's slate, not the diagrams of God writ on the
heavens in points of fire. We are told that what
once thus; helped mould a religious character must
be continually resorted to, and become the permanent form thereof.
This notion is exceedingly pernicious. It wastes
the practical power of piety:by directing it from
its natural work; it keeps the steam-engine always
fanning and blowing itself, perpetually firing itself
up, while it turns no wheels but its own, and does
no work but feed and fire itself. This constant
firing up of one's self is looked on as the natural
work and only form  of piety. Ask any popular




20        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
minister, in one of the predominant sects, for the
man most marked for piety, and he will not show
you the men with the power of business who do
the work of life, —the upright mechanic, merchant,
or farmer; not the men with the power of thought,
of justice, or of love; not him whose whole life is
one great act of fourfold piety. No, he will show
you some men who are always a dawdling over
their souls, going back to the baby-jumpers and
nursery rhymes of their early days, and everlastingly coming to the church to fire themselves up,
calling themselves "miserable offenders," and saying, " save us, good Lord."  If a man thinks himself a miserable offender, let him  away with the
offence, and be done with the complaint at once
and for ever. It is dangerous to reiterate so sad
a cry.
You see this mistake, on a large scale, in the
zeal with which nations or sects cling to their religious institutions long after they are obsolete.
Thus the Hebrew cleaves to his ancient ritual and
ancient creed, refusing to share the religious science which mankind has brought to light since Moses and Samuel went home to their God. The two
great sects of Christendom exhibit the same thing in
their adherence to ceremonies and opinions which
once were the greatest helps and the highest expression of piety to mankind, but which have long




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.        21
since lost all virtue except as relics. The same
error is repeated on a small scale all about us, men
trying to believe what science proves ridiculous, and
only succeeding by the destruction of reason. It
was easy to make the mistake, but when made it
need not be made perpetual.
Then this causes another evil: not only do men
waste the practical power of piety, but they cease
to get more. To feed on baby's food, to be dandled in mother's arms, -to play with boys' playthings, to learn boys' lessons, and be amused with
boys' stories, - this helps the boy, but it hinders
the man. Long ago we got from these helps all
that was in them.  To stay longer is waste of
time.  Look at the men who have been doing
this for ten years; they are where they were ten
years ago. They have done well if they have not
fallen back. If we keep the baby's shoes for ever
on the child, what will become of the feet? What
if you kept the boy over his nursery rhymes for
ever, or tried to make the man grown believe that
they contained the finest poetry in the world, that
the giant stories and the fairy tales therein were
all true; what effect would it have on his mind?
Suppose you told him that the proof of his manhood consisted in his fondness for little boys' playthings, and the little story-books and the little games
of little children, and kept him securely fastened




22        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
to the apron-strings of the school-dame; suppose
you could make him believe so!  You must make
him a fool first.  What would work so bad in
intellectual affairs works quite as ill in the matter
of piety. The story of the flood has strangled a
world of souls. The miracles of the New Testament no longer heal, but hurt mankind.
Then this method of procedure disgusts welleducated and powerful men with piety itself, and
with all that bears the name of religion.  "Go
your ways," say they, " and cant your canting as
much as you like, only come not near us with your
grimace."  Many a man sees this misdirection of
piety, and the bigotry which environs it, and turns
off from religion itself, and will have nothing to
do with it.  Philosophers always have had a bad
name in religious matters; many of them  have
turned away in disgust from  the folly which is
taught in its name. Of all the great philosophers
of this day, I think no one takes any interest in
the popular forms of religion. Do we ever hear
religion referred to in politics?  It is mentioned
officially in proclamations and messages; but in
the parliamentary debates of Europe and America,
in the State papers of the nations, you find hardly
a trace of the name or the fact. Honest men and
manly men are ashamed to refer to this, because it
has been so connected with unmanly dawdling and




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.         23
niggardly turning back, —they dislike to mention
the word. So religion has ceased to be one of the
recognized forces of the State. I do not remember
a good law  passed in my time from  an alleged
religious motive. Capital punishment, and the laws
forbidding work or play on Sunday, are the only
things left on the statute-book for which a strictly "religious motive" is assigned!  The annual
thanksgivings and fast-days are mementos of the
political power of the popular religious opinions
in other times.  Men of great influence in America are commonly men of little apparent respect
for religion; it seems to have no influence on their
public conduct, and, in many cases, none on their
private character; the class most eminent for intellectual culture, throughout all Christendom, is heedless of religion.  The class of rich men has small
esteem for it; yet in all the great towns of America
the most reputable churches have fallen under theircontrol, with such results as we see. The life of
the nation in its great flood passes by, and does
not touch the churches, —"the institutions of religion."   Such fatal errors come from  this mistake.
But there is a natural form of piety.  The natural use of the strength of a strong man, or the wisdom  of a wise one, is to the work of a strong




24         THE FOURFOLD FORM OF -.PIETY.
man or a wise one.  What is the natural work of
piety? Obviously it is practical life; the use of all
the faculties in their proper spheres, and for their
natural function. Love of God,.as truth, justice,
love,: must appear in a life marked by these qualities; that is the only effectual "ordinance of religion."   A  profession of the man's convictions,
joining a society, assisting at a ceremony, -all
these are of the same value in science as in religion; as good forms of chemistry as of piety.
The natural form  of piety is goodness, morality,
living a true, just, affectionate, self-faithful life, from
the motive of a pious man. Real piety, love of
God, if left to itself, assumes the form  of real
morality, loyal obedience to God's law. Thus the
power of religion does the work of religion, and is
not merely to feed itself.
There are various degrees of piety, the quality
ever the same, the quantity variable, and of course
various degrees of goodness as the result thereof.
Where there is but little piety, the work of goodness is done as a duty, under coercion as it were,
with only the voluntary, not the spontaneous will.;
it is not done from a love of the duty, only in obedience to a law of God felt within the conscience
or the soul, a law  which bids the deed.  The
man's desires and duty are in opposition, not conjunction; but duty rules.  That is the goodness




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.       25
of a boy in religion, the common goodness of the
world.
At length the rising man shoots above this rudimentary state, has an increase of love of God, and
therefore of love of man; his goodness is spontaneous, not merely enforced by volition. He does the
good thing which comes in his way, and because it
comes in his way; is true to his mind, his conscience, heart, and soul, and feels small temptation
to do to others what he would not receive from
them; he will deny himself for the sake of his
brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the
line of his duty, both in conjunction now. Not
in vain does the poor, the oppressed, the hunted
fugitive look up to him. This is the goodness of
men well grown in piety.  You find such men
in all Christian sects, Protestant and Catholic; in
all the great religious parties of the civilized world,.
among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. Theyare kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable
in their business, beautiful in their daily lives. You
see the man's piety in his work, and in his play.
It appears in all the forms of his activity, individual,.
domestic, social, ecclesiastic, or political.
But the man goes on in his growth of piety,
loving truth, justice, love, loving God the more.
What is piety: within must be morality without..
The quality and quantity of the outward must
3




26        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
increase as the quality and quantity of the inward.
So his eminent piety must become eminent morality,
which is philanthropy. He loves not only his kindred and his country, but all mankind; not only
the good, but also the evil. He has more goodness than the channels of his daily life will hold.
So it runs over the banks, to water and to feed
a thousand thirsty plants. Not content with the
duty that lies along his track, he goes out to seek
it; not only willing, he has, a salient longing to
do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his love,
his piety, over all the world. His daily life is a profession of his conscious piety to God, published in
perpetual good-will to men.
This is the natural form of piety; one which it
assumes if left to itself. Not more naturally does
the beaver' build, or the blackbird sing her own
wild gushing melody, than the man of real piety
lives it in this beautiful outward life. So from
the perennial spring wells forth the stream  to
quicken the meadow  with new  access of green,
and perfect beauty bursting into bloom.
Thus piety does the work it was meant to do:
the man does not sigh and weep, and make grimaces, for ever in a fuss about his soul; he lives
right on. Is his life marked with errors, sins,-he
ploughs over the barren spot with his remorse, sows
with new seed, and the old desert blossoms like a




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.        27
rose. He is free in his spiritual life, not confined
to set forms of thought, of action, or of feeling.
He accepts what his mind regards as true, what
his conscience decides is right, what his heart
deems lovely, and what is holy to his soul; all else
he puts far from  him. Though the ancient and
the honorable of the earth bid him bow down to
them, his stubborn knees bend only at the bidding
of his manly soul. His piety is his freedom before
God, not his bondage unto men. The toys and
child's stories of religion are to him toys and child's
stories, but no more. No baby-shoes deform  his
manly feet.
This piety, thus left to obey its natural law,
keeps in sound health, and grows continually more
and more. Doing his task, the man makes no more
ado about his soul than about his sense.  Yet
it grows like the oak-tree.  He gets continually
more love of truth and right and justice, more love
of God, and so more love of man. Every faculty
becomes continually more.  His mind acts after
the universal law of the intellect, his conscience
according to the universal moral law, his affections
and his soul after the universal law thereof, and
so he is strong with the strength  of God, in
this fourfold way communicating with him. With
this strengthening of the moral faculties there comes
a tranquillity, a calmness and repose, which nothing




28       TTHE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
else can give, and also abeauty of character which
you vainly seek elsewhere. When a man has the
intellectual, the moral, the affectional part of piety,
when he unites them  all with conscious love of
God, and puts that manifold piety into morality,
his eminent piety into  philanthropy, he attains
the highest form  of loveliness which belongs to
mortal man. His is the palmy loftiness of man,
such strength, such calmness, and such transcendent
loveliness of soul.
I know some men mock at the name of piety;
I do not wonder at their scoff; for it has been
made to stand as the symbol of littleness, meanness,
envy, bigotry, and hypocritical superstition; for
qualities I hate to name. Of what is popularly
called piety there is no lack; it is abundant
everywhere, common as weeds in the ditch, and
clogs the wheels of mankind in every quarter of
the world.  Yet real piety, in manly quantity
and in a manly form, is an uncommon thing.  It
is marvellous what other wants the want of this
brings in: look over the long list of brilliant names
that glitter in English history for the past three
hundred years, study their aims, their outward and
their inner life; explore the causes of their manifold defeat, and you will see the primal curse
of all these men was lack of piety. They did not




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.        29
love truth, justice, or love; they did not love God
with all their mind and conscience, heart and soul.
Hence came the failure of many a mighty-minded
man. Look at the brilliant array of distinguished
talent in France for the last-five generations; what
intellectual gifts, what understanding, what imagination, what reason, but with it all what corruption,
what waste of faculty, what lack of strong and calm
and holy life, in these great, famous men!  Their
literature seems marvellously like the thin, cold
dazzle of Northern Lights upon the wintry ice. In
our own country it is still the same; the high intellectual gift or culture is ashamed of religion, and
flouts at God; and hence the faults we see.
But real piety is what we need; we need much
of it, —need it in the natural form thereof. Ours
is an age of great activity. The peaceful hand was
never so busy as to-day; the productive head never
created so fast before. See how the forces of nature
yield themselves up to man: the river stops for him,
content to be his servant, and weave and spin; the
ocean is his vassal, his toilsome bondsman; the
lightning stoops out of heaven, and bears thoughtful burdens on its electric track from  town to
town. All this comes from the rapid activity of
the lower intellect of man.  Is there a conscious
piety to correspond with this, -a conscious love
of truth and right and love,  a love of God?
3*




30        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
Ask the State, ask the church, ask society, and ask
our homes.
The age requires a piety most eminent. What
was religion enough for the time of the Patriarchs,
or the Prophets, or the Apostles, or the Reformers,
or the Puritans, is not enough for the heightened
consciousness of mankind to-day. When the world
thinks in lightning, it is not proportionate to pray in
lead. The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, will not suffice us now.
We want a religion of the intellect, of the conscience, of the affections, of the soul, —the natural
religion of all the faculties of man. The form also
must be natural and new.
We want this natural piety in the form of normal
human life, -morality, philanthropy. Piety is not
to forsake, but possess the world; not to become
incarnate in a nun and a monk, but in women and
in men. Here are the duties of life to be done.
You are to do them, do them religiously, consciously obedient to the law of God, not atheistically,
loving only your selfish gain. Here are the sins of
trade to be corrected. You are to show that a good
merchant, mechanic, farmer, doctor, lawyer, is a real
saint, a saint at work. Here are the errors of philosophy, theology, politics, to be made way with.
It is the function of piety to abolish these and supply their place with new truths all radiant with God.




THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.         31
Here are the great evils of church and State, of
social and domestic life, wrongs to be righted, evils
to be outgrown: it is the business of piety to mend
all this.  Ours is no age when Religion can forsake
the broad way of life. In the public street must she
journey on, open her shop in the crowded square,
and teach men by deeds, her life more eloquent than
any lips. Hers is not now the voice that is to cry
in the wilderness, but in the public haunts of men
must she call them to make straight their ways.
We must possess all parts of this piety, —the
intellectual, moral, affectional,- yea, total piety.
This is not an age when men in religion's name
can safely sneer at philosophy, call reason " carnal,"
make mouths at immutable justice, and blast with
their damnation the faces of mankind. Priests have
had their day, and in dull corners still aim to protract their favorite and most ancient night; but the
sun has risen with healing in his wings. Piety
without goodness, without justice, without truth or
love, is seen to be the pretence of the hypocrite.
Can philosophy satisfy us without religion?  Even
the head feels a coldness from  the want of piety.
The greatest intellect isruled by the same integral
laws with the least, and needs this fourfold love of
God; and the great intellects that scorn religion are
largest sufferers from their scorn.
Any man may attain this piety; it lies level to all.




32        THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY.
Yet it is not to be won without difficulty, manly
effort, self-denial of the low for the sake of the highest in us. Of you, young man, young maid, it will
demand both prayer and toil. Not without great
efforts are great heights won. In your period of
passion you must subordinate instinctive desire to
your reason, your conscience, your heart and soul;
the lust of the body to the spirit's love. In the
period of ambition you must coordinate all that is
personal or selfish with what is absolutely true, just,
holy, and good. Surely this will demand self-denial, now of instinctive desire, now of selfish ambition.  Much you must sacrifice. But you will
gain the possession, the use, the development, and
the joy of your own mind and conscience, heart and
soul. You will never sacrifice truth, justice, holiness, or love. All these you will gain; gain for
to-day, gain for ever.  What inward blessedness
will you acquire! what strength, what tranquillity,
what loveliness, what joy in God!  You will have
your delight in Him; He his in you. Is it not
worth while to live so that you know you are in
unison with God; in unison, too, with men; in
quantity growing more, in quality superior? Make
the trial for manly excellence, and the result is
yours, for time and for eternity.




OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
BUY THE TRUTH, AND SELL IT NOT; ALSO WISDOM, AND INSTRUCTION, AND UNDERSTANDING. Prov. xxiii. 23.
TEMPERANCE is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body. It is the harmony of all the members thereof; the true symmetry and right proportion of part with part, of each
with all, and so the worship of God with every
limb of the body.  Wisdom  is to the mind what
temperance, in this sense, is to the body; it is
intellectual piety; the presence of divine order in
the mind; the harmony of all the faculties thereof;
the true symmetry and right proportion of faculty
with faculty, of each with all.  It is a general
power of intellect, which may turn in any one
or in all directions; the poet is a wise man in
what relates to poetry; the philosopher, the statesman, the man of business, each in what relates to
his particular function. So it is a general power of




34          TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
mind. We say "knowledge is power," but mean
wisdom, which is general intellectual ability, the
power of knowing and of using truth.
This wisdom  implies two things: the. love of
truth as truth, which I spoke of the other day as
the intellectual side of piety; and, secondly, the
power to possess and use this truth, either in the
specific form which is sought by the philosopher,
poet, statesman, and man of business, or else in
some more general form  including all these; the
power of getting truth either by the mode of reflection, as truth demonstrated, or by the mode of intuition, as truth seen and known at sight. For the
acquisitive part of wisdom is the generic power
which includes both the specific powers, - of intuition and of reflection.
Truth is the object which corresponds to the
mind. As the eye has the power of sight, and as
the special things we see are the object of the eye,
so is truth, in its various forms, the object of the
mind. If a man keep the law of his body, in the
large sense of the word Temperance, he acquires
three good things, health, strength, and beauty.
As a general rule these three will come; there are,
indeed, particular and personal exceptions, but such
is the rule.  Let any race of men, say the New
Englanders, for a hundred years fulfil all the conditions of the body, and observe the laws thereof,




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.          35
they will become distinguished for these three
things.
In like manner, if a man keep the law  of his
mind, and fulfil its natural conditions, he acquires
wisdom, - acquires intellectual health, strength, and
beauty.  Here also there may be particular and
personal exceptions, but such is the rule.  Let
any race of men, say the New Englanders, for a
hundred years fulfil the natural condition of mind
and keep the law thereof, we should have these
three qualities to a greater degree than the ancient
inhabitants of Athens, long regarded as the most
intellectual race in the world; we should have the
quality of wisdom which they had, but with more
intellectual health, strength, and loveliness, more
truth and more power to use it, -inasmuch as the
human race has acquired a greater intellectual
development in the two thousand years that have
passed since the days of Aristotle and Alexander.
The laws which regulaie the development of mind,
in the individual or the race, are as certain as the
laws of matter. Observance thereof is sure to bring
certain consequences to the individual, the nation,
and mankind.  The intellectual peculiarity of a
nation is transmitted from  age to age, and only
disappears when the nation perishes or mingles
with some other tribe inferior to itself; then it does
not cease, but is spread more thinly over a wider




36         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
field, and does not appear in its ancient form for
years to come. Intellectual talent dies out of a
particular family. There are seldom two men of
genius of the same name.  Stuarts and Tudors,
Guelphs and Bourbons, there are in abundance,
but only one Luther, Shakspeare, Milton, Cromwell, Burns; only a single Franklin or Washington.
But the intellectual power which once rose up in
such men does not perish from the race, only from
the special family. It comes up in other names,
for the fee of all the genius that is born, as well
as the achievements won, vests perpetually in mankind; not in the special family which holds only
its life-estate of talent under the race and of it.
The wisdom which this generation shall develop,
foster, and mature, will not perish with this age;
it will be added to the spiritual property of mankind, and go down, bequeathed as a rich legacy,
to such as come after us, all the more valuable
because it is given in perpetual entail, a property
which does not waste, but greatens in the use. Yet
probably no great man of this age will leave a
child as great as himself. At death the father's
greatness becomes public property to the next generation. The piety of Jesus of Nazareth did not
die out of mankind when he gave up the ghost;
the second century had more of Christ than the
first; there has been a perpetual increase of So



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         37
cratic excellence ever since the death of the Athenian sage.
This is a remarkable law of Providence, but a
law it is; and cheering is it to know that all the
good qualities you give example of, not only have
a personal immortality in you beyond the grave,,but a national, even.a human, immortality on earth,
and, while they bless you in heaven, are likewise
safely invested in your brother man, and shall go
down to the last posterity, blessing your nation
and all mankind. So the great men of antiquity
continue to help us, - Moses, Confucius, Buddha,
Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, — not to
dwell upon the name dearest of all. These men
and their fellows, known to all or long; since forgotten of mankind,- the aristocracy of heaven,
whose patent of nobility dates direct from God,they added to the spiritual power of mankind.
The wisdom they inherited or acquired was a personal fief, which at their death reverted to the
human race. Not a poor boy in Christendom,:not
a man of genius, rejoicing in the plenitude of power,
but is greater and nobler for these great men; not
barely through his knowledge of their example, but
because, so to say, they raised the temperature of
the human world. For, as there is a physical temperature of the interstellar spaces, betwixt sun and
sun, which may.be called the temperature of the
4




38         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
universe, so is there a spiritual temperature of the
interpersonal spaces, a certain common temperature
of spirit, not barely personal, not national alone,
but human and of the race, which may be called
the temperature of mankind. On that in general
we all depend, as on our family in special, or
in particular upon our personal genius and our
will. Those great men added wisdom to mankind,
brought special truths to consciousness, which now
have spread throughout the enlightened nations of
the world, and penetrate progressively the human
mass, giving mankind continual new  power. So
shall you see an iron bar become magnetic; first
it was a single atom  of the metal which caught
the electric influence, spark by spark; that atom
could not hold the subtile fire, whose nature was
to spread, and so one atom gave the spark to the
next, and soon it spread through the whole, till
the cold iron, which before seemed dead as stone,
is all magnetic, acquires new  powers, and itself
can hold its own, yet magnetize a thousand bars
if rightly placed.
According to his nature man loves truth with a
pure and disinterested love, the strongest intellectual affection.  The healthy eye does not more
naturally turn to the light, than the honest mind
turns toward the truth. See how we seek after it




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.          39
in nature. All the National Academies, Institutes,
and Royal Societies are but so many companies
organized for the pursuit of truth, - of truth chiefly
in some outward form, materialized in the visible
world. These societies propose no corporeal benefit
to themselves, none to the human race. They love
each truth of nature for its own fair sake. What
is thd pecuniary value of the satellites of Neptune
to us?  See how laborious naturalists ransack the
globe to learn the truths writ in its elements.  One
goes to Florida to look after the'bones of a mastodon, hid in a bog some thousands of years ago;
another curiously collects chips of stone from all
the ledges of the world, lives and moves and has
his being in the infra-carboniferous sandstones and
shales, a companion of fossil plants and fossil shells.
This crosses land and ocean to study the herbage
of the earth; that, careless of ease and homefelt
joys, devotes his life to mosses and lichens, which
grow unheeded on the rocks; he loves them  as if
they were his own children, yet they return no
corresponding smile, nor can he eat and drink of
them. How the astronomer loves to learn the truth
of the stars, which will not light his fife nor fill
his children's hungry mouths!  No Inquisition can
stop Galileo in his starry quest. I have known a
miser who loved money above all things; for this,
would sacrifice reason, conscience, and religion, and




40         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
break affection's bond; but it was the use of money
that was loved, with a mean and most ignoble
selfish lust, vulgarizing and depraving the man.
The true disciple of science loves truth far more,
with a disinterested love; will endure toil, privation, and self-denial, and encounter suffering, for
that.  This love of truth will bless the lover all
his: days; yet when he brings her home, his* fairfaced. bride, she comes empty-handed to his door,
herself her only dower.
How carefully men look after the facts of human
history! how they study the tragic tale of Greece
and Rome, and explore the remains of nations that
long since have perished from the earth! Of what
material consequence is it to us who composed
the Iliad, twenty-five hundred years ago, or whether
Homer wrote, or only sung, his never-dying song?
Yet what a mass of literature has come into being
within the last sixty years to settle these two questions!  How the famous scholars light their lamps
and dim  their eyes over this work, and how the
world rejoices in their books, which will not bake
bread, nor make two blades of grass grow where
only one rose up before; which will not build a
railroad, nor elect a president, nor give a man an
office in any custom-house of the wide world!
There is a deep love of truth in men, even in
these.poor details. A natural king looks royal at
the plough.




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         41
How men study yet higher modes of truth, writ
in the facts of human consciousness! How the
ablest men have worked at the severest forms of
intellectual toil, yet proposing no gain to themselves, only the glorious godliness of truth!  A
corporeal gain to men does come from every such
truth. There is such a solidarity betwixt the mind
and body, that each spiritual truth works welfare
in the material world, and the most abstract of
ideas becomes concrete in the widest universe of
welfare.  But philosophers love the truth before
they learn its material use. Aristotle, making an
exhaustive analysis of the mind of man, did not
design to build a commonwealth in New England,
and set up public schools.
This love of truth, instinctive and reflective both,
is so powerful in human nature, that mankind
will not rest till we have an idea corresponding
to every fact of Nature and of human consciousness, and the contents of the universe are repeated
in the cosmic mind of man, which grasps the
whole of things. The philosophic work of observation, analysis, and synthesis, will not be over,
till the whole world of material nature is comprehended by the world of human nature. Such
is our love, not only of special truths, but of total
truth.
Consider what an apparatus man has devised
4*




42         TRUUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
to aid the search for truth: not only visible tools
to magnify the little and bring near us the remote,
but the invisible weapons of the mind,  mathematics and the various sciences, the mining-tools
with which we dig for truth, — logic, the Lydian
stone to test the true,  rhetoric, the art to communicate,- language, speech itself, the most amazing weapon of the human mind, an instrument
half made on purpose, and half given without our
thought.
This love of truth is the natural and instinctive
piety of the mind. In studying the facts of nature,
material or human, I study the thought of God;
for in the world of real things a fact is the
direct speech of the Father. Words make up the
language of men; facts and ideas are the words
of God, his universal language to the Englishman
and the Chinese, in which He speaks from  all
eternity to all time. Man made "in the image of
God" loves his Father's thought, and is not contented till he hears that speech; then he is satisfied. All intellectual error is but the babble of the
baby-man. Every truth which I know is one point
common to my consciousness and the consciousness
of God; in this -we approach, and, so far as that
goes, God's thought is my thought, and we are
at one. Mankind will not be content till we also
are conscious of the universe, and have mastered




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         43
this Bible of God writ in the material world, a perpetual lesson for the day.
I cannot think we value wisdom  high enough;
not in proportion to other things for more vulgar
use.  We prize the material results of wisdom
more than the cause which produces them. Let
us not undervalue the use.  What is it which
gives Christendom its rank in the world? What
gives Old England or New England her material
delight, - our comfortable homes, our mills and
ships and shops, these iron roads which so cover
the land? It is not the soil, hard and ungrateful;
not the sky, cold and stormy half the year; it is
the educated mind, the practical wisdom  of the
people. The Italian has his sunnier sky, his labored land, which teems with the cultured luxuriance of three thousand years. Our outfit was the
wilderness and our head. God gave us these, and
said, " Subdue the earth; " and we have toiled at
the problem, not quite in vain. The mind is a
universal tool, the abstract of all instruments; it
concretizes itself in the past present and future
weapons of mankind.
We value wisdom chiefly for its practical use, as
the convenience of a weapon, not the function of
a limb; and truth as a servant, 1not a bride. The
reason of this seeming falseness to the intellectual




44          TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
instinct is found partly in the low development
of man, -the external precedes the spiritual in
order of unfolding,-and partly in this, that the
human race is still too poor to indulge in merely
intellectual delights, while material wants are not
yet satisfied.  Mankind rejoices in rough aprons
of camel's hair, and feeds on locusts and wild
honey, before there is purple and fine linen for all,
with sumptuous faring every day. Even now a
fourth part of the human family is as good as
naked. It is too soon to ask men to rejoice exclusively in the beauty of wisdom, when they need
its convenience so much. Let us not be too severe
in our demands of men. God "suffereth long, and
is kind."
Then, sour theologies confront us, calling wisdom
" foolish," reason "carnal," scoffing at science with
a priestly sneer, as if knowledge of God, of God's
world, and of its laws, could disturb the natural
service of God. We are warned against the "arrogance of the philosopher," but by the arrogance
of the priest. We are told to shun "the pride
of wisdom;" alas! it is sometimes the pride of
folly which gives the caution.
It seems to me, that the value of the intellect
is a little underrated by some writers in the New
Testament, and wisdom sometimes turned off rather
rudely.  Perhaps the reason was, that then, as




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         45
now, men often cultivated the mind alone, and
not the highest faculties of that; and, though ever
learning, never hit the truth.  Doubtless men of
accomplished mind and manners sneered at the rudeness of the Galilean, and with their demonstrations
sought to parry the keen intuitions of great-souled
men. It is not to be wondered at, that James
attacked the rich, and Paul the learned, of their
time. Fox and Bunyan did the same. Many a
Christian Father has mocked at all generous culture
of the mind.:Even now, with us, amongst men
desiring to be religious, there is an inherited fear
of reason: and of common sense. Science is thought
a bad companion for religion. Men are cautioned
against " free thinking" in religion, and, as all
thinking must be free, against all thinking in that
quarter.  Even common sense is thought dangerous.  Men in pews are a little afraid, when a
strong man goes into the pulpit, lest he should
shake the ill-bottomed fabric to the ground; men
in pulpits are still more fearful. It is a strange
fear, that the mind should drive the soul out of us,
and our knowledge of God annihilate our love of
God. Yet some earnest men quake with this panic
terror, and think it is not quite safe to follow the
records writ in the great Bible of Nature, its worldwide leaves laid open before us, with their " millions
of surprises."




46         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
Let me say a word in behalf of the largest culture of the intellect, of all faculties thereof, -understanding, imagination, reason. I admit there have
been men of able mind and large intellectual development who have turned off from religion, their
science driving them away from the doctrines taught
in this name. But such men have been few. Did
they oppose the truths of religion?  Oftener the
follies taught in its name. All the attacks made
on religion itself by men of science, from Celsus
to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring
religion into contempt as a single persecution for
witchcraft, or a Bartholomew massacre, made in
the name of God. At this day, in America, the
greatest argument against the popular form  of
religion is offered by the churches of the land,
a twofold argument: first, the follies taught as
religious doctrine, the character assigned to God,
the mode of government ascribed to him, both
here and hereafter, the absurdities and impossibilities taught as the history of God's dealing
with mankind; next, the actual character of these
churches, as a body never rebuking a popular and
profitable sin, but striking hands by turns with
every popular form of wrong. Men of science, as
a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness, and
the piety that are taught as religion, only on the
errors, the evil, the impiety, which bear its name.




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.        47
Science is the natural ally of religion. Shall we
try and separate what God has joined? We injure
both by the attempt.  The philosophers of this
age have a profound love of truth, and show
great industry and boldness in search thereof. In
the name of truth they pluck down the strong-holds
of error, venerable and old. But what a cry has
been raised against them! It was pretended that
they would root out religion from  the hearts of
mankind! It seems to me it would be better for
men who love religion to understand philosophy
before they declaim against " the impiety of modern
science."  The study of Nature, of human history,
or of human nature might be a little more profitable than the habit of "hawking at geology and
schism."  A true philosophy is the only cure for
a false philosophy.  The sensational scheme of
philosophy has done a world of harm, it seems to
me, in its long history from Epicurus to Comte;
but no-philosophy would be far worse. The abnegation of mind must be the abnegation of God.
The systems built by priests, who deemed reason
not fit to trust, are more dangerous than "infidel
science."  Those have been found sad periods of
time, when the ablest men were forced to spend
their strength in pulling down the monstrous pagodas built in the name of religion, full of idols
and instruments of torture. Epicurus, Lucretius,




48         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
Voltaire, even Hobbes and Hume, performed a
work indispensable to the religious development
of mankind. Yet destruction is a sad work;- set
your old house afire, you do not know how much
of it will burn down. It was the ignorance, the
folly, the arrogance, and the tyranny of a priesthood which made necessary the scoff of Lucian and
the haughty scorn of D'Holbach. The science of
philosophers cannot be met by the ignorance of the
priests; the pride of wisdom is more than a match
for the pride of folly; the philosophy of an unwelcome demonstration is ill answered by the preaching of foolishness. How can a needle's eye embrace a continent?  In the name of religion, I
would call for the spirit of wisdom without measure; have free thinking on the Bible, on the
Church, on God and man,-the largest liberty of
the intellect. I would sooner have an unreasonable
form of agriculture than of religion. The state of
religion is always dependent, in a good measure,
on the mental culture of mankind. A foolish man
cannot give you a wise form of piety. All men
by nature love truth. Cultivate their mind, they
will see it, know it, value it. Just now we need a
large development of mind in the clergy, who fall
behind the men of leading intellect in England,
America, and France.  Thinking men care little
for the "opinions of the clergy," except on the




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         49
mere formalities of a ritual and church-show. Depend upon it, the effect will be even more baneful
for the future than at present.
I love to look on the wise mind as one means
of holding communion with the Infinite God; for
I believe that He inspires men, not only through the
conscience, the affections, and the soul, but also
through the intellect-through the reason, imagination, and understanding.  But he does this, not
arbitrarily, niraculously, against the nature of the
mind, but by a mode of operation as constant as
the gravitation of planets or the chemical attraction of atoms of metal. Yet I do not find that He
inspires thoughtless men with truth, more than
malicious men with love. Tell me God inspired
the Hebrew saints with wisdom, filled the vast urns
of Moses and of Jesus; I believe it, but not Hebrew
saints alone.  The Grecian saints, the saints of
Rome, of Germany, of France, of either England,
Old or New; all the sons of men hang on the
breasts of Heaven, and draw inspiration from Him
"in whom we live and move and have our being."
Intellectual inspiration comes in the form of truth,,
but the income from  God is proportionate to the
wisdom  which seeks and so receives.  A mind
small as a thimble may be filled full thereof, but
will it receive as much as a mind whose oceanbosom  is thirsty for a whole heaven of truth?
5




50          TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
Bring larger intellect, and you have the more. A
drop would overflow a hollow  cherry-stone, while
whole Mediterranean Seas fill but a fraction of the
Atlantic's mighty deep. There still is truth in the
sweet heaven, near and waiting for mankind. A
man of little mind can only take in the contents of
his primer; he should not censure his neighbor whose
encyclopedic head dines on the science of mankind,
and still wanders crying for lack of meat.
How mankind loves the truth!  We will not let
it go;
"One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost;"
so native is it to the mind of man. Look on the
power of a special truth, a great idea; view  it
merely as a force in the world of men. At first,
nothing seems so impotent. It has no hands nor
feet; how can it go alone?  It seems as if the
censor of the press could blot it out for ever. It
flatters no man, offers to serve no personal and
private interest and then forbear its work, will be
no man's slave. It seems ready to perish; surely
it will give up the ghost the next moment. There
now, a priest has it in the dust and stamps it out!
O idle fear! stamp on the lightning of the sky!
Of all things truth is the most lasting; invulnerable
as God; "of the Eternal coeternal beam," shall




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.          51
we call it an accident of his being, or rather substance of the substance of God, inseparable from
Him?  The pyramids may fall, in ages of time
the granite be crumbled into dust and blown off
by the sirocco of the wilderness; the very mountains, whence they first were hewn, may all vanish,
evaporate to the sky and spread over the world;
but truth shall still remain, immortal, unchanging, and not growing old. Heaven and earth may
pass away, but a truth never. A true word cannot fail from  amongst men; it is indorsed by
the Almighty, and shall pass current with mankind for ever. Could the armies of the world alter
the smallest truth of mathematics; make one and
one greater or less than two?  As easily as they
can alter any truth, or any falsehood, in morals,
in politics, or in religion. A lie is still a lie, a truth
a truth.
See the power of some special truth upon a single man. Take an example from a high mode of
truth, a truth of religion. Saul of Tarsus sees that
God loves the Gentile as well as the Jew.  It
seems a small thing to see that. Why did men
ever think otherwise?  Why should not God love
the Gentile as well as the Jew? It was impossible that He should do otherwise.  Yet this seemed
a great truth at that time, the Christian Church
dividing upon that-matter. It burnt in the bosom




52         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT,
of Paul of Tarsus, then a young man. What
heroism it wakens in him! what self-denial he can
endure!  Want, hardships, persecution, the contempt and loathing of his companions and former
friends, shipwreck, scourging, prison, death,- all
these are nothing to him. A truth has inspired
him; he is eloquent with its new force, his letters
powerful.  Go where he will he finds foes, the
world bristling with peril; but go where he may
he makes friends, makes them  by this truth and
the heroism it awoke in him. Men saw the new
doctrine, and looked back on the old error, — that
Jove loved Rome, Pallas Athens, Juno Samos and
Carthage most of all, Jehovah Mount Zion, and
Baal his Tyrian towns; that each several deity
looked grim at all the rest of men, and so must
have his own forms and ceremonies, unwelcome
to the rest.  Men see this is an error now; they
see the evil which came thereof,  the wars and
ages full of strife, national jealousies, wrangling
betwixt Babylonian or Theban priests, and the
antagonism of the Gentile and the Jew. Now all are' one in Christ." They bless the lips which taught
the doctrine and brought them  freedom by the
truth. Meantime the truth uplifts the Apostle; his
mind expands, his conscience works more freely
than before, no longer burdened with a law of
sin and death. His affections have a wider range,




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.          53
knowing no man after his national flesh. His soul
has a better prospect of God, now the partitionwall between the Jew and Gentile is thrown down.
We often estimate the value of a nation by the
truths it brings to light.  To take the physical
census, and know how many shall vote, we count
the heads, and tell men off by millions, - so many
square miles of Russians, Tartars, or Chinese.
But to take the spiritual census, and see what
will be voted, you count the thoughts, tell off the
great men, enumerate fhe truths. The nations may
perish, the barbarian sweep over Thebes, the lovely
places of Jerusalem  become a standing pool, and
the favorite spot of Socrates and Aristotle be grown
up to brambles, -yet Egypt, Judea, Athens, do
not die; their truths live on, refusing death, and
still these names are of a classic land. I do not
think that God loves the men or the nations He
visits with this lofty destiny better than He loves
other ruder tribes or ruder men: but it is by this
standard that we estimate the nations; a- few truths
make them immortal.
A great truth does not disdain to ride on so humble a beast as interest. Thus ideas go abroad in
the.ships of the desert, or the ships of the sea.
Some nations, like the English and others, seem
to like this equipage the best, and love to handle
and taste a truth in the most concrete form; so
5*




54         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
great truths are seen and welcomed as political
economy before they are thought of as part of
political morality, human affection, and cosmic piety.
All the great truths of political science seem to have
been brought to the consciousness of men stimulated by fear, or by love of the results of the truth,
not of itself.  Nations have sometimes adopted
their ideal children only for the practical value
of the dress they wore; but the great Providence
of the Father sent the truth as they were able
to bear it. So earthly mothers sometimes teach
the alphabet to their children in letters of sugar,
eaten as soon as learned.
But even with us it is not always so. In our
own day we have seen a man possessed with this
great idea, —that every man has a right to his
own body and soul, and consequently that it is
wrong to hold an innocent man in bondage; that
no custom, no law, no constitution, no private or
national interest, can justify the deed; nothing on
earth, nothing beneath it or above.  He,applies
this to American slavery. Here is a conflict between an acknowledged truth, and what is thought
a national interest.  What an influence did the
idea have on the man! It enlarged him, and made
him  powerful, opened the eye of his conscience
to the hundred-headed injustice in the Lerneean
Marsh of modern society; widened his affections,




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         55
till his heart prayed, ay, and his hands, for the
poor negro in the Southern swamps,- for all the
oppressed. It touched and wakened up his soul,
till he felt a manly piety in place of what might
else have been a puny sentimentalism, mewling
and whining in the Church's arms. The idea goes
abroad, sure to conquer.
See how a great idea, a truth of morals or religion, has an influence on masses of men. Some
single man sees it first, dimly for a long time,
without sight enough to make it clear, the quality
of vision better than his quantity of sight. Then
he sees it clearly and in distinct outline. The truth
burns mightily within him, and he cannot be still;
he tells it, now to one, then to another; at each
time of telling he gets his lesson better learned.
Other men see the idea, dimly at first as he.
It wakens a love for itself; first, perhaps, in the
recipient heart of some woman, waiting for the
consolation. Then a few minds prepared for the
idea half welcome it; thence it timidly flashes
into other minds, as light reflected from the water.
Soon the like-minded meet together to sun themselves in one another's prayers. They form a family
of the faith, and grow strong in their companionship.  The circle grows wider.  Men oppose the
new idea, with little skill or much, sometimes with
violence, or only with intellect.  Then comes a




56          TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
little pause,    the ablest representatives of the truth
must get fully conscious of their truth, and of
their relation to the world; a process like that in
the growing corn of summer, which in hot days
spindles, as the farmers say, but i. cool nights
gets thick, and has a green and stocky growth.
The interruptions to a great idea are of corresponding value to its development in a man, or a nation,
or the world. Our men baptized with a new idea
pause and reflect to be more sure, - perfecting the
logic of their thought; pause and devise their mode
to set it forth,    perfecting their rhetoric, and seek
to organize it in an outward form, for every thought
must be a thing. Then they tell their idea more
perfectly; in the controversy that follows, errors
connected with it get exposed; all that is merely
accidental, national, or personal gets shaken off,
and the pure truth goes forth to conquer.  In
this way all the great ideas of religion, of philanthropy, have gone their round. Yet every new
truth of morals or religion which blesses the world
conflicts with old notions, binds a new  burden
on the men who first accept it; demands of
them  to lay aside old comforts, accept a hard
name, endure the coldness of their friends, and
feel the iron of the world. What a rough wind
winnowed the early Christians and the Quakers!
They bear all that, and still the truth goes on.




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         57
Soon it has philosophers to explain it, apologists
to defend it, orators to set it forth, institutions
to embody its sacred life. It is a new force in
the world, and nothing can dislodge or withstand
it. It was in this way that the ideas of Christianity got a footing in the world. Between the
enthusiasm of Peter and James at the Pentecost,
and the cool demonstrations of Clarke and Schleiermacher, what a world of experience there lay!
Some four hundred years ago this truth began
to be distinctly seen: Man has natural empire
over all institutions; they are for him, accidents
of his development, not he for them. That is a
very simple statement, each of you assents to it.
But once it was a great new truth. See what it
has led to. Martin Luther dimly saw its application to the Catholic Church, the institution that
long had ruled over the souls of men. The Church
gave way and recoiled before the tide of truth.
That helpless truth, —see what it has done, what
millions it has inspired, what institutions it has
built, what men called into life! By and by men
saw its application to the despotic state which long
had ruled over the bodies and souls of men. Revolutions followed thick and fast in Holland, England, America, and France, and one day all Europe
and the world will be ablaze with that idea. Men
opposed; one of the Stuarts said, "It shall not




58         TRUTH- AND -THE INTELLECT.
cross the four seas of England;" but it crossed
the Stuart's neck, and drove his children from the
faithful soil. It came to: America, that idea so
destructive at first, destined to be so creative and
conservative.  It brought our fathers here, grim
and bearded men, full of the fear of God; they
little knew what fruit would come of their planting.
See the institutions which have sprung up on the
soil then cumbered by a wilderness, and hideous
with wild beasts and wilder men. See what new
ideas blossomed out of the old truth: All men have
natural, equal, and unalienable rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness; —that was a new
flower from the old stem. See the one-and-thirty
States which have sprung up under the shadow
of this great idea.
That truth long since recognized as true, now
proved expedient by experiment, goes back over
the sea, following the track the Mayflower broke,
and earnest nations welcome it to their bosom,
that sovereign truth: Man is supreme over institutions, not they over him. How it has thundered
and lightened over Europe in the last few years!
It will beat to the dust many a godless throne, and
the palm of peace shall occupy the ground once
reserved for soldiers' feet; here and there a city
ditch of defence has already become a garden for
the town.




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         59
Here in America, men full of this truth rise up
against ungodly customers, now become a law, and
under this demand the freedom of the slave. See
how it spreads! It cannot be written down, nor
voted down, nor sneered and frowned down; it
cannot be put down by all the armies of the world.
This truth belongs to the nature of man, and can
only perish when the race gives up the ghost.
Yet it is nothing but an idea; it has no hands,
no feet. The man who first set it agoing on the
earth, - see what he has done!  Yet I doubt
not the villagers around him thought the ale-house
keeper was the more useful man; and when beer
fell a penny in the pot, or the priest put on a new
cassock, many a man thought it was a more important event than the first announcement of this
truth to men. But is not the wise man stronger
than all the foolish? Truth is a part of the celestial machinery of God; whoso puts that in gear
for mankind has the Almighty to turn his wheel.
When God turns the mill, who shall stop it?
There is a spark from the good God in us all.
" 0, joy that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive."
Methinks I see some thoughtful man, studious
of truth, his intellectual piety writ on his tall pale




60         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
brow, coming from the street, the field, or shop,
pause and turn inward all his strength; now he
smiles as he gets glimpses of this bashful truth,
which flies, yet wishes to be seen, - a daughter of
the all-blessed God. It is at her beauty that he
smiles, the thought of kindred loveliness, she is to
people earth withal. And then the smile departs,
and a pale sadness settles down upon his radiant
face, as he remembers that men water their gardens
for each new  plant with blood, and how  much
must be shed to set a truth like this! He shows
his thought to other men; they keep it nestled
in the family awhile.  In due time the truth
has come of age, and must take possession of the
estate. Now she wrestles with the Roman Church;
the contest is not over yet, but the deadly wound
will never heal. Now she wrestles with the Northern kings; see how they fall, their sceptres broken,
their thrones overturned; and the fair-faced daughter
of the Eternal King leads forward happy tribes of
men, and with pious vow inaugurates the chiefs
of peace, of justice, and of love, and on the one
great gospel of the human heart swears them to
keep the constitution of the universe, written by
God's own hand.
But this last is only prophecy; men say, " It cannot be; the slaves of America must be bondmen
for ever; the nations of Europe can never be free."




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.         61
I laugh at such a word. Let me know a thing is
true, I know it has the omnipotence of God on
its side, and fear no more for it than I fear for
God.  Politics is the science of exigencies. The
eternal truth of things is the exigency which controls
the science of men as the science of matter. Depend
upon it, the Infinite God is one of the exigencies
not likely to be disregarded in the ultimate events of
human development. Truth shall fail out of geometry and politics at the same time; only we learn
first the simpler forms of truth. Now folly, passion,
and fancied interest pervert the eye, which cannot
always fail to see.
Truth is the object of the intellect; by human
wisdom  we learn the thought of God, and are
inspired by his mind,  not all of us with the same
mode, or form, or quantity of truth; but each
shall have his own, proportionate to his native
powers and to the use he makes thereof. Love
of truth is the intellectual part of piety. Wisdom
is needful to complete and manly religion; a thing
to be valued for itself, not barely for its use. Love
of the use will one day give place to love of truth
itself.
To keep the body's law brings health and strength,
and in long ages brings beauty too; to keep the
laws of mind brings in the higher intellectual health
6




62         TRUTH AND  THE INTELLECT.
and strength and loveliness, as much nobler than
all corporeal, qualities as the mind is nobler than
the muscles it controls.. Truth will -follow- from
the lawful labor of the mind, and serve the great
interest of men. Many a thousand years hence,
when we are forgotten, when both the Englands
have perished out of time, and the Anglo-Saxon
race is only known as the Cherethites and Pelethites,-nothing national left but the name, —the
truths we have slowly learned will be added to
the people that come after us; the great political
truth of America will go round the world, and
clothe the earth with greenness and with beauty.
All the power of mind that we mature and give
examples of shall also survive; in you and me
it will be personally immortal,  a portion of our
ever-widening consciousness, though all the earthly
wisdom of Leibnitz or Aristotle must soon_:become
a single drop in the heavenly ocean of the sages
whom death has. taught; but it will be not less
enduring on the earth, humanly immortal;: for the
truths you bring to light are dropped into the world's
wide treasury,- where Socrates and Kant have cast
in but two mites, which.made only a farthing.in the
wealth of man, —and form a part of the heritage
which each generation receives, enlarges, holds in
trust, and of necessity bequeathes to mankind, the
personal estate of man entailed of nature to the




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.          63
end of time. As the men -who discovered corns
tamed the ox, the horse, invented language and
letters, who conquered fire and water, and yoked
these two brute -furious elements with  an  iron
bond, as gentle now as any lamb, -as they who
tamed the lightning, sending it- of their errands,
and as they who sculptured loveliness in stone
two thousand years ago, a thing of beauty and
a joy for ever, —as these and all such transmit
their wealthy works to man, so he who sets forth a
truth and develops wisdom, any human excellence
of gift or growth, greatens the spiritual glory of
his race. And a single man, who could not make
one hair white or black, has added a cubit to the
stature of mankind.
All the material riches inherited  or actively
acquired by this generation, our cultivated land, our
houses, roads of earth, of wood, of iron, our factories and ships, -mechanical inventions which make
New- England more powerful than Russia to create,
though  she have forty-fold our men,- all these
contrivances, the crown-jewels of the human race,
the symbols of our kingly power over the earth,:
we leave to the next age; your children's burden
will be lighter, their existence larger, and their joy
more delightful, for our additions to this heritage.
But the spiritual truths we learn, the intellectual
piety which we acquire, all the manly excellence




64         TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
that we slowly meditate and slowly sculpture into
life, goes down in blessing to mankind, the cup
of gold hid in the sack of those who only asked
for corn, richer than all the grain they bought.
Into our spiritual labors other men shall enter,
climb by our ladder, then build anew, and so go
higher up towards heaven than you or I had time
and power to go. There is a spiritual solidarity of
the human race, and the thought of the first man
will help the wisdom of the last. A thousand generations live in you and me.
It is an old world, mankind is no new creation,
no upstart of to-day, but has lived through hard
times and long. Yet what is the history of man
to the nature that is in us all! The instinctive
hunger for perfect knowledge will not be contented
with repetitions of the remembered feast. There
are new truths to come,- truths in science, morals,
politics, religion; some have arrived not long ago
upon this planet, — many a. new thing underneath
the sun. At first men give them doubtful welcome.
But if you know that they are truths, fear not;
be sure that they will stay, adding new treasures
to the consciousness of men, new  outward welfare to the blessedness of earth.  No king nor
conqueror does men so great a good as he who
adds to human kind a great and universal truth;
he that aids its march, and makes the thought a




TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.        65
thing, works in the same line with Moses, has
intellectual sympathy with God, and is a fellowlaborer with Him. The best gift we can bestow
upon man is manhood. Undervalue not material
things; but remember that the generation which,
finding Rome brick, left it marble and full of
statues and temples too, as its best achievement
bequeathed to us a few words from a young Carpenter of Galilee, and the remembrance of his manly
life.
6*




III.
OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
TURN AND DO JUSTICE.- Tobit xiii. 6.
EVERYWHERE in the world there is a natural law,
that is a constant mode of action, which seems
to belong to the nature of things, to the constitution of the universe: this fact is universal. In
different departments we call this mode of action,
by different names, as the law of Matter, the law of
Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean
thereby a certain mode of action which belongs to
the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in
which commonly they are seen to act, and in which
it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of
matter we only know from the fact that they are
always obeyed; to us the actual obedience is the
only witness of the ideal rule, for in respect to the
conduct of the material world the ideal and the
actual are the same.




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        67
The laws of matter we can learn only by observation and experience.  We cannot divine them and
anticipate, or know them at all, unless experience
supply the facts of observation. Before experience
of the fact, no man could foretell that a falling
body would descend sixteen feet the first second,
twice that the next, four times the third, and sixteen
times the fourth.  The law  of falling bodies is
purely objective to us; no mode of action in our
consciousness anticipates this rule of action in the
outer world.  The same is true of all the laws
of- matter.  The ideal law  is known because it
is a fact.  The law  is imperative; it must be
obeyed, without hesitation. In the solar system,
or the composition of a diamond, no margin is left
for any oscillation of disobedience; margins of oscillation there always are, but only for vibration as a
function, not as the refusal of a function. Only the
primal will of God works in the material world, no
secondary finite will.
In  Nature, the world spread out before the
senses, —to group many specific modes of action
about a single generic force,-we see there is the
great general law of Attraction, which binds atom
to atom in a grain of sand, orb to orb, system to
system, gives unity to the world of things, and
rounds these worlds of systems to a universe. At
first there seem to be exceptions to this law,- as in




68         JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
growth  and decomposition, in the repulsions of
electricity; but at length all these are found to be
instantial cases of this great law  of attraction
acting in various modes. We name the attraction
by its several modes,-cohesion in small masses,
and gravitation in large. When the relation seems
a little more intimate, we call it affinity, as in the
atomic union of molecules of matter. Other modes
we name electricity, and magnetism; when the
relation is yet niore close and intimate, we call it
vegetation in plants, vitality in animals. But for
the present purpose all these may be classed under
the general term Attraction, considered as acting
in various modes of cohesion, gravitation, affinity,
vegetation, and vitality.
This power gives unity to the material world,
keeps it whole; yet, acting  under such various
forms, gives variety at the same time. The variety
of effect surprises the senses at first; but in the
end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated
mind. Looked at in reference to this globe, an
earthquake is no more than a chink that opens
in a garden-walk, of a dry day in summer.  A,sponge is porous, having small spaces between the
solid parts; the solar system is only more porous,
having larger room between the several orbs; the
universe yet more so, with vast spaces between
the systems; a similar attraction keeps together




JUSTICE.AND THE CONSCIENCE.        69
the sponge, the system, and the universe. Every
particle of matter in the world is related to each
and all the other particles thereof; attraction is the
common bond.
In the spiritual world, the world of human consciousness, there is also a law, an ideal mode of
action for the spiritual forces of man.  To take
only the moral part of this sphere of consciousness,
we find the phenomenon called Justice, the law of
right.  Viewed as a force, it bears the same relation in the world of conscience, that attraction
bears in the world of sense.  I mean justice is
the normal relation of men, and has the same,to
do  amongst moral atoms, —individual men,moral masses,  that is, nations,-and the moral
whole,  I mean all mankind,- which attraction
has to. do with material atoms, masses, and the
material whole. It appears in a variety of forms
not less striking.
However, unlike attraction, it does not work
free from all hinderance; it develops itself through
conscious  agents, that continually  change, and
pass by experiment from  low  to high degrees of
life and development, to higher forms of justice.
There is a certain private force, personal and peculiar to each one of us, controlled by individual
will; this may act in the same line with the great
normal force of justice, or it may conflict for a




70         JUSTICE. AND -THE CONSCIENCE.
time with the: general law of the universe, having
private nutations, oscillations, and aberrations, per.
sonal or national. But these minor forces, after a
while, are sure to be overcome by the great general
moral force, pass into the current, and be borne
along in the moral stream of the universe.
What a variety of men and women in the world!
Two hundred million persons, and no two alike
in form  and lineament! in character and being
how unlike! how very different as phenomena and
facts! What an immense variety of wish, of will,
in these thousand million men! of plans, which
now  rise up in the little personal bubble that
we call a reputation or a great fortune, then in
the great national bubble which we call a State!
for bubbles they are, judging by the space and
time they occupy in this great and age-outlasting  sea of human  kind.  But underneath  all
these bubbles, great and little, resides the same:
eternal force which they shape into this or the
other special form; and over all the same paternal Providence presides, and keeps eternal watch
above the little and. the great, producing variety
of effect from  unity of force.  This Providence
allows the: little bubbles of his.child's caprice,
humors him in forming them, gives him time and
space for that, understands his little caprices and
his whims, and lets him: carry them  out awhile;




JUSTICE: AND:TIE CONSCIENCE.;      71
but Himself, with no- whim -and no caprice, rules
there as universal- justice, omniscient and all-powerful. Out of -His sea these bubbles rise; by His
force they -rise; by His law  they have their consistence, and the private personal will, which gives
them  size or littleness and  normal or abnormal
shape, has its limitation of error marked out for
it which cannot be passed by.  In this human
world there is a wide margin for oscillation; refusal
to perform  the ideal function has been provided
for, redundance made -to balance deficiency; checks
are provided for every form  of abnormal: action of
the will.
Viewed as an objecnot in:man, justice is the
constitution or fundamental: law -of the moral universe, the law  of right, a rule of conduct for man
in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human
affairs must be subject to: that -as the law  paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands,
what is wrong conflicts and falls.  Private cohesions of- self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism,
must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation
towards the eternal right.
We learn the laws of matter, that of attraction,
for example, by observation and reflection; what
we know thereof is the result of long experience,
- the experienced sight and the experienced thought




72       JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
of many a thousand years.  We might learn
something of the moral law  of justice, the law
of right, in the same way, as a merely external
thing. Then we should know it as a phenomenon,
as we know  attraction; as a fact so general,
that we called it universal and a law of nature.
Still it would be deemed only an arbitrary law,
over us, indeed, but not in us, —or in our elements, not our consciousness,- which we must be
subordinate to, but could not become coordinate
with; a law like that of falling bodies, which had
no natural relation with us, which we could not
anticipate or divine by our nature, but only learn
by our history. We should not know why God
had made the world after the pattern of justice,
and not injustice, any more than we now know
why a body does not fall as rapidly the first as the
last second of its descent.
But God has given us a moral faculty, the conscience, which is able to perceive this law directly
and immediately, by intuitive perception thereof,
without experience of the external consequences of
keeping or violating it, and more perfectly than
such experience can ever disclose it. For the facts
of man's history do not fully represent the faculties
of his nature as the history of matter represents
the qualities of matter.  Man, though finite, is
indefinitely progressive, continually unfolding the




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        73
qualities of his nature; his history, therefore, is
not the whole book of man, but only the portion
thereof which has been opened and publicly read.
So the history of man never completely represents
his nature; and a law derived merely from the facts
of observation by no means describes the normal
rule of action which belongs to his nature.  The
laws of matter are known to us because they are
kept; there the' ideal and actual are the same; but
man has in his nature a rule of conduct higher
than what he has come up to,- an ideal of nature
which shames his actual of history.  Observation
and reflection only give us the actual of morals;
conscience, by gradual and  successive  intuition,
presents us the ideal of morals. On condition that
I use this faculty in its normal activity, and in
proportion as I develop it and all its kindred
powers, I learn justice, the law of right, the divine
rule of conduct for human life; I see it, not as an
external fact which might as well not be at all as
be, or might have been supplanted by its opposite,.
but I see it as a mode of action which belongs to
the infinitely perfect nature of God; belongs also
to my own nature, and so is not barely over me,
but in me, of me, and for me. I can become coordinate with that, and  not merely subordinate
thereto; I find a deep, permanent, and instinctive
delight in justice, not only in the outward effects,
7




74        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
but in the inward cause, and by my nature I love
this law of right, this rule of conduct, this justice,
with a deep and abiding love. I find that justice is
the object of my conscience, fitting that as light the
eye and truth the mind. There is a perfect agreement between the moral object and the moral subject. Finding it fit me thus, I know that justice
will work my welfare and that of all mankind.
Attraction is the most general law in the material world, and prevents a schism in the universe;
temperance is the law of the body, and prevents
a schism  in the members; justice is the law  of
conscience, and prevents a schism  in the moral
world, amongst individuals in a family, communities in a State, or nations in the world of men.
Temperance is corporeal justice, the doing right to
each limb of the body, and is the mean proportional between appetite and appetite, or one and all;
sacrificing no majority to one desire, however great,
-no minority, however little, to a majority,but giving each its due, and to all the harmonious
and well-proportioned symmetry that is meet for
all. It keeps the proportions betwixt this and that,
and holds an even balance within the body, so
that there shall be no excess. Justice is moral tenmperance in the world of men. It keeps just relations between men; one man, however little, must




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.         75
not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a
majority, or to all men. It holds the balance betwixt nation and nation, for a nation is but a larger
man; betwixt a man and his family, tribe, nation,
race; between mankind and God. It is the universal regulator which coordinates man with man,
each with all, - me with the ten hundred millions
of men, so that my absolute rights and theirs do
not interfere, nor our ultimate interests ever clash,
nor my eternal welfare prove antagonistic to the
blessedness of all or any one. I am to do justice,
and demand that of all, - a universal human debt,
a universal human claim.
But it extends further; it is the regulator between men and God.  It is the moral spontaneousness of the Infinite God, as it is to be the moral
volition of finite men. The right to the justice of
God is unalienable in men, the universal human
claim, the never-ending gift for them. Can God
ever depart from his own justice, deprive any creature of a right, or balk it of a natural claim? Philosophically speaking, it is impossible,-a contradiction to' our idea of God;  religiously speaking, it
is impious, -a contradiction to our feeling of God.
Both the philosophic and the religious consciousness
declare it impossible that God should be unjust.
The nature of finite men claims justice of God;
His infinite nature adjusts the claim. Every man




76        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
in the world is morally related to each and all the
rest. Justice is the common human bond. It joins
us also to the infinite God. Justice is his constant
mode of action in the moral world.
So much for justice, viewed as objective; as a
law of the universe, the mode of action of the universal moral force.
Man naturally loves justice, for its own sake, as
the natural object of his conscience. As the mind
loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the
right; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties.
Conscience rests in justice as an end, as the mind in
truth. As truth is the side of God turned towards
the intellect, so is justice the side of Him which
conscience looks upon. Love of justice is the moral
part of piety.
When I am  a baby, in my undeveloped moral
state, I do not love justice, nor conform to it; when
I am sick, and have not complete control over this
republic of nerves and muscles, I fail of justice, and
heed it not; when I am  stung with beastly rage,
blinded by passion, or over attracted from my proper
sphere of affection, another man briefly possessing
me, I may not love the absolute and eternal right,
private capillary attraction conflicting with the universal gravitation. But in my maturity, in my cool
and personal hours, when I am  most myself, and




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.         77
the accidents of my bodily temperament and local
surroundings are controlled by the substance of my
manhood, then I love justice with a firm, unwavering love.  That is the natural fealty of my conscience to its liege-lord. Then I love justice, not for
its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for
the moral truth and loveliness thereof.  Then if
justice crown me I am glad, not merely with my
persona] feeling, because it is I who wear the crown,
but because it is the crown of justice. If justice
discrown and bind me down to infamy, I still am
glad with all my moral sense, and joy in the universal justice, though I suffer with the private smart.
Though all that is merely selfish and personal of me
revolts, still what is noblest, what I hold in common
with mankind and in common with God, bids me
be glad if justice is done upon me; to me or upon
me, I know it is justice still, and though my private
injustice be my foe, the justice of the universe is
still my friend. God, acting in this universal mode
of moral force, acts for me, and the prospect of
future suffering has no terror.
Men reverence and love justice.  Conscience is
loyal; moral piety begins early, the ethical instinct
prompting mankind, and in savage ages bringing
out the lovely flower in some woman's character,
where moral beauty has its earliest spring.  Commonly, men love justice a little more than truth;
7




78         JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
they are more moral than intellectual; have ideas
of the conscience more than of the mind. This is
not true of the more cultivated classes in any
civilization, but of the mass of men in all; their
morals are better than their philosophy. They see
more absolute truth with the moral than with the
intellectual faculty. The instinct for the abstract
just of will is always a little before the instinct for
the abstract true of thought. This is the normal
order of development.  But in the artificial forms
of culture, what is selfish and for one takes rank
before what is human and for all.  So cultivated
men commonly seek large intellectual power, as
an instrument for their selfish purposes, and neglect and even hate to get a large moral power, the
instrument of universal benevolence.  They love
the exclusive use of certain forms of truth, and
neglect justice, which would make the convenience
of every truth serve the common good of all. Men
with large moral power must needs work for all;
with merely large intellectual power they may work
only for themselves.  Hence crafty aristocracies
and  monopolists seek for intellectual culture as
a mode of power, and shun moral culture, which
can never serve a selfish end. This rule holds good
of all the  great forms of civilization, from  the
Egyptian to the British; of all the higher seminaries of education, from  the Propaganda of the




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.         79
Jesuits to a New England college. In all the civilized nations at this day, the controlling class is
intellectual more than moral; has more power of
thought than power of righteousness.  The same
fact appears in the literature of the world.  The
foremost class in culture, wealth, and social rank
have less than the average proportion of morality.
Hence comes the character of laws, political, social,
and ecclesiastical institutions, -not designed for all,
but for a few, at best a part, because the makers did
not start with adequate moral power, nor propose
justice as an end.
Yet the mass of men are always looking for the
just; all this vast machinery which makes up a
State, a world of States, is, on the part' of the people, an attempt to organize justice; the minute
and wide-extending civil machinery which makes
up the law  and the courts, with all their officers
and implements, on the part of mankind, is chiefly
an effort to reduce to practice the theory of right.
Alas! with the leaders of civil and political affairs
it is quite different, often an organization of selfishness.  Mankind reaches out after the absolute
right, makes its constitutions to establish justice,
and provide for the common defence.  We report
the decisions of wise men, and of courts; we keep
the record of cases decided, to help us judge more
wisely in time to come.  The nation would enact




80         JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
laws: it aims to get the justest men in the State,
that they may incorporate their aggregate sense of
right into a statute. We set twelve honest men to
try an alleged offender; they are to apply their joint
justice to the special case. The people wish law to
be embodied justice, administered without passion.
I know the government seldom desires this; the people as seldom fail of the wish. Yet the mass of
men commonly attribute their own moral aims to
every great leader. Did they know the actual selfishness and injustice of their rulers, not a government would  stand  a year.  The world would
ferment with universal revolution.
In savage times, duelling and private revenge
grew out of this love of justice. They were rude
efforts after the right. In its name a man slew his
father's murderer, or, failing thereof, left the reversion of his vengeance as a trust in the hands of his
own son, to be paid to the offender or his heir.
With the Norsemen it was deemed a crime against
society to forgive a grievous wrong, and "nidding"
is a word of contempt to this day. It was not
merely personal malice which led to private revenge;
which bade the Scottish mother train up one son
after another filled with a theological hatred against
their father's murderer; not a private and selfish
lust of vengeance alone which sustained her after
the eldest and then the next of age perished in the




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        81
attempt, and filled her with a horrid joy when
the third succeeded. It was "wild justice" in a
wild age, but always mixed with  passion, and
administered in hate; private vengeance edged the
axe with which wild justice struck the blow. Even
now, in the ruder portions of America, South and
West, where the common law  is silent, and of
statutes there are none, or none enforced, when a
wrong is done, the offended people come forth and
hold their court, with summary process, brief and
savage, to decree something like justice in a brutal
way; rage furnishing the occasion, conscience is
still the cause.
All these things indicate a profound love of justice inherent in mankind. It takes a rude form
with rude men, is mixed with passion, private hate;
in a civilized community it takes a better form,
and attempts are made to remove all personal
malice from  the representatives of right. A few
years ago men were surprised to see the people of
a neighboring city for the first time choose their
judges: common elections had been carried there
by uncommon party tricks; but when this grave
matter came before the people, they laid off their
party badges, and as men chose the best officers for
that distinguished trust.
The people are not satisfied with any form of
government, or statute law, until it comes up to




82        JUSTICE AND -THE CONSCIENCE.
their sense of justice; so every progressive State
revises its statutes from time to time, and at each
revision comes nearer to the absolute right which
human nature demands.  Mankind, always progressive, revolutionizes constitutions, changes and
changes, seeking to come close to the ideal justice, the divine and immutable law of the world,
to which we all owe fealty, swear how we. will.
In literature men always look for poetical justice,
desiring that virtue should have its own reward,
and vice appropriate punishment, not always outward, but always real, and made known to the
reader. All students of English history rejoice at
the downfall of Judge Jeffiies. In romances we
love to read of some man or maid oppressed by
outward circumstances, but victorious over them;
hawked at by villains whose foot is taken in their
own snare. This is the principal charm in the ballads and people's poetry of England and  Germany, and in the legends of Catholic countries.
All men sympathize in the fate of Blue Beard,
and "the guardian uncle fierce."  The world has
ready sympathy with the Homeric tale of Ulysses
returning to his Penelope, long faithful, but not
grown old with baffling the suitors for twenty
years. It is his justice and humanity which give
such a wide audience to the most popular novelist
of our day. But when a writer tries to paint vice




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        83
beautiful, make sin triumphant, men shrink away
from the poison atmosphere he breathes. Authors
like Filmer, Machiavel, and Hobbes arouse the indignation of mankind.  The fact of personal error
it is easy to excuse, but mankind does not forgive
such as teach the theory of sin. We always honor
men who forget their immediate personal interests,
and use an author's sacred function to bear witness
to the right.
The majority of men who think have an ideal
justice better than the things about them, juster
than the law. Some paint it behind them, on the
crumbling walls of history, and tell us of " the
good old times;" others paint it before them, on
the morning mist of youthful life, and in their
prayers and their daily toil strive after this, - their
New  Jerusalem. We all of us have some ideal;
our dream is fairer than our day; we will not let it
go. If the wicked prosper, it is but for a moment,
say we; the counsel of the froward shall be carried
headlong.  What an ideal democracy now floats
before the eyes of earnest and religious men,-fairer
than the "Republic" of Plato, or More's " Utopia,"
or the "golden age" of fabled memory!  It is
justice that we want to organize,-justice for all,
for rich and poor  There the slave shall be free
from  his master.  There shall be no want, no
oppression, no fear of man, no fear of God, but




84        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
only love. "There is a good time coming,"- so
we all believe when we are young and full of life
and healthy hope.
God has made man with the instinctive love of
justice in him, which gradually gets developed in
the world. But in Himself justice is infinite. This
justice of God must appear in the world, and in the
history of men; and, after all "the wrongs that
patient merit of the unworthy takes," still you see
that the ploughshare of justice is drawn through
and through the field of the world, uprooting the
savage plants. The proverbs of the nations tell us
this: " The mills of the gods grind slow, but they
grind to powder; " "Ill got ill spent; " " The
triumphing of the wicked is but for a moment;"
"What the Devil gives, he also takes;" "Honesty
is the best policy; " " No butter will stick to a bad
man's bread."  Sometimes these sayings come from
the instinct of justice in man, and have a little ethical
exaggeration about them, but yet more often they
represent the world's experience of facts more than
its consciousness of ideas.
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do
not pretend to understand the moral universe; the
arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways;
I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.       85:
by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends
towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged
long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery
and remembered that God is just.  Erelong all
America will tremble.  The Stuarts in England
were tyrannical and strong: respectable and peaceful men kept still a while, and bore the tyranny;
but men who loved God and his justice more than
house and land fled to the wilderness, and built up
a troublesome commonwealth of Puritans. Such
as stayed at home endeavored for a while to submit
to the wrong; some of them made theories to justify
it. But it could not be; the tyranny became unbearable even to barons and bishops; one tyrant loses
his head, another his crown; no Stuart must tread
again the English soil; legitimacy becomes a pretender.
England would rule America, not for our good,
but hers alone.  We forgot the love which bound
the two people into one family; the obstinate injustice of the mother weakened the ties of language,
literature, religion, - the Old England and the New
read the same Bible, —kindred blood and institutions inherited from the same fathers; we thought
only of the injustice; and there was an ocean between us and the mother country.  The fairest
jewel fell from the British crown.
8




86         JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
In France, kings, nobles, clergy, trod the people
down. Men bore it with the slow, sad patience of
humanity, bore it out of regard for the "divinity
that doth hedge a king," for the nobility of the
noble, and the reverence of the priest. But in a
few years outraged humanity forgot its slow, sqd
patience, and tore away this triple torment, -as
Paul, escaped from wreck, shook off the viper from
his hand,-and trod the venomous beast tQ dust.
Napoleon came, king of the people. Justice was
his word, his action for a while. The nation gathered about him, gave him their treasure and their
trust. He was strong through the people's faith; his
foes fell before him; ancient thrones tottered and
reeled, and came heavy to the ground. The name
of justice, of the rights of man, shook down their
thrones, and organized victory at every step. But
he grows giddy with his height; selfishness takes
the place of justice in his counsels; a bastard giant
sits on the throne whence the people had hurled off
" legitimate" oppression; he fights no more the
battles of mankind; justice is exiled from his upstart
court. The people fall away; victory perches no
more on his banner. The snows of Russia cut off
his army, but it was his own injustice that brought
Napoleon to the ground.  Self-shorn of this great
strength, the ablest monarch since Charlemagne sits
down on a little island in the tropic sea, and dies




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        87
upon that lonely rock, his life a warning, to bid mankind be just and not despise the Lord. No mighti.
ness of genius could save him, cut off from  the
moral force of the human race.  Can any tyrant
prosper where such a master fell?
Look at the condition of Christendom  at this
day; what tyrant sits secure?  Revolution is the
Lynch-law of nations; it creates an anarchy, and
then organizes its provisional government of momentary despotism. It is a bloody process, but justice does not disdain a rugged road; the Desire of
all nations comes not always on an ass's colt. All
Europe is, just now, in a great ferment; terrible
questions are getting ready for a swift tribunal.
Injustice cannot stand. No armies, no "Holy Alliance," can hold it up. Human nature is against
it; and so is the nature of God! "Justice has feet
of wool," no man hears her step, "but her hands are
of iron," and where she lays them down, only God
can uplift and unclasp. It is vain to trust in wrong:
As much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of
human history.
I know men complain that sentence against an
evil work is not presently executed. They see but
half; it is executed, and with speed; every departure from justice is attended with loss to the unjust
man, but the loss is not reported to the public.




88        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
Sometimes a man is honored as a brave, good man,
but trial rings him and he gives an empty, hollow
sound. All the ancient and honorable may bid the
people trust that man,   they turn off their affections fiom him.
So have I seen an able man, witty and cunning,
graceful, plausible, elegant, and rich; men honored
him for a time, tickled by his beauty to eye and
ear. But gradually the mean soul of the man appeared in his conduct, selfish, grasping, inhuman,
and fraudulently unjust.  The public heart forgot
him, and when he came to die, the town which once
had honored him so much gave him only earth to rest
his coffin on. PHe had the official praises which he
paid for, that was all. Silence is a figure of speech,
unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe.
How differently do men honor such as stood up
for truth and right, and never shrank! What monuments the world builds to its patriots! Four great
statesmen, organizers of the right, embalmed in
stone, look down upon the lawgivers of France as
they pass to their hall of legislation, silent orators
to tell how nations love the just. What a monument Washington has built in the heart of America
and all the world! not by great genius, —he had
none of that, —but by his effort to be just. The
martyrs of Christendom, of Judaism, and of every




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.       89
form of heathen faith, —how men worship those
firm souls who shook off their body sooner than be
false to conscience.
Yet eminent justice is often misunderstood. Littleness has its compensation. A small man is seldom pinched for want of room. Greatness is its
own torment. There was once a man on this earth
whom the world could not understand. He was too
high for them, too wide, was every way too great.
He came, the greatest moral genius of our history,
to bless mankind. Men mocked him, gave him a
gallows between two thieves. "Saviour, save thyself," said they, as they shot out the lip at him.
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do! " was the manly answer to the brutal taunt.
Now see how the world avenges its conscience on
itself for this injustice: for sixteen hundred years
men worship him as God throughout the Western
World. His name goes like the morning sun around
the earth, like that to waken beauty into life. This
conscience of ours is loyal; only let us see the man
and know that he is King of Righteousness, and we
will do him homage all our days.
But we do not see that justice is always done
on earth; many a knave is rich, sleek, and honored,
while the just man is poor, hated, and in torment.
The Silesian merchant fattens on the weavers' tears,
and eats their children's bones. Three million slaves
8*




90        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
earn the enjoyment of Americans, who curse them
in the name of Christ; in the North, capital is a
tyrant over labor.  How sad is the condition of the
peasantry of Christendom!  The cry of a world of
suffering, from mythic Abel to the actual slaves of
America, comes up to our ear, and the instinct of
justice paints a world beyond the grave, where exact
justice shall be done to all and each, to Abel and to
Cain.  The moral instinct, not satisfied on earth,
reaches out to the future world, and in an ideal
heaven would realize ideal justice. But even there
the tyranny of able-minded men  has interfered,
painting immortality in such guise that it would be
a curse to mankind.  Yet the instinct of justice
prevails above it all, and few men fear to meet the
eternal Mother of us all in heaven.
We need a great and conscious development of
the moral element in man, and a corresponding expansion of justice in human affairs; an intentional
application thereof to individual, domestic, social,
ecclesiastical, and political life. In the old military
civilization that was not possible; in the present
industrial civilization it is not thought desirable
by the mercantile chiefs of church and State. Hitherto, the actual function of government, so far as
it has been controlled by the will of the rulers,
has commonly been this: To foster the strong at




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        91
the expense of the weak, to protect the capitalist
and tax the laborer. The powerful have sought a
monopoly of development and enjoyment, loving
to eat their morsel alone. Accordingly, little respect
is paid to absolute justice by the controlling statesmen of the Christian world.  Not conscience and
the right is appealed to, but prudence and the
expedient for to-day. Justice is forgotten in looking at interest, and political morality neglected for
political economy; instead of national organization
of the ideal right, we have only national housekeeping.  Hence come the great evils of civilization at this day, and the questions of humanity,
so long adjourned and put off, that it seems they
can only be settled with bloodshed. Nothing rests
secure save in the law of God.  The thrones of
Christian Europe tremble; a little touch and they
fall.  Capitalists are alarmed, lest gold ill got
should find an equilibrium. Behind the question
of royalty, nobility, slavery,  relics of the old feudalism,-there are other questions yet more radical, soon to be asked and answered.
There has been a foolish neglect of moral culture throughout all Christendom.  The leading
classes have not valued it; with them  the mind
was thought better than the moral sense, and conscience a dowdy. It is so in the higher education
of New England, as of Europe. These men seek




92        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
the uses of truth, not truth itself; they scorn duty
and its higher law; to be ignorant and weakminded is thought worse than to be voluntarily
unjust and wicked; idiocy of conscience is often
thought an excellence, is never out of fashion.
Morality is thought no part of piety in the Church,
it "saves" no man;'belief" does that with the
Protestants, "sacraments" with the Catholics; it is
no part of politics in the State, -not needed to save
the nation or the soul.
Of late years there has been a great expansion
of intellectual development in Europe and America.
Has the moral development kept pace with it?  Is
the desire to apply justice to its universal function
as common and intense with the more intellectual
classes, as the desire to apply special truths to their
function?  By no means. We have organized our
schemes of intellectual culture: it is the function
of schools, colleges, learned societies, and all the
special institutions for agriculture, manufactures,
and commerce, to develop the understanding and
apply it to various concrete initerests. No analogous
pains have been taken with the culture of conscience. France has the only academy for moral
science in the Christian world! We have statistical
societies for interest, no moral societies for justice.
We rely only on the moral instinct; its development is accidental, not a considerable part of our




JUSTICE AND: THE CONSCIENCE.        93
plan; or else is involuntary, no part of the will of
the most intellectual class.  There is no college for
the conscience.
Do the churches accomplish this educational purpose for the moral sense?  The popular clergy think
miracles better than morality; and have even less
justice than truth.  They justify the popular sins in
the name of God; are the allies of despotism in all
its forms, military or industrial.  Oppression by the
sword and oppression by capital successively find
favor with them. In America there are two common ecclesiastical defences of African slavery: The
negroes are the descendants of Ham, who laughed
at his father Noah, —overtaken with drink,  and
so it is right that Ham's children, four thousand
years later, should be slaves to the rest of the world;
Slavery teaches the black men "our blessed religion."   Such is ecclesiastical justice; and hence
judge the value of the churches to educate the
conscience of mankind! It is strange how little the
clergy of Christendom, for fifteen hundred years, have
done for the morality of the world; much for decorum, little for justice; a deal for ecclesiastical ceremony, but what for ecclesiastical righteousness?
They put worship with the knee before the natural
piety of the conscience. " Trusting in good works"
is an  offence to the Christian  Church, as well
Protestant as Catholic.




94        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
In Europe the consequences of this defect of
moral culture have become alarming, even to such
as fear only for money. That intellectual culture,
which was once the cherished monopoly of the rich,
has got diffused amongst wide ranks of men, who
once sat in the shadow  of intellectual darkness.
There is no development of conscience to correspond therewith.  The Protestant clergy have not
enlightened the people on the science of religion.
The Catholics had little light to spare, and that was
spent in exhibiting "the holy coat of Treves," or
images of "the Virgin," and in illuminating cardinals and popes set in the magic-lantern of the great
ecclesiastical show-box. No pains, or little, have
been taken with the moral culture of the people;
none scientifically and for the sake of justice and
human kind. So the selfishness of the rich has spread
with their intellectual culture. The few have long
demanded a monopoly for themselves, and with
their thunder blasted the mortal life of the prophets
of justice sent by God to establish peace on earth
and good-will amongst men. Now the many begin
to demand a monopoly for themselves. Education,
wealth, political power, was once a privilege, and
they who enjoyed it made this their practical motto:
"Down with the poor!"  The feudal system fell
before Dr. Faustus and his printing-press. Military
civilization slowly gives way to industrial. Com



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.       95
mon schools teac\h men to read. The steam-press
cheapens literature; the complicated tools of modern
industry make the shop a college for the tinderstanding; the laborer is goaded by his hate of wrong,
which is the passion of morality, as love of right is
the affection thereof; -he sees small respect for
justice in church or State. What shall save him
from the selfishness about him, long dignified as
philosophy, sanctified as religion, and reverenced as
the law of God! Do you wonder at "atheism"
in Germany; at communism  in France?  Such
" atheism" is the theory of the Church made
popular; the worst communism is only the principle
of monopoly translated out, of aristocracy into democracy; the song of the noble in the people's
mouth. The hideous cry, "Down with the rich! "is that an astonishment to the leaders of Europe,
who have trod down the poor these thousand years?
When ignorance, moral and intellectual stupidity,
brought only servile obedience from the vassal, the
noble took delight in the oppression which trod his
brother down. Now numbers are power; that is the
privilege of the people, and if the people, the privileged class of the future, have the selfishness of the
aristocracy, what shall save the darling dollars of the
rich? "They that laughed at the grovelling worm,
and trod on him, may cry and howl when they see
the stoop of the flying and fiery-mouthed dragon!"




96        JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
The leaders of modern civilization have scorned
justice. The chiefs of war, of industry, and the
Church are joined in. a solidarity of contempt; in
America, not harlots, so much as politicians debauch
the land. Conscience has been left out of the list
of faculties to be intentionally developed in the
places of honor. Is it marvellous if men find their
own selfishness fall on their own heads? No army
of special constables will supply the place of morality in the people. If they do not reverence justice,
what shall save the riches of the rich?  Ah me!
even the dollar flees to the Infinite God for protection, and bows before the Higher Law its worshippers despise.
What moral guidance do the leading classes of
men offer the people in either England, - the European or American? Let the laboring men of Great
Britain answer; let Ireland, about to perish, groan
out her reply; let the three million African slaves
bear the report to Heaven.  " Ignorance is the
mother of devotion," once said some learned fool;
monopolists act on the maxim. Ignorance of truth,
ignorance of right,-will these be good directors,
think you, of the class which has the privilege
of numbers and their multitudinous agglomerated
power?  "Reverence the eternal right," says Conscience, "that is moral piety!"  "Reap as you sow,"
quoth human History. Alas for a church without




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.         97
righteousness, and a State without right! All history shows their fate! What is false to justice
cannot stand; what is true to that cannot perish,
Nothing can save wrong.
A sentence is written against all that is unjust,
written by God in the nature of man and the nature
of the universe, because it is in the nature of the
Infinite God.  Fidelity to your faculties, trust in
their convictions, that is justice to yourself; a life in
obedience thereto, that is justice towards men. Tell
me not of successful wrong.  The gain of injustice
is a loss, its pleasure suffering. Iniquity seems to
prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame.
The knave deceives himself.  The miser, starving
his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at
death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice,
poor and naked and miserable.  Whoso escapes a
duty avoids a gain.  Outward judgment often fails,
inward justice never. Let a man try to love the
wrong, and do the wrong, it is eating stones, and
not bread; the swift feet of justice are upon him,
following with woollen tread, and her iron hands are
round his neck.  No man can escape from this, no
more than from himself.
At first sight of the consequences of justice,
redressing the evils of the world, its aspect seems
stern and awful.  Men picture the palace of this
9




98         JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.
king as hell: there is torment and anguish; the
waters are in trouble. The chariot of justice seems
a car of Juggernaut crushing the necks of men; they
cry for mercy. But look again: the sternness all is
gone; nothing is awful there; the palace of justice
is all heaven, as before a hell; the water is troubled
only by an angel, and to heal the sick; the fancied
car of Juggernaut is the triumphal chariot of mankind riding forth to welfare. With swift and noiseless feet justice follows the transgressor and clutches
the iron hand about his neck; it was to save him
that she came with swift and noiseless tread. This
is the angel of God that flies from east to west, and
where she stoops her broad wings it is to bring the
counsel of God, and feed mankind with angels'
bread. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, from her
own beak to feed its young, broods over their callow
frame, and bears them on her wings, teaching them
first tofly, so comes justice unto men.
Sometimes men fear that justice will fail, wickedness appears so strong. On its side are the armies,
the thrones of power, the riches, and the glory of the
world. Poor men crouch down in despair.  Shall
justice fail and perish out from the world of men?
shall anything that is wrong continually endure?
When attraction fails out of the world of matter,
when God fails and there is no God, then shall




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.        99
justice fail, then shall wrong be able continually to
endure; not till then.
The unity of the material world is beautiful, kept
by attraction's universal force; temperance in the
body has fair effects, and wisdom in the mind. The
face of Nature, how fair it is; the face of strong
and healthy, beauteous manhood is a dear thing to
look upon. To intellectual eyes, the countenance of
truth has a majestic charm.  Wise men, with cultivated mind, understanding, imagination, reason well
developed, discovering and disclosing truth  and
beauty to mankind, are a fair spectacle. But I love
the moral side of Deity yet more; love God as
justice. His justice, our morality working with that,
shall one day create a unity amongst all men more
fair than the face of Nature, and add a wondrous
beauty, wondrous happiness, to this great family of
men.  Will you fear lest a wrong should prove immortal?  So far as any thing is false, or wrong, it is
weak; so far as true and right, is omnipotently
strong. Never fear that a just thought shall fail to
be a thing; the power of God, the wisdom of God,
and the justice of God are on its side, and it
cannot fail, - no more than God himself can perish.
Wrong is the accident of human development.
Right is of the substance of humanity, justice the
goal we are to reach.




100       JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE..
But in human affairs the justice of God must
work by human means. Men are the measures
of God's principles; our morality the instrument of
his justice, which stilleth alike the waves of the sea,
the tumult of the people, and the oppressor's brutal
laugh. Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man,
the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind.
The ideal must become actual, God's thought a
human thing, made real in a reign of righteousness,
and a kingdom - no, a Commonwealth - of justice
on the earth. You and I can help forward that
work. God will not disdain to use our prayers, our
self-denial, and the little atoms of justice that personally belong to us, to establish his mighty work,the development of mankind.
You and I may work with Him, and, as on the
floor of the Pacific Sea little insects lay the foundation of firm islands, slowly uprising from the tropic
wave, -the ocean working with their humble toil,
- so you and I in our daily life, in house, or field,
or shop, obscurely faithful, may prepare the way for
the republic of righteousness, the democracy of
justice that is to come. Our own morality shall.
bless us here; not in our outward life alone, but in
the inward and majestic life of conscience. All the
justice we mature shall bless us here, yea, and hereafter; but at our death we leave it added to the
common store of humankind.  Even the crumbs




JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE.       101
that fall from our table may save a brother's life.
You and I may help deepen the channel of human
morality in which God's justice runs, and the wrecks
of evil, which now check the stream, be borne off
the sooner by the strong, all-conquering tide of right,
the river of God that is full of blessing.
9*




IV.
OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
LOVE IS OF GOD.-1 John iv. 7.
CONSCIENCE deals with universal principles of
morals. It has for its object justice, the divine law
of the world, to be made ideal in the consciousness
of mankind, and then actual in the facts of our condition and history. The affections deal with persons; with nothing but persons, for animate, and
even inanimate, things get invested with a certain
imaginary personality as soon as they become objects
of affection. Ideas are the persons of the intellect,
and persons the ideas of the heart. Persons are the
central point of the affectional world. The love of
persons is the function of the affections, as it is that
of the mind and conscience to discover and accept
truth and right.
This love is a simple fact of consciousness; a
simple feeling, not capable of analysis, not easly




LOVE AND T-HE AFFECTIONS.         103
described, yet not likely to be confounded with any
other fact of consciousness, or simple feeling. It is
not directly dependent on the will, so is free from all
immediate arbitrariness and caprice of volition.  It
is spontaneous, instinctive, disinterested, not seeking
the delight of the loving subject, but of the object
loved. So it is not a desire of enjoying, but of delighting. As we love truth for itself, justice for its
own sake, so we love persons not for their use, but
for themselves; we love them independently of their
convenience to us. Love is its own satisfaction; it
is the love of loving, not merely of enjoying, another.
Such is love itself, described by its central character; but it appears in many forms, and is specifically modified by the character and condition of the
person loved, the object of affection; by the person
who loves, the loving subject, and by the various
passions and emotions mingling therewith.  So it
appears as fraternal, filial, connubial, and parental
love; as friendship, love of a few who reciprocate
the feeling; as charity, love of the needy; as patriotism, love of your nation; and a philanthropy, the
love of all mankind without respect to kin or country.  In all these cases love is the same thing in
kind, but modified specifically by other emotions
which connect themselves with it. Love is the piety
of the affections.




104         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
Of course there are not only forms of love, where:he quality is modified, but degrees which measure
the different quantity thereof.  The degree depends,on the subject, and also on the object, of love.
There is a state of consciousness in which we wish
-no ill to a man, but yet wish him no good. That is
the point of affectional indifference. The first remove above that may be regarded as the lowest
degree of love, hardly worthy of the name, a sort of
zoophytic affection. You scarcely know whether to
call it love or not.
The highest degree of love is that state of feeling
in which you are willing to abandon all, your comfort, convenience, and life, for the sake of another,
to sacrifice your delight in him to his delight in you,
and to do this not merely by volition, as an act of
conscience, and in obedience to a sense of duty,not merely by impulse, in obedience to blind feeling,
as an act of instinct, -but to do all this consciously,
yet delightedly, with a knowledge of the consequences, by a movement which is not barely instinctive, and not merely of the will, but spontaneous;
to do all this not merely out of gratitude for favors
received, for a reward paid in advance, nor for the
sake of happiness in heaven, a recompense afterwards; with no feeling of grateful obligation, no
wish for a recompense, but from pure, entire, and
disinterested affection.




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         105
This highest ideal degree of love is sometimes
attained, but, like all the great achievements of human nature, it is rare. There are few masterpieces
in sculpture, painting, architecture, in  poetry or
music. The ideal and actual are seldom the same
in any performance of mankind. It is rarely that
human nature rises to its highest ideal mark; some
great hearts notch the mountains and leave their line
high up above the heads of ordinary men,-a history
and a prophecy. Yet the capacity for this degree
of love belongs to the nature of man as man. The
human excellence which is actual in Jesus, is possible in Iscariot; give him time and opportunity, the
man will appear in him also. I doubt not that the
worst man ever hanged or even honored for his
crime, will one day attain a degree of love which the
loftiest men now cannot comprehend. This power
of loving to this degree, it seems to me, is generic,
of the nature of man; the absence of it is a mark
of immaturity, of greenness, and clownishness of
the heart. But at this day the power of affection is
distributed as diversely as power of mind or conscience, and so the faculty of loving is by no means
the same in actual men. All are not at once capable of the same quantity of love.
There are also different degrees of love occasioned
by the character of the object of affection. All cannot receive the same quantity. Thus you cannot




106         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
love a dog so well as a man, nor a base, mean man
so much as a great, noble man, with the excellences
of mind and conscience, heart and soul. Can you
and I love an Arnold as well as a Washington? a
kidnapper as well as a philanthropist?  God may
do so, not you and I. So with finite beings the
degree of love is affected by the character of both
the subject and the object of affection.
It is unfortunate that we have but one word in
English to express affectional action in respect to
myself and to other men; we speak of a man loving
himself, and loving another. But it is plain that I
cannot love myself at all in the sense that I love
another; for self-love is intransitive, - subject and
object are identical. It is one thing to desire my
own delight, and something quite opposite to desire
the delight of another. So, for the sake of clearness,
I will use the words Self-love for the normal feeling
of a man towards himself; Selfishness for the abnormal and excessive degree of this; and Love for
the normal feeling towards others.
Self-love is the lesser cohesive attraction which
keeps the man whole and a unit, which is necessary
for his consistency and existence as an individual.
It is a part of morality, and is to the man what
impenetrability is to the atoms of matter, and what




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         107
the centripetal force is to the orbs of heaven; without it, the man's personality would soon be lost in
the press of other men.
Selfishness is the excess of this self-love; no
longer merely conservative of myself, I become invasive, destructive of others, and appropriate what
is theirs to my own purposes.
Love is the greater gravitation which unites me
to others; the expansive and centrifugal power that
extends my personality, and makes me find my delight in others, and desire them to have theirs in me.
In virtue of this I feel for the sorrows of another
man; they become, in some measure, my sorrows,
just in proportion to the degree of my love; his joys
also are my joys just in the same degree; I am
gladdened with his delights, honored in his honors;
and so my consciousness is multiplied by all the
persons that I love, for my affectional personality is
extended to them all, and with a degree of power
exactly proportionate to my degree of love.  So
affection makes one man into many men, as it were.
The highest action of any power is in combination with all the rest. Yet there is much imperfect
action of the faculties, working severally, not jointly.
The affections may act independent of the conscience, as it of them. It is related that an eminent
citizen of Athens had a son who committed an
offence for which the law demanded the two eyes




108         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
of the offender; the father offered one of his to save
one of his son's. Here his heart, not his conscience,
prompted the deed.  When the affections thus control the conscience, we have the emotion called
Mercy, which is the preponderance of love for a
person, not love for right, of love for the concrete
man over the abstract idea of justice. In a normal
condition, it seems to me that love of persons is a
little in advance of love of the abstract right, and
that spontaneous love triumphs  over voluntary
morality; the  heart carries the day before the
conscience.  This is so in most women, who are
commonly fairer examples of the natural power of
both the moral and affectional faculties, and represent the natural tendency of human nature better
than men. I think they seldom  sacrifice a person
to an abstract rule of conduct; or at least, if there
is a collision between conscience and the heart, with
them  the heart carries the day.  Non-resistants,
having a rule of conduct which forbids them to hurt
another, will yet do this for a wife or child, though
not for themselves, their love being greater than
their selfishness.  This is so common that it seems
a rule of nature,- that the affectional is a little
stronger than the moral instinct, and where both
have received due culture, and there is still a collision between the two, that mercy is the law. But
here no private love should prevail against right,




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.          109
and only universal love come in to its aid to supply
the defect of conscience. Brutus, so the story goes,
finds his son  committing a capital offence, and
orders his head struck off, sacrificing his private and
paternal love to his universal and human love of
justice, his love of a special man to his love of what
is right for all men. This is as it should be.
Conscience may be cultivated in an exclusive
manner tb the neglect of the affections.  Then
conscience is despotic; the man always becomes
hard and severe, a stern father, a cold neighbor, a
harsh judge, a cruel magistrate. He will err often,
but always on the side of vengeance.  Love improves the quality of finite morality, for it is the
same as divine justice. Absolute justice and absolute love are never antagonistic, but identical.
The affections may be cultivated at the expense
of conscience.  This often happens with such as
limit the range of their love to a few friends, to
their own family, class, or nation. The world is
full of examples of this.  Here is one who loves
her own family with intense love, - her husband,
children, grandchildren, and collateral relations,the love always measured by their propinquity to
her. Like the crow in the fable, she thinks her own
young the fairest of the fair, heedless of their vul10




110         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
garity, and worldly and ignoble materialism. She
is generous to them, no she-crow more bounteous
to her young, but no hawk was ever more niggardly
to all beyond. Here neglect of justice and scorn of
conscience have corrupted her affections; and her
love is only self-love,- for she loves these but as
limbs of herself, - and has degenerated into selfishness in a wider form, not simple, but many-headed
selfishness.
I once knew of a man who was a slave-trader
on the Atlantic, and a proverb for cruelty among
the felons of that class; he was rich, and remarkably affectionate in his own family; he studied
the comfort of his daughters and wife, was selfdenying for their sake. Yet he did not hesitate to
break up a thousand homes in Africa, that he might
adorn his own in New England. The lion, the
tiger, the hyena, each is kind to his whelps,-for
instinctive love affects the beast also. No man
has universal love; conscience gives the rule thereof,
and so in applying justice applies God's universal
love to that special case. Seek to exercise love
without justice, and you injure some one.
The same form of affection appears on a larger
scale in the members of a class in society, or a sect
in religion; it leads to kindliness within the circle
of its range, but intense cruelty is often practised
beyond that limit.  All the aristocracies of the




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.          111
world, the little sects of Christendom, and the great
sects of the human race, furnish examples of this.
What is called patriotism  is another form of the
same limited love, —a culture of the  affections
without regard to justice.  Hence it has been held
patriotic to build up your country by the ruin of
another land, to love Jacob and hate Esau.  This
feeling is of continual occurrence. " Lands intersected by a narrow frith abhor each other," cities
that are rivals in trade seek to ruin each other;
nations do the same.
In all these cases, where ove is limited to the
family, class, sect, or nation, the aim is this: Mutuality of love within the narrow  circle; without
its range, mutuality of selfishness. Thus love is
deemed only a privilege of convention and for a
few, arbitrarily limited by caprice; not a right, of
nature and for all, the extension thereof to be limited only by the power, not the will, of the man
who loves.
All the above are common forms of limited
affection.  The domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and
political institutions of the world, the educational
and commercial machinery of the world, tend to
produce this result. All the religions of the world
have practically fostered this mistake, by starting
with the idea, that God loved best the men who
worshipped Him in a certain conventional form.




112         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
But this expansive and centrifugal power may
be cultivated to the neglect of natural and wellproportioned self-love. This also is a defect, for
the conservative or self-preserving power is quite as
necessary as the beneficent and expansive power.
Impenetrability is the  necessary concomitant of
attraction.  The individual is  first an  integer,
then a fraction of society; he must keep his personal integrity and discreteness of person, and not
be lost in the press and crowd of other persons.
What is true of bodies is not less so of spirits.
Here is a man with so little self-love, that his personality seems lost; he is no person, but now
this man, now that,-a free port of trade, where
all individualities are unloaded and protected; but
he has none.  His circumference is everywhere;
his centre nowhere.  He keeps other men's vineyards, not his own.  This is a fault; doubtless a
rare one, still a fault which destroys the individual
character of the man.
There is, doubtless, a large difference amongst
men in respect to the original power of the affections, -a difference of nature; a great difference in
respect to the acquired power of love,- a difference
of culture; a difference, also, in respect to the mode
of culture of the heart, which may be developed
jointly with mind and conscience, or independent of




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         113
them,  a difference in proportion. Thus, practically, the affectional power of men varies as much
as the intellectual or the moral power.
Look at the place which the affections occupy in
the nature of man. In point of time they precede
the intellectual and moral powers in their order of
development, they have a wider range in the world
than those other faculties.  You find affection in
animals. In some, love is very powerful. True, it
appears there as rudimentary, and for a short time,
as in birds, grouping them into brief cohesions. In
some animals it is continual, yet not binding one
individual to another in a perpetual combination,
but grouping many individuals into a flock. The
flock remains; all the individuals sustain a constant
relation to the flock, but most unconstant relations
to one another,-the male and female parting
fellowship when the annual season of passion is
over, the parents neglecting their child as soon as it
outgrows the mother's care. Throughout the animal
world love does not appear to exist for its own sake,
but only as a means to a material end; now to
create, then to protect, the individual and the race.
Besides, it is purely instinctive, not also self-conscious and voluntary action. The animal seems not
an agent, but only a tool of affection, his love neces10*




114         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
sitated, not spontaneous. Accordingly, in its more
permanent forms, love is merely gregarious, and
does not come to individual sociality; it seems but
a more subtle mode of gravitation.  A  herd of
buffaloes is only an aggregation of members, not a
society of free individuals, who group from choice.
Friendship, I think, never appears amongst animals,
excepting such as are under the eye of man, and
have, in some manner not easily understood, acquired his habits.  The animal does not appear to
have private affinities, and to attach himself to this
or that fellow-being with the discrimination of love;
development of the affections is never sought for as
a thing good in itself, but only as a means to some
other good.
With man there is this greater gravitation of men
into masses; which, without doubt, is at first as
instinctive as the grouping of bees or beavers; but
nan is capable of modifying the action of this gregarious instinct so, on the one side, as to form
minute cohesions of friendship, wherein each follows
his private personal predilections, his own elective
affinities; and, also, on the other, to form vast associations of men gravitating into a nation, ruled by a
common will; and one day we shall, no doubt,
group all these nations into one great family of
races, with a distinct self-consciousness of universal
brotherhood.




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.        115
It is instructive to look on the rudimentary love
in animals, and see the beginnings of human nature, as it were, so low down, and watch the successive risings in successive creations. It helps us
to see the unity of the world, and also to foretell
the development of human nature; for what is there
accomplished by successive creation of new races,
with us takes place by the continual development of
the same individual.
It is according to the order of nature, that the
power to love should be developed before the power
to think. All things with us begin with a feeling;
next enlarge to an idea; then take the form of action, the mind mediating between the inward sentiment and the outward deed. We delight in love
long before we have any conscious joy in truth or
justice. In childhood we are acquainted with persons before we know  things; indeed, things are
invested with a dim  personality in the mind of
children and of savages.  We know father and
mother long before we have any notion of justice
or of truth. The spontaneous development of the
heart in children is one of the most beautiful phenomena in nature. The child has self-love, but no
selfishness; his nebulous being not yet solidified to
the impenetrability which is to come.  His first




116         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
joys are animal, the next affectional, the delight of
loving and of being loved!
Indeed, with most men the affections take the
lead of all the spiritual powers; only they act in a
confined sphere of the family, class, sect, or nation.
Men trust the heart more than the head. The
mass of men have more confidence in a man of
great affection than in one of great thought; pardon is commonly popular, mercy better loved than
severity. Men rejoice when the murderer is arrested; but shout at his acquittal of the crime.  The
happiness of the greater part of men comes from
affectional more than intellectual or moral sources.
Hence the abundant interest felt in talk about persons, the popular fondness for personal anecdotes,
biographies, ballads, love-stories, and the like.
The mass of men love the person of their great
man, not his opinions, and care more to see his
face and hear his voice than to know his ideas of
truth and of justice. It is so with religious teachers.
Men sympathize with the person before they take
his doctrine. Hence the popular fondness for portraits of great men, for their autographs, and even
for relics. The person of Jesus of Nazareth has
left a much greater impression on the hearts of men,
than his doctrines have made on the mind and conscience of Christendom. For this reason, religious




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         117
pictures preserve scenes which have nothing to do
with the truth or the right that the man represented, but are merely personal details, often destitute of. outward beauty, of no value to the mind, of
much to the affections. This explains the popular
fondness for stories and pictures of the sufferings of
martyrs. A crucifix is nothing to the mind and
conscience; — how much to the heart of Christendom! Hence, too, men love to conceive of God in
the person of a man.
Now and then you find a man of mere intellectual
or moral power, who takes almost, his whole delight
in the exercise of his mind or conscience. Such men
are rare and wonderful, but by no means admirable.
Without the culture of the affections life is poor
and unsatisfactory; truth seems cold, and justice
stern. Let a man have the piety of the body, of the
mind and conscience, it is not satisfactory without
the piety of the heart. Let him have this also, and
what a world of delight it opens to him!
Take the whole population of Christendom, there
are but one or two in a thousand who have much
delight in intellectual pursuits, who find a deep and
reconciling joy in science, or literature, or any art;
even music, the most popular of all, has a narrow
range. But almost every one has a delight in the
affections which quite transcends his intellectual joy.
When a new book comes into being, if it be brave




118        LOVE AND- THE AFFECTIONS.
and good, it will quicken the progress of mankind;
men rejoice, and the human race slowly folds to its
bosom  the works of Homer, Dante, Shakspeare,
Milton, and will not willingly let them die. When
a new child is born into some noble and half-starved
family, it diminishes their "comforts," it multiplies
their toil, it divides their loaf, it crowds their bed, and
shares the unreplenished fire; but with what joy is
it welcomed there! Men of great genius, who can
judge the world by thought, feel less delight at the
arrival of some great poet at his mind's estate, than
many a poor mother feels at the birth of a new soul
into the world; far less than she feels in the rude
affection of her home, naked, comfortless, and cold.
I know there is a degradation caused by poverty,
when the heart dies out of the man, and " the
mother hath sodden her own child."  But such depravity is against nature, and only takes place when
physical suffering has worn off the human qualities,
one by one, till only impenetrability is left.
You find men that are ignorant, rich men too;
and they are not wholly ashamed of it. They say,
"Early circumstances hindered my growth of mind,
for I was poor. You may pity, but you should not
blame me."  If you should accuse a man of lacking
heart, of having no culture of affection, every one
would feel it was a great reproach, and, if true, a
fault without excuse. No man ever confesses this,
-a sin against human nature.




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.            119
All men need something to poetize and idealize
their life a little, something which they value for
more than its use, and which is a symbol of their
emancipation  from   the  mere  materialism   and
drudgery of daily life.  Rich men attempt to do
this with beautiful houses, with costly furniture,
with sumptuous food, and "wine too good for the
tables of pontiffs," thereby often only thickening
and gilding the chain which binds the soul to earth.
Some men idealize their life a little with books,
music, flowers; with science, poetry, and art; with
thought.  But such men are comparatively rare,
even in Scotland and New England, -two or three
in the hundred, not more.  In America the cheap
newspaper is the most common instrument used for
this purpose, - a thing not without great value.
But the majority of men do this idealizing by the
affections, which furnish the chief poetry of their
life,- the wife  and husband  delighting  in  one
another, both in their children.  Burns did not exaggerate in his Cotter's Saturday Night, when he
painted the laborer's joy:
" His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily,
His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile,
An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil."




120        LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
I have heard a boorish pedant wonder how a
woman could spend so many years of her life with
little children, and be content! In her satisfaction
he found a proof of her "inferiority," and thought
her but the " servant of a wooden cradle," herself
almost as wooden. But in that gentle companionship she nursed herself and fed a higher faculty
than our poor pedant, with his sophomoric wit,
had yet brought to consciousness, and out of her
wooden cradle got more than he had learned to
know. A physician once, with unprofessional impiety, complained that we are not born men, but
babies. He did not see the value of infancy as a
delight to the mature, and for the education of the
heart. At one period of life we need objects of
instinctive passion, at another, of instinctive benevolence without passion.
I am not going to undervalue the charm of wisdom, nor the majestic joy which comes from loving
principles of right; but if I could have only one
of them, give me the joy of the affections,  my
delight in others, theirs in me,-the joy of delighting, rather than the delight of enjoying.  Here
is a woman with large intellect, and attainments
which match her native powers, but with a genius
for love, developed in its domestic, social, patriotic,
human form, with a wealth of affection which sur



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         121
passes even her affluence of intellect. Her chief
delight is to bless the men who need her blessing.
Naturalists carry mind into matter, and seek the
eternal truth of God in the perishing forms of the
fossil plant, or the evanescent tides of the sea; she
carries love into the lanes and kennels of society, to
give bread to the needy, eyes to the blind, mind
to the ignorant, and a soul to men floating and
weltering in this sad pit of society. I do not undervalue intellect in any of its nobler forms, but if
God gave me my choice to have either the vast
intellect of a Newton, an Aristotle, a Shakspeare, a
Homer, the ethical insight of the great legislators,
the moral sense of Moses, or Menu, the conscience
of men who discover justice and organize unalienable right into human institutions, -or else to take
the heroic heart which so loves mankind, and I
were to choose what brought its possessor the
greatest joy,  I would surely take, not the great
head, but the great heart, the power of love before
the power of thought.
I know we often envy the sons of genius, men
with tall heads and brain preternaturally delicate
and nice, thinking God partial.  They are not to
be envied: the top of Mount Washington is very
lofty; it far transcends the neighboring hills, and
overlooks the mountain tops from the Mississippi
to the Atlantic main, and has no fellow from the
11




122        LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
Northern Sea down to the Mexique Bay. Men
look up and wonder at its tall height; but it must
take the rude blasts of every winter upon its naked,
granite head; its sides are furrowed with the storm.
It is of unequalled loftiness, but freezing cold;
while in the low valleys and on the mountain's
southern slopes the snow melts quick away, early
the grass comes green, the flowers lift up their
modest, lovely face, and shed their fragrance on
the sudden spring. Who shall tell me that intellectual or moral grandeur is higher in the scale of
powers than the heart!  It is not so. Mind and
conscience are great and noble; truth and justice
are exceeding dear, but love is dearer and more
precious than both.
See the array of natural means provided for the
development and education of the heart. Spiritual
love, joining with the instinctive passion which peoples the world, attracts mankind into little binary
groups, families of two. Therein we are all born of
love. Love watches over our birth. Our earliest
knowledge of mankind is of one animated by the
instinctive power of affection, developed into conscious love.  The first human  feeling extended
towards us is a mother's love.  Even the rude
woman in savage Patagonia turns her sunniest
aspect to her child; the father does the same. In




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         123
our earliest years we are almost wholly in the hands
of women, in whom the heart emphatically prevails
over the head. They attract and win, while man
only invades and conquers. The first human force
we meet is wroman's love. All this tends to waken
and unfold the affections, to give them their culture,
and hasten their growth.  The other children of
kindred blood, asking or giving kind offices; affectionate relations and friends, who turn out the fairest
side of nature and themselves to the new-born
stranger, -all of these are helps in the education of
the heart. All men unconsciously put on amiable
faces in the presence of children, thinking it is not
good to cause these little ones to offend. As the
roughest of men will gather flowers for little children,
so in their presence he turns out  the silver lining"
of his cloudy character to the young immortals, and
would not have them know the darker part. The
sourest man is not wholly hopeless when he will not
blaspheme before his son.
The child's affection gets developed on the smallest
scale at first. The mother's love tempts forth the
son's; he loves the bosom that feeds him, the lips
which caress, the person who loves. Soon the circle
widens, and includes brothers and sisters, and familiar friends; then gradually enlarges more and more,
the affections strengthening as their empire spreads.
So love travels from  person to person, from the




124         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
mother or nurse to the: family at home; then to the
relatives and frequent guests; next-to the children
at school, to the neighborhood, the town, the State,
the nation; and at last manly love takes in the
whole family of mankind, counting nothing alien
that is human.
You often find men lamenting the lack of: early
education of the intellect:; it is a grievous deficiency;
and it takes the hardest toil in: after years to supply
the void, if indeed it can ever be done. It is a misfortune to fail of finding an opportunity for the culture of conscience in childhood, and to acquire bad
habits in youth, which at great cost you must revolutionize at a later day. But it is a yet greater loss
to miss the opportunity of affectional growth; a sad
thing to be born, and yet not into a happy home, -
to lack the caresses, the fondness, the self-denying
love, which the child's nature needs so much to take,
and the mother's needs so much to give.  The
cheeks which affection does not pinch, which no
mother kisses, have always a sad look, that nothing
can conceal, and in childhood get a scar which they
will carry all their days. What sad faces one always
sees in the asylums for orphans! It is more fatal to
neglect the heart than the head.
In a world like this, not much advanced as yet in
any high qualities of spirit, but still advancing, it is




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.          125
beautiful to see the examples of love which we
sometimes meet, the exceptional cases that to me
are prophecies of that good time which is so long in
coming.  I will not speak of the love of husband
and wife, or of parent and child, for each of these is
mainly controlled by a strong generic instinct, which
deprives the feeling of its personal and voluntary
character.  I will speak of spontaneous love not
connected with the connubial or parental instincts.
You see it in the form of friendship, charity, patriotism, and philanthropy, where there is no tie of
kindred blood, no impulsion of instincts to excite,
but only a kindred heart and an attractive soul.
Men tell us that the friendship of the ancients has
passed away. But it is not so; Damon and Pythias
are perpetually reproduced in every walk of life,
save that where luxury unnerves the man, or avarice
coins him into a copper cent, or ambition degrades
him to lust of fame and power. Every village has
its tale of this character. The rude life of the borderers on the frontiers of civilization, the experience
of men in navigation, in all the difficult emergencies of life, bring out this heroic affection of the
heart.
What examples do we all know of friendship and
of charity!  Here is a woman of large intellect,
well disciplined, well stored, gifted with mind and
11*




126         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.,graced with its specific piety, whose chief delight it
is to do kind deeds to those beloved. Her life is
poured out, like the fair light of heaven, around the
bedside of the sick. She comes like a last sacrament to the dying man, bringing back a reminiscence
of the best things of mortal life, and giving a foretasted prophecy of the joys of heaven, her very
presence an alabaster box of ointment, exceeding
precious, filling the house with the balm of its thousand flowers. Her love adorns the paths wherein
she teaches youthful feet to tread, and blooms in
amaranthine loveliness above the head laid low in
earth.  She would feel insulted by gratitude; God
can give no greater joy to mortal men than the consciousness whence such a life wells out. Not content with blessing the few whom friendship joins to
her, her love enlarges and runs over the: side of the
private cup, and fills the bowl of many a needy and
forsaken one. Self-denial is spontaneous, - self-indulgence of the noble heart to her. In the presence
of such affection as this, the intellect of a Plato
would be abashed, and the moral sense of a saint
would shrink and say to itself: " Stand back, my
soul, for here is somewhat far holier than thou!"
In sight of such excellence I am ashamed of intellect; I would not look upon the greatest mind that
ever spoke to ages yet unborn.
There is far more of this charity than most men




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         127
imagine.  You find it amid the intense worldliness
of this city, where upstart Mammon scoffs at God;
in the hovels of the poor, in the common dwellings
of ordinary men, and in the houses of the rich;
drive out nature with  a dollar, still she comes
back. This love is the feminine saviour of mankind, and bestows a peace which nothing else can
give, which nought can take away. From its nature this plant grows in by-places, where it is not
seen by ordinary eyes, till wounded you flee thither;
then it heals your smart, or when beheld fills you
with wonder at its human loveliness.
The calling of a clergyman in a great, wicked
town brings him acquainted with ghastly forms of
human wickedness, -with felons of conscience, and
men idiotic in their affections, who seem born with
an arithmetic instead of a conscience, and a vulture
for a heart: but we also find those angels of affection in whom the dearest attribute of God becomes
incarnate, and his love made flesh; else an earnest
minister might wear a face grim, stony, battered all
over by the sad sight of private suffering, and the
sadder sight of conscious and triumphant wickedness trampling the needy down to dust, and treating
the Almighty with sneer and scoff.
Books tell us of but few examples of patriotism:
they are common. Let us see examples in its vul



128         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
garest, and so most honored form, -love of country,
to the exclusion and hate of other lands. Men tell
of Regulus, how he laid down his life for his country,
the brave old heathen that he was. But in the
wickedest of modern wars, when America plundered Mexico of soil and men, many a deluded
volunteer laid down his life, I doubt not, with a
heroism as pure, and a patriotism as strong, as that
of Regulus or Washington. Detesting the unholy
war, let us honor the virtue which it brought to
light.
This virtue of patriotism  is common with the
mass of men in this republic. In aristocratic governments the rich men and nobles have it in a
large degree; it is, however, somewhat selfish, - a
love of their private privileges more than of the
general rights of their countrymen.  With us in
America, especially in the seat of riches and of
trade, there seems little patriotism in the wealthy,
or more educated class of men; small fondness for
the commonwealth in that quarter. Exclusive love
of gain drives that out of their heart. To the dollar,
all lands, all governments, are the same.
But apart from patriotism, charity, friendship, I
have seen most noble examples of the same affection on a yet wider scale,  I mean philanthropy,
the love of all mankind. You all know men, whose




LOVE AND THE:AFFECTIONS.         129
affection, at first beginning:at home, and loving
only the mother who gave her baby nature's bread,
has now transcended family and kin, gone beyond
all private friendships with like-minded men, overleaped the far barriers of our native land, and now,
loving family, friend, and country, loves likewise all
humankind.  This is the largest expanse of affection; the man's heart, once filled with love for one,
for a few, for men in need beneath his eye, for his
countrymen, has now grown bountiful to all. To
love  the lovely, to  sympathize with  the likeminded, -everybody can do that; —all save an
ill-born few, whom  we may pity, but must not
blame, for their congenital deformity and dwarfishness;-but to love the unlovely, to sympathize
with the contrary-minded, to give to the uncharitable, to forgive such as never pity, to be just to men
who make iniquity a law, to pay their sleepless
hate with never-ceasing love, —that is the triumph
of the affections, the heroic degree of love; you
must be butlittle lower than the angels to do that.
It is one of the noblest attainments of man, and
in this he becomes most like God. The intellect
acquaints you with truth, the thought of God; conscience informs you with his justice, the moral will
of God; and the heart fitly exercised gives you a
fellowship with his eternal love, the most intimate
feeling of the Infinite Father; having that, you can




130        LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
love men spite of the imperfections of their conduct and character,- can love the idiot, the criminal, hated or popular,-be towardly to the froward, kind to the unmerciful, and on them bestow
the rain and the sunshine of your benevolence, your
bounty limited only by your power, not your will,
to bless, asking no gratitude, expecting no return.
I do not look for this large philanthropy in all
men here, only in a few. All have a talent for loving, though this is as variously distributed as any
intellectual gift; few have a genius for benevolence.
The sublime of patriotism, the holy charity, and
the delicate friendship, are more common.  The
narrower love between husband and wife, child and
parent, has instinct to aid it, and is so common,
that, like daily bread and nightly sleep, we forget
to be thankful for it, not heeding how much depends thereon.
The joys of affection are the commonest of joys;
sometimes the sole poetic ornament in the hutch of
the poor, they are also the best things in the rich
man's palace. They are the Shekinah, the presence
of God in the dwellings of men. It is through the
affections that most men learn religion. I know
they often say, " Fear first taught us God."  No!
Fear first taught us a devil,    often worshipped as
the God, - and with that fear all devils fade away,
they and their misanthropic hell. Ghosts cannot




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         131
stand the light, nor devils love. My affections bind
me to God, and as the heart grows strong my everdeepening consciousness of God grows more and
more, till God's love occupies the heart, and the sentiment of God is mine.
Notwithstanding the high place which the affections hold in the natural economy of man, and the
abundant opportunities for their culture and development furnished by the very constitution of the family,
but little value is placed thereon in what is called
the "superior education" of mankind. The class of
men that lead the Christian world have but a small
development of affection. Patriotism  is the only
form of voluntary love which it is popular with such
men to praise, - that only for its pecuniary value;
charity seems thought a weakness, to be praised
only on Sundays; avarice is the better weekday
virtue;- friendship is deemed too romantic for a trading town. Philanthropy is mocked at by statesmen
and leading capitalists; it is the standing butt of the
editor, whereat he shoots his shaft, making up in its
barb and venom for his arrows' lack of length and
point.  Metropolitan clergymen rejoice in calumniating philanthropy; "Even the golden rule hath
its exceptions," says one of them just now. It is
deemed important to show that Jesus of Nazareth




132         LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
was" no philanthropist," and cared nothing for the
sin of the powerful, which trod men into a mire of
blood! In what is called the "highest education,"
only the understanding and the taste get a considerable culture. The piety of the heart is thought
" inelegant " in society, unscholarly with the learned,
and a dreadful heresy in the churches. In literature
it is not love that wins the palm; it is power to rule
by force,  force of muscles or force of mind: " None
but the brave deserve the fair." In popular speech
it is the great fighters that men glorify, not the great
lovers of mankind. Interest eats out the heart from
commerce and politics; controlling men have no
faith in disinterested benevolence; to them the nation
is a monstrous shop, a trading city but a bar-room
in a commercial tavern, the church a desk for the
accountant, the world a market; men are buyers and
sellers, employers and employed.  Governments are
mainly without love, often without justice. This
seems their function: To protect capital and tax
toil.
Hitherto justice has not been done to the affections
in Religion. We have been taught to fear God, not
to love Him, to see Him in the earthquake and the
storm, in the deluge, or the "ten plagues of Egypt,"
in the "-black death," or the cholera; not to see God
in the morning sun, or in the evening full. of radiant




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         133
gentleness. Love has little to do with the popular
religion of our time. God is painted as a dreadful
Eye, which bores through the darkness to spy out
the faults of men who must sneak and skulk about
the world; or as a naked, bony Arm, uplifted to
crush his children down with horrid squelch to endless hell. The long line of scoffers from Lucian,
their great hierophant, down to Voltaire and his
living coadjutors, have not shamed the priesthood
from such revolting images of deity. Sterner men,
who saw the loveliness of the dear God and set it
forth in holy speech and holy life, - to meet a fate
on earth far harder than the scoffer's doom, — they
cannot yet teach men that love of God casts every
fear away. In the Catholic mythology the Virgin
Mary, its most original creation, represents pure
love, — she, and she alone. Hence is she, (and deservedly,) the popular object of worship in all Catholic countries.  But the sterner Protestant sects
have the Roman Godhead after Mary is taken
away.
When this is so in religion, do you wonder at the
lack of love in law and custom, in politics and trade?
Shall I write satires on mankind? Rather let me
make its apology. Man is a baby yet; the time for
the development of conscious love has not arrived.
Let us not say, " No man eat fruit of thee hereafter;"
12




134        LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
let us wait; dig about the human tree and encourage it; in time it shall put forth figs.
Still affection holds this high place in the nature
of man. Out of our innermost hearts there comes
the prophecy of a time when it shall have a kindred
place in history and the affairs of men. In the
progress of mankind, love takes continually a higher
place; what was adequate and well-proportioned
affection a century ago, is not so now. Long since,
prophets rose up to declare the time was coming
when all hate should cease, there should be war no
more, and the sword should be beaten into the
ploughshare. Were they dreamers of idle dreams?
It was human nature which spoke through them its
lofty prophecy; and mankind fulfils the highest prediction of every noble man. The fighter is only the
hod-carrier of the philanthropist. Soldiers build the
scaffolding; with the voice of the trumpet, with the
thunder of the captain, and manifold shouting, are
the stones drawn to the spot, the cement of human
architecture has been mixed with human blood, but
it is a temple of peace which gets builded at the
last.
In every man who lives a true life the affections
grow continually. He began with his mother and
his nurse, and journeyed ever on, pitching his tent




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.        135
each night a day's march nearer God. His own
children helped him love others yet more; his children's children carried the old man's heart quite out
beyond the bounds of kin and country, and taught
him to love mankind. He grows old in learning to
love, and now, when age sets the silver diadem upon
his brow, not only is his love of truth and justice
greater than before, -not only does he love his wife
better than in his hour of prime, when manly instinct
added passion to his heart, -not only does he love
his children more than in their infancy, when the
fatherly instinct first began its work, - not only has
he more spontaneous love for his grandchildren than
he felt for his first new-born babe, -but his mature
affection travels beyond his wife, and child, and
children's child, to the whole family of men, mourns
in their grief, and joys in their delight. All his
powers have been greatened in his long, industrious,
and normal life, and so his power of love has
continually enlarged. The human objects do not
wholly satisfy his heart's desire. The ideal of love
is nowhere actual in the world of men, no finite person fills up the hungry heart, so he turns to the
Infinite Object of affection, to the great Mother of
mankind; and in the sentiment of love he and his
God are one. God's thought in his mind, God's
justice in his conscience, God's love in his heart,why should not he be blessed?




136        LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
In mankind, as in a faithful man, there has been
the same enhancement of the power to love. Already Affection begins to legislate, even to administer the laws of love. Long ago you see intimation
of this in the institutes of Moses and Menu. "The
qualitative precedes the quantitative," as twilight
precedes day.  Slowly vengeance fades out of
human institutions, slowly love steals in: -the
wounded soldier must be healed, and paid, his
widow fed, and children comforted; the slaves must
be set free; the yoke of kings and nobles must be
made lighter, be broken, and thrown away; all men
must have their rights made sure; the" poor must be
fed, must have his human right to a vote, to justice,
truth, and love; the ignorant must be educated, the
State looking to it that no one straggles in the rear
and so is lost; the criminals -I mean the little
criminals committing petty crimes — must be instructed, healed, and manlified; the lunatic must be
restored to his intellect; the blind, the deaf and
dumb, the idiots, must be taught, and all mankind
be blessed. The attempt to banish war out of the
world, odium from theology, capital punishment out
of the State, the Devil and his hell from the Christian mythology,- the effort to expunge hate from
the popular notion of God, and fear from  our
religious consciousness, -all this shows the growth
of love in the spirit of men. A few men see that




LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.         137
while ir-religion is fear of a devil, religion is love:
one half is piety,- the love of God as truth, justice,
love, as Infinite Deity; the rest is morality,-selflove, and the love of man, a service of God by the
normal use, development, and enjoyment of every
limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, every
particle of power we possess over matter or over
man. A few men see that God is love, and makes
the world of love as substance, from love as motive,
and for love as end.
Human nature demands the triumph of pure, disinterested love at last; the nature of God is warrant
that what is promised in man's nature shall be fulfilled in his development. Human nature is human
destiny; God's nature, universal Providence. The
mind tells us of truth which will prevail; conscience,
of justice sure to conquer; the heart gives us the
prophecy of infinite love certain to triumph. One
day there shall be no fear before men, no fear before
God, no tyrant in society, no Devil in theology, no
hell in the mythology of men; love and the God of
love shall take their place. Hitherto Jesus is an exceptional man, the man of love; Caesars and Alexanders are instantial men, men of force and fight.
One day this will be inverted, these conquerors swept
off and banished, the philanthropists become common, the kingdom of hate forgot in the commonwealth of love. Here is work for you and me to do;
12*




138           LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS.
for our affectional piety, assuming its domestic,
social, national, universal form, will. bless us with its
delight, and then go forth to bless mankind; and
long after you and I shall have gone home to'the
God we trust, our affectional piety shall be a sentiment living in the hearts of men; - yes, a power in
the world to bless mankind for ever and ever.
"Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,
Live in the spirit of this creed,
Yet find that other strength, according to their need."




V.
OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
WORSHIP THE LORD IN THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. -PS. xxix. 2.
THE mind converses with things indirectly, by
means of the senses; with ideas directly, independent of the senses, by spiritual intuition, whereto
the senses furnish only the occasion, not the power,
of knowledge; so the mind arrives at truth, in
various forms or modes, rests contented therein,
and has joy in the love thereof.  Conscience is
busied with rules of right, by direct intuition
learns the moral law of the universe as it is writ
in human nature, -outward experience furnishing
only the occasion, not the power, of knowing
right,-arrives at justice, rests contented therein,
and has its joy in the love thereof. The affections deal with persons, whom it is their function
to love, travel ever on to wider and wider spheres,
joying in the men they love, but always seeking




140     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
the perfect object with which they may be contented and have the  absolute joy of the heart.
To think truth, to will justice, to feel love, is the
highest act respectively of the intellectual, moral,
and affectional powers of man, which seek the
absolutely true, just, and lovely, as the object of
their natural desire.
The soul has its own functions.  God is the
object thereof.  As the mind and conscience by
their normal activity bring truth  and justice to
human consciousness, so the soul makes us conscious of God.
We see what intellectual, moral, and affectional
creations have come from the action of the mind,
the conscience, and the heart of man; we see the
human use thereof and joy therein. But the religious faculty has been as creative and yet more
powerful, overmastering  all the other powers of
man.  The profoundest study of man's affairs, or
the hastiest glance thereat, shows the power of the
soul for good and ill. The phenomena of man's
religious history are as varied and important as
they are striking.  The surface of the world is
dotted all over with the temples which man has
built in his acts of reverence; religious sentiments:and ideas are deeply ploughed into the history of
every tribe that has occupied time or peopled
space.  Consider mankind as one man, immortal




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    141
and not growing old, universal history as his biography; study the formation of his religious consciousness, the gradual growth of piety in all its
forms, normal or monstrous; note his stumblings
in the right way, his wanderings in the wrong, his
penitence, his alarm and anxiety, his remorse for
sin, his successive attainments of new truth, new
justice, and  new  love, the forms in which  he
expresses his inward  experience, —and what a
strange, attractive spectacle this panorama of man's
religious history presents to the thoughtful man.
The religious action of a child begins early;
but like all early activity it is unconscious.  We
cannot remember that; we can only recollect what
we have known in the form  of consciousness, or,
at best, can only dimly remember what lay dimly
and half conscious in us, though the effects thereof
may be as lasting as our mortal life.  You see the
tendency to the superhuman in quite little children asking, "But who made God?" the child's
causality  heedlessly  leaping  at the  Infinite, he
having a dim  sentiment of the Maker of all itself
unmade.  You have seen little babies, early deprived of their mother, involuntarily and by instinct
feeling with  their ill-shapen  mouths after what
nature provided for their nourishment. So in our
childhood as involuntarily and instinctively do we




142     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
feel with our soul after the Infinite God, often,
alas! to be beguiled by our nurses with some sop
of a deity which fills our mouth for the time and
keeps us from perishing. Perhaps a few of you
remember a time when you had a sentiment  it
was more a feeling than a thought — of a vague,
dim, mysterious somewhat, which lay at the bottom of all things, was above all, about all, and in
all, which you could not comprehend nor yet
escape from.  You seemed a part of it, or it of
you; you wondered that you could not see with
your eyes, nor hear with your ears, nor touch with
your hands, what you yet felt and longed after
with  such perplexity of indistinctness.  Sometimes you loved it; sometimes you feared. You
dared not name it, or if you did, no one word was
name enough for so changeable a thing.  Now
you felt it in the sunshine, then in the storm; now
it gave life, then it took life away.  You connected it with all that was strange and uncommon; now it was a great loveliness, then an ugliness of indefinite deformity. In a new place you
missed it at first; but it soon came back, travelling
with the child, a constant companion at length.
All men do not remember this, I think; only a
few, in whom religious consciousness began early.
But we have all of us been through this nebulous
period of religious history, when the soul had




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    143
emotions for which the mind could not frame
adequate ideas.
You  see the same phenomena drawn on a
large scale in the history of ancient nations,
whose monuments still attest these facts of consciousness; you find nations at this day still in
this nebulous period of religion, the Divine not yet
resolved to Deity.  Sphinxes and pyramids are
fossil remains of old facts of consciousness which
you and I and every man have reproduced. Savages are baby nations, feeling after God, and trying
to express with their reflective intellect the immediate emotions of the soul. When language is a
clumsy instrument, men try to carve in stone what
they fail to express in speech. Is the soul directly
conscious of a superhuman power? they seek to
legitimate the feeling in the mind, and so translate
it to a thought; at least they legitimate it to the
senses, and make it a thing. This vague, mysterious, superhuman something, before it is solidified
into deity, let me call The Divine. Man does not
know what it is.  "It is not myself," says he.
" What is it, then? Some outward thing?"  He
takes the outward thing which seems most wondrous to himself, - a reptile, beast, bird, insect; an
element, the wind, the lightning, the sun, the moon,
a planet, or a star. Outward things embody his
inward feeling; but while there are so many ele



144     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
ments of confusion within him, no one embodiment
is enough; he must have many, each one a step
beyond the other. His feeling becomes profounder,
his thought more clear. At length he finds that
man is more mighty than the elements, and seeks
to consolidate the Divine in man, and has personifications thereof, instead of his primitive embodiments in Nature. Then his feeling of the Divine
becomes an idea of Deity; he has his personal
gods, with all the accidents of human personality, 
the passions, feelings, thoughts, mistakes, and all
the frailties of mortal men.
Age after age this work goes on; the human
idea of God has its metempsychosis, and transmigrates through many a form, rising higher at every
step until this day. In studying mathematics man
has used for counters the material things of earth,
has calculated by the help of pebbles from  the
beach, learned the decimal system  from  his ten
fingers, and wonders of abstract science from the
complicated diagrams of the sky. So he has used
reptiles, beasts, and all the elements and orbs of
nature, in studying his sentiment of God, transfering each excellence of Nature to the Divine, and
then each excellence of man. Nature is the rosary
of man's prayer.  The  successive embodiments
and personifications of God in matter, animals,
or men were in religion what the hypotheses of




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    145
Thales and Ptolemy, Galileo and Kepler, were in
science,  helps to attain a more general form of
truth. Every idol-fetish, every embodiment of a
conception of God in matter, every personification
thereof in man, has been a step forward in religious progress. The grossest fetichism is only the
early shoot from  the instinctive seed, one day to
blossom into the idea of the Infinite God.' The
confusion of past and present mythologies is not
only a witness to the confusion in the religious
consciousness of men, but the outward expression
helps men to understand the inward fact, and so to
bring truth out of error.
The religious history of mankind could not have
been much different from what it has been; the
margin for human caprice is not a very wide one.
All mankind had the same process to pass through.
The instinct of development in the human race is
immensely strong, even irrepressible; checked here,
in another place it puts out a limb. The life of
mankind is continual growth.  There is a special
progress of the intellectual, moral, affectional, and
religious faculties; so a general progress of man;
with that, a progress in the ideas which men form
of God. Each step seems to us unavoidable and
not to be dispensed with. Once unconscious reverence of the Divine was all man had attained
to; next he reached the worship of the Deity in the
13




146     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
form of material or animal nature then personified in
man.  Let us not libel the human race: we are
babies before we are men. "Live and learn" applies to mankind, as to Joseph and Jane.
You and I are born as far from pure religion as
the first men, and have passed over the same ground
which the human race has painfully trod, only mankind has been before us, and made a road to travel
on; so we journey more swiftly; and in twenty or
thirty years an ordinary man accomplishes what it
took the human race five or six hundred generations
to achieve. But hitherto the majority of Christians
have not attained unity, or even concord, in their
conception of the Deity. There is a God, a Christ,
a Holy Ghost, and a Devil, with angels and saints,
(lemons and damned; it takes all these to represent
the popular ecclesiastical conception of the Deity;
and a most heterogeneous mixture of contradictions
and impossibilities do they make. The Devil is part
of the popular Godhead. Here and there is a man
conscious of God as Infinite; but such are only
exceptional men, and accordingly disowned as heretics, condemned, but no longer burnt, as of old time.
It is plain that the religious faculty is the strongest spiritual power in the constitution of man. Accordingly, what is called religion is always one of




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    147
the mightiest forces in the world of men. It overrides the body, mutilates every instinct, and hews
off every limb; it masters the intellect, the conscience, and the affections. Lightning shows us the
power of electricity, shattering that it may reach its
end, and shattering what it reaches; the power of
the religious faculty hitherto has been chiefly shown
in this violent exhibition. A crusade is only a long
thunderstorm of the religious forces.
In the greater part of the world, men who speak in
the name of God are looked on with more reverence
than any other. So every tyrant seeks to get the
priesthood on his side.  Hard Napoleon got the
Pope to assist at the imperial coronation; even the
cannons must yield to the Cross. All modern wickedness must be banked up with Christianity. If the
State of the Philistines wishes to sow some eminently wicked seed, it ploughs with the heifer of the
Church.
A nation always prepares itself for its great works
with consecration and prayer; both the English and
American revolutions are examples of this. The
religious sentiment lies exceeding deep in the heart
of mankind. Even to-day the nations look on men
who die for their country as a sacrifice offered to
God. No government is so lasting as that based on
religious sentiments and ideas; with the mass of
men the State is part of the Church, and politics a




148     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
national sacrament. Nothing so holds a nation together as unity of religious conviction.  Men love to
think their rulers have a religious sanction. " Kings
rule by divine right," says the monarchist; " Civil
government is of God," quoth the Puritan.  The
mass of men love to spread acts of religion along
their daily life, having the morning sacrament for
birth, the evening sacrament for death, and the noonday sacrament of marriage for the mature beauty of
maid and man. Thus in all the sects, the morning,
the evening, and the noon of life are connected with
sentiments and ideas of religion. In New England
we open a town-meeting, a banquet, or a court with
prayer to God.
You see the strength of the religious instinct in
the power of the sacred class, which has existed in
all nations, while passing from the savage state to
the highest civilization, - a power which only passes
away when the class which bears the name ceases
to represent the religious feeling and thought of the
nation, and merely keeps the traditions and ceremonies of old time.  So long as the priests represent
God to the people, they are the strongest class.
What are the armies of Saul, if Samuel pleases to
anoint a shepherd-lad for king? You see examples
of this power of the sacred class in Egypt, in India,
in Judea, in Greece and Rome, before the philosopher outgrew the priest. You see it in Europe dur



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    149
ing the Middle Ages; what monuments thereof are
left, marking all the land from Byzantium to Upsala
with convents, basilicas, minster, cathedral, dome,
and spire! At this day the Mormons, on the borders of American civilization, gather together the
rudest white men of the land, and revive the ancient
priestly power of darker times, a hierarchic despotism  under a republic. In such communities the
ablest men and the most ambitious form a sacred
class; the Church offers the fairest field for activity.
There religion is obviously the most powerful form
of power. Men who live in a city where the tavern
is taller, costlier, more beautiful and permanent, than
the temple, and the tavern-keeper thought a more
important man than the minister of religion, who is
only a temple-keeper now, can hardly understand
the period when such works as the Cathedral at
Milan or the Duomo at Venice got built: but a
Mormon city reveals the same state of things; Nauvoo and Deseret explain Jerusalem and Carnak.
The religious faculty has overmastered all others;
the mind is reckoned " profane" in comparison.
Does the priest tell nlen in its name to accept what
contradicts the evidence of the senses, and all human experience, millions bow  down before the
Grand Lama or the Pope. It is the faith of the
Christian world, that a Galilean woman bore the
Almighty God in her bosom, and nursed Him at her
13*




150     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
breast. Augustine and Aquinas stooped their proud
intellects and accepted the absurdity. The priests
have told the people that three persons are one God,
or three Gods one person, - that the world was created in six days; the people give up their intellect
and try to believe the assertion, Grotius and Leibnitz
assenting to the tale. Every thing written in the
Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, is thus
made to pass current with their respective worshippers. In the name of religion men sacrifice reason.
St. James says, " Is any sick among you? let him
call for the elders of the Church; and let them pray
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the
Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and
the Lord shall raise him up."  Thousands of men,
in the name of religion, believe that this medical advice of a Hebrew fisherman was given by the infallible inspiration of God; and it is clerically thought
wicked and blasphemous to speak of it as I do this
day. I only mention these facts to show the natural
strength of the religious instinct, working in a perverted and unnatural form, and against the natural,action of the mind.
In like manner religion is made to silence the
moral faculties. The Hebrews will kill the Canaanites by thousands; Catholic Spaniards will build
the Inquisition for their countrymen; English Protestants, under the bloody Elizabeth, will dip their




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    151
hands in their Catholic brothers' blood; Puritan
Boston has had her AtTOS DA FE, hanging Quakers
for "non-resistance" and the "inner light," or
witches for a "compact with the Devil."  Do we
not still hang murderers throughout all Christendom  as an act of worship?  This is not done as
political economy, but as "Divine service;" not for
the conversion of man, but in the name of God, -
one of the few relics of human sacrifice. " Reason
is carnal," says one priest, - men accept a palpable
absurdity as a "revealed truth;" "Conscience must
not be trusted," says another,-and human sacrifice is readily assented to. Nothing is so unjust,
but men, meaning to be pious, will accept and perform it, if commanded in the name of religion. In
such cases even interest is a feeble ally to conscience, and money is sometimes sacrificed in New
England.
The religious instinct is thus made to trample on
the affections. At the priest's command, men renounce the dearest joys of the heart, degrading
woman to a mere medium of posterity, or scoffing
at nature, and vowing shameful oaths of celibacy.
Puritan mothers feared lest they should "love their
children too much."  How many a man has made
his son "pass through the fire unto Moloch? "  The
Protestant thinks it was an act of religion in Abraham  to sacrifice his only son unto Jehovah; the




152     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
Catholic still justifies the St. Bartholomew massacre. Mankind did not shrink at human sacrifice
which was demanded in the name of religion terribly perverted. These facts are enough to show
that the religious faculty is the strongest in human
nature, and easily snaps all ties which bind us to
the finite world, making the lover forswear his bride,
and even the mother forget her child.
See what an array of means is provided for the
nurture and development of the religious instinct,provided by God in the constitution of men and
of the universe. All these things about us, things
magnificently great, things elegantly little, continually impress mankind.  Even to the barbarian
Nature reveals a mighty power and a wondrous
wisdom, and continually points to God. I do not
wonder that men worshipped the several things of
the world, at first reverencing the Divine in the
emmet or the crocodile. The world of matter is a
revelation of fear to the savage in northern climes:
he trembles at his deity throned in ice and snow.
The lightning, the storm, the earthquake, startle the
rude man, and he sees the Divine in the extraordinary.
The grand objects of Nature perpetually constrain men to think of their Author. The Alps are




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    153
the great altar of Europe; the nocturnal sky has
been to mankind the dome of a temple, starred all
over with admonitions to reverence, trust, and love.
The Scriptures for the human race are writ in earth
and heaven.  Even now  we say, "An undevout
astronomer is mad."  What a religious mosaic is
the surface of the earth, — grew  with vegetable
beauty, animated with such swarms of life.  No
organ or Pope's Miserere touches my heart like the
sonorous swell of the sea, and the ocean wave's immeasurable laugh.  To me, the works of men who
report the aspects of Nature, like Humboldt, and of
such as Newton and Laplace, who melt away the
facts, and leave only the laws, the forces of Nature,
the ideas and ghosts of things, are like tales of a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or poetical biographies of a saint; they stir religious feelings, and I
commune with the Infinite.
This effect is not produced on scholarly men so
much as on honest and laborious mankind, all the
world over. Nature is man's religious book, with
lessons for every day. In cities men tread on an
artificial ground of brick or stone, breathe an unnatural air, see the heavens only a handful at a
time, think the gas-lights better than the stars, and
know little how the stars themselves keep the police
of the sky.  Ladies and gentlemen in towns see
Nature only at second hand. It is hard to deduce




154      CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
God from a brick pavement. Yet ever and anon
the mould comes out green and natural on the walls,
and through the chinks of the sidewalks bursts up
the life of the world in many a little plant, which to
the microscopic eye of science speaks of the presence of the same Power that slowly elaborates a
solar system and a universe. In the country men
and women are always in the presence of Nature,
and feel its impulse to reverence and trust. Every
year the old world puts on new bridal beauty, and
celebrates its Whitsunday, -each bush putting its
glory on. Spring is our Dominica in Albis. Is not
autumn a long All-Saints' day? The harvest is
Hallowmass to mankind. How men have marked
each annual crisis of the year,-the solstice and the
equinox,- and celebrate religious festivals thereon!
The material world is the element of communion
between man and God.  To heedful men God
preaches on every mount, utters beatitudes in each
little flower of spring.
Our own nature  also reminds us  of God.
Thoughtful men are conscious of their dependence,
their imperfection, their finiteness, and naturally turn
to the Independent, the Perfect, the Infinite. The
events of life, its joys and its sorrows, have a natural
tendency to direct the thoughts to the good Father
of us all. Religious emotions spring up spontaneously at each great event in the lives of earnest men.




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    155
When I am sick I become conscious of the Infinite
Mother in whose lap I lay my weary head. The
lover's eyes see God beyond the maid he loves;
Heaven speaks out of the helpless face which the
young mother presses to her bosom; each new child
connects its parents with the eternal duration of
human kind. Who can wait on the ebb and flow
of mortal life in a friend, and not return to Him who
holds that ocean also in the hollow of his hand!
The old man looking for the last time upon the sun
turns his children's face towards the Sun which
never sets. Even in cities men do not pause at a
funeral or look on a grave without a thought of the
eternal life beyond the tomb, and the dependence of
rich and poor on the God who is father of body and
Foul. The hearse obstructs the omnibus of commerce, and draws the eyes of even the silly and the
vain and empty creatures who buzz out their ephemeral phenomena in wealthy towns, the butterflies of
this garden of bricks, and forces them to confront
one reality of life, and reverence, though only with
a shudder, the Author of all. The undertaker is a
priest to preach terror, if no more, to the poor
flies of metropolitan frivolity, reminding them at
least of the worm.
The outward material world forms a temple where
all invites us to reverence the Soul which inspires
it with life; the spiritual powers within are all in



156     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
stinctively astir with feelings infinite. Thus material nature joins with human nature in natural fellowship; outward occasions andinward means of
piety are bountifully given, and man is led to develop his religious powers. The soul of man cannot
well be still; religion has always had a powerful
activity in the world, and a great influence upon the
destiny of mankind. The soul has been as active as
the sense, and left its monuments.
An element thus powerful, thus well appointed
with outward and with inward helps, must have a
purpose for the individual and the race commensurate with its natural power. The affections tell me
it is not good for man to be alone in the body without a friend; the soul as imperatively informs us
that we cannot well be alone in the spirit without a
consciousness of God. If the religious faculty has
overpowered all others, and often trod them underfoot, its very power shows for what great good to
mankind it was invested with this formidable force.
It will act jointly or alone; if it have not its proper
place in the mass of men, working harmoniously
with the intellect, the conscience, and the affections,
then it will tyrannize as a brute instinct, lusting
after God, and, like a river that bursts its bounds,
sweep off the holy joys of men before its desolating
flood.




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    157
The mind may work without a corresponding action of the conscience or the heart. You can comprehend the worth of a man all head, with no sense
of right, no love of men, with nothing but a demonbrain. Conscience may act with no corresponding
life of the affections and the mind. You can understand the value of a man all conscience and will,nothing but an incarnate moral law, the " categorical
Imperative " exhibited in the flesh, with no wisdom
and no love. A life domineered over by conscience
is unsatisfying, melancholy, and grim. The affections may also have a development without the
moral and the mental powers. But what is a man
domineered over by his heart; with no justice, no
wisdom, nothing but a lump of good-nature, partial
and silly?  It is only the rareness of such phenomena that makes them bearable. Truth, justice,
love,  it is not good for them to be alone; each
loses two thirds of the human power when it expels
the sister virtues from it.  What God has joined
must not be put asunder.
The religious faculty may be perverted, severed
from the rest and made to act alone, with no corresponding action of the mind, the conscience, and
the heart. Attempts are often made to produce this
independent development of the soul. It is no new
thing to seek to develop piety while you omit its
several elements, the intellectual love of truth, the
14




158      CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
moral love of justice, and the affectional love of
men. But in such a case what is the value of the
" piety" thus produced?  The soul acting without
the mind goes to superstition and bigotry. It has
its conception of God, but of a God that is foolish
and silly. Reason will be thought carnal, science
dangerous, and a doubt an impiety; the greatest
absurdities will be taught in the name of religion;
the philosophy of some half-civilized, but God-fearing people, will be put upon the minds of men as
the word of God; the priest will hate the philosopher, and the philosopher the priest; men of able intellect will flee off and loathe ecclesiastical piety.
If the churches will have a religion without philosophy, scholars will have a philosophy without religion. The Roman Church forbid science, burnt Jordano Bruno, and reduced Galileo to silence and
his knees. So much the worse for the Church.
The French philosophy of the last century, its Encyclopedia of scoffs at religion, were the unavoidable counterpart. Voltaire and Diderot took vengeance for the injustice done to their philosophic
forerunners.  The fagots of the Middle Ages got
repaid by the fiery press of the last generation.
You may try and develop the soul to the neglect
of conscience:- your Antinomian will recognize no
moral law: " All things are permissible to the elect;
let them  do what they will, they cannot sin, for




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.     159
they are born of God; the moral law is needless
under the Gospel," says he. Religion will be made
the pander, of wrong, and priests will pimp for
respectable iniquity.  God is thus represented as
unjust, partial, cruel, and full of vengeance. The
most unjust things will be demanded in his name;
the laws and practices of a barbarous nation will be
ascribed to God, and men told to observe and keep
them. Religion will aim to conserve the ritual barbarities of ruder times.  Moral works will be
thought hostile to piety, —goodness regarded as of
no value, rather as proof that a man is not under
the "covenant of grace," but only of works. Conscience will be declared an uncertain guide. No
" higher law" will be allowed in religion, - only the
interest of the politician and the calculation of the
merchant must bear rule in the State. The whim
of some priest, a new or an old traditionary whim,
must be the rule in the Church. It will then be
taught that religion is for the Sunday and "holy
communion;" business for the week, and daily life.
The "most respectable churches" will be such as do
nothing to make the world a better place, and men
and women fitter to live in it. The catechism will
have nothing to do with the conduct, nor prayers
with practice. But if the churches will have religion without morals, many a good and conscientious
man will go to the opposite extreme, and have




160      CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND- THE SOUL.
morals without religion,- will jeer and mock at all
complete and conscious piety; eminently moral men
will flee off from the- churches, which will be left
with their idle mummeries and vain conceits.
Men sometimes seek to develop the religious element while they depress the affectional. Then they
promote fanaticism — hate before God, which so
often has got organized in the world. Then God is
represented as jealous, partial, loving only a few,
and of course Himself unlovely. He sits as a tyrant
on the throne of the world, and with his rod of iron
rules the nations whom he has created for his glory,
to damn for his caprice. He is represented as having a little, narrow heaven, where he will gather a
few of his children, whining and dawdling out a life
of eternal indolence; and a great, wide hell, full of
men, demons, and torments lasting for ever and
ever. Then, in the name of God, men are bid to
have no fellowship with unbelievers, no sympathy
with sinners. Nay, you are bidden to hate your
brethren of a different mode of religious belief. This
fanaticism organizes itself, now into brief and temporary activity, to persecute a saint, or to stone a
philanthopist; now into permanent institutions for
the defence of heathenism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity. The fires in which Catholics
and Protestants have burnt their brother Christians,
the dreadful tortures which savage heathens have in



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    161
flicted on the followers of Jesus, have all been prepared by the same cause, hatred in the name of
God. It is this which has made many a temporary
hell on. earth, and fancied and. taught an eternal hell
beneath it. Brief St. Bartholomew massacres, long
and lasting crusades against Albigenses or Saracens,
permanent Inquisitions, laws against unbelievers,
atheists, quakers, deists, and Christians, all spring
from this same wantonness of the religious sentiment rioting with ungodly passions of the flesh.
The malignant priest looks out of the storm of his
hate, and smites men in the name of religion and of
God. But then the affectionate man turns off from
the God who is "a consuming fire," from the "religion" that scorches and burns up the noblest emotions of mankind, and, if others will have a worship
without love in the worshippers or the worshipped,
he will have love without religion, and philanthropy
without God. So, in the desert, the Arab sees the
whirlwind coming with its tornado of fiery sand,
and hastens from its track, or lies down, he and his
camels, till the horrid storm has spent its rage and
passed away; then he rises and resumes his peaceful pilgrimage with thanks to God.
How strong is the family instinct! how beautiful
is it when, passion and affection blending together,
it joins man and maid into one complete and perfect
solidarity of human life, each finding wholeness and
14*




162     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
enjoyment while seeking only to delight!  What
beautiful homes are built on marriages like that!
what families of love are born and bred therein! but
take away the affection, the self-denial, the mutual
surrender, aggravate the instinctive love to the unnatural selfishness of lust seeking its own enjoyment,
heedless of its victim, and how hateful is the beastly
conjunction of David, Solomon, Messallina, Mohammed, of Gallic Cassanova, or Moscovian Catharine.
Religion bereft of love to men becomes more hateful
yet,-a lusting after God. It has reddened with
blood many a page of human history, and made the
ideal torments of hell a flaming fact in every Christian land. The Catharines of such a religion, the
Cassanovas of the soul, are to me more hideous
than Bacchanalians of the flesh. Let us turn off
our eyes from a sight so foul.
Piety of mind, the love of truth, is only a fragment of piety; piety of conscience, the love of right,
is also fragmentary; so is love of men, piety of the
heart. Each is a beautiful fragment, all three not
a whole piety. We want to unite them all with the
consciousness of God, into a complete, perfect, and
total religion, the piety of mind and conscience,
heart and soul,- to love God with all the faculties,
-to love Him as truth, as justice, as love, as God,
who unites in Himself infinite truth, infinite justice,




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    163
infinite love, and is the Father of all. We need to
do this consciously, to be so wonted to thus loving
Him, that it is done spontaneously, without effort,
and yet not merely by instinct; done personally, not
against our own consent. Then we want to express
this fourfold total piety by our outward morality, in
its natural forms and various degrees.
I mentioned, that in human history the religious
faculty had often tyrannized over the other powers
of men; I think it should precede them in its development, should be the controlling power in every
man, the universal force which sways the several
parts. In the history of man the soul has done so,
but in most perverse forms of action. In the mass
of men the religious element is always a little in
advance of all the rest. Last Sunday I said that
the affections often performed an idealizing and
poetizing function in men who found it not in the
intellect or the moral sense. In the vast majority of
men it is religion that thus idealizes and adorns
their life, and gives the rude worshipper an intimate
gladness and delight beyond the reach of art. The
doctrine of Fate and Foreordination idealizes the
life of the Mohammedan; he feels elevated to the
rank of an instrument of God; he has an inflexible
courage, and aTpatience which bears all that courage
cannot overcome. The camel-driver of the Arabian
prophet rejoiced in this intimate connection with




164     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
God, a spoke in the wheel of the Unalterable. The
thought that Jehovah watched over Israel with special love, consoled the Hebrews who hung their
harps on the willows of Babylon, and sat down and
wept; it brought out of their hearts stories like that
of Jonah, Esther, and Daniel, and the sweet Psalms
of comfort which the world will not forget to sing.
How it has sustained the nation, wandering, exiled
and hated, in all the corners of the world! The
God of Jacob is their refuge and the Holy One of
Israel the joy of their hearts. Faith in God sustained and comforted our fathers here in New England.  Their affections went wandering over the
waters to many a pleasant home in the dear old
island of the sea, and a tear fell on the snow, at the
thought that, far over the waters, the first violet was
fragrant on a mother's grave; but the consciousness
of God lit a smile in the Puritan's heart which
chased the tear from his manly cheek.
The thought that God sees us, knows us, loves us,
idealizes the life of all religious men. How it blunts
the edge of pain, takes away the sting of disappointment, abates the bitterness of many a sorrowful cup
which we are called to drink!  If you are sure of
God, is there any thing which you cannot bear?
The belief in immortality is so intimately connected
with the development of religion, that no nation ever
doubted of eternal life. How that idealizes and em



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    165
bellishes all our daily doing and suffering!  What a
power is there that hangs over me, within a day's
march perhaps, nay, within an easy walk of an hour,
or a minute it may be, certainly not far off, its gates
wide open night and day! The weary soul flees
thither right often. Poor, weary, worn-out millions,
it is your heaven! No king can shut you out. The
tyrants, shooting their victim's body, shoot his soul
into the commonwealth of heaven.  The martyr
knows it, and laughs at the bullets which make an
involuntary subject of despotism an immortal republican, giving him citizenship in the democracy of
everlasting life. There the slave is free from his
master; the weary is at rest; the needy has no want
of bread; all tears are wiped from every eye; justice
is done; souls dear to ours are in our arms once
more; the distractions of life are all over; no injustice, no sorrow, no fear. That is the great comfort
with the mass of mankind,-the most powerful
talisman which enchants them of their weary woe.
Men sing Anacreontic odes, amid wine and women,
and all the voluptuousness of art, buying a transient jollity of the flesh; but the Methodist finds poetry in his mystic hymn to take away the grief of a
wound and leave no poison in its place. The rudest Christian, with a real faith in immortal life, has
a means of adorning the world which puts to shame
the poor finery of Nicholas and Nebuchadnezzar.




166     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
What are the prizes of wealth, of fame, of genius,
nay, of affection; compared with what we all anticipate erelong? The worst man that ever lived may
find delight overmastering terror here.  " I am
wicked," he may say; " God knows how I became
so; his infinite love will one day save me out of my
bitterness and my woe!"  I once knew a man tormented with a partner, cruel and hard-hearted, ingenious only to afflict. In the midst of her torment he
delighted to think of the goodness of God, and of
the delights of heaven, and in the pauses of her
tongue dropped to a heaven of lovely dreams unsullied by any memory of evil words.
Religion does not produce its fairest results in
persons of small intellectual culture; yet there it
often spreads a charm and a gladness which nothing
else can give. I have known men, and still oftener
women, nearly all of whose culture had come through
their religious activity. Religion had helped their
intellect, their conscience, even their affections; by
warming the whole ground of their being, had quickened the growth of each specific plant thereof.
Young observers are often amazed at this, not
knowing then the greener growth and living power
of a religious soul. In such persons, spite of lack of
early intellectual culture, and continual exclusion
from the common means of refinement, you find
piety without narrowness, zeal without bigotry, and




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    167
trust in God with no cant.  Their world of observation was not a wide world, not much varied, not
rich; but their religious experience was deep, their
consciousness of divine things extended high. They
were full of love and trust in God.  Religion was
the joy of their heart, and their portion for ever.
They felt that God was about them, immanent in
matter, within not less, dwelling in their spirit, a
present help in their hour of need, which was their
every hour.  Piety was their only poetry; out of
ignorance, out of want, out of pain,-which lay heavy
about them,-a triple darkness that covered the
people, - they looked up to heaven, and saw the
star of everlasting life, which sent its mild beams
into their responsive soul. Dark without, it was
all-glorious within.  Men with proud intellect go
haughtily by these humble souls; but Mohammeds,
Luthers, are born of such a stock, and it is from
these little streams that the great ocean of religion is
filled full.
Yet it is not in cases like these that you see the
fairest effects of religion.  The four prismatic rays
of piety must be united into one natural and fourfold beam of light, to shine with all their beauty,
all their power; then each is enhanced. I love truth
the more for loving justice; both the more for loving
love; all three the more, when I see them as forms
of God; and in a totality of religion I worship the




168     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
Father, who is truth, justice, and love, who is the
Infinite God.
The affections want a person to cling to;   my
soul reveals to me God, without the limitations of
human personality; Him  I can love, and not be
narrowed by my affections. If I love a limited
object, I grow up to the bigness thereof, then stop;
it helps my growth no more. The finiteness of my
friend admits no absolute affection. Partial love
must not disturb the universal sweep of impersonal
truth and justice. The object of the heart must not
come between me and the object of mind or conscience, and enfeeble the man.' But if you love the
Infinite God, it is with all your faculties, which
find their complete and' perfect object, and you
progressively grow up towards him, to be like him.
The idea of Godd becomes continually more, your
achievement:-of'the divine becomes more. You
love with no::divided love; there is no collision of
faculties, the heod forbidding what the soul commands, the heart working one way and the conscience another. The same Object corresponds to
all these faculties, which love Him as truth, as justice, as love, as God who is all in all; one central
sun balances and feeds with fire this system of harmonious orbs.
Consider the power of religion in a man whose
mind and conscience, heart and soul, are all well




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    169
developed. He has these four forms of piety; they
all unite, each to all, and all to each. His mind
gives him knowledge of truth, the necessary condition for the highest action of his conscience; that
furnishes him with the idea of justice, which is the
necessary condition for the highest action of the
affections; they in their development extend to all in
their wide love of men; this affords the necessary
condition for the highest action of the soul, which
can then love God with absolute love, and, joining
with all the other activity of the man, helps the use,
development, and enjoyment of every faculty. Then
truth has lost its coldness; justice is not hard and
severe; love is not partial, as when limited to
family, tribe, or nation; but, coextensive with justice, applies to all mankind; faith is not mystical or
merely introversive and quietistic.  This fourfold
action joins in one unity of worship, in love of God,
-love with the highest and conjoint action of all
the faculties of man.  Then love of the Infinite God
is no mystical abstraction, no dreamy sentimentalism, but the normal action of the entire man, every
faculty seeking its finite contentment, and finding
also its infinite satisfaction by feeling the life of God
in the soul of man.
In our time, as often before, attempts are making
to cultivate the soul, in the narrowest way, without
15




170     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
developing the other parts of man's spiritual nature.
The intellect is called "carnal," conscience "dangerous," and the heart " deceitful."  We are told to
trust none of these in matters of religion. Accordingly, ecclesiastical men complain that " science
is not religious," because it breaks down the " venerable doctrines" of the Church, -because geologists have swept away the flood, grammarians annihilated the tower of Babel, and physiologists brushed
off the miracles of the Jews, the Greeks, the Hindoos, and the Christians, to the same dust-hole of
the ages and repository of rubbish. It is complained
that " morality is not religious," because it refuses to
be comforted with the forms of religious ceremony,
and thinks "divine service " is not merely sitting in
a church, or listening to even the wisest words. The
churches complain also that " philanthropy is not religious," but love of men dissuades us from love of
God. The philanthropist looks out on the evils of
society,- on the slavery whose symbol is the lash,
and the slavery whose symbol is the dollar; on the
avarice, the intemperance, the licentiousness of
men; and calls on mankind in the name of God to
put away all this wickedness, The churches say:
" Rather receive our sacraments. Religion has nothing to do with such matters."
This being the case, men of powerful character
no longer betake themselves to the Church as their




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    171
fortress whence to assail the evils of the age, or as
their hermitage wherein to find rest to their souls.
In all England there are few men, I think, of firstrate ability who speak from a pulpit. Let me do no
injustice to, minds like three great men honoring her
pulpits now, but has England a clerical scholar to
rival the intellectual affluence of Hooker, and Barrow, and Taylor, and Cudworth, and South?  The
great names of English literature at this day, Carlyle, Hallam, Macaulay, Mill, Grote, and the rest,
seem far enough from the Church, or its modes of
salvation. The counting-house sends out men to
teach political economy, looking always to the
kitchen of the nation, and thinking of the stomach
of the people. Does the Church send out men of
corresponding power to think of the soul of the nation, and teach the people political morality? Was
Bishop Butler the last of the great men who essayed
to teach Britain from her established pulpit? Even
Priestley has few successors in the ranks of religious
dissent. The same may be said of Church poets:
they are often well-bred; what one of them is there
that was well-born for his high vocation?
In the American Church there is the same famine
of men.  Edwards and Mayhew belonged to a race
now extinct, - great men in pulpits. In our literature there are names enough once clerical. The
very fairest names on our little hill of the Muses are




172     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
of men once clergymen. Channing is the only one
in this country who continued thus to the end of
life. A crowd of able men, with a mob of others,
press into all departments of trade, into the profession of the law, and the headlong race of American
politics,-where a reputation is gained without a
virtue or lost without a crime, — but no men of firstrate powers and attainments continue in the pulpit.
Hence we have strong-minded men in business, in
politics, and law, who teach men the measures which
seem to suit the evanescent interests of the day, but
few in pulpits, to teach men the eternal principles of
justice, which really suit the present and also the
everlasting interests of mankind. Hence no popular
and deadly sin of the nation gets well rebuked by
the Church of the Times. The dwarfs of the pulpit
hide their diminished heads before the Anakim of
politics and trade. The almighty dollar hunts wisdom, justice, and philanthropy out of the American
Church. It is only among the fanatical Mormons
that the ablest men teach in the name of God.
The same is mainly true of all Christendom.
The Church which in her productive period had an
Origen, a Chrysostom, an Augustine, a Jerome, an
Aquinas, its Gregories and its Basils, had real saints
and willing martyrs, in the nineteenth century cannot show a single mind which is a guide of the age.




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    173
The great philosophers of Europe are far enough
from Christian.
It is, doubtless, a present misfortune that the positions most favorable to religious influence are filled
with feeble men, or such as care little for the welfare
of mankind, -who have all of religion except its
truth, its justice, its philanthropy, and its faith.
Still, such is the fact just now; a fact which shows
plainly enough the position of what is popularly
called " Christianity" in the world of men.  The
form of religion first proclaimed by the greatest religious genius that ever lit the world, and sealed by
his martyrdom, is now officially represented by men
of vulgar talents, of vulgar aspirations, - to be rich,
respectable, and fat, - and of vulgar lives. Hunkers
of the Church claim exclusively to represent the martyr of the Cross. A sad sight!
Yet still religion is a great power amongst men,
spite of these disadvantages. It was never so great
before; for in the progressive development of mankind the  higher faculties acquire  continually  a
greater and greater influence. If Christianity means
what was true and good in the teaching and character of Jesus, then there was never so much of it in
the world. Spite of the defalcation and opposition
of the churches, there is a continual growth in all
those four forms of piety.  Under the direction of
15*




174     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
able men, all those fragments of religion are made
ready in their. several places. In the department of
mind, see how much has been done in this last hundred years; man has nearly doubled the intellectual
property of the seventeenth century. The early history of mankind is better understood now than by
the nations who lived it.  What discoveries of
science in all that relates to the heavens, to the earth
and its inhabitants, mineral, vegetable, animal, human! In the philosophy of man, how much has
been done to understand his nature and his history!
In practical affairs, see what wonders have been
wrought in a hundred years; look at England,
France, Germany, and America, and see the power
of the scientific head over the world of matter, the
human power gained by better political organization,of the tribes of men.
In the department of conscience, see what a love'of justice develops itself in all Christendom; see the
results of this for the last hundred years; in the reform  of laws, of constitutions, in the great political, social, and domestic revolutions of our time.
Men have clearer ideas of justice; they would have
a church without a bishop, a State without a king,
society without a lord, and a family without a slave.
From this troublesome conscience comes the uneasiness of the Christian world. A revolution is a nation's act of penitence, of resolution, and of prayer,




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    175
-its agony and bloody sweat. See what a love of
freedom there is shaking the institutions of the aged
world. Tyrannies totter before the invisible hand of
Justice, which, to the terror of the oppressors, writes,
" Weighed, and found wanting."  So the despot
trembles for his guilty throne; the slave-driver begins to fear the God of the man he has kidnapped
and enthralled. See the attempts making by the
people to break down monopolies, to promote freedom of intercourse between all nations of the earth.
See woman assert her native rights, long held in
abeyance by the superior vigor of the manly arm.
In all that pertains to the affections, there has
been a great advance. Love travels beyond the narrow bounds of England and of Christendom. See
the efforts making to free the slave; to elevate the
poor, - removing the causes of poverty by the charity that alleviates and the justice that cures; to heal
the drunkard of his fiery thirst; to reform the criminals whom once we only hung. The gallows must
come down, the dungeon be a school for piety, not
the den of vengeance and of rage. Great pains begin to be taken with the deaf and dumb, the blind,
the insane; even the idiot must be taught. Philanthropic men, who are freedom to the slave, feet to
the lame, eyes to the blind, and hearing to the deaf,
would be also understanding to the fool. In what is
idly called "an age of faith," the town council of




176      CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
Grenoble set archers at the gates, to draw upon
strange beggars and shoot them  down before the
city walls.  Look, now, at the New England provision for the destitute, — for the support of their
bodies and the culture of their minds.
No Church leads off in these movements; ecclesiastical men take small interest therein; but they
come from the three partial forms of piety, the intellectual, the moral, and the affectional. We need to
have these all united with a conscious love of God.
What hinders?  The old ecclesiastical idea of God,
as finite, imperfect in wisdom, in justice, and in love,
still blocks the way. The God wholly external to
the world of matter, acting by fits and starts, is not
God enough for science, which requires a uniform,
infinite force, with constant modes of action. The
capricious Deity, wholly external to the human
spirit,  jealous, partial, loving Jacob and hating
Esau, revengeful, blasting with endless hell all but a
fraction of his family, -this is not God enough for
the scientific moralist, and the philanthropist running over with love. They want a God immanent
in matter, immanent in spirit, yet infinite, and so
transcending both,-the God of infinite perfection,
infinite power, wisdom, justice, love, and self-fidelity.
This idea is a stranger to the Christian, as to the
Hebrew and Mohammedan church; and so stout
men turn off therefrom, or else are driven away with




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    177
hated names.  One day these men will welcome the
true idea of God, and have a conscious trust and
love of Him to match their science, their justice, and
their love of men; will become the prophets and
apostles of the Absolute Religion, finding it wide
enough for all truth, all justice, and all love, yea, for
an absolute faith in God, in his motives, means, and
ends. Then all this science of the nineteenth century, all this practical energy, this wide command
over Nature, this power to organize the world of
matter and yoke it to the will of man, this love of
freedom and power to combine vast masses in productive industry; then all this wide literature of
modern times, glittering with many-colored riches,
and spread abroad so swift; then all this morality
which clamors for the native right of men, this wide
philanthropy, laying down its life to bless mankind,
- all this shall join with the natural emotions of
the soul, welcoming the Infinite God. It shall all
unite into one religion; each part thereof " may
call' the farthest brother." Then what a work will
religion achieve in the affairs of men! What institutions will it build, what welfare will it produce on earth, what men bring forth! Even now
the several means are working for this one great
end, only not visibly, not with the consciousness of
men.
I do not complain of the " decline of piety." I




178     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
thank God for its increase. I see what has been
done, but I look also to what remains to do. I am
sure that mankind will do it. God is a master
workman  He made man well, - for an end worthy
of God, provided with means quite adequate to that
end. No man, not an Isaiah or a Jesus, ever dares
prophesy so high but man fulfils the oracle, and
then goes dreaming his prophecy anew, and fulfilling it as he goes on. If you have a true idea of justice, a true sentiment of philanthropy or of faith in
God, which men have not yet welcomed, if you
can state your idea in speech, then mankind will
stop and realize your idea,- make your abstract
thought their concrete thing. Kings are nothing,
armies fall before you. The idea sways them in its
flight as the wind of summer bows the unripe corn
of June.
This religion will build temples, not of stone only,
but temples of living stones, temples of men, families, communities, nations, and a world. We want
no monarchies in the name of: God; we do want a
democracy in that name, a democracy which rests
on human nature, and, respecting that, reenacts the
natural laws of God, the Constitution of the Universe, in the common statutes and written laws of
the land.
We need this religion for its general and its special purposes; need it as subjective piety in each of




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    179
these fragmentary forms, as joined into a totality of
religious consciousness; we need it as morality,
keeping the natural laws of God for the body and
the spirit, in the individual, domestic, social, national, and general human or cosmic form, the divine
sentiment becoming the human act. We need this
to heal the vices of modern society, to revolutionize
this modern feudalism of gold, and join the rich and
poor, the employer and the employed, in one bond
of human fellowship; we need it to break down the
wall between class and class, nation and nation,
race and race,- to join all classes into one nation,
all nations into one great human family. Science
alone is not adequate to achieve this; calculations
of interest cannot effect it; political economy will
not check the iron hand of power, nor relax the
grasp of the oppressor from  his victim's throat.
Only religion, deep, wide spread, and true, can
achieve this work.
Already it is going forward, not under the guidance of one great man with ideas to direct the
march, and mind to plan the structure of the future
age, but under many men, who know  each his
little speciality, all their several parts, while the
Infinite Architect foresees and so provides for all.
Much has been done in this century, now only
half spent; much more is a-doing. But the greatest of its works is one which men do not talk about,




180     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
nor see: it is the silent development of the several
parts of a complete piety, one day to be united into
a consciousness of the Absolute Religion, and to be
the parent of a new church and new State, with
communities and families such as the world has
hitherto not seen.
We notice the material works of our time, the
industrial activity, the rapid increase of wealth in
either England, Old or New. Foolish men deplore
this, and would go back to the time when an ignorant peasantry, clad in sheep-skins, full of blind, instinctive faith in God, and following only as they
were led by men, built up the cathedrals of Upsala
and Strasburg. In the order of development, the
material comes first; even the excessive lust of gain,
now turning the heads of Old England and the
New, is part of the cure of the former unnatural
mistake. Gross poverty is on its way to the grave.
The natural man is before the spiritual nan. We
are laying a basis for a spiritual structure which no
man has genius yet to plan. Years ago there were
crowds of men at work in Lebanon, cutting down
the algum, the cedar, and the fir, squaring into ashlar, boring, chiselling, mortising, tenoning, all manner of beams; some were rafting it along the coast
to Joppa, and yet others teaming it up to Jerusalem.
What sweat of horses was there, what lowing of
oxen and complaint from the camels! Thousands




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.    181
of men were quarrying stone at Moriah for the foundation of the work. Yet only one man comprehended it all; the lumberers felling the cedar and
sycamore, the carpenters and the muleteers, understood each their special work, no more. But the son
of the Danite woman planned all this stone and
timber into a temple, which, by the labor of many
and the consciousness of a few, rose up on the
mountain of Jerusalem, the wonder and the pride of
all the land. So the great work, the humanization
of man, is going forward. The girl that weaves
muslins at Brussels, the captain of the emigrar
ship sailing "past bleak Mozambique," hungry for
Australian gold, the chemist who annihilates pain
with a gas and teaches lightning to read and write,
the philosopher who tells us the mighty faculties
which lie hid in labyrinthine man, and the philanthropic maiden who in the dirt of a worldly city
lives love which some theologians think is too much
for God, - all of these, and thousands more, are getting together and preparing the materials for the
great temple of man, whose builder and maker is
God. You and I shall pass away, but mankind is
the true son of God that abideth ever, to whom the
Father says continually, "Come up higher."
I see the silent growth of religion in men. I see
that the spiritual elements are a larger fraction of
human consciousness than ever before; that there
16




182     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
is more of truth, of justice, of love, and faith in God
than was ever in the world. As we know  and
observe' the natural laws of man, the constitution of
the universe, the more, so will this religion continue
to increase, and the results thereof appear in common life, in the individual, domestic, social, national,
and universal human form.
Some men say they cannot love, or even know,
God, except in the form of man. God as the Infinite seems to them abstract, and they cannot lay
hold on Him until a man fills their corporeal eye
and arms, and the affections cling thereto and are
blest. So they love Christ, - not the Jesus of history, but the Christ of the Christian mythology, -
an imaginary being, an ideal incarnation of God in
man. Let them help themselves with this crutch of
the fancy, as boys use sticks to leap a ditch or
spring a wall; yet let them remember that the real
historical incarnation of God is in mankind, not in
one person, but all, and human history is a continual transfiguration. As the Divine seems nearest
when' human, and men have loved to believe in
the union of God and man, so religion is loveliest when it assumes the form  of common life,
-when daily work is a daily sacrament, and
life itself a psalm of gratitude and prayer of aspiration.
It is Palm  Sunday to-day, and men in churches




CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE- SOUL.    183
remember what is written of the peasant from
Galilee who rode into Jerusalem  amid multitudes
of earnest men not merely waiting for consolation,
but going to meet it half-way, who yet knew not
what they did, nor whom they welcomed. As that
man went to the capital of a nation which knew
him not, so in our time Religion rides her ass-colt
into village and town, welcome to many a weary,
toiling heart, but ignored and pelted by the successors of such as " took counsel against Jesus, to put
him to death."  How little do we know! But he
that keeps the integrity of his own consciousness,
and is faithful to himself day by day, is also faithful
to God for eternity, and helps to restore the integrity of the world of men.
The religious actions of old times it is now easy
to understand. They left their monuments, their
pyramids, and temples which they built, the memory
of the wars they fought against their brothers in
the dear name of Jesus, or of Allah the Only. But
the religious action of this age, not in the old form,
-it will take the next generation to understand
that.
My friends, this is a young nation, new as yet;
you and I can do something to mould its destiny.
There are millions before us. They will fulfil our
prophecy, the truer the fairer. Our sentiment of
religion, our ideas thereof, if true, shall bless them




184     CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL.
in their deepest, dearest life. They will rejoice if
we shall break the yokes from  off their necks,
and rend asunder the old traditionary veil which
hides from them  their Father's face.  All of your
piety, partial or total, shall go down to gladden the
faces of your children, and to bless their souls for
ever and for ever.




VI.
OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION.-Heb. vi. 1.
THE highest product of a nation is its men; of
you and me is our character, the life which we
make out of our time. Our reputation is what we
come to be thought of, our character what we come
to be. In this character the most important element
is the religious, for it is to be the guide and director
of all the rest, the foundation-element of human excellence.
In general our character is the result of three
factors, namely, of our Nature, both that which is
human, and which we have as men in common
with all mankind, and that which is individual,
and which we have as Sarah or George, in distinction from  all men; next, of the Educational
Forces about us; and, finally, of our own Will,
which we exercise, and so determine the use we
16*




186     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
make of the two other factors; for it is for us to
determine whether we will lie flat before natural instincts and educational forces, or modify their action
upon us.
What is true in general of all culture is true in
special of religious education. Religious character
is the result of these three factors.
I suppose every earnest man, who knows what
religion is, desires to become a religious man, to
do the most of religious duty, have the most of
religious rights, and enjoy the most of religious
welfare; to give the most for God, and receive the
most from  Him. It does not always appear so,
yet really is. At the bottom of our hearts we all
wish for that. We have been misled by blind
guides, who did not always mean to deceive us;
we have often gone astray, led off by our instinctive passion in youth, our voluntary calculation in
manhood, yet never meaning to deceive ourselves.
But there is none of us who does not desire to be
a religious man,  at least, I never met one who
confessed it, or of whom I thought it true. But of
course, they desire it with various degrees of will.
Writers often divide men into two classes, saints
and sinners.  I like not the division.  The best
men are bad enough in their own eyes. I hope
God is better pleased with men than we are with




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.   187
ourselves, there are so many things in us all which
are there against our consent, - evil tenants whom
we cannot get rid of as yet. That smoky chimney
of an ill-temper is a torment to poor Mr. Fiery,
which he has not had courage or strength to remove in fifty winters. To "see ourselves as others
see us," would often minister to pride and conceit;
how many naughty things, actions and emotions
too, I know of myself, which no calumniator ever
casts in my teeth. Yet take the worst men whom
you can find, -men that rob on the highway with
open violence, pirates on the sea, the more dangerous thieves who devour widows' houses and plunder
the unprotected in a manner thoroughly legal, respectable, and " Christian," men that steal from the
poor; -take the tormentors of the Spanish Inquisition, assassins and murderers from New York and
Naples, nay, the family of commissioners who in
Boston are willing to kidnap their fellow-citizens for
ten dollars a head, and bind them and their posterity
for the perennial torture of American slavery;even these men would curl and shudder at the
thought of being without consciousness of God in
the world; of living without any religion, and dying
without any religion. I know some think religion
is rather uncomfortable to live by, but the worst of
men, as the best, thinks it is a good thing to die
with. Men repent of many things on a death-bed;




188     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
when the storm  blows, all the dead bodies are
stirred in the bosom of the sea, and no one is then
sorry for his efforts to become a religious man.
Many a man, who lives in the violation of his personal, domestic, social, national, and general human
duties, doubtless contrives to think he is a religious man, and if in the name of Mammon he robs
the widow  of a pound, he gives a penny to the
orphan in the name of God, and thinks he serves
each without much offending  the other.  Thus,
kidnappers in these times are "exemplary members"
of " Christian churches" where philanthropy gets
roundly rated by the minister from week to week,
and call themselves " miserable offenders " with the
devoutest air. This is not all sham. The men
want to keep on good terms with God, and take
this as the cheapest, as well as the most respectable way.  Louis the Fifteenth  had a private
chapel dedicated to the "Blessed Virgin" in the
midst of his house of debauchery, where he and
his poor victims were said to be "very devout
after the Church fashion."  Slave-traders and kid-,nappers take pains to repel all calumny from their
" religious" reputation, and do not practise their.craft till "divines" assure them  it is patriarchal
and even " Christian."  I mention these things to
show that men who are commonly thought eminently atrocious in their conduct and character, yet




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    189
would not willingly be without religion.  I shall
take it for granted that all men wish to acquire a
religious character.
I take it this is the Idea -of a religious character.
It is, first, to be faithful to ourselves, to rule body
and spirit, each by the natural law thereof; to use,
develop, and enjoy all the faculties, each in its just
proportions, all in harmonious action, developed to
the greatest degree which is possible under our circumstances; to have such an abiding consciousness
of God, that you will have the fourfold form  of
piety, so often dwelt on before, and be inwardly
blameless, harmonious, and holy.
It is, next, to be faithful to your fellow men; to
do for them what is right, from right motives and
for right ends; to love them as yourself; to be useful to them to the extent of your power; to live in
such harmony with them that you shall rejoice in
their joys, and all be mutually blessed with the bliss
of each other.
It is also to be faithful to God; to know of Him,
to have a realizing sense of his Infinite power, wisdom, justice, goodness, and holiness, and so a perfect love of God, a perfect trust in Him, a delight in
the Infinite Being of God; to love him intellectually
in the love of truth, morally as justice, affectionally
as love, and totally as the Infinite God, Father and




190     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
Mother too of all this world; so to love God that
you have no desire to transcend his law or violate
your duty to yourself, your brother, or your God; so
to love Him that there shall be no fear of God, none
for yourself, none for mankind, but a perfect confidence and an absolute love shall take the place of
every fear. In short, it is to serve God by the normal use, development, and enjoyment of every faculty of the spirit, every limb of the body, and every
mode of power which we possess.
I think such is the ideal of a religious character;
that there is no one who would not confess a desire
to be religious in that sense,. for it is to be a perfect
man; no one who would not make some sacrifice
for this end; most men would make a great one,
some would leave father and mother, and lay down
their own lives, to secure it.
What are some of the means to this end, to this
grace and this glory? There are four great public
educational forces, namely, the industrial, political,
literary, and ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Business, the State, the Press, and the
Church.*  These have a general influence in the for* See Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, by Theodore Parker, Boston, 1852, Vol. I. p. 407 et seq., where these educational forces are dwelt on at length.




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    191
mation of the character, and so a special influence in
the formation of the religious character; but as they
cannot be trusted for the general work of forming
the character, no more can they for this special function. They are less reliable in religion than in any
other matter whatever. By these forces the whole
community is a teacher of religion to all persons
born therein; but it can only teach the mode and
degree of religion it has itself learned and possessed,
not that which it has not learned and does not possess. Not only can it not teach a religion higher
than its own, but it hinders you in your attempt to
learn a new and better mode of religion.
For several things we may trust these public educational forces in religion.
They teach you in the general popular fear of
God, and a certain outward reverence which comes
of that; the popular sacraments of our time, - to
give your bodily presence in a meeting-house, perhaps to join a sectarian church, and profess great
reverence for the Bible.
They will teach you the popular part of your
practical duties,    personal, domestic, sodial, ecclesiastical, and political. But of course they can teach.
you only the popular part.
They may be relied on to teach the majority of
men certain great truths, which are the common
property of Christendom, such as the existence of a




192     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
God, the immortality of the soul, the certainty of a
kind of retribution, and the like. Then each sect
has certain truths of its own which it will commonly
teach. Thus the Catholics will learn to reverence
the Roman Church; the Protestants to venerate the
Bible; the Calvinists to believe in the Trinity; and
the Unitarians in the Oneness of God. All the
sects will teach a certain decorum, the observance of
Sunday, -to honor the popular virtues, to shun the
unpopular vices.
The educational forces tend to.produce this effect.
You send your boys to the public schools of Boston,
they learn the disciplines taught there, -to read,
write, and calculate. What is not taught they do
not learn. In Saxony the children learn German;
Dutch, in Holland. In the same way the majority
of men learn the common religion of the community,
and profess it practically in their markets, their
houses, their halls of legislature, their courts, and their
jails. The commercial newspapers, the proceedings
of Congress, the speeches of public men, -these are
a part of the national profession of faith, and show
what is the actual object of worship, and what the
practical creed of the nation.
But for any eminence of religion you must look
elsewhere; for any excellence of the sentiment, any
superiority of the idea, any newness in the form of
religion. These educational forces will teach you




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    193
evanescent principles which seem to suit your present and partial interests, not eternal principles, which
really suit your universal and everlasting interests.
In Jerusalem these forces might educate a Gamaliel,
- never a Jesus.
Charles River flows two miles an hour; chips and
straws on its surface, therefore, if there be no wind,
will float with that velocity. But if a man in a
boat wishes to go ten miles an hour, he must row
eight miles more than the stream will carry him.
So we are all in the dull current of the popular religion, and may trust it to drift us as fast as it flows
itself; we may rise with its flood, and be stranded
and left dry when it ebbs out before some popular
wickedness which blows from off the shore. The
religious educational forces of a commercial town, -
you see in the newspapers what religion they will
teach you, -in the streets what men they would
make.
These educational forces tend to make average
Christians, and their influence is of great value to
the community,- like the discipline of a camp.
But to be eminent religious men, you must depend
on very different helps. Let us look at some of
them.
There are religious men who, by the religious
genius they were born to, and the religious use they
17




194    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
have made thereof, have risen far above the average
of Christians. Such men are the first help; and a
most important one they are. It is a fortunate
thing when such an one stands in a church whither
the public current drives in the people, and to the
strength of his nature adds the strength of position.
But it is not often that such a man stands in a
pulpit. The common ecclesiastical training tends to
produce dull and ordinary men, with little individual
life, little zeal, and only the inspiration of a sect.
However, if a man of religious genius, by some
human accident, gets into a pulpit, he is in great
danger of preaching himself out of it. Still there
are such men, a few of them, stationed along the
line of the human march; cities set on a hill, which
no cloud of obloquy can wholly hide from  sight.
Nay, they are great beacons on the shore of the
world, - light-houses on the headlands of the coast,
sending their guidance far out to sea, to warn the
mariner of his whereabouts, and welcome him to
port and peace. Street-lamps there must be for the
thoroughfares of the town, shop-lights also for the
grocer and the apothecary; nay, hand-lights which
are made to be carried from room to room and set
down anywhere, and numerous they will ever be,
each having its own function. This arrangement
takes place in the ecclesiastical as well as in municipal affairs, for each sect has its street-lamps and its




CULTURE OF THE.RELIGIOUS POWERS.    195
shop-lights to guide men to its particular huckstery
of salvation, and little hand-lights to take into corners where the salesmen and the showmen are all
ready with their wares. But the great Faros of
Genoa, and Eddystone light-houses of religion must
always be few and far between; the world is not
yet rich enough in spirit to afford many of this sort.
Yet even in these men you seldom find the wholeness of religion.  One has the sentiments thereof;
he will kindle your religious feelings, your reverence,
your devotion, your trust, and your love of God.
Another has only its ideas; new thoughts about
religion, new truths, which he presents to the minds
of men. Analytic, he destroys the ancient errors of
theological systems; thrashes the creeds of the
churches with the stout flail of philosophy, and sifts
them as wheat, winnowing with a rough wind, great
clouds of chaff blow off before his mighty vans.
Synthetic, he takes the old truth which stood the
critical thrashing and is now winnowed clean; he
joins therewith new truth shot down from God, and
welcomed into loving arms; and out of his large
storehouse this scribe, well instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, brings forth things new and old, to
serve as bread for the living, and seed-corn to generations not born as yet.
A third, with no eminence of feelings commonly
called religious, - none of theological ideas, - will




196    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
have yet an eminence of justice, and teach personal
and social morality as no other man. He may turn
to a single speciality of morals, and demand temperance, chastity, the reform of penal law, the reconstruction of society, the elevation of woman, and
the education of the whole mass of men; or he may
turn to general philanthropy, the universality of
moral excellence, -it all comes from the same root,
and with grateful welcome should be received.
Each of these teachers will do real service to your
souls, - quickening the feelings, imparting ideas,
and organizing the results of religion in moral acts.
I know a great outcry has been made in all the
churches against moral reformers, against men who
would apply pure religion to common life, in the
special or the universal form. You all know what
clamor is always raised against a man who would
abolish a vice from  human society, or establish a
new virtue. Every wolf is interested in the wilderness, and hates the axe and the plough of the settler,
and would devour his child if he dared: So every
nuisance in society has its supporters, whose property
is invested therein. Paul found it so at Ephesus,
Telemachus at Rome, and Garrison in America. I
doubt not the men of Ephesus thought religion
good in all matters except the making of silver
shrines for Diana; "there it makes men mad."
Men cry out against the advance of morality:




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    197
"Preach us religion; preach us Christianity, Christ
and him crucified, and not this infidel matter of
ending particular sins, and abounding in special
virtues. Preach us the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
original sin''which brought death into the world
and all our woe;' preach the beauty of holiness, and
the like of that, and let alone the actual sins of
society, of the shop and the church and the State; —
be silent about drunkenness and lust, about war,
slavery, and the thousand forms of avarice which
we rejoice in. Is it not enough, O Preacher, that
we give you of our purse and our corporeal presence,
that we weekly confess ourselves' miserable offenders' with'no health in us,' and fast, perhaps, twice
in our lives, but you must convict us of being idolaters also; yea, drunkards, gluttons, impure in youth
and avaricious in manhood, - once a Voluptuary,
and now a Hunker! Go to now, and preach us the
blessedness of the righteous, Christ and him crucified!"  When money speaks, the Church obeys,
and the pulpit preaches for doctrine the commandments of the pews.
But it is these very moral reformers, who, in our
time, have done more than all others to promote the
feeling of piety which the churches profess so much
to covet. The new ground of religion which the
churches occupy is always won for them by men
whom the churches hated. In the last thirty years
17*




198    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
these " pestilent moral reformers" of New England,
I think, have done more to promote love of God,
and faith in Him, than all the other preachers of all
the churches. Justice is a part of piety; and such
is the instinctive love of wholeness in man, that all
attempts to promote justice amongst men lead ultimately to the love of God as God.
In every community you will find a man who
thus represents some portion of religion, - often,
perhaps, thinking that part is the whole, because it
is all that he knows; here and there we find such an
one in the pulpit. But now and then there comes a
man who unites these three functions of piety into
one great glory of religion; is eminent in feelings,
ideas, and actions not the less. Each of those partial men may help us much, teaching his doctrine,
kindling our feelings, giving example of his deed,
and laying out religious work for us, spreading his
pattern before society. Each of these may help us
to a partial improvement. But when a man comes
who unites them all, he will give us a new start, an
inspiration which no other man can give; not partial, but total.
There are always some such men in the world;
the seed of the prophets never dies out. It comes
up in Israel and in Attica; here a prophet teaching
truth  as divine inspiration, there a philosopher
with his human discovery. So the Herb of Grace




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    199
springs up in  corners where  once old  houses
stood, or wherever the winds have borne the seed;
and, cropped by the oxen, and trodden with their
feet, it grows ever fresh and ever new.  When
Scribes and Pharisees become idolaters at Jerusalem, and the sheep without a shepherd
"Lookup and are not fed,
But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread,"
the spirit of God comes newly down on some carpenter's son at Nazareth, whose lightning terrifies
the non-conducting Scribe; the new encounters the
perishable old, and all heaven rings with the thunder
of the collision.  Now  and then such a person
comes to stand betwixt the living and the dead.
"Bury that," quoth he, "it is hopelessly dead, past
all resurrection. This must be healed, tended, and
made whole."  He is a physician to churches sick of
sin, as well as with it; burying the dead, he heals
also the sick, and quickens the sound into new and
healthy life. But the owners of swine that perish
must needs cry out at the loss.
Yet such a man is not understood in his own
generation. A man with a single eminent faculty is
soon seen through and comprehended. This man is
good for nothing but practice; that, only for thought.
One is a sentimentalist; another, a traveller. But




200     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
when a genius comes eminent in many and most
heterogeneous faculties, men do not see through nor
comprehend him in a short time. If he has in himself all the excellence of all the men in the metropolis, - why, it will take many a great city to comprehend him. The young maiden in the story, for the
first time hearing her clerical lover preach, wondered
that those lips could pray as sweetly as they kissed,
but could not comprehend the twofold sacrament,
the mystery of this double function of a single
mouth. Anybody can see that corn grows in this
field, and kale in that; the roughest clown knows
this, but it takes a great many wise men to describe
the botany of a whole continent.  So is it ever.
Here is a religious man, - writing on purely internal emotions of piety, of love of God, of faith in
Him, of rest for the soul, the foretaste of heaven.
He penetrates the deeps of religious joy, its peace
enters his soul, his morning prayer is a psalm deeper
than David's, with a beauty more various than the
poetic wreath which the shepherd-king gathered
from  the hill-sides of Jordan or the gardens of
Mount Zion. Straightway men say: " This man is
a sentimentalist; he is a mystic, all contemplation,
all feeling, - poetical, dreamy, - his light is moonshine."  But erelong our sentimentalist writes of.
philosophy, and his keen eye sees mines of wisdom
not quarried heretofore, and he brings a power of




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    201
unsunned gold to light. Other men say: " 0, this
man is nothing but a philosopher, a mere thinker, a
mighty head, but with no more heart than Chimborazo or Thomas Hobbes."  Yet presently some
great sin breaks out, and rolls its desolating flood
over the land, uprooting field and town, and our
philosopher goes out to resist the ruin. He denounces the evil, attacks the institution which thus
deceives men. Straightway men call out: " Iconoclast! Boanerges! John Knox! destroyer!" and the
like. Alas me! men do not know that the same
sun gathers the dews which water the forget-me-not,
drooping at noonday, and drives through the sky
the irresistible storm that shatters the forest in its
thunderous march, and piles the ruins of a mountain in an Alpine avalanche. The same soul which
thundered its forked lightning on Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, poured out poetic parables from
his golden urn, spreading forth the sunshine of the
beatitudes upon friend and foe, and, half in heaven,
breathed language wholly thence, -" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
It is a great thing once in our days to meet with a
man of religious genius largely developed into lovely
life. He stirs the feelings infinite within us, and
we go off quite other than we came. He has not
put his soul into our bosom; he has done better,has waked our soul in our own bosom. Men may




202     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
go leagues long to listen to such a man, and come
back well paid. He gives us seeds of future life
for our little garden. So the husbandman journeys
far to get a new  root or a new seed,; to fill his
ground with beauty or his home with bread., After
we have listened to the life of such a man, the
world does not seem  so low, nor man, so mean;
heaven looks nearer, yet higher too; humanity is
more rich; if wrong appear yet more shameful, the
wrongdoer is not so hopeless., After that I can,
endure trouble; my constant cross is not so heavy;
the unwonted is less difficult to bear. Tears are not
so scalding to an eye. which has looked through
them into the serene face of a great-souled man.
Men seem friendlier, and God is exceeding dear.
The magistrates of Jerusalem marvelled at the conduct of Peter and John, heedful of the higher law of
God, spite of bonds and imprisonment and politicians; but they " took knowledge of tjhem, that they
had been with Jesus," and the marvel had its explanation. What a dull, stupid thing is a candle!
Touch it with fire, and then look!, We are all of us
capable of being lit when some Prometheus comes
down with the spark of God in his right hand. The
word of Jesus touched the dull fishermen of Galilee,
and they flamed into martyrs and apostles.
It is a great thing to meet such a man once in
your lifetime, to be cheered and comforted in your




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    203
sad wayfaring, and filled with new vigor and new
faith in the Father of all. After that we thank God,
and take courage and fare on our happier way. So
a company of pilgrims journeying in the wilderness,
dry, foot-sore, and hot, the water all spent in their
goat-skins, their camels weary and sick, come to a
grove of twelve palm-trees, and an unexpected
spring of pure water wells up in the desert.
Strightway. their weariness is all forgot, their limping camels have become whole once more. Staying
their thirst, they fill their bottles also with the cool
refreshment, rest in the shadow from the noonday's
heat, and then with freshened life, the soreness gone
from every bone, pursue their noiseless and their
happy march. Even so, says the Old Testament
story, God sent his angel down in the wilderness to
feed Elias with the bread of heaven, and in the
strength thereof the prophet went-his forty days,
nor hungered not. I suppose some of us have had
this experience, and in our time of bewilderment,
of scorching desolation, and of sorrow, have come
upon our well of water and twelve palm-trees in
the sand, and so have marched all joyful through
the wilderness. Elias left all the angels of God for
you and me, - the friendlier for his acquaintance.
There is a continual need of men of this stamp,
We live in the midst of religious machinery.
Many mechanics at piety, often only apprentices




204     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
and slow to learn, are turning the various ecclesiastical mills, and the creak of the motion is thought
"the voice of God."  You put into the hopper a
crowd of persons, young and old, and soon they
are ground out into the common run of Christians, sacked up, and stored away for safe-keeping
in the appropriate bins of the great ecclesiastical
establishment, and labelled with their party names.
You look about in what is dryly called " the religious world."  What a mass of machinery is there,
of dead timber, not green trees! what a jar and
discord of iron clattering upon iron! Action is of
machinery, not of life, and it is green new life that
you want. So men grow  dull in their churches.
What a weariness is an ordinary meeting on one
of the fifty-two ordinary Sundays of the year!
What a dreary thing is an ordinary sermon of an
ordinary minister!  He does not wish to preach
it; the audience does not wish to hear it. So
he makes a feint of preaching, they a feint of hearing him preach. But he preaches not; they hear
not. He is dull as the cushion he beats, they as the
cushions they cover. A body of men met in a
church for nothing, and about nothing, and to hear
nobody, is to me a ghastly spectacle. Did you ever
see cattle in a cold day in the country crowd together in an enclosure, the ground frozen under their
feet, and no hay spread upon it,- huddling together




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    205
for warmth, hungry, but inactive, because penned
up, and waiting with the heavy, slumberous patience
of oxen till some man should come and shake down
to them a truss of clean bright hay, still redolent of
clover and honeysuckle?  That is a cheerful sight;
and when the farmer comes and hews their winter
food out of the stack, what life is in these slumberous oxen! their venerable eyes are full of light,
because they see their food. Ah me! how many a
herd of men is stall-hungered in the churches, not
getting even the hay of religion, only a little chaff
swept off from old thrashing-floors whence the corn
which great men beat out of its husk was long since
gathered up to feed and bless mankind! Churches
are built of stone. I have often thought pulpits
should be cushioned with husks.
Of all melancholy social sights that one sees, few
are so sad as a body of men got together to convert
mankind to sectarianism by ecclesiastical machinery,
-men dead as timber, cut down, dead and dry!
Out of wire, muslin, thread, starch, gum, and sundry
chemicals, French milliners make by dozens what
they call roses, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots,
and the like. Scentless and seedless abortions are
they, and no more. What a difference between the
flower the lover gathers by the brookside for his
maiden's breast, and the thing which the milliner
makes with her scissors; between the forget-me-not
18




206    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
of the meadow and the forget-me-not of the shop!
Such an odds is there betwixt religious men and
Christians manufactured in a mill.
In the factories of England you find men busy all
their life in making each the twenty-sixth part of a
watch. They can do nothing else, and become
almost as much machines as the grindstone which
sharpens their drill, or the rammage which carries
their file. Much of our ecclesiastical machinery
tends to make men into mere fixtures in a mill. So
there must be a continual accession of new religious
life from without into the churches to keep Christians living. Men of religious genius it is who bring
it in. Without them " religion " in cities would become mere traditional theology, and "life in God"
would be sitting in a meeting-house, and the baptism in water from an aqueduct taken for the communion of the Holy Ghost. Blessed be God that
there are such men not smothered in the surplice of
the priest, but still alive in God, and God alive in
them!
In old towns all the water that fills the wells is
dead water,-dead and dirty too; the rinsings of
the streets, the soakings of stables, the slop of markets, the wash and offscouring of the town; even the
filterings of the graveyard settle therein, and the
child is fed with its grandsire's bones. Men would
perish if left alone, dying of their drink. So, far off




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    207
in the hills, above the level of the town, they seek
some mountain lake, and furnish a pathway that its
crystal beauty may come to town. There the living
water leaps up in public fountains, it washes the
streets, it satisfies the blameless cattle, it runs into
every house to cleanse and purify and bless, and men
are glad as the Hebrews when Moses smote the
fabled rock. So comes religious genius unto men:
some mountain of a man stands up tall, and all winter long takes the snows of heaven on his shoulders,
all summer through receives the cold rain into his
bosom; both become springs of living water at his
feet. Then the proprietors of fetid wells and subterranean tanks, which they call " Bethesda," though
often troubled by other than angels, and whence they
retail their " salvation " a pennyworth at a time, 
they cry out with sneer and scoff and scorn against
our new-born saint. "Shall Christ come out of Galilee? " quoth they. "Art thou greater than our
father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Who
are you?"  Thus, the man of forms has ever his
calumny against the man of God.
Religious teachers there will ever be, -a few organizers, many an administrator of organizations;
but inventors in religion are always few. These are
the greatest external helps to the manhood of religion. All great teaching is the teacher's inspiration;




208     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
this is truer in religion than in aught besides, for here
all is life, and nothing a trick of mechanism. Let
us take all the good that we can gain from the rare
men of religious genius, but never submit and make
even them our lords; teachers ever, let them never
be masters.
Then there are religious books, such as waken the
soul by their direct action,-stirring us to piety,
stirring us to morality,-books in which men of
great religious growth have garnered up the experience of their life. Some of them are total, - for all
religion; some partial, -for the several specialities
thereof. These books are sacks of corn carried from
land to land, to be sown, and bear manifold their
golden fruit. There are not many such in the world.
There are few masterpieces of poetry in all ihe
earth; a boy's school-bag would hold them all, ifom
Greece and Rome, Italy, Germany, England.  The
masterpieces of piety in literature are the rarest of
all. In a mineralogist's cabinet what bushels there
are of quartz, mica, hornblende, slate, and coal; and
common minerals by heaps; reptiles and fishes done
in stone; only here and there an emerald; and diamonds are exceeding rare. So is it with gems of
holy thought. Some psalms are there from  the
Bible, though seldom a whole one that is true to the
soul of man, -now and then an oracle from a He



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    209
brew prophet, full of faith in God, a warrior of piety,
- which keep their place in the cabinet of religion,
though two or three thousand years have passed by
since their authors ceased to be mortal. But the
most quickening of all religious literature is still
found in the first three Gospels of the New Testament, -in those dear beatitudes, in occasional flowers of religion,-parable and speech. The beatitudes will outlast the pyramids. Yet the New Testament and its choicest texts must be read with the
caution of a free-born man. Even in the words of
Jesus of Nazareth much is merely Hebrew, - marked with the limitations of the nation and the man.
Other religious books there are precious to the
heart of man. Some of the works of Augustine, of
Thomas a Kempis, of PFenelon, of Jeremy Taylor, of
John Bunyan, of William Law, have proved exceeding dear to pious men throughout the Christian
world.  In a much narrower circle of readers,
Buckminster, Channing, and  Ware have comforted the souls of men.  Herbert and'Watts
have here and there a "gem of purest ray serene,"
and now  and then a flower blooms into beauty
in the desert air of liturgies, breviaries, and collections of hymns. The religious influence of Wordsworth's poetry has been truly great.  With no
large poetic genius, often hemmed in by the narrowness of his traditionary creed and the puerile
18*




210     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
littleness of men about him, he had yet an exceeding love of God, which ran over into love of men,
and beautified his every day; and many a poor
girl, many a sad boy, has been cheered and lifted
up in soul and sense by the brave piety in his
sonnets and in his lyric sweeps of lofty song. A
writer of our own time, with large genius and unfaltering piety, adorning a little village of New
England with his fragrant life, has sent a great
religious influence to many a house in field and
town, and youths and maids rejoice in his electric
touch. I will leave it to posterity to name his
name,-the most original, as well as religious, of
American writers.
But the great vice of what is called "religious
literature " is this.  It is the work of narrowminded men, sectarians, and often bigots, who
cannot see beyond their own little partisan chapel;
men who know little of any thing, less of man, and
least of all of real religion.  What criticism  do
such men make on noble men?  The criticism
aof an oyster on a thrush; nay, sometimes, of a
toad "ugly and venomous," with  no "jewel in
its head," upon a nightingale.  Literature of that
character is a curse. In the name of God it rrisleads common men from  religion, and it makes
powerful men hate religion itself; at least hate
its name. It bows weak men down till they trem



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    211
ble and fear all their mortal life. I lack words to
express my detestation of this trash,-concocted
of sectarian cant and superstitious fear. I tremble when I think of the darkness it spreads over
human life, of the disease which it inoculates mankind withal, and the craven dread it writes out upon
the face of its worshippers. Look at the history of
the Athanasian Creed and the Westminster Catechism. They have done more, it seems to me, to
retard the religious development of Christendom,
than all the ribald works of confessed infidels, from
Lucian, the king of scoffers, down to our own days.
The American Tract Society, with the best intentions in the world, it seems to me is doing more
damage to the nation than all the sellers of intoxicating drink and all the prostitutes in the land!
Some books on religious matters are the work
of able men, men well disciplined, but yet contaminated with false views of God, of man, and of
the relation between the two; with false views of
life, of death, and of the next, eternal world. Such
men were Baxter and Edwards and many more,
-  Protestant and  Catholic, Christian, Hebrew,
Buddhist, and Mahometan. All these books should
be read with caution and distrust.  Still a wise
man, with a religious spirit, in the religious literature of the world, from  Confucius to Emerson,
may find much to help his growth.




212    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
After the attainment of manlier years in piety,
other works, not intentionally religious, will help a
man greatly.  Books of science, which show the
thought of God writ in the world of matter; books
of history, which reveal the same mind in the development of the human race, slow, but as constant
and as normal as the growth of a cedar or the disclosing of an egg; Newton and Laplace, Descartes
and Kant, indirectly, through their science, stir devout souls to deeper devotion. A thoughtful man
dissolves the matter of the universe, leaving only
its forces; dissolves away the phenomena of human
history, leaving only immortal spirit; he studies the
law, the mode of action, of these forces, and this
spirit, which make up the material and the human
world; and I see not how he can fail to be filled
with reverence, with trust, with boundless love of
the Infinite God who devised these laws of matter and of mind, and thereby bears up this marvelIous universe of things and men. Science also
has its New  Testament.  The beatitudes of philosophy are profoundly touching; in the exact
laws of matter and of mind the great Author of the
world continually says," Come unto me, all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest."
The study of Nature is another great help to the




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    213
cultivation of religion. Familiarity with the grass
and the trees teaches us deeper lessons of love and
trust than we can glean from the writings of Fenelon and Augustine.  What lessons did Socrates,
Jesus, and Luther learn from the great Bible of God,
ever open before mankind! It is only indirectly
that He speaks in the sights of a city, -the brick
garden with dioecious fops for flowers. But in the
country all is full of God, and the eternal flowers of
heaven seem to shed sweet influence on the perishable blossoms of the earth. Nature is full of religious
lessons to a thoughtful man. The great sermon of
Jesus was preached on a mountain, which preached
to him as he to the people, and his.figures of speech
were first natural figures of fact. But the religious
use to be made of natural objects would require a
sermon of itself.
The great reliance for religious growth must not
be on any thing external; not on the great and living souls whom  God sends, rarely, to the earth, to
water the dry ground with their eloquence, and
warm it with their human love; nor must it be on
the choicest gems of religious thought, wherein
saints and sages have garnered up their life and left
it for us. We cannot rely on the beauty or the
power of outward Nature to charm our wandering
soul to obedience and trust in God. These things




214     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
may jostle us by the elbow when we read, warn us
of wandering, or of sloth, and open the gate, but we
must rely on ourselves for entering in. By the aid
of others and our own action we must form the ideal
of a religious man, of what he ought to be and do,
under our peculiar circumstances.  To form  this
personal ideal, and fit ourselves thereto, requires an
act of great earnestness on our part. It is not a
thing to be done in an idle hour. It demands the
greatest activity of the mightiest mode of mind.
But what a difference there is between men in
earnestness of character! Do you understand the
"religion" of a frivolous man?  With him it is all
a trifle; the fashion of his religion is of less concern
than the fashion of his hat or of the latchet of his
shoes. He asks not for truth, for justice, for love, -
asks not for God, cares not. The great sacrament
of religious life is to him less valuable than a flask
of Rhenish wine broke on a jester's head. The specific levity of these men appears in their relation to
religion. The fool hath said in his heart, " There is
no God."  Quoth the fop in his waistcoat, " What
if there be none? What is that to me?  Let us
dance and be silly! "  Did you ever see a frivolous
man and maid in love,-so they called it?  I
have: it was like putting on a new garment of uncertain fit; and the giving and the taking of what
was called a " heart" was like buying a quantity of




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    215
poison weed to turn to empty smoke. They were
"fearfully and wonderfully made for each other."
So have I seen a silly man give a bad coin to a beggar in the streets.
I know there are those whose practical religion is
only decency. They have no experience of religion,
but the hiring of a seat in a church where pew and
pulpit both invite to sleep, - whose only sacrifice is
their pew-tax; their single sacrament but bodily
presence in a church. There are meeting-houses
full of such men, which ecclesiastical upholsterers
have furnished with pulpit, and pew, and priest,
objects of pity to men with human hearts!
When an earnest young man offers a woman his
heart and his life and his love, asking her for her
heart and her life and her love, it is no easy hour to
man or maid.  The thought of it takes the rose
out of the young cheek, gives a new lustre to the
eye which has a deeper and mysterious look, and a
terrible throbbing to the heart. For so much depends upon a word that forms or else misshapes so
much in life, and soul and sense are clamoring for
their right. The past comes up to help create the
future, and all creation is new before the lover's eye,
and all
"The floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."




216     CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
So is it in some great hour when an earnest man
holds communion with himself, seeking to give and
take with God, and asks: " What ought I in my
life to be and do?"  Depend upon it, only to the
vulgarest of men is it a common hour. I will not
say that every earnest man has his one enamored
hour of betrothing himself to religion. Some have
this sudden experience, and give themselves to piety
as they espouse a bride found when not looked for,
and welcomed with a great swelling of the heart
and  prophetic  bloomings of the yearning soul.
Others go hand in hand therewith as brother and
sister, through all their early days in amiable amity
which sin has never broke and seldom jarred; and
so the wedlock of religion is as the acquaintance
which began in babyhood, was friendship next at
home and school, and slowly under tranquil skies
grew up and blossomed out at last to love. This is
the common way, - an ascent without a sudden
leap. If bred as religious children, you grow up religious men. But under the easiest of discipline, I
think, every earnest man has his time of trial and of
questioning, when he asks himself, " Shall I serve
the soul by a life of piety; or shall I only serve the
flesh, listing in the popular armada of worldliness
to do battle in that leprous host? That, I say, is a
time of trial.




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    217
Let us suppose some earnest man forms the true
ideal of religion,-of his duty to himself, his brother,
and his God. He is next to observe and attend to
himself, making his prayer a practice, and his ideal
dream an actual day of life. Here he is to watch
and scan himself, to see what causes help, and what
hinder him in his religious growth. We have different dispositions, all of us; what tempts one, is nothing to another man; every heart knows only its own
bitterness, not also that of another. Let me know
my weak points and my strong ones; forewarned, I
shall be then forearmed. This man in the period of
passion is led off by the lusts of the body; that in
the period of calculation is brought into yet greater
peril by his ambition, - his love of riches, place, and
the respect of men. The Devil rings a dollarin one
man's ear; he dreams of money every day. Some
sensual lust catches another, as flies with poisoned
sweet. To speak mythologically, the Devil has different baits to lure his diverse prey. Love of applause strips this man of his conscience, his affection, and his self-respect, of his regard for God, and
drives him naked through a dirty world. Let a man
know in what guise the tempter comes, and when,
and he will not suffer his honor to be broken through.
For this purpose, in the earlier period of life, or later
when placed in positions of new peril, it is well to
ask at the close of every day, " What have I done
19




218    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
that is wrong, -what have I said, or thought, or
felt? What that is right?"  It is well thus to orient yourself before your Idea and your God, and see
if there be any evil thing in you. This is needful
until the man has gained complete possession of
every limb of his body and of each faculty of his
spirit, and can use them each after its own law in
his particular position. Then he will do right with
as little trouble as he walks about his daily work.
His life will sanctify itself.
Do you know how artists make their great pictures.? First, they form the idea. It is a work of
sweat and watching.  The man assembles all the
shapes of beauty and of power which he has ever
seen, or thought, or fancied, or felt.  They flash
along before his quickened eye, wildered and wandering now. New forms of beauty spring into life
at the bidding of his imagination, - so flowers at
touch of spring. Erelong he has his idea, composite, gathered from many a form of partial beauty,
and yet one; a new creation never seen before.
Thus in his seething mind Phidias smelts the several
beauty of five hundred Spartan maids into his one
Pallas-Athena, born of his head this time, a grand
eclecticism  of loveliness.  So Michael devised his
awful form of God creating in the Vatican; and
Raphael his dear Cecilia, sweetest of pictured saints,
- so fair, she drew the angels down to see her sing,




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    219
and ears were turned to eyes. Now the artist has
formed his idea. But that is not all. Next, he must
make the idea that is in his mind a picture in the
eyes of men; his personal fiction must become a
popular fact. So he toils over this new work for
many a weary day, and week, and month, and year,
with penitential brush oft painting out what once
amiss he painted in, - for even art has its error, the
painter's sin, and so its remorse; the artist is made
wiser by his own defeat. At last his work stands
there complete,- the holy queen of art. Genius is
the father, of a heavenly line; but the mortal mother,
that is Industry.
Now as an artist, like Phidias, Angelo, or Raphael, must hold a great act of imagination to form
his idea, and then industriously toil, often wiping
out in remorse what he drew in passion or in ignorance; so the man who would be religious must
hold his creative act of prayer, to set the great example to himself, and then industriously toil to
make it daily life, shaping his actual, not from the
chance of circumstance, but from the ideal purpose
of his soul.
Th.ere is no great growth in manly piety without
fire to conceive, and then painstaking to reproduce
the idea, —without the act of prayer, the act of
industry. The act of prayer, - that is the one great
vital means of religious growth; the resolute desire




220    CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
and the unconquerable will to be the image of a
perfect man; the comparison of your actual day
with your ideal dream; the rising forth, borne up
on mighty pens, to fly towards the far heaven of
religious joy.  Fast as you learn a truth, moral,
affectional, or religious, apply the special truth to
daily life, and you increase your piety. So the best
school for religion is the daily work of common life,
with its daily discipline of personal, domestic, and
social duties, - the daily work in field or shop, market or house, "the charities that soothe and heal
and bless."
Nothing great is ever done without industry.
Sloth sinks the idle boy to stupid ignorance, and
vain to him are schools, and books, and all the appliances of the instructor's art. It is industry in
religion which makes the man a saint. What zeal
is there for money, -what diligence in learning to
be a lawyer, a fiddler, or a smith! The same industry to be also religious men,- what noble images
of God it would make us! ay, what blessed men.
Even in the special qualities of fiddler, lawyer,
smith, we should be more; for general manhood is
the stuff we make into tradesmen of each special
craft, and the gold which was fine in the ingot is
fine also in the medal and the coin.
You have seen a skilful gardener about his work.
He saves the slips of his pear-trees, prunings from




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.    221
his currant-bush; he watches for the sunny hours in
spring to air his, passion-flower and orange-tree.
How nicely he shields his dahlias from the wind,
his melons from the frost! Patiently he hoards cuttings from a rose-bush, and the stone of a peach;
choice fruit in another's orchard next year is grafted
on his crabbed stock, which in three years rejoices
in alien flowers and apples not its own. Are we
not gardeners, all of us, to fill our time with greener
life, with fragrant beauty, and rich, timely fruit?
There are bright, cheery morning hours good for
putting in the seed; moments of sunnier delight,
when some success not looked for, the finding of a
friend, husband, or wife, the advent of a child, mellows the hours. Then nurse the tender plant of
piety; one day its bloom will adorn your gloomy
hour, and be a brightness in many a winter day
which now you reck not of.
There are days of sadness when it rains sorrow
on you, -when you mourn the loss of friends, their
sad defeat in mortal life, or worse still, the failure
of yourself, your wanderings from the way of life,
or prostrate fall therein. Use, then, O man, these
hours for penitence, if need be, and vigorous resolve.  Water the choicest, tender plants;  one
day the little seedling you have' planted with your
tears shall be a broad tree, and under its arms you
19*




222    CULTURE OF TIIE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
will screen your head from the windy storm  and
the tempest;-yes, find for your bones a quiet
grave at last.
Do you commit a sin, an intentional violation
of the law of God, you may make even that help
you in your religious growth. He who never hungered knows not the worth of bread; who never
suffered, nor sorrowed, nor went desolate and alone,
knows not the full value of human sympathy and
human love.  I have sometimes thought that a
man who had never sinned nor broke the integrity
of his consciousness, nor, by wandering, disturbed
the continuity of his march towards perfection,that he could not know the power of religion to
fortify the soul. But there are no such men. We
learn to walk by stumbling at the first; and spiritual experience is also bought by errors of the soul.
Penitence is but the cry of the child hurt in his
fall. Shame on us that we affect the pain so oft,
and only learn to whine an unnatural contrition!
Sure I am that the grief of a soul, self-wounded, the
sting of self-reproach, the torment of remorse for
errors of passion, for sins of calculation, may
quicken any man in his course to manhood, till he
runs and is not weary. The mariner learns wisdom
from each miscarriage of his ship, and fronts the
seas anew to triumph over wind and wave.




CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.   223
Some of you are young men and maidens. You
look forward to be husbands and wives, to be fathers and mothers, some day. Some of you seek to
be rich, some honored. Is it not well to seek to
have for yourself a noble, manly character, to be religious men and women, with a liberal development
of mind and conscience, heart and soul? You will
meet with losses, trials, disappointments, in your
business, in your friends and families, and in yourselves; many a joy will also smile on you. You
may use the sunny sky and its falling weather alike
to help your religious growth. Your time, young
men, what life and manhood you may make of that.
Some of you are old men, your heads white with
manifold experience, and life is writ in storied hieroglyphics on cheek and brow. Venerable faces! I
hope I learn from you. I hardly dare essay to teach
men before whom time has unrolled his lengthened
scroll, men far before me in experience of life. But
let me ask you, if, while you have been doing your
work, - have been gathering riches, and tasting the
joys of time, -been son, husband, father, friend,you have also greatened, deepened, heightened your
manly character, and gained the greatest riches,the wealth of a religious soul, incorruptible and undefiled, the joys that cannot fade away?
For old or young, there is no real and lasting
human blessedness without this. It is the sole suf



224      CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS.
ficient and assured defence against the sorrows of
the world, the disappointments and the griefs of life,
the pains of unrequited  righteousness and  hopes
that went astray. It is a never-failing fountain of
delight.
"There are briers besetting every path,
That call for patient care;
There is a cross in every lot,
And an earnest need for prayer;
But the lowly heart that trusts in Thee
Is happy everywhere."




VII.
OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF
STRENGTH.
THE LORD IS THE STRENGTH OF MY LIFE. —PS. XXVii. 1.
THERE are original differences of spiritual strength.
I mean of intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious power; these depend on what may be called
the natural spiritual constitution of the individual.
One man is born with a strong spiritual constitution, another with a weak one! So one will be
great, and the other little. It is no shame in this
case, no merit in that. Surely it is no more merit
to be born to genius than to gold, to mental more
than to material strength; no more merit to be born
to moral, affectional, and religious strength than to
mere intellectual genius. But it is a great convenience to be born to this large estate of spiritual
wealth, a very great advantage to possess the high



226          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
est form of human power, - eminence of intellect,
of conscience, of the affections, of the soul.
There is a primitive intellectual difference amongst
men which is ineffaceable from  the man's mortal
being, as the primary qualities are ineffaceable from
the atoms of matter. It will appear in all the life of
the man. Even great wickedness will not wholly
destroy this primeval loftiness of mind. Few men
were ever better born in respect to intellect than
Francis Bacon and Thomas Wentworth, — " the
great Lord Verulam " and " the great Earl of Strafford:" few men ever gave larger proof of superior
intellect, even in its highest forms of development,
of general force and manly vigor of mind; few ever
used great natural ability, great personal attainments, and great political place, for purposes so selfish, mean, and base.  Few  ever fell more completely. Yet, spite of that misdirection and abuse,
the marks of greatness and strength appear in them
both to the very last. Bacon was still " the wisest,
brightest," if also "the meanest of mankind."  I
know a great man may ruin himself; stumbling is
as easy for a mammoth as a mouse, and much more
conspicuous; but even in his fall his greatness will
be visible. The ruin of a colossus is gigantic, - its
fragments are on a grand scale. You read the size
of the ship in the timbers of the wreck, fastened
with mighty bolts.  The Tuscan bard is true to na



SOURCE OF STRENGTH.            227
ture as to poetry in painting his odious potentates
magnificently mighty even in hell.  Satan fallen
seems still " not less than archangel ruined"!
I do not deny this natural and ineffaceable difference between men in reference to their strength of
character, their quantity of being. I am not going
to say that conscious piety will make a great man
out of a little one; that it would give to George the
Third the strength of Charlemagne or Napoleon.
No training will make the shrub-oak a tree-oak; no
agriculture swell a cape to a continent. But I do
mean to say, that religion, conscious piety, will
increase the actual strength of the great and of the
little; that through want of religious culture the
possibility of strength is diminished in both the little
and the great.
Not only does religion greaten the quantity of
power, it betters its quality at the same time. So
it both enlarges a man's general power for himself
or his brother, and enhances the mode of that power,
thus giving him a greater power of usefulness and a
greater power of welfare, more force to delight, more
force to enjoy. This is true of religion taken in its
wide sense,  a life in harmony with myself, in concord with my brother, in unity with my God; true
of religion in its highest form, the conscious worship
of the Infinite God by the normal use of every




228         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
faculty of the spirit, every limb of the body, and
every portion of material or social power.
Without this conscious religious development, it
seems to me that no strength or greatness is admirably human; and with it, no smallness of opportunity, no littleness of gift, is contemptible or low. I
reverence great powers, given or got; but I reverence much more the faithful use of powers either
large or little.
Strength  of character appears in two general
modes of power, accordingly as it is tried by one
or other of two tests. It is power to do, or power
to bear. One is active, and the other passive, but
both are only diverse modes of the same thing.
The hard anvil can bear the blows of the hard hammer which smites it, because there is the same solidity in the nether anvil which bears up, as in the
upper hammer which bears down. It takes as much
solidity to bear the blow as to give it; only one is
solidity active, the other merely passive.
Religion increases the general strength and volume of character. The reason is plain: Religion is
keeping the natural law of human nature in its threefold mode of action, - in relation to myself, to my
brother, and to my God; the coordination of my
will with the will of God, with the ideal of my




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.            229
nature. So it is action according to my nature, not
against it; it is the agreement of my finite will with
the Infinite Will which controls the universe and
provides for each portion thereof.
Now, to use a thing against its nature, to abuse it,
is ultimately to fail of the natural end thereof, and
waste the natural means provided for the attainment of the end.  A boat is useful to journey with
by sea, a chaise to journey with by land; use each
for its purpose, you enjoy the means and achieve
the end. But put off to sea in your chaise, or put
on to land in your boat, you miss the end, —you
lose also the means. This is true of the natural, as
of the artificial instruments of man; of his limbs,
as of his land-carriages or sea-carriages. Hands are
to work with, feet to walk on; the feet would make
a poor figure in working, the hands an ill figure in
essaying to walk.  The same rule holds good in
respect to spiritual faculties as in bodily organs.
Passion is not designed to rule conscience, but to
serve; conscience not to serve passion, but to rule.
If passion rule and conscience serve, the end is not
reached, you are in a state of general discord with
yourself, your brother, and your God; the means
also fail and perish; conscience becomes weak, the
passion itself dies from the plethora of its indulgence; the whole man grows less and less, till he
becomes the smallest thing he is capable of dwind20




230         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
ling into. But if conscience rule and passion serve,
all goes well; you reach the end, -welfare in general, harmony with yourself, concord with your
brother, and unity with your God; you keep the
means,- conscience and passion are each in position, and at their proper function; the faculties
enlarge until they reach their entire measure of possible growth, and the whole man becomes the greatest he is capable of being here and now.
You see this strength of character, which naturally results from religion, not only in its general
forms, but in its special modes. Look a moment at
the passive power, the power to endure suffering.
See the fact in the endurance of the terrible artificial
torments that are used to put down new.'forms of
religion, or extinguish the old. While men believe in
the divinity of matter, they try suspected persons
by exposure to the elements —walking over redhot
ploughshares, holding fire in the naked hand, or
plunging into water.  All new forms of religion
must pass through the same ordeal, and run the
gauntlet betwixt bishops, priests, inquisitors; between  scribes, Pharisees, and  hypocrites.  See
how faithfully the trial has been borne. Men naturally shrink from pain; the stout man dreads the
toothache, he curls at the mention of the rheumatism, and shivers at the idea of an ague; how sud



SOURCE OF STRENGTH.          231
denly he drops a piece of burning paper which
would tease his hand for a minute! But let a
man have religion wakened in his heart, and be
convinced that it is of God, let others attempt to
drive it out of him, and how ready is he to bear all
that malice can devise or tyranny inflict!  The
thumb-screws and-the racks, the whip, the gallows,
and the stake,- the religious man has strength to
bear all these; and Cranmer holds his right arm,
erring now no more, in the flame, till the hand drops
off in the scalding heat. You know  the persecutions of Peter and Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen,
the trials of early Christians,- Ignatius, Polycarp,
Justin, Irenaeus, and the rest. They all went out to
preach the form of religion themselves had practised,
and enjoyed in their own souls. What could they
offer men as an inducement to conversion?  The
common argument at this day, -respectability, a
c6mfortable life and an honorable death, the praise
of men?  Could Origen and Cyprian tell the young
maiden: " Come to our church, and you will be
sure to get a nice husband, as dainty fine as any
patrician in Ephesus or Carthage?"  Could they
promise "a fashionable company in prayer," and a
rich wife to the young man who joined their
church?  It was not exactly so; nay, it was considerably different. They could offer their converts
hunger, and nakedness, and peril, and prison, and




232         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
the sword; ay, and the scorn of relatives and the
contemporaneous jeer of a cruel world. But "the
word of God grew and prevailed."  The nice voluptuary, the dainty woman, too delicate to set
foot upon the ground, became converted, and then
they could defy the axe of the headsman and the
tormentor's rack.  Unabashed they stood before
wild beasts; ay, they looked in the face of the
marshals and commissioners and district judges of
those times,-men who perverted law and spit on
justice with blasphemous expectoration,- and yet
the religious soul did not fear!
In the Catholic Church this is Saint Victorian's
Day. Here is the short of his story. He was an
African nobleman of Adrumetum, governor of Carthage with the Roman title of Proconsul, the wealthiest man in the province of Africa.  He was a
Catholic; but Huneric, the king of the Vandals in
Africa, was an Arian, and in the year four hundred
and eighty began to persecute the Catholics. He
commanded Victorian to continue the persecution,
offering him great wealth and the highest honors.
It was his legal obligation to obey the king.
"Tell the king that I trust in Christ," said the
Catholic proconsul; "the king may condemn me
to the flames, to wild beasts, to any tortures, I shall
never renounce the Church."  He was put to the
most tormenting tortures, and bore them  like a




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.           233
man. Others met a similar death with the same
steadiness of soul. Even the executioners felt the
effect of such heroism of endurance. "Nobody,"
said they, " embraces our religion now; everybody
follows the example of the martyrs."
The Catholic Church tried the same weapons
against heretics that had been first found wanting
when turned against the early Christians.  The
tyrant, with the instinct of Pharaoh, seeks to destroy the male children, the masculine intellect, conscience, affections, soul. Then a new race of Pauls
and Justins springs up; a new Ignatius, Polycarp,
and Victorian, start into life. The Church may
burn Arnaldo da Brescia, Savonarola, Huss; — what
profits it? The religion which the tyrant persecutes
makes the victim stronger than the victor; then it
steals into the heart of the people, and as the wind
scatters the martyr's ashes far and wide, so the spectacle or the fame of his fidelity spreads abroad the
sentiment of that religion which made him strong.
The persecuting Nile wafts Moses into the king's
court, and the new religion is within the walls.
You know how the Puritans were treated in England, the Covenanters in Scotland; you know how
they bore trial. You have heard of John Graham,
commonly called  Lord  Claverhouse.  He lived
about two hundred years ago in England and Scotland, one of that brood of monsters which still dis20 *




234         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
grace mankind, and, as vipers and rattlesnakes,
seem born to centralize and incarnate the poison
of the world. An original tormentor, if there had
never been any cruelty he would have invented it,
of his own head. Had he lived in New England
in this time, he would doubtless have been a United
States commissioner under the Fugitive  Slave
Bill, perhaps a judge or a marshal:; at any rate, a
slave-hunter, a kidnapper in some form; and of
course he would now be as much honored in this
city as he then was in Edinburgh and London,
and perhaps as well paid.  Well, Lord Claverhouse had a commission to root out the Covenanters with fire and sword, and Vent to that work
with the zeal of an American kidnapper.  By
means of his marshals he one day caught a Scotch
girl, a Covenanter.  She was young, only eighteen;- she was comely to look upon. Her name'was Margaret.  Graham  ordered her to be tied
to a stake in the sea at low-water, and left to drown
slowly at the advance of the tide. It was done:
and his creatures -there were enough of them in
Scotland, as of their descendants here, - his com-,missioners, his marshals, and his attorneys  sat
down on the shore to watch the end of poor Margaret. It was an end not to be forgotten. In a
clear, sweet voice she sung hymns to God till the
waves of the sea broke over her head and floated




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.            235
her pious soul to her God and his heaven. Had
Scotland been a Catholic country there would have
been another SAINT Margaret, known as the
" Genius of the shore
In her large recompense, who would be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood."
You all know what strength of endurance religion gave to Bunyan and Fox, and their compeers
the Quakers, in Boston as well as England; to
the Mormons in Missouri, and in all quarters of
Christendom.  Religion  made these men formidably strong.  The axe of the tormentor was as
idle to stay them  as the gallows to stop a sunbeam.  This power of endurance is general, of all
forms of religion. It does not depend on what is
Jewish in Judaism, or Christian in Christianity, but
on what is religious in religion, what is human in
man.
But that is only a spasmodic form of heroism,the reaction of human nature against unnatural evil.
You see religion producing the same strength to
endure sufferings which are not arbitrarily imposed
by cruel men.  The.stories of martyrdom only bring
out in unusual forms the silent heroism which works
unheeded in society every day.  The strength is
always there; oppression, which makes wise men
mad, in making religious men martyrs, only finds
and reveals the heroism; it does not make it, more




236         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
than the stone-cutter makes the marble which he
hews into the form his thought requires. The heroism is always there. So there is always enough
electricity in the air above this town to blast it to
atoms and burn it to cinders. Not a babe could be
born without it; not a snow-drop bloom; yet no
one heeds the silent force.  Let two different
streams of air, one warm, the other cold, meet here,
the lightning tells of the reserved power which
hung all day above our heads.
I love now and then to look on the strength of
endurance which religion gives the most heroic
martyrs. Even  in these times the example is
needed. Though the fagot is only ashes now,
and the axe's edge is blunt, there are other forms
of martyrdom, bloodless yet not less cruel in motive
and effect. But I love best to see this same strength
in lovelier forms, enduring the common ills of life, -
poverty, sickness, disappointment, the loss of friends,
the withering of the fondest hopes of mortal men.
One is occasional lightning, thundering and grand,
but transient; the other is daily sunshine which
makes no noisy stir on any day, but throughout the
year is constant, creative, and exceeding beautiful.
Did you never see a young woman with  the
finest faculties, every hope of mortal success crushed
in her heart; see her endure it all, the slow torture
which eats away the mortal from the immortal, with




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.          237
a spirit still unruffled,-with a calm cheerfulness
and a strong trust in God? We all have seen such
things, -the loveliest forms of martyrdom.
Did you never see a young man with large
faculties, fitting him to shine among the loftiest
stars of this our human heaven, in the name of
duty forego his own intellectual culture for the
sake of a mother, a sister, or a father dependent
upon his toil, and be a drudge when he might else
have been a shining light; and by the grace of
religion do it so that in all of what he counted
drudgery he was kinglier than a king?  Did you
never see the wife, the daughter, or the son of a
drunkard sustained by their religion to bear sorrows to which  Nebuchadnezzar's sevenfold-heated furnace were  a rose-garden, —bear it and
not complain, — grow sweeter in that bitterness?
There are many such examples all about us, and
holy souls go through that misery of torture clean
as sunlight through the pestilential air of a town
stricken with plague. So the pagan poets tell a
story of the fountain Arethusa, which, for many a
league, ran through the salt and bitter sea, all the
way from  Peloponnesus to  Trinacria, and then
came up pure, sweet, and sparkling water, far off
in Ortygia, spreading greenness and growth in the
valley where  the anemone  and asphodel paid




238          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
back their beauty to the stream which gave them
life.
Such are daily examples of the fortitude and
strength to suffer which religion gives. When we
look carelessly on men in their work or their play,
busy in the streets or thoughtful in a church, we
think little of the amount of religion there is in
these human.hearts; but when you need it in times
of great trial, then it comes up in the broad streets
and little lanes of life. Disappointment is a bitter
root, and sorrow is a bitter flower, and suffering is
a bitter fruit, but the religious soul makes medicine thereof, and is strengthened even by the poisons of life.  So out of a brewer's dregs and a
distiller's waste in a city have I seen the bee suck
sweetest honey for present joy, and lay it up for
winter's use.  Yea, the strong man in the fable,
while hungering, found honey in the lion's bones
he once had slain; got delight from the destroyer,
and meat out of the eater's mouth.
Why is it that the religious man has this power
to suffer and endure?  Religion is the normal mode
of life for man, and when he uses his faculties according to their natural law, they act harmoniously,
and all grow  strong.  Besides this, the religious
man has a confidence in his God; he knows there
is the Infinite One, who has foreseen all and pro



SOURCE OF STRENGTH.           239
vided for all, — provided a recompense for all the
unavoidable suffering of his children here. If you
know that it is a part of the purpose of the Infinite
Father that you must suffer to accomplish your
own development, or the development of mankind,
yet understand that the suffering must needs be
a good for you, -then you will not fear. "The
flesh may quiver as the pincers tear," but you
quiver not; the will is firm, and firm is the unconquerable trust. "Be still, O flesh, and burn!"
says the martyr to the molecules of dust that form
his chariot of time, and the three holy children of
the Hebrew tale sing psalms in their fiery furnace,
a Fourth with them; and Stephen in his stoning
thinks that he sees his God, and to Paul in his
prison there comes a great, cheering light; —yes,
to Bunyan, and Fox, and Latimer, and John Rogers, in their torments; to the poor maiden stifled
by the slowly strangling sea; to her whose crystal
urn of love is shattered at her feet; to the young
man who sees the college of his dream  fade off
into a barn' and the mother, wife, or child who
sees the father of the family bloat, deform, and
uglify himself into the drunkard, and, falling into
the grave, crush underneath his lumbering weight
all of their mortal hopes. Religion gives them all
a strength to suffer, and be blessed by the trials they
endure. There are times when nothing outward




240            CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
is left but suffering.  Then  it is a great thing to
have the  stomach  for it, the faith  in God which
disenchants the  soul of pain.  Did  not Jesus, in
the Gospel, have his agony and his bloody sweat,
— the last act of that great tragedy? did not religion come, an angel, to strengthen him, and all
alone, deserted, forsaken, he could say, "I am  not
alone, for the Father is with me?"
"The darts of anguish fix not where the seat
Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified
By acquiescence in the Will supreme,
For time and for eternity, by Faith,
Faith absolute in God, including Hope,
And the defence that lies in boundless love
Of His perfection; with habitual dread
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured
Impatiently, ill done or left undone,
To the flshonor of His holy Name.
Soul of our souls and safeguard of the world!
Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart.
Restore their languid spirits, and recall
Their lost affections unto Thee and Thine.
" Come labor, when the worn-out frame requires
Perpetual sabbath; come disease and want,
And sad exclusion through decay of sense;
But leave me unabated trust in Thee;And let Thy favor to the end of life
Sustain me with ability to seek
Repose and hope among eternal things,
Father of earth and heaven! and I am rich,
And will possess my portion in. content."




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.           241
See this same strength in another form, —the
power to do. Religion not only gives the feminine capacity to suffer, but the masculine capability to do. The religious man can do more than
another without religion, who is his equal in other
respects; because he masters and concentrates his;
faculties, making them work in harmony with each
other, in concord with mankind, in unity with
God; and because he knows there is a God who
works with him, and so arranges the forces of the
universe, that every wrong shall be righted, and
the ultimate well-being of each be made sure of
for ever. Besides, he has a higher inspiration and
loftier motive, which strengthen, refine, and ennoble him. Adam Clarke tells us how much more of
mere intellectual labor he could perform after his
conversion than before.  Ignatius Loyola makes
the same confession.  They each attribute it to
the technical peculiarity of their sectarianism, to
Methodism  or Catholicism, to  Christianity; but
the fact is universal, and applies to religion under
all forms. It is easily explained by the greater
harmony of the faculties, and by the higher motive
which animates the man, the more: certain trust
which inspires him.  An earnest youth in love
with an earnest maid,  his love returned, -gets
more power of character from  the ardor of her
affection and the strength  of his passion; and
21




242          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
when the soul of man rises up in its great act of
love to become one with God, you need not marvel
if the man is strong.  "I can do all things," says
Paul, "through  Christ who  strengtheneth  me."
Buddhists and Hebrews and Mohammedans say
the same of their religion.
Then religion helps a man to two positive things,
— first, to a desire of the right; next, to a progressive knowledge and practice of the right.  Justice is always power; whoso has that commands
the world. A fool in the right way, says the proverb, can beat a wise man in the wrong.  The
civilized man has an advantage over the savage, in
his knowledge of Nature.  He can make the forces
of the universe toil for him: the wind drives his
ship; the water turns his mill, spins, and weaves
for him; lightning runs his errands; steam carries
the new lord of Nature over land or ocean without
rest.  He that knows justice, and does it, has the
same advantage over all that do it not.  He sets
his mill on the rock, and the river of God for ever
turns his wheels.
The practice of the right in the common affairs
of life is called Honesty.  An honest man is one
who knows, loves, and does right because it is
right. Is there any thing but this total integrity
which I call religion, that can be trusted to keep a




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.            243
man honest in small things and great things, in
things private and things public? I know nothing
else with this power.  True it is said, " Honesty
is the best policy;" and as all men love the best
policy, they will be honest for that reason. But to
follow the best policy is a very different thing from
being honest; the love of justice and the love of
personal profit or pleasure are quite different. But
is honesty the best policy?  Policy is means to
achieve a special end. If the end you seek be the
common object of desire.- if it be material pleasure in your period of passion, or material profit in
your period of ambition, -if you seek for money,
for ease, honor, power over men, and their approbation,- then honesty is not the best policy; is means
from it, not to it.  Honesty of thought and speech
is the worst policy for a minister's clerical reputation.  Charity impairs an estate; unpopular excellence is the ruin of a man's respectability. It is
good policy to lie in the popular way; to steal after
the respectable fashion.  The hard creditor is surest
of his debt; the cruel landlord does not lose his
rent; the severe master is uniformly served the best;
who gives little and with a grudge finds often the
most of obvious gratitude.  He that destroys the
perishing is more honored in Christendom than he
who comes to save the lost.  The slave-hunter is a
popular Christian in the American Church, and gets




244         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
his pay in money and  ecclesiastical reputation.
The honesty of Jesus brought him  to the bar of
Herod and Pilate; their best policy nailed him to
the cross. Was it good policy in Paul to turn
Christian? His honesty brought him to weariness
and painfulness, to cold and nakedness, to stripes
and imprisonment, to a hateful reputation on the
earth. Honesty the best policy for personal selfishness! Ask the " Holy Alliance."  Honesty is the
means to self-respect, to growth in manly qualities,
to high human welfare, -a means to the kingdom
of heaven: When men claim that honesty is the
best policy, is it this which they mean?
I will not say a man cannot be honest without
a distinct consciousness of his relation to God; but
I must say, that consciousness of God is a great
help to honesty in the business of a shop, or the
business of a nation; and without religion, unconscious if no more, it seems to me honesty is not
possible.
By reminding me of my relation to the universe,
religion helps counteract the tendency to selfishness.
Self-love is natural and indispensable; it keeps the
man whole, - is the centripetal power, representing
the natural cohesion of all the faculties. Without
that, the man would drop to pieces, as it were, and
be dissolved in the mass of men, as alump of clay
in the ocean. Selfishness is the abnormal excess of




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.            245
this self-love. It takes various forms. In the period
of passion, it commonly shows itself as intemperate
love of sensual pleasure; in the period of ambition,
as intemperate love of money, of power, rank, or
renown.  There are as many modes of selfishness
as there are propensities which may go to excess.
Self-love belongs to the natural harmony of the
faculties, and is a means of strength. Selfishness
comes from the tyranny of some one appetite, which
subordinates the other faculties of man, and is a
cause of weakness, a disqualification for my duties
to myself, to my brother, and my God.  Now the
effort to become religious, working in you a love of
man and of God, a desire of harmony with yourself,
of concord with man and unity with Him, diminishes selfishness, develops your instinctive self-love
into conscious self-respect, into faithfulness to yourself, and so enlarges continually the little ring of
your character, and makes you strong to bear the
crosses and do the duties of daily life.
Much of a man's ability consists in his power to
concentrate his energies for a purpose; in power to
deny some private selfish lust - of material pleasure
or profit - for the sake of public love. I know of
naught but religion that can be trusted to promote
this power of self-denial, which is indispensable to
a manly man.  There can be no great general
power without this; no strong character that lies
21*




'46          CONSCIOTUS RELIGION AS A
deep in the sea, and holds.on its way through sun-:shine and through storm, and unabashed by tempests, comes safe to port. I suppose you all know
mnen and women, who now are not capable of;any large self-denial, - the babies of -mere selfish
instinct. It is painful to look on such, domineered,over by their propensities.  Compared to noblehearted men and women, they are as the mushroom
and the toadstool to the oak, under whose shade the
fungus springs up in a rainy night to blacken and
perish in a day. Self-denial is indispensable to a;strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes
~only of a religious stock, - from consciousness of obligation and dependence upon God.
In youth the seductions of passion lead us easily
~astray; in manhood there are the more dangerous
seductions of ambition, when lust of pleasure gives
-way to lust of profit; and in old age the man is
soften the victim of the propensities he delicately
nursed in earlier life, and dwindles down into the
dotage of a hunker or a libertine. It is easy to yield
now to this, and then to that, but both mislead us
-to our partial and general loss, to weakness of power
and poverty of achievement, to shipwreck of this,great argosy of mortal life. How many do you see
slain by lust of pleasure!  How many more by lust
<of power, - pecuniary, social, or political power!
Religious self-denial would have kept them strong.and beautiful and safe.




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.           247
Religion gives a man courage. I do not mean
the courage which comes of tough muscles and rigid
nerves, — of a stomach  which  never surrenders.
That also is a good thing, the hardihood of the
flesh; let me do it no injustice. But I mean the
higher, moral courage, which can look danger and
death in the face unawed and undismayed; the
courage that can encounter loss of ease, of wealth,
of friends, of your own good name; the courage
that can face a world full of howling and of scorn,
-ay, of loathing and of hate; can see all this with
a smile, and, suffering it all, can still toil on, conscious of the result, yet fearless still. I do not mean
the courage that hates, that smites, that kills, but
the calm courage that loves and heals and blesses
such as smite and hate and kill; the courage that
dares resist evil, popular, powerful, anointed evil,
yet does it with good, and knows it shall thereby
overcome. That is not a common quality. I think
it never comes without religion. It belongs to all
great forms of religious excellence; it is not specifically Hebrew or Christian, but generically human
and of religion under all forms.
Without this courage a man looks little and
mean, especially a man  otherwise great, -with
great intellect, and great culture, and occupying a
great place. You see all about you how little such
men are worth; too cowardly to brave a temporary




248        CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
defeat, they are swiftly brought to permanent ruin.
Look over the long array of brilliant names in
American, English, universal history, and see what
lofty men, born to a large estate of intellect, and
disciplined to manifold and brilliant mental power,
for lack of courage to be true amid the false, and
upright amid the grovelling, have laid their proud
foreheads in the dust, and mean men have triumphed over the mighty!
Did you never read here in your Old Testament,
here in your New Testament, here in your Apocrypha, how religion gave men, yea, and women too,
this courage, and said to them, " Be strong and very
courageous; turn not to the right hand, neither
to the left," -and made heroes out of Jeremiah
and Elias? Did you never read of the strength of
courage, the courage of conscience, which religion
gave to the "unlearned and ignorant men," who,
from  peasants that trembled before a Hebrew
Rabbi's copious beard, became apostles to stand
before the wrath of kings and not quake, to found
churches by their prayers, and to feed them with
their blood?  You know, we all know, what courage conscious religion gave to our fathers. Their
corporal courage grew more firmly knit, as men
learned by bitter blows who crossed swords with
them on the battle field; but their moral courage
grew giant high. You know how they dwelt here,




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.           249
amid what suffering, yet with what patience; how
they toiled to build up these houses, these churches,
and the institutions of the State.
With this honesty, this self-denial, there comes
a total energy of character which nothing else can
give. You see what strength religion gives; what
energy and continual persistence in their cause it
gave to men like the Apostles, like the martyrs and
great saints of the Christian Church, of the Hebrew,
the Mohammedan, and the Pagan Church. You
may see this energy in a rough form in the soldiers
of the English revolution, in the "Ironsides" of
Cromwell; in the stern and unflinching endurance
of -the Puritans of either England, the Old or the
New, who both did and suffered what is possible to
mortal flesh only when it is sustained by a religious
faith. But you see it in forms far more beautiful,
as represented by the missionaries who carry the
glad tidings of their faith to other lands, and endure
the sorrows of persecution with the longsuffering
and loving-kindness we worship in the good God.
This is not peculiar to Christianity.' The Buddhists
had their missionaries hundreds of years before
Jesus of Nazareth first saw the light. They seem
to have been the first that ever went abroad, not to
conquer, but convert; not to get power, or wealth,
or even wisdom, but to carry the power of the mind,




250         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
the riches of conscience and the affections, and the
wisdom of the soul; and in them you find the total
energy which religious conviction gives to manly
character in its hour of peril. But why go abroad
to look for this?  Our own streets exhibit the same
thing in the form of the philanthropist. The Sister
of Charity treads the miserable alleys of Naples and
of Rome; the Catholic Visitor of the Poor winds
along in the sloughs and slums of St. Giles's Parish
in Protestant London, despised and hated by the
well-endowed clergy, whose church aisles are never
trodden save by wealthy feet; and in the mire of the
street, in the reeking squalidness of the cellars,
where misery burrows with crime, he labors for their
bodies and their souls.  In our own Boston do
I not know  feeble-bodied and  delicate women,
who with their feet write out the gospel of lovingkindness and tender mercy on the mud or the
snow  of the kennels of this city, —women  of
wise intellect and nice culture, who, like that great
philanthropist, come to seek and to save that which
is lost!
Look at the reformers of America at this day;some of them men of large abilities, of commensurate culture, of easy estate, once respected, flattered, and courted too by their associates, but now
despised for their justice and their charity, hated
for the eminent affection which makes them look




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.            251
after the welfare of the criminal, the drunkard, the
pauper, the outcast, and the slave, and feared for the
power with which they assert the rights of man
against the wrongs which avarice inflicts. See the
total energy which marks these men, whose life is a
long profession of religion, -their creed writ all
over the land, and their history a slow martyrdom,
- and you may see the vigor which comes of. religious conviction.  These are the nobler forms of
energy.  The soldier destroys, at best defends, while
the philanthropist creates.
Last of all these forms of strength, religion gives
the power of self-reliance; reliance on your mind
for truth, on your conscience for justice, on your
heart for love, on your soul for faith, and through
all these reliance on the Infinite God. Then you
will keep the integrity of your own nature spite of
the mightiest men, spite of a multitude of millions,
spite of States and churches and traditions, and a
worldly world filled with covetousness and priestcraft.  You will say to them  all, " Stand by, and
let alone; I must be true to myself, and thereby
true to my God."
I think nothing but religion can give any man this
strength to do and to suffer; that without this, the




252          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
men of greatest gift and greatest attainment too,
do not live out half the glory of their days, nor
reach half their stature. Look over the list of the
world's great failures, and see why Alexander,
Caesar, and Napoleon came each to such an untimely and vulgar end! Had they added religion
to their attainments and their conquests, what empires of welfare would they not hold in fee, and give
us to enjoy! Without it, the greatest man is a
failure. With it, the smallest is a triumph. He
adds to his character; he enjoys his strength; he
delights while he rejoices, growing to more vigorous
manliness; and when the fragrant petals of the spirit
burst asunder and crowd off this outer husk of the
body, and bloom  into glorious humanity, what a
strong and flamelike flower shall blossom there for
everlasting life.
There are various forms of strength. Wealth is
power; office is power; beauty is power; knowledge is power. Religion too is power. This is the
power of powers, for it concentrates, moves, and
directs aright the force of money, of office, of beauty,
and of knowledge.  Do men  understand  this?
They often act and live as if they knew it not.
Look at our "strong men," not only mighty by
position in office or on money, but mighty by nature. In what are they strong? In a knowledge of
the passions and prejudices of men; of the interests




SOURCE OF STRENGTH.          253
and expedients and honors of the day; in a knowledge of men's selfishness and their willingness to
sin; in experienced skill to use the means for certain selfish, low, and ignoble ends, organizing a contrivance against mankind; in power of speech and
act to make the better seem the worse, and wrong
assume the guise of right. It is in this that our
" great men " are chiefly great. They are weak in
a knowledge of what in man is noble, even when he
errs; they know nothing of justice; they care little
for love. They know the animal that is in us, not
the human, far less the godlike. Mighty in cunning,
they are weak in knowledge of the true, the just, the
good, the holy, and the ever-beautiful. They look
up at the mountains and mock at God. So they
are impotent to know  the expedient of eternity,
what profits now  and profits for ever and ever.
Blame them not too much; the educational forces
of society breed up such men, as college lads all
learn to cipher and to scan.
In the long run of the ages see how the religious
man distances the unreligious. The memory of him
who seeks to inaugurate cunning into the state
for his own behoof, is erelong gibbeted before the
world, and his lie is cast out with scorn and hate;
and the treason of the traitor to mankind is remembered only with a curse; while the wisdom of the
22




254         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
wise, the justice of the upright, the love of the affectionate, and the piety of holy-hearted men, incarnated in the institutions of the State, live and will
for ever live, long after Rome and America have
gone to the ground. Tyrants have a short breath,
their fame a sudden ending; and the pbwer of the ungodly, like the lamp of the wicked, shall soon be put
out; their counsel is carried,- but it is carried headlong. He that seeks only the praise of men gets
that but for a day; while the religious man, who
seeks only to be faithful to himself and his God, and
represent on earth the absolute true and just, all
heedless of the applause of men, lives, and will for
ever live, in the admiration of mankind, and in " the
pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove."
Champollion painfully deciphers the names of the
Egyptian kings who built the pyramids and swayed
millions of men.  For three thousand years that
lettered Muse, the sculptured stone, in silence kept
the secret of their name. But the fugitive slave, a
bondsman of that king, with religion in his heart,
has writ his power on all the continents, and dotted
the name of Moses on every green or snow-clad
isle of either sea.  That name shall still endure
when the last stones of the last pyramid become gas
and exhale to heaven. The peasant of Galilee has
embosomed his own name in the religion of man



SOURCE OF STRENGTH.          255
kind, and the world will keep it for ever. Foolish
men  building your temple of fame on the expedients of to-day, and of selfishness and cunning and
eloquent falsehood!  That shall stand, - will it?
On the frozen bosom of a northern lake go, build
your palace of ice. Colonnade and capital, how
they glitter in the light when the northern dawn is
red about the pole, or the colder moon looks on
your house of frost!  " This will endure. Why
carve out the granite, and painfully build upon the
rock? " Ah me! at the touch of March, the icetemple and its ice-foundation take the leap of
Niagara; and in April the skiff of the fisherman
finds no vestige of all that pomp and pride. But
the temple of granite, - where is that? Ask Moses,
ask Jesus, ask mankind, what power it is that lasts
from age to age, when selfish ambition melts in the
stream of time.
Well, we are all here for a great work, not merely
to grow up and eat and drink, to have estates called
after us and children born in our name. We are
all here to be men; to do the most of human duty
possible for us, and so to have the most of human
right and enjoy the most of human welfare. Religion is a good thing in itself; it is the betrothed
bride of the spirit of man, to be loved for her own
sweet sake; not a servant, to be taken for use




256         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
alone.  But it is the means to this end, —to
strength of character, enlarging the little and greatening the great
You and I shall have enough to suffer, most of
us; enough to do. We shall have our travail, our
temptation, perhaps our agony, but our triumph too.
O smooth-faced youths and maids! your cheek
and brow yet innocent of stain, do you believe you
shall pass through life and suffer naught? Trial
will come on you;-  you shall have your agony
and bloody sweat. Seek in the beginning for the
strength which religion brings you, and you shall
indeed be strong, powerful to suffer, and mighty also
to do. I will not say your efforts will keep you
from every error, every sin. When a boy, I might
have thought so; as a man, I know better, by observation and my own experience too. Sin is an
experiment that fails; a stumble, not upright walking.  Expect such mishaps, errors of the mind,
errors of the conscience, errors of the affections,
errors -of the soul.  What pine-tree never lost a
limb?  The best mathematician  now  and then
misses a figure, must rub out his work and start
anew. The greatest poet must often mend a line,
and will write faulty verses in the heat of song.
Milton has many a scraggy line, and even good
Homer sometimes nods. What defects are there in




SOURCE OF.STRENGTH.         257
the proud works of Raphael and Angelo! Is there
no failure in Mozart?  In such a mighty work as
this of life, such a complication of forces within, of
circumstances without, such imperfect guidance as
the world can furnish in this work, I should expect
to miss the way sometimes, and with painful feet,
and heart stung by self-reproach, or grief, or shame,
retread the way shamefaced and sad. The field
that is ploughed all over by Remorse, driving his
team that breathe fire, yields not a faint harvest
to the great Reaper's hand. Trust in God will do
two things. It will keep you from many an error;
nobody knows how great a gain this is, till he has
tried. Then it will help you after you have wandered from the way. Fallen, you will not despair,
but rise the wiser and the stronger for the fall. Do
you look for strength to your brave young hearts,
and streams of life to issue thence?  Here you
shall find it, and with freshened life pass on your
way. Religion is the Moses to smite the rock in
the wilderness.
O bearded men, and women that have kept and
hoarded much in your experienced hearts! you also
seek for power to bear your crosses and to do your
work. Religion will be the strength of your life, -
you may do all things through this. When the last
act of the mortal drama draws towards a close, you
22*




258           CONSCIOUS RELIGION.
will look joyfully to the end, not with fear, but with
a triumphant joy.
There are two great things which make up the
obvious part of life, — to do, to suffer. Behind both
as cause, and before each as result, is one thing
greater,- to BE.  Religion is true Being, normal
life in yourself, in Nature, in men, and in God.




VIII.
OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF JOY.
I WILL GO UNTO GOD, MY EXCEEDING JOY. -PS. xliii. 4.
JoY is not often mentioned in religious books.
It is sometimes thought to have no place in religion; at least none here and now. The joy of the
religious man is thought to be chiefly in the future.
Religion is painted with a sad countenance. Artists
sometimes mix joyous colors in their representations
thereof, but theologians almost never. With them,
religion is gloomy, severe, and grim. This is eminently the case in New England. The Puritans as
a class were devoutly religious in their way, but
they were sad men; they had many fast-days and
few times of rejoicing. Even Sunday, which to the
rest of Christendom was an occasion of festivity,
was to them a day of grimness and of fearing the
Lord; a weariness to the old men, and an intolerable burden to the children. Look at the pictures




260          CONSCIOUS RELIGION A  A
of those men, so bony and gaunt and grim; of the
women, so austere and unloving in their look.  The
unjoyous characteristics of Puritanism still cleave to
us, and color our mode of religion at this day, and,
spite of ourselves, taint our general philosophy and
view of life.
The Catholic Church is less serious, less in earnest with religion, than the Church of the Puritans,
-less moral and reliant on God than the Protestant
Church in general, - so it seems to me; but even
there little room is left for joy. Their richest music
is a Miserere, not an Exultemus or a Te Deum.
The joyous chanting of Christmas, of Easter, and
of Pentecost is inferior to the sad wail of Palm-Sunday and Good-Friday.  The Stabat Mater and the
Dies Irwe are the most characteristic hymns of the
Catholic Church.  The paintings and statues are
chiefly  monuments of woe, — saints in their torments, Jesus in his passion; his stations are stations
of affliction, and the via sacra of his life is painted
as a long via dolorosa; God is represented as a
Thunderer, distinguished chiefly by self-esteem and
destructiveness.
Take the Christian Church as a whole, from its
first day to this, study all expressions of the religious
feeling and thought of Christendom, in literature,
painting, and music, it is strangely deficient in joy.
Religion is unnatural self-denial; morality is sym



SOURCE OF JOY.              261
bolized by a celibate monk, eating parched pease
and a water-cress; piety, by a joyless nun.  The
saints of the Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant, are either stern, heroic men, who went first
and foremost on a field of battle, to peril their lives,
men whose heroism was of iron, - and they have
never been extolled above their merit, — or else
weeping men, sentimental, sickly, sad, sorrowful,
and afraid. Most preachers would rather send away
their audience weeping, than  with a resolute, a
cheerful, and a joyous heart. Yet nothing is easier
to start from  a multitude than a tear.  Cotton
Mather, in his life of his kinsman, Nathaniel, a
pious clergyman who died young, mentions as his
crowning merit the fulness of his fastings, the abundant mortifications he needlessly imposed upon himnself, his tear-stained face. Smiles are strange phenomena in a church; sadness and tears are therein
at home.
Even the less earnest sects of America, calling
themselves "Liberal Christians," whose  ship  of
souls does not lie very deep in the sea of life, seem
to think joy is not very nearly related to religion.
The piety of a round-faced and joyous man is
always a little suspected.  The Cross is still the
popular symbol of Christianity, and the type of the
saint is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,
having no form or comeliness. Sermons of joy you




262         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
seldom hear; the voice of the pulpit is mainly a
whine; its flowers are nightshade, and its psalms a
Miserere.
Everybody knows what joy is, —a certain sense
of gladness and of pleasure, a contentment and a
satisfaction, sometimes noisily breaking into transient surges of rapture, sometimes rolling with the
tranquil swell of calm delight. It is a state which
comes upon any particular faculty, when that finds
its natural gratification. So there may be a partial
joy of any one faculty, or a total joy of the whole
man, all the faculties normally developed and normally gratified. If religion be the service of God
by the normal development, use, and enjoyment of
every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit,
and every power acquired over matter or man, then
it is plain that religion must always aim at, and under favorable circumstances will achieve, a complete
and total joy for all men.
There is no man wholly destitute of some partial and transient joy; for if all the conditions needful to the welfare of each faculty of mind, or to each
appetite, were wanting, then, part by part, the man
would perish and disappear. On the other hand, no
man, I think, has ever had a complete, total, and
permanent enjoyment of every part of his nature.
That is the ideal to which we tend, but one not




SOURCE OF JOY.             263
capable of complete attainment in a progressive
being. For if the ideal of yesterday has become
the actual of to-day, to-morrow we are seized with
manly disquiet and unrest, and soar up towards
another ideal.
We have all more or less of joy, the quantity and
quality differing amazingly amongst men. There
are as many forms of joy as there are propensities
which hunger and thirst after their satisfaction.
What a difference in the source whence men derive
their customary delight.
Here is a man whose whole joy seems to come
from his body; not from its nobler senses, offering
him the pleasures of the ear and the eye, but from
the lower parts of the flesh, imbruted now to passions which seem base when made to minister the
chief delight to man. We could not think highly
of one who knew no joy above the pleasure of eating and drinking, or of any other merely animal
satisfaction. Such joys cannot raise man far. If
one had his chief delight in fine robes, the taste
would rather degrade him. Yet these two appetites,
for finery in food and finery in dress, have doubtless
done their part to civilize mankind. It is surely
better for the race to rejoice in all the sumptuous
delicacies of art, than to feed precariously on wild
acorns which the wind shakes down. The foolish
fondness for gay apparel has served a purpose.




264         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
Nay, so marvellous is the economy of God in his
engineering of the world, that no drop of waste
water runs over the dam of the universe; and as
the atom which now sparkles in the rainbow, the
next minute shall feed a fainting rose, so even these
sensual desires have helped to uplift mankind from
mere subordination to the material world.
There is another man whose chief joy is not
merely bodily, but yet resides in his selfish appetites, in his lust of money, or lust of power. I pass
by the joy of the miser, of the ambitious politician,
of the pirate and the kidnapper. They are so well
known amongst us that you can easily estimate
their worth.
Now  and then we find men whose happiness
comes almost wholly from pure and lofty springs,
from the high senses of the body or the high faculties of the spirit, —joys of the mind, of the conscience, of the affections, of the soul. Difference of
quality is more important than difference in mere
bulk; an hour of love is worth an age of lust. We
all look with some reverence on such as seek the
higher quality of joy.
You are pleased to see birds feeding their widemouthed little ones; sheep and oxen intent upon
their grassy bread; reapers under a hedge enjoying
their mid-day meal, reposing on sheaves of corn
new cut. All this is nature; the element of neces



SOURCE OF JOY.             265
sity consecrates the meal. Artistic pictures of such
scenes are always attractive. But pictures or descriptions of feasts -where the design is not to
satisfy a natural want, but where eating and drinking are made a luxurious art, the end of life, andi
man seems only an appendage to the table — are
never wholly pleasing. You feel a little ashamed
of the quality of such delight. Even the marvellous pencil of Paul of Verona here fails to please.
But a picture of men finding a joy in the higher
senses, still more in thought, in the common, everyday duties of life, in works of benevolence or justice,
in the delight of love, in contemplation, or in prayer,
-this can touch us all. We like the quality of
such delight, and love to look on men in such a
mood of joy. I need only refer to the most admired
paintings of the great masters, Dutch or Italian, and
to the poetry which chronicles the mortal modes of
high delight. The spiritual element must subordinate the material, in order to make the sensual joy
welcome to a nice eye. In the Saint Cecilia of Raphael, in Titian's Marriage at Cana, in Leonardo's
Last Supper, it is the preponderance of spiritual
over sensuous emotion that charms the eye. So is
it in all poetry, from the feeding of the five thousand to the sweet story of Lorenzo and Jessica, and
the moonlight scene of their love whereby " heaven.
is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."
23




266          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
The joy of a New  England miser, gloating over
extortions which even the law would cough at, the
delight of a tyrant clutching at power, of a Boston
kidnapper griping some trembling slave, or counting
out the price of blood which a wicked government
bribes him  withal, -that would hardly be acceptable even here and to-day,* though painted with the
most angelic power and skill. It would be a painted
satire, not a pictured praise; the portrait of a devil's
joy can be no man's delight.
Everybody knows the joy of the senses.  The
higher faculties have a corresponding joy.  As there
is a scale of faculties ascending from the sense of
touch and taste, the first developed and most widely
spread in the world of living things, up to affection,
rejoicing to delight, and to the religious emotions
which consciously connect us with the Infinite God;
so there is a corresponding scale of joys, delight
rising above  delight, from  the baby fed by his
mother's breast to the most experienced man, enlarged by science and by art, filled with a tranquil
trust in the infinite protection of the all-bounteous
God.  The higher the faculty, the more transcendent is its joy.
* This sermon was preached April 6, 1851, presently after the
kidnapping of Mr. Sims, in Boston, and before his "trial" was
completed.




SOURCE OF JOY.             267
The partial and transient Jjoy of any faculty
comes from  the fractional and brief fulfilment of
the conditions of its nature; the complete and permanent joy of the whole man comes from a total
and continuous supply of the conditions of the
entire nature of man.
Now, for this complete and lasting joy, these conditions must be thus fulfilled for me as an individual, for my family, for my neighborhood, for the
nation, and for the world, else my joy is not complete; for though I can in thought for a moment
abstract myself from the family, society, nation, and
from all mankind, it is but for a moment. Practically I am bound up with all the world; an integer
indeed, but a fraction of mankind. I cannot enjoy
my daily bread because of the hunger of the men I
fain would feed. I am  not wholly and long delighted with a book relating some new wonder of
science, or offering me some jewelled diadem of
literary art, because, I think straightway of the
thousand brother men in this town to whom even
the old wonders of science and the ancient diadems
of literary art are all unknown. The morsel that I
eat alone is not sweet, because the fatherless has
not eaten it with me. Yet we all desire this complete joy; we are not content without it; I feel
it belongs to me, to all men, as individuals and as
fractions of society. When mankind comes of age,




268         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
he must enter on this estate.  The very desire
thereof shows it is a part of the Divine plan of
the world, for each natural desire has the means to
satisfy it put somewhere in the universe, and there
is a mutual attraction between the two, which at
last must meet. Natural desire is the prophecy of
satisfaction.
Look over the bountiful distribution of joy in the
world. It abounds in the lower walks of creation.
The young fish, you shall even now find on the
shallow beaches of some sheltered Atlantic bay, how
happy they are! Voiceless, dwelling in the cold
unsocial element of water, moving with the flapping
of the sea, and never still amid the ocean waves' immeasurable laugh, —how delighted are these little
children of God!  Their life seems one continuous
holiday, the shoal waters a play-ground. Their food
is plenteous as the water itself. Society is abundant, and of the most unimpeachable respectability.
They have their little child's games which last all
day. No one is hungry, ill-mannered, ill-dressed,
dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy. They fear no
hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and bloodless little
atomies seem ever full of joy as they can hold; wise
without study, learned enough with no book or
school, and well cared for amid their own neglect.
They recollect no past, they provide for no future,




SOURCE OF JOY.             269
the great God of the ocean their only memory or
forethought.  These little, short-lived minnows are
to me a sermon eloquent; they are a psalm to God,
above the loftiest hymnings of Theban Pindar, or of
the Hebrew king.
On the land, see the joy of the insects just now
coming into life.  The new-born butterfly, who
begins his summer life to-day, how joyous he is in
his claret-colored robe, so daintily set off with a silver edge! No Pharisee, enlarging the borders of
his garments, getting greetings in the markets and
the uppermost seat at feasts, and called of men
" Rabbi," is ever so brimful of glee as our little
silver-bordered fly. He has a low seat in the universe, for he is only a butterfly; but to him it is
good as the uppermost; and in the sunny, sheltered
spots in the woods, with brown leaves about him,
and the promise of violets and five-fingers by and
by, the great sun gently greets him, and the dear
God continually says to this son of a worm, " Come
up higher!"
The adventurous birds that have just come to
visit us, how delighted they are, and of a bright
morning how  they tell their joy  each robin and
blackbird waking, not with a dry mouth and a
parched tongue, but with a bosom full of morning
psalms to gladden the day with "their sweet jargoning."  What a cheap luxury they pick up in the
23 




270         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
fields; and in a clear sunrise and a warm sky find a
delight which makes the pomp of Nebuchadnezzar
seem ridiculous!
Even the reptiles, the cold snake, the bunchy and
calumniated toad, the frog, now newly wakened
from his hybernating sleep, have a joy in their existence which is complete and seems perfect. How
that long symbol of "the old enemy" basks delighted in the sun! In the idle days which in childhood I once had, I have seen, as I thought, the gospel of God's love written in the life of this reptile,
for whom  Christians have such a mythological
hatred, but whom the good God blesses with a new,
shining skin every year, -written more clearly than
even Nazarene Jesus could tell the tale. No wonder! it was the dear God who wrote His gospel in
that scroll. How joyously the frogs welcome in the
spring, which knocks at the icy door of their dwelling, and rouses them to new life! What delight
have they in their thin, piping notes at this time,
and in the hoarse thunders wherewith they will
shake the bog in weeks to come; in their wooing
and their marriage song!
The young of all animals are full of delight.
God baptizes his new-born children of the air, the
land, the sea, with joy; admits them to full communion in his great church, where He that taketh
thought for oxen suffers no sparrow to fall to the




SOURCE OF JOY.             271
ground without his fatherly love. A new lamb, or
calf, or colt, just opening its eyes on the old world,
is happy as fabled Adam in his Eden. With what
sportings, and friskings, and frolickings do all young
animals celebrate their Advent and Epiphany in the
world of time! As they grow older, they have a
wider and a wiser joy,  the delight of the passions
and the affections, to apply the language of men to
the consciousness of the cattle. It takes the form,
not of rude leapings, but of quiet cheerfulness. The
matronly cow, ruminating beside her playful and
hornless little one, is a type of quiet joy and entire
satisfaction, — all her nature clothed in well-befitting happiness.
Even animals that we think austere and sad, —
the lonely hawk, the solitary jay, who loves New
England winters, and the innumerable shellfish, -
have their personal and domestic joy, well known to
their intimate acquaintances. The toad whom we
vilify as ugly, and even call venomous, malicious,
and spiteful, is a kind neighbor, and seems as contented as the day is long. So is it with the spider,
who is not the malignant kidnapper that he is
thought, but has a little, harmless world of joy. A
stream  of welfare flows from end to end of their
little life,- not very broad, not very deep, but wide
and deep enough to bathe their every limb, and
bring contentment and satisfaction to each want.




272          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
Did not the same God who pours out the light from
yonder golden sun, and holds all the stars in his
leash of love, make and watch over the smallest of
these creatures?  Nay, He who leaves not forsaken
Jesus alone never deserts the spider and the toad.
Wait a few weeks and go into the fields, of a
warm day, at morning, noon, or night, and all creation is a-hum with happiness, the young and old,
the reptile, insect, beast, and fowls of heaven, rejoice
in their brave delight. All about us is full of joy,
fuller than we notice.  Take a handful of water
from the rotting timbers of a wharf; little polyps are
therein, medusae and the like, with few senses, few
faculties; but they all swim in a tide of joy, and it
seems as if the world was made for them  alone; for
them the tide ebbs and flows, for them the winter
goes, the summer comes, and the universe subsists
for them alone.
Some men tell us that, at the other extreme of
the scale, those vast bodies, the suns and satellites,
have also a consciousness and a delight; that "in
reason's ear they all rejoice." But that is poetry.
Not in reason's, but fancy's ear do they rejoice.
The rest is fact, plain prose.
All animate creatures in their natural condition
have, it is true, their woes; but they are brief in
time, little in quantity, and soon forgot. When you
look microscopically and telescopically at the natu



SOURCE OF JOY.                 273
ral suffering in the world of animals, you find it is
just enough to tie the girdle, and hold the little creature together, and keep him from violating his own
individual being; or else to unite the tribe and keep
them from violating their social being. So it seems
only the girdle of the individual of the flock, and no
more an evil, when thus looked at, than the bruises
we get in our essays to walk. Suffering marks the
outer limit of the narrow margin of oscillation left
for the caprice of the individual animal or man,the pain a warning to mark the bound.
A similar joy appears in young children well born
and well nurtured.  But the human power of error,
though still not greater in proportion to our greater
nature, is so much more, and man so little subordinate to his instincts, that we have wandered far
from the true road of material happiness. So the
new-born child comes  trailing the  errors of his
ancestry behind him at his birth.  Still, the healthy
child, wisely cared for, though tethered with such a
brittle chain of being, is no exception to the general
rule of joy. He
"Is a dew-drop which the morn brings forth,
Not formed to undergo unkindly shocks,
Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;A gem that glitters while it lives,
And no forewarning gives,
But at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
Slips in a moment out of life."




274         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
In the world of adult men there is much less of
this joy; it is not a great river that with mighty
stream runs round and round the world of human
consciousness, all ignorant of ebb. Our faces are
care-stricken, not many joyous; most of them look
as if they had met and felt the peltings of the storm,
and only hoped for the rainbow. The songs of the
people are mostly sad; only the savage in tropic
climes- subordinate to nature, there a gentle mistress-is blithe and gay as the monkeys and the
parrots in his native grove of Africa; and there his
joy is only jollity, the joy of saucy flesh.
There are two chief causes for this lack of joy
with men.  This is one:I. We have not yet fulfilled the necessary material conditions thereof. The individual has not kept
the natural law, and hence has some schism in the
flesh from his intemperance or want; some schism in
the spirit from lack of harmony within; or there is
some schism between him and the world of matter,
he not in unison with things around; he has a miserable body, that goes stooping and feeble, must be
waited for and waited on, and, like the rulers of the
Gentiles, exercises authority over him; or he lacks
development of spiritual powers; or else is poor, and
needs material supplies.
Or if the special individual is right in all these




SOURCE OF JOY.               275
things, and so might have his personal joy, the mass
of men in your neighborhood, your nation, or the
world, are deficient in all these, in body, mind,
and estate, and with your individual joy there comes
a social grief, and so the worm in the bud robs your
blossom of half its fragrant bloom, and hinders all
its fruit. Man is social not less than personal;
sympathy is national, even human, reaching out to
the ends of the earth; and if the hungry cry of those
who have reaped down the world's harvest smite
your ear, why, your bread turns sour, and is bread
of affliction. The rich scholar, with abundant time,
in his well-stored library, has the less joy in his own
books while he remembers there are nobler souls
that starve for the crumbs which fall from his table,
or drudge at some ungrateful toil not meant for
them.  The healthy doctor, well fed and nicely clad,
cannot so steel his heart against the ignorance and
want and pain he daily sees, that his health and
table and science, and rosy girls, shall give him the
same delight which would come thereof in a world
free from such society of suffering.
" The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
Thatbhath kept watch o'er man's mortality."
Now the pain which comes from this source, this
lack of mind, body, and estate on the part of the




276          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
special individual, or of the race, is all legitimate
and merciful; I would not have it less. There is
never too much suffering of this sort in the world,
only enough to teach mankind to live in harmony
with Nature, in concord with each other, in unity
with God. Here, as in the animals, this pain is but
the girdle round the loins of you or me to keep
the individual whole; or about the waist of mankind, to keep us all united in one brotherhood.
Here, as there, suffering marks the limit of our margin of oscillation, warns against trespass, and says,
" Pause and forbear."
Yet we are all seeking for this joy. Each man
needs it; knows he needs it, yet needs it deeper
than he knows. So is it with mankind: the cornmon heart by which we live cries to God for satisfaction of our every need, and for our natural joy.
The need thereof stirs the self-love of men to toil,
the sight of pain quickens the nobler man to rouse
his sluggish brother to end it all. The sad experience of the world shows this,-that man must
find his joy, not in subordinating himself to matter, or to the instincts of the flesh, as the beasts find
theirs, or of the weak to the strong, but in subordinating matter to mind, instinct to conscious reason,
and then coordinating all men into one family of
religious love.
II. Here is the other cause. Much of this lack




SOURCE OF JOY.            277
of joy comes from false notions of religion; -false
ideas of God, of man, and of the relation between
the two. We are bid to think it wicked to be joyous. In the common opinion of churches, a religious man must be a sad man, his tears become his
meat. Men who in our day are eminent " leaders
of the churches" are not joyous men; their faces
are grim and austere, not marked with manly delight. Some men are sad at sight of the want, the
pain, and the misdirection of men. It was unavoidable that Jesus of,Nazareth should ofttimes be
" exceeding sorrowful."  He must indeed weep over
Jerusalem. The Apostles, hunted from city to city,
might be excused for sadness. For centuries the
Christian Church had reason to be a sad Church.
Persecution made our New England fathers stern
and sour men, and their form of religion caught a
stain from their history. I see why this is so, and
blame no man for it. It was once unavoidable.
But now it is a great mistake to renounce the natural joy of life; above all, to renounce it in the
name of God. No doubt it takes the whole human
race to represent in history the whole of Human
Nature; but if the " Church," that is theological
men, make a mock at joy, then the " world " will go
to excess in the opposite extreme. Men in whom the
religious and moral powers are not developed in proportion with the intellectual, the aesthetic, or the
24




278         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
physical appetites, will try to possess this joy, and
without religion. But nothing is long fruitful of delight when divorced from the consciousness of God;
nothing thrives that is at enmity with God. Such
joy is poor, heartless, and unsatisfying. Men in
churches set up a Magdalen, a nun, a monk, a hermit, or a priest, as a representative of religion. Men
out of churches want joy; they will flee off where
they can find it, and leave religion behind them.
Yet joy without religion is but a poor, wandering
Hagar, her little water spent, her bread all gone, and
no angel to marshal the way to the well where she
shall drink and feed her fainting child, and say,
THOU, GOD, SEEST ME!
There is little joy in the ecclesiastical consciousness of religion. Writers and preachers of Christianity commonly dwell on the dark side of human
nature. They tell us of our weakness, not of our
ability to be and to do. They mourn and scold
over human folly, human sin, human depravity,
often leaving untold the noble deeds of man and
his nobler powers. "Man is a worm," say they.
They do the same with God. They paint him as
a king, not as a father; and as a king who rules
by low and selfish means, for low and selfish ends,
from  low  and selfish motives, and with a most
melancholy result of his ruling. According to the




SOURCE OF JOY.               279
common opinion of the Christian churches, God's
is'the most unsuccessful despotism  that has ever
been set agoing, leading to the eternal ruin of the
immense majority of his subjects, as the result of
the absolute selfishness of the theological deity. In
the theology called-Christian the most conspicuous
characteristics of God are great force, great selfesteem, and  immense  destructiveness.   He  is
painted as cruel, revengeful, and without mercy,the grimmest of the gods.  The heathen devils all
glower at us through the mask of the theological
God.  The Mexicans worshipped an idea of God,
to* which they sacrificed hundreds of captives and
criminals. Christian divines tell us of a God that
will not kill, but torment in hell the greater portion
of his children, and will feed fat his " glory " with
the damnation of mankind, the everlasting sacrifice of each ruined soul!  If men think that man
is a worm, and God has lifted the heavenly heel
to give him a squelch which shall last for ever, the
relation between  God and man is certainly not
pleasant for us to think of.
God is thought a hard creditor, man a poor
debtor; "religion" is the sum  he is to pay; so
he puts that down grudgingly, and with the stingiest fist. Or else God is painted as a grim and
awful judge, man a poor, trembling culprit, shiver



280          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
ing before his own conscience, and slinking down
for fear of the vengeance of the awful judge, hell
gaping underneath his feet.  Does any one doubt
this? Let him read the Book of Revelation, or the
writings of John Calvin, of Baxter, or Edwards
or even of Jeremy Taylor. The theological God is
mainly a great devil, and as the theological devil
hates "believers," whom  he seeks to devour, so
the theological God hates " unbelievers," and seeks
successfully to devour them, gnawed upon eternally
in hell. In general, theological books represent
God as terrible. They make religion a melancholy
sort of thing, unnatural to man, which he would
escape from if he dared, or if he could. It is seldom spoken of as a thing gobd in itself, but valuable to promote order on the earth, and help men
to get " saved " and obtain a share of eternal happiness. It is not a joy, but a burthen, which some
men are to be well and eternally paid for bearing
in the heat of the mortal day. Yes, to the majority of men it is represented as of no use at all in
their present or future condition; for if a man has
not Christianity enough to purchase a share in
heaven, his religion is a useless load,    only a torment on earth, and of no value at all in the next
life! What is the use of religion to men in eternal torment?  So, by the showing of the most




SOURCE OF JOY.             281
respectable theologians, religion can bring no joy,
save to the " elect," who are but a poor fraction of
mankind, and commonly exhibit little of it here.
The general tone of writings called religious is
sad and melancholy.  Religion adorns her brow
with yellow leaves smitten by the frost, not with
rosebuds and violets. The leading men in the
more serious churches are earnest persons, selfdenying, but grim, unlovely, and  joyless men.
Look through the ecclesiastial literature of the
Christian world, — it is chiefly of this sad complexion. The branches of the theological tree are
rough and thorny, not well laden with leaves, and
of blossoms it has few that are attractive. It was
natural enough that the Christians, when persecuted and trodden down, should weep and wail in
their literature. In the first three centuries they
do so;- in every period of persecution.  The dark
shades of the New  England forest lowered over
New England theology, and Want and War knit
their ugly brows in the meeting-houses of the day.
But the same thing continued, and it lasts still.
Now it is the habit of Christendom, though sometimes it seems only a trick.
In what is called Christian literature nothing
surprises you more than the absence of joy. There
is much of the terror of religion, little of its delights. Look over the list of sermons of South,
24*




282         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
Edwards, Chalmers, Hopkins, Emmons, even  of
Jeremy Taylor, and you find few  sermons on
the joys -of religion. The same is true of Massillon,.of Bourdaloue, and Bossuet. The popular
ecclesiastical notion of religion is not to be represented as a wife and mother, cheerful, contented,
and happy in her work, but as a reluctant nun,
abstracted, idle, tearful, and with a profound melancholy; not the melancholy which comes from
seeing actual evils we know not how to cure,the sadness of one strong to wish and will, but
feeble to achieve; —no, the more incurable sadness which comes from a distrust of Nature and of
God, and from the habit of worrying about the
-soul, —the melancholy of fear; not the melancholy
which looks sadly on misery and crime, which,wept'out its " O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" but the:sadness which whines in a corner, and chews its,own lips from sheer distrust.
The writers who dwell on the joys of religion;too often have very inadequate ideas thereof. For
they all, from Augustine to Chalmers, start with
-the idea that God is imperfect, and not wholly to be
trusted. Accordingly they seek and obtain but a
very one-sided development of their nature, thinking
they must sacrifice so much of it; and hence have
not that strength of religious character, nor that
wholeness thereof, which is necessary to complete
manly joy in religion.




SOURCE OF JOY.             283
Such being the case, fear of God predominates
over love of Him; trust of God is only special under
such and such circumstances, not universal under all
circumstances; and religious joy is thin, and poor,
and cold.
You find mention of religious joy in some of the
great Christian writers, especially among the mystics, in Tauler ahd  Kempis, Scougal, Fenelon,
William  Law, and Jacob Behme, not to mention
others.  Even Bunyan has his delectable mountains, and though in the other world, the light therefrom shines serene and joyous along the paths of
mortal life. But in most, if not in all, of these writers, religious joy is deemed an artificial privilege,
reserved by God's decree for only a few, purchased
by unnatural modes of life, and miraculously bestowed. Even in greathearted Martin Luther, one
of the most joyous of men, it is not a right which
belongs to human nature, and comes naturally from
the normal action of the faculties of man; it is the
result of " divine grace," not of human nature.
Thus this religious joy of the churches is often
hampered and restricted, and the man must be
belittled before he is capable thereof. In the ecclesiastical saint there is always something sneaking;
some manly quality is left out, or driven out, some
unmanly quality forced in. I believe this has been
so in all ages of Christianity, and in all Christian




284         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
sects at this day. Study the character and history of
the saints of the Catholic and Protestant churches.
Look at their mode of life, their sources and forms
of joy. You see it is so. They must turn Human
Nature out of doors before the Divine Nature can
come in. So the heavenly bridegroom, adorned for
his wife, comes to a house swept and garnished indeed, but cheerless, empty, and* cold, only theological furniture left in, the bride herself swept out.
Look at the marbles of antiquity,- at the face of
pagan Plato, of Aristotle, "the master of such as
know," - or at the faces of modern philosophers,
and compare them with the actual or ideal countenance of Christian saints,- with Saint Francis,
with Saint Thomas, with Ignatius Loyola, with the
ideal Magdalens and Madonnas of art, or with the
dark, sad, and woe-stained faces of the leading
clergy of the predominant sects,-and you see at
once the absence of natural delight.
Religion is often separated from  common life.
So a sharp distinction is made between the "flesh "
and the "spirit."  The flesh is all sinful, all that
belongs to it thought poor, and mean, and low; to
taste the joys of piety, the senses must be fettered
and put in jail, and then, where theology has made
a solitude, it proclaims peace. On the one side is
the " world," on the other " religion; " and there is
a great gulf fixed between the two, which neither




SOURCE OF JOY.             285
Dives, nor Lazarus, nor yet Abraham, can pass
over. Here all the delight is in " things temporal;"
there the delight is only in " things eternal."
Worldly men have their delight in the things of
this world, and no more; heavenly men, only in the
joys of the next life; and they who have the worst
time here shall have the best hereafter. Religion is
thought out of place at a ball, at a theatre, at any
amusement; dancing is thought more than half a
sin. Religion loves funerals, is seldom at a wedding,
-only to sadden the scene, - for woman is bid to
be ashamed of natural human love, and man of being loved. " We are conceived in sin," quoth theology; "the' God-man' was born with no human
father."
It seems commonly thought that the joys of religion are inconsistent with active daily life.  Men
who have written thereof are chiefly ascetic and
romantic persons of retired lives, of shy habits; they
prefer thought to work, passive contemplation to
active meditation, and dreamy sentimentalism to all
other and manlier joys. The natural result of this
ecstasy, not the normal activity of the whole man,
but irregular, extravagant, and insane action of a
few noble powers. Hence those writings are not
wholesome; the air they exhale is close and unhealthy, for such pietism is the sickness of the soul,
not its soundness and its health.




286         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
I believe what I say will apply to almost the
whole class of writers on sentimental religion, -to
the mystical writers of the Brahminic, Buddhistic,
Christian, and Mahometan sects. He must be a
whole man who writes a sound book on a theme so
deep as the religious joys of man,  his delight in
Nature, in man, and in God. But the false ideas
of the popular theory corrupt the faculties of noble
and great men. So, in the writings of Law and
Fenelon, of Taylor and Henry More, you find this
unhealthiness pervading what they do and say.
There is much you sympathize in, but much also
which offends a nice taste, and revolts the reason,
the affections, and all the high faculties of a sound
man. You may see the excess of this unhealthiness
in the works of St. Bridget or of St. Theresa, in
Molinos and Swedenborg, even in Taylor, in Feneion, and Augustine; in the dreams and fancied revelations of monks and nuns, when nature clamored
for her rights, or in the sermons and prayers of ascetic clergymen, whom a false idea of God and religion has driven to depravity of body and sickness of
the soul.
We may see the effects of this false idea on the
conduct and character of active men in a Methodist
camp-meeting; or in a form yet more painful, in the
pinched faces, and narrow, unnatural foreheads of




SOURCE OF JOY.              287
men and women early caught and imprisoned in
some of the popular forms of fear of God. I have
sometimes shuddered to hear such men talk of their
joy of religion, -a joy unnatural and shameful,
which delighted in the contemplation of torment as
the portion of mankind.
Read the life of St. Hugh, an Archbishop of Lyons. See in what his joys of religion consisted. If
any one spoke of news in his presence, he checked
them, saying, "This life is all given us for weeping
and penance, not for idle discourses." It was his
" constant prayer that God would extinguish in his
heart all attachment to creatures, that His pure love
might reign in all his affections."  "His love of
heavenly things made all temporal affairs seem
burdensome and tedious."   "Women he would
never look in the face, so that he knew not the
features of his own mother."  He continually recited the Psalter and the Lord's Prayer; the latter
on one occasion "three hundred times in a single
night!"
In saying all this, I do not wish to blame men.
I would rather write an apology for the religious
errors of Pagans or Christians, than a satire thereon. I only mention the fact. It is not a strange
one, for we find analogous errors in the history of
every department of human affairs. What dreams
of astrologers and alchemists came before the cool,




288         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
sober thought of chemists and astronomers! The
mistakes in religion are not greater in proportion to
the strength of the religious faculty and the greatness of the interest at stake, than the mistakes in
agriculture or politics. The theology of Boston is
not much worse than its " law and order " just now;
and they who in pulpits, administer the popular
theology, are not much more mistaken than they
who, in courts and jails, administer the public law.
But in religion these mistaken notions have been so
common, that the very name of religious joy is associated with superstition, bigotry, extravagance, madness. You attend a meeting "for conference and
prayer," and you come away a little disgusted, with
more pity than sympathy for the earnest men who
have so mistaken the nature of God, of man, and of
the relation between the two; who have so erred as
to the beginning of religion, its processes and its
result.  You pass thence to a meeting of philosophical men met for science, or philanthropic men
met for benevolence, and what a change!  Both
are equally earnest; but in the one all is hot, unnatural, restricted, and presided over by fear; in
the other all is cool, all is free, and there is no fear.
In consequence of this abuse, men often slight
the sentiment of religion, and deny the real and
sober joy which it naturally affords. This is a great




SOURCE OF JOY.             289
loss, for, setting aside the extravagance, the claim
to miraculous communion with God, putting aside
all ecstasy, as only the insanity of religious action,
it is true that, in its widest sense and in its highest form, religion is a source of the deepest and
noblest joys of man. Let us put away the childish things and look at the real joys of manly religion itself.
A true form of religion does not interfere with
any natural delight of man. True religion is normal life, not of one faculty alone, but of all in due
coordination. The human consciousness of the Infinite God will show itself, not merely in belief, or
prayer and thanksgiving, but by the legitimate action of every limb of the body and every faculty of
the spirit. Then all the legitimate appetites have
their place. Do you want the natural gratification
of the body? Religion bids you seek it in the natural and legitimate way, not in a manner unnatural
and against the body's law. It counts the body
sacred, as well as the soul, and knows that a holy
spirit demands a holy flesh. Thus it enhances even.
the delights of the body, by keeping every sense in;
its place. The actual commandments of God written on every fibre of human flesh, are not less au —
thoritative than the Ten which Jehovah is said to
have written on stone at Sinai.
25




290         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
Do you seek the active business of life? This
religion will bid you pursue your calling, hand-craft
or head-craft, and buy and sell and get gain, the
Golden Rule your standard measure, and all your
daily work a sacrament whereby you communicate
with man and God. Do you want riches, honor,
fame, the applause of men? This religion tells you
to subordinate the low aim to the high; to keep
self-love in its natural channel; to preserve the
integrity of your own spirit; and then, if you will
and can, to get riches, power, honor, fame, and the
applause of men, by honestly earning them all, so
that you shall be the manlier, and mankind the
richer, for all that you do and enjoy. Then the approbation of your own soul and the sense of concord with men and of unity with God, will add
a certain wholeness to your delight in the work of
your hands.
Do you desire the joys of the intellect working
in any or all its manifold forms of action?  The
world is all before you where to choose, and Providence your guide.  The law of God says, " Of
every tree of the field shalt thou eat. Nothing that
is natural shall harm  thee. Put forth thy hand
and try. Be not afraid that Truth or Search shall
ever offend God, or harm the soul of man."  Does
a new truth threaten an old church? It will build
up ten new ones in its stead. No man ever loved




SOURCE OF JOY.              291
truth too much, or had too much of it, or was too
diligent in the search therefor. To use the reason
for reasonable things is a part of religion itself.
Thus consciousness of God well developed in man
gives greater joy to the natural delights of the intellect itself, which it helps to tranquillize and render
strong.
You need the exercise of the moral faculties.
This religion will bid you trust your own conscience, never to fear to ask thereof for the everlasting right, and be faithful thereto. Justice will
not hurt you, nor offend God; and if your justice
pull down the old kingdom, with its statutes of
selfishness and laws of sin and death, it will build
up a new  and better state in its stead, the Commonwealth  of Righteousness, where the eternal
laws of God are reenacted into the codes of men,
laws of love and life. No man ever loved justice
too much, —his own rights, or the rights of men,:- or was too faithful to his own conscience. Loyalty to that is fealty to God; and the consciousness of Him enhances the moral delight of moral
men, as the intellectual joy of scientific and thoughtful men.
Do you seek the joy of the affections which
cling to finite objects of attraction, to wife and




292          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
child, brother and sister, parent and friend?  Religion will tell you it is impossible to love these
too much; that it is impossible to be too affectionate, or to be too wise or too just. No man can be
too faithful to his own heart, nor have, in general,
too much love. Love of the "creature" is part of
the service we owe the Creator; one of the forms of
love to God. Conscious piety will enhance the delight of mortal affections, and will greaten and beautify every form of love,- connubial, parental, and
filial, friendly and philanthropic love.
Nay, all these —the love of truth and beauty,
of justice and right, of men - are but parts of the
great integral piety, the love of God, the Author
of Truth, of Justice, and of Love.  The normal
delight in God's world, the animal joy in material
things, the intellectual in truth and beauty, the
moral in justice and right, the affectional delight
in the persons of men, the satisfactions of labor of
hand or head or heart, -all these are a part of
our large delight in God, for religion is not one
thing and life another, but the two are one. The
normal and conscious worship of the Infinite God
will enlarge every faculty, enhancing its quantity
and quality of delight.
Let me dwell yet longer on this affectional delight. Last Sunday I spoke of the Increase of
Power which comes of the religious use of the fac



SOURCE OF JOY.              293ulties.  One form  thereof I purposely passed by
and left for this hour,-the ability to love other
men.  Religion, by producing harmony with yourself, concord with men, and unity with God, prevents the excess of self-love, enlarges the power of
unselfish affection, increases the quantity of love,
and so the man has a greater delight in the welfare
of other men.
I will not say that this religion increases the
powers of instinctive  affection, except indirectly
and in general, as it enlarges the man's whole
quantity of being, and refines its quality.  Yet
much of the power of affection is not instinctive,
but the result of conscious and voluntary action.
It is not mere instinct which drives me unconsciously and bound to love a friend; I do it consciously, freely, because it suits the whole of me,
not merely one impulsive part.  The consciousness of my connection with God, of my obligation
to God, of his Providence watching over all,this, and the effort to keep every law He has written
in my constitution, enlarges my capability to love
men.
I pass by connubial love, wherein affection and
passion blend each its several bloom, and there are
still two other forms of conscious love.  One is
friendship, the other philanthropy.
In friendship I love a man  for his good and
25*




294          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
mine too. There is action on both sides; I take
delight in him, but only on condition that he takes
delight in me. I ask much of my friend, not only
gratitude and justice, but forbearance and patience
towards me; -yes, sacrifice of himself. I do this
not selfishly, not wilfully. I love my friend for
his character and his conduct, for what he is to
me and I am to him.  My friendship is limited,
and does not reach out so far as justice, which has
the range of the world. Who can claim  friendship of any one?  The New  England kidnapper
has a right to the philanthropy even of his victim;
but he seems to have a right to the friendship
only of pirates and men that would assassinate
the liberty of mankind. But no man is wholly
wicked and self-abandoned, and so has forfeited all
claim to the friendship of the noblest; and such is
the blessed wealth of the human heart, that it continually runs over with mercy for the merciless, and
love for the unlovely.
In philanthropy I love a man for his sake, not at
all for mine. I take the delight of justice and of
charity in him, but do not ask him to take any delight in me. I ask nothing of him, not even gratitude, nor justice; perhaps expect neither. I love
him because he is a man, and without regard to his
character and conduct; and would feed and clothe
and warm and bless the murderer, or even the Bos



SOURCE OF JOY.               295
ton kidnapper. Philanthropy makes its sun rise on
the evil and on the good, and sends its rain on the
just and on the unjust. Its circle is measured by its
power, not its will. It is not personal, limited in its
application to Robert or Marion, but universal as
justice, reaching to all, it joins the wayfaring Samaritan to his national enemy who had fallen among
thieves.
Now I wish to say that religion enlarges a man's
power of friendship and of philanthropy, and consequently enhances the delight of both. Look a moment at the joy of each.
The joy of friendship is a deep and beautiful delight.  Here you receive as well as give, get not
only from  yourself, as your unconsciousness becomes conscious, and the seed you planted for the
bread of another becomes a perfect flower for your
own eye and bosom; but you receive from another
self.  This is one of the dearest joys; it is the mutuality of affection, your delight in another's person,
and his delight in you; it is a reciprocity of persons. There are those we love not with instinctive
passion, as man and wife; nor with instinctive affection, as parent and child; nor with the love of philanthropy; but with emotions of another class, with
friendly love. It is delightful to do kind deeds for
such, and receive kind deeds from them.  Not that
you need or they need the gift; but'both the giv



296         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
ing. You need to give to them, they to give to
you. Their very presence is a still and silent joy.
After long intimacy of this sort, you scarce need
speech to communicate sympathy; the fellow-feeling has a language and tells its own tale. In loving a friend, I have all the joy of self-love without
its limitation. I find my life extending into another
being, his into me. So I multiply my existence. If
I love one man in this way, and he love me, I have
doubled my delight; if I love two, it is yet further
enlarged. So I live in each friend I add to myself;
his joys are mine and mine are his; there is a solidarity of affection between us, and his material delights give permanent happiness to me. As a man
enlarges his industrial power by material instruments, the wind and the river joined to him by skilful thought, so he enlarges his means of happiness
by each friend his affection joins to him. A man
with a forty-friend power would be a millionaire at
the treasury of love.
The joy of philanthropy is a high delight, worth
all the exaltations of St. Hugh, and the ecstasies of
St. Bridget and St. Theresa.  Compare it with the
rapture which Jonathan Edwards anticipates for the
"elect " in heaven, looking down upon the damned,
and seeing their misery, and making " heaven ring
with the praises of God's justice towards the wicked,
and his grace towards the saints!"  Such is the




SOURCE OF JOY.             297
odds betwixt the religion of nature and the theology
of the Christian Church.
There is a great satisfaction in doing good to
others, -to men that you never saw, nor will see,
-who will never hear of you, but not the less be
blessed by your bounty, - even in doing good to
the unthankful and the unmerciful.  You have
helped a poor woman in Boston out of the want
and wretchedness her drunken husband has brought
on her, and filled her house withal; you have delivered a slave out of the claw of the kidnapper, the
"barbarous and heathen kidnapper in Benguela," or
the" Christian and honorable kidnapper in Boston,"
commissioned, and paid for the function; you have
taken some child out of the peril of the. streets,
found him a home, and helped him grow up to be
a self-respectful and useful man; - suppose the
poor woman shall never know the name of her
benefactor, nor the slave of his deliverer, nor the
child of his saviour,- that you get no gratitude
from the persons, no justice from the public; you
are thought a fool for your charity, and a culprit for
your justice, the government seeking to hang you;
still the philanthropy has filled your bosom with
violets and lilies, and you run over with the delight thereof. You would be ashamed to receive
gratitude, or ask justice. "Father, forgive them! "
was the appropriate benediction of one of the great




298          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
masters of philanthropy. Do you look for reciprocal
affection?
" I have heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning."
The good Samaritan, leaving his "neighbor" who
had fallen among thieves well cared for at the inn,'
jogs home on his mule with a heart that kings
might envy; but when he comes again, if the man,
healed by his nursing, offers thanks, -" Nay," says
the Samaritan," nay, now, be still and say nothing
about it. It is all nothing; only human nature.  I
could not help it.  You would do the same!"
Such a man feeds his affection by such deeds of
love, till he has the heart of God in his bosom, and
a whole paradise of delight.  Meantime the Priest
and the Levite have hastened to the temple, and
offered their sacrifice, tithed their mint, their anise,
and their cumin, made broad their phylacteries and
enlarged the borders of their garments, and dropped
with brassy ring their shekels in the temple chest,
shoving aside the poor widow with her two mites,
which make a farthing; now they stand before the
seven golden candlesticks and pray, "Father, I
thank Thee that I am not like other men, who trust
in good works and the light of nature; I give tithes
of all that I possess. I thank Thee that I am one




SOURCE OF JOY.            299
of Thine Elect, and shall have glory when this
Samaritan goeth down to the pit."
I once knew a little boy in the country, whose
father gave him a half-dime to help the sufferers
at a fire in New Brunswick; the young lad dropped
his mite into the box at church, -it was his earliest alms, -with a deep delight which sweetened
his consciousness for weeks to come with the
thought of the good that his five cents would do.
What were all sweetmeats and dainties to this?
Our little boy's mother had told him that the good
God loved actions such as these, Himself dropping
the sun and moon into the alms-box of the world;
and the grave, sober father, who had earned the
silver with serious sweat, his broadaxe ringing in
the: tough oak of New  England, brushed a tear
out of his eye at seeing the son's delight in helping
men whom none of the family had ever seen.
Philanthropy begins small, and helps itself along,
sometimes by love of sheep and oxen, and dogs
and swine. Did not the great Jesus ride into the
holy city "on the foal of an ass"?  By and by
our philanthropist goes out to widest circles, makes
great sacrifice of comfort, of money, of reputation;
his philanthropic power continually grows, and an
inundation of delight fills up his mighty soul.
The shillings which a poor girl pays for missionaries to Burmah and Guinea are shillings which




300         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
bring more delight than all the gewgaws they could
buy.
I have seen a man buy baskets of cherries in a
foreign town, and throw them  by handfuls to the
little boys and. girls in the streets wholly unknown
to him. He doubtless got more joy from  that,
than if he had had the appetite of a miser, and
stomach enough to eat up all the cherries in the.valley of the Rhine.  Men of wealth, who use
money for philanthropy, to feed the poor, to build
hospitals and asylums, schools and colleges, get
more joy from this use thereof, than if they had
the pecuniary swallow and stomach of a gigantic
miser, and themselves eat up the schools and colleges, the hospitals and asylums, which others built.
They who build widows' houses, not they who
devour them, have the most joy thereof.
The man who devotes the larger wealth of the
mind, reason, understanding, imagination, with all
the treasures of culture and the graceful dignity
of eloquence, to serve some noble cause, despised
as yet, and sacrifices not money alone, but reputation, and takes shame as outward recompense for
truth and justice and love,- think you that he has
less delight than the worldly man well gifted, cultivated well, whose mind lies a prostitute to the
opinion of the mob, and is tricked off with the
ornaments of shame, and in office shines " the first




SOURCE OF JOY.             301
of bartered jades"?  Look about you in Boston,
and answer, ye that know! Go to the men who
sacrifice their intellect, their conscience, their affections, for place and a name, ask them what they
have got in exchange for their soul? and then go
to such as have left all for God and his law, and
ask them of their reward.
Now  religion enlarges this capacity for both
friendship and philanthropy, and so the quantity of
joy which comes thereof, the happiness of the affections.
This religion has delights peculiar to the religious faculty, the happiness of the Soul. I love
the Infinite God as the ideal of all perfection,beauty to the imagination, truth  to the reason,
justice to the conscience, the perfect person to the
affections, the Infinite and Self-faithful God to the
soul. With this there vanishes away all fear of
God, all fear of ultimate evil for any thing that is.,
If this-escape from fear of God were all, that alone
were a great thing. How men hate fear! From
the dreadful God of the popular theology, and its
odious immortality, they flee to annihilation; and
atheism  itself seems a relief. But this religion.
which grows out of the idea of the Infinite God
casts out all fear and the torment thereof.. I am
26




302        CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
content to be afraid of some men, stronger and
wickeder than I; I know  they can hurt me; I
know  they wish it; I know they will. To them
my truth is " error of the carnal reason;" my justice
is "violation of the law" of men; my love, philanthropic or friendly, is "levying war"; my religion
is "infidelity,"- " sin  against the Holy Ghost."
I fear these men; they turn their swine into my
garden to root up and tread down every little herb
of grace, or plant that flowers for present or for
future joy. These men may hang me, or assassinate me in the street. I will try to keep out of
their wicked way. If they will hurt me, I must
bear it as best I can. But the fear of such men
will not disturb me much. Their power is only for
a time. " Thus far, but no further," quoth Death to
the tyrant; and I am free.
But to fear God whom I cannot escape, whom
death cannot defend me from, that would indeed be
most dreadful. Irreligion is the fear of. God. It
takes two forms. In atheism, the, form of denial,
you fear withiout naming the object of horror, perhaps calling it Chance or Fate; in superstition, the
form of affirmation, you fear Him by name, believe
and tremble. Superstition and atheism are fellowtrunks from the same root of bitterness. I would
as soon worship in the wigwam of Odin and Thor,




SOURCE OF JOY.             303
as in the temple of Fear called by a Hebrew or a
Christian name.
With a knowledge of the Infinite  God, and with
a fair development of the religious faculties, you
cease to fear, you love. As nocturnal darkness, or
the gray mist of morn, is chased away before the
rising sun, so dread and horror flee off before the
footsteps of love. Instead of fear, a sense of complete and absolute trust in God comes in, gives you
repose and peace, filling you with tranquillity and
dear delight in God. Then I know not what a day
shall bring forth; some knave may strip me of my
house and home, an accident —my own or another's
fault - deprive me of the respect of men, and death
leave me destitute of every finite friend, the objects
of instinctive' or of voluntary love all scattered from
before my eyes; some hireling of the government, for
ten pieces of silver, may send me off a slave for all
my mortal life; decay of sense may perplex me,
wisdom shut out an eye and ear; and disease may
rack my frame. Still I am  not afraid. I know
what eternity will be. I appeal from man to God.
Forsaken, I am not alone, uncomforted, not comfortless. I fold my arms and smile at the ruin
which time has made, the peace of God all radiant
in my soul.
Let me look full in the face the evil which I meet
in the personal tragedies of private life, in the social




304          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
evils which darkly variegate this and all other great
towns; let me see monstrous political sin, dooming
one man to a throne because he has trod thousands
down to wretchedness and dirt; nay, let me see
such things as happen now in Boston.  I know no
sadder sight on all this globe of lands: for to-day a
brother-man is held in a dungeon by the avarice of
this city, which seeks to make him a slave, and he
out of his jail sends round a petition to the clergymen of Boston, asking their prayers for his unalienable rights,- a prayer which they will refuse, for
those "churches of Christ" are this day a " den of
thieves," shambles for the sale of human flesh.*
Let me look on all these things, still I am not dismayed.  I know, I feel, I am sure of this, that the
Infinite God has known it all, provided for it all;
that as He is all-powerful, all-wise, all-just, all-loving,
and all-holy too, no absolute evil shall ever come to
any child of his, erring or sinned against. I will do
all for the right: then, if I fail, the result abides
with God; it is His to care for and not mine. Thus
am I powerful to bear, as powerful to do. I know
of no calamity, irresistible, sudden, seemingly total,
but religion can abundantly defend the head and
heart against its harm.  So I can be calm.  De* The prophecy was only too true, but here and there remembered his God.




SOURCE OF JOY.               305
feated, and unable to rise, I will " lie low  in the
hand of the Father," smiliag with the delight of
most triumphant trust.
" These surface troubles come and go
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but Thee."
With this tranquillity of trust there comes a still,
a peculiar and silent joy in God.  You feel your
delight in Him, and His in you.  The man is not
beside himself, he is self-possessed and cool. There
is no ecstasy, no fancied "being swallowed up in
God;" but there is a lasting inward sweetness and
abiding joy.  It will not come out in raptures; it
will not pray all night, making much ado for nothing done; but it will fill the whole man with beatitudes, with delight in the Infinite God.  There will
be a calm and habitual peace, a light around the
mortal brow, but a light which passes from glory to
glory till it changes into perfect fulness of delicious
joy.  God gives to the loving in their sorrow or
their sleep.
Let us undervalue no partial satisfaction, which
may be had without the consciousness of God.  If
it be legitimate and natural to man, let it have its
place andits joy. Religion is not every thing. But
yet the happiness of this inner human world, the
26*




306          CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A,delight of loving God and absolutely trusting Him,
is plainly the dearest of all delights. I love the
world of sense, its beauty to the eye and ear; the
natural luxury of taste and touch. It is indeed a
glorious world,  the stars of earth, that gem  the
ground with dewy loveliness, the flowers of heaven,
whose amaranthine bloom  attracts alike the admiring gaze of clown or sage, and draws the lover's eye
while the same spirit is blooming also in his and
in another's heart. I love the world of science,the deeper loveliness which the mind beholds in
each eternal star, or the rathe violet of this April,day.  What a more wondrous wonder is the uniform force of Nature, whose constant modes of operation are all exact as mathematic law, and whence
the great minds of Kepler, Newton, and Laplace
gather the flowers of nature's art, and bind them up
in handfuls for our lesser wits!  I rejoice in the
world of men, in the all-conquering toil which sub-.ordinates matter unto man, making the river, ocean,
winds, to serve mankind; which bridles the lightning and rides it through the sky, and sails the
stormiest seas unharmed.  I rejoice in the statutes
which reenact the eternal laws of God, and administer justice betwixt man and man.  I delight in
ihuman love in all its forms, instinctive or voluntary,
iin friendship and philanthropy; the mutuality of
persons is a dear and sacred joy to me. But the




SOURCE OF JOY.              307
delight in God is yet more, -dearer than each of
these; onewe like not much to name.  Add to it
all these several delights, which get each a charm
from this consciousness of. God, and you taste and
see the real happiness of religion.
Religion without joy,   it is no religion. Superstition, the fear of God, might well be sad. The
devotees thereof seek their delight in  violating
the functions of the body and the spirit. In the
theological garden  the Tree of Life bears fruit
indeed, a few fair apples, but out of reach, which
no man can gather till death lift us on his shoulders,
and then they are not apples for a mortal mouth.
You turn off from the literature of this superstition,
and look on sunny Nature, on the minnow in the
sea, on the robin in the field, on the frog, the snake,
the spider, and the toad, and smile at sight of their
gladness in the world, and wish to share it yourself.
You turn to the literature which makes a mock at
all religion.  You find enough of it in Greece and
Rome at the decay of paganism, enough still in
brilliant France at the dissolution of Christian mythology, in the last century and in this. There also
is an attempt at joy, but the attempt is vain, and
the little life of men is full of wine and uproar and
scarlet women, is poor, unsatisfactory, and short,
rounded with bitterness' at the last.  The chief
tree in that garden blossoms bright enough, but it




308         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
bears only apples of Sodom for a body without a
soul, a here with no hereafter, in a world without
a God. In such a place the brilliance of genius is
only lightning, not light. In such company you
almost long for the iron age of theology and the
hard literature of the "divines," lean and old and
sour, but yet teaching us of a Will above the poor
caprice of men, of a Mind beyond this perishing
intellect, of an Arm which made men tremble indeed, but also upheld the world. At least there
is Duty in that grim creation, and self-denial for the
sake of God.
Things should not be so.  Sensuality is not
adequate delight for men who look to immortality. Religion is not at enmity with joy. No: it
is irreligion,- atheistic now  and now  superstitious. There is no tyranny in God. Man is not
a worm, the world a vale of tears. Tears enough
there are, and long will be, -the morning mist of
the human day. We can wipe off some of them, can
rend a little the cloud of ignorance and want and
crime, and let in the gladdening light of life. Nay,
grief and sorrow are the world's medicine, salutary
as such, and not excessive for the ill they come to
cure. But if we are to make them our daily food,
and call that angels' bread, surely it is a mistake
which the world of matter cries out upon, and
human nature itself forbids.




SOURCE OF JOY.             309
The development of religion in man is the condition of the highest happiness. Temperance, the
piety of the body, prepares that for the corporeal
joys, the humble in their place, the highest also in
their own; wisdom, the piety of mind, justice,
the piety of conscience, and love, the piety of the
affections, - the love of God with all our varied
faculties, -these furnish us the complete spiritual
joy which is the birthright of each man. It is the
function of religion to minister this happiness, which
comes of self-denial for the sake of God.
The joy of religion must be proportionate to the
purity of the feeling, the completeness of the idea,
and the perfection of the act. When all are as
they should be, what a joy is there for man! No
disappointment will have lasting power over you,
no sorrow destroy your peace of soul.  Even the
remembrance of sins past by will be assuaged by
the experience you thereby have, and by the new
life which has grown over them. The sorrows of
the world will not seem as death-pangs, but the
birth-pains of new  and holier life.  The sins of
mankind, the dreadful wars, the tyrannies of the
strong over the weak, or of the many over the
few, will be seen to be only the stumbling of this
last child of God learning to walk, to use his limbs
and possess himself of the world which waits to be
mastered by man's wisdom, ruled by man's justice,




310         CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A
directed by man's love, as part of the great human
worship of the Infinite God. The Past, the Present, and the Future will appear working together
for you and all mankind,  all made from  the
perfect motive of God, for a perfect end and as a
perfect means. You will know  that the providence of the Great Author of us all is so complete
and universal, that every wrong that man has suffered which he could not escape, every sorrow he
has borne that could not be resisted nor passed by,
every duty we have done, had a purpose to serve
in the infinite housekeeping of the universe, and
is warrant for so much eternal blessedness in the
world to come. You look on the base and wicked
men who seem as worms in the mire of civilization,
often delighting to bite and devour one another, and
you remark that these also are children of God;
that He loves each of them, and will suffer no
ancient Judas, nor modern kidnapper of men, to
perish; that there is no child of perdition in all the
family of God, but He will lead home his sinner
and his saint, and such as are sick with the leprosy
of their wickedness, "the murrain of beasts," bowed
down and not able to lift themselves up, He will
carry in his arms!
The joys of the flesh are finite, and soon run
through. Objects of passion are the dolls wherewith
we learn to use our higher faculties, and through all




SOURCE OF JOY.                   311
our life the joy of religion, the delight in God, becomes more and more.  All that ancient saints ever
had thereof, the peace which the world could not
give, the rest unto the soul, which Jesus spoke of,all these are for you  and  me, here and now  and
to-day, if we will.  Our own souls hunger for it,
God offers it to us all.  " Come and take," says the
Father of the world.
" While Thou, O my God, art my Help and Defender,
No cares can o'erwhelm me, no terrors appall;
The wiles and the snares of this world will but render
More lively my hope in my God and my All.
And when Thou demandest the life Thou hast given,
With joy will I answer Thy merciful call;
And quit Thee on earth, but to find Thee in heaven,
My Portion for ever, my God, and my All."




IX.
OF CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE. -Matt. ix. 13.
NOTHING in human experience is so lovely as the
consciousness of God; nothing so tranquillizing, elevating, beautifying. See it on a merely personal
scale in a man, imagine it on a national scale in a
great people, - the natural development of religion
into its various forms is one of the most beautiful
phenomena of the world. But, alas! men too often
love to meddle a little with nature; not simply to
develop, complete, and perfect what begun spontaneously,, but to alter after individual caprice, so that
the universal, eternal, and unchangeable force is
made to take the form of their personal, temporary,
and shifting caprice.
Thus in old gardens you may see pines, yew-trees,
and oaks clipped into fantastic and unnatural forms,
looking like any thing but trees, not works of nature,




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 313
but tricks of skill. A fan, a pyramid, or a peacock
is taken for the model of a tree, and the poor oak or
yew is teased into some approach to that alien type.
But the tree is always stinted, ugly, and short-lived
under such treatment. Pliant nature assumes the
form thrust on her, and then dies. So the savage,
who has not yet learned to clothe his body, colors it
with gall-nuts or ochre, tattooes his fancy upon his
skin, mutilates the members, and hangs " barbaric
pearl and gold'" where nature left no need nor room
for ornament. Civilized nations cut off the manly
beard, and scrimp and screw the female form, warping, twisting, distorting, and wasting the dear handiwork of God. So we see men, as those trees, walking in a vain show far astray from the guidance of
nature, looking as if " nature's journeymen had
made them, and not made them well, they imitate
humanity so abominably."
But man is not content to meddle with his body.
He must try his hand on the soul, warping and
twisting, tattooing and mutilating that also, coloring
it with ochre and gall-nuts of more astringent bite,
and hanging barbaric pendants thereon. Attempts
are made to interfere with the religious faculty, and
give it a conventional direction; to make it take on
certain forms of human caprice, not human nature.
Some monstrous fancy is adopted for the model
27




314  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
man, and then common men are clipped, and pruned,
and headed down, or bent in, and twisted into a
resemblance to that type. Nay, men are thought
to be religious, just as they conform to the unnatural abomination. " God likes none but the clipped
spirit," quoth the priest. "No natural man for Him.
Away with your whole men. Mutilation is the test
of piety!"
If some Apelles or Michael Angelo could paint
the religious condition of mankind, and represent by
form and color to the eye all this mutilation, twisting, distorting, and tattooing of the invisible spirit,
what a sight it would be, - these dwarfs and cripples, one-legged, one-eyed, one-handed, and halfheaded, half-hearted men! what a harlequin-show
there would be! what moley on men's shoulders!
what caps and bells on reverend heads, and tattooing
which would leave Australia far behind! What
strange jewels are the fashionable theological opinions of Christendom! Surely such liveries were
never invented before! In that picture men would
look as striped as the Pope's guard. And if some
Adamitic men and women were also represented,
walking about in this varicolored paradise of theology, arrayed in the natural costume of religion,
"when unadorned, adorned the most," how different
they would seem! Truly that gibbeting of theological folly in a picture would be a more instructive




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 315
" Last Judgment " than even the great Michael ever
thought of painting.
In all forms of religion hitherto there has been
noticed, not merely the natural difference between
right and wrong, good and evil, but also an artificial
and conventional difference between things sacred
and things profane.  Some things are deemed common and laical; others are called holy and clerical.
This conventional distinction begins early, extends
wide, and will outlast you and me a great many
years. Thus, what is now-a-days said under oath
is officially thought a holy and clerical sort of truth;
while what is said without oath, though equally
correspondent with facts, is officially considered only
a common and laical sort of truth.  Some persons,
as atheists and such as deny the immortality of
the soul, are thought incapable of this clerical truth,
and so not allowed to swear, or otherwise testify, in
court.
In earlier ages of the world, and even now, this
conventional distinction between laical and clerical,
sacred and profane, applies to places, as groves, hilltops, temples, and the like; to times, as new moons
with one, full moons with another, Friday with the
Turks, Saturday with the Jews, Sunday with the
Christians; to things, as statues of saints and deities, the tools of public worship; to persons, and




316  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
some are set apart from mankind as "the Lord's
lot," and deemed holy; to actions, some of which
are reckoned pleasing to God, not because they are
naturally right, good, beautiful, or useful, but only
as conventionally sacred; and to opinions, which for
the same reason were pronounced revealed, and so
holy and clerical.
The laws of the land, for a long time, observed
this artificial distinction. Thus a blow struck in a
church or temple brought a severer punishment on
the offender than if given elsewhere. Even now
in Boston it is lawful to " gamble," except on Saturday night and Sunday; and all common work on
that day is penal. Formerly it was legally thought
worse to steal church property than any other. To
rob a beggar was a small thing; it was a great sin
to steal from a meeting-house. To take a whole
loaf from a baker's basket was a trifle, but to steal
the consecrated wafer from the church-box brought
the  offender to the stake.  Says Charlemagne,
" Less mercy is to be shown to men who rob and
steal from the church, than to common thieves." In
New England, until lately, for striking a clergyman
a man was punished twice as much as for striking a
layman; not because a bishop is to be blameless,
" no striker," and so less likely, and less able, to
retaliate, but because he is a holy person. Not long
ago there was no penalty in this State for disturbing




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 317
a moral meeting, but a severe one for disturbing a
religious meeting. Opinions connected with religion have had laws to defend them. It was once a
capital crime to deny the Trinity, or the inspiration
of the Song of Solomon, while a man might deny
all the axioms of Euclid, all the conclusions of science, and the law let him alone. It seems that
these artificial and foreign " sacred things " cannot
take care of themselves so well as the indigenous
"things of this world." Religion was thought to
extend to certain places, times, things, persons, actions, and opinions, and the law gave them a peculiar protection; but religion was not thought to
extend much further.  So the law  stopped there.
About three hundred years ago, an Italian sculptor
was burned alive, in Spain, for breaking a statue
he had himself made, being angry because the customer would not pay the price for it. The statue
was a graven image of the Virgin Mary. Had it
been the image of his own mother, he might have
ground it to powder if he liked, or he might have
beat his own living wife, and had no fault found
with him.
There was a deeper reason for this capricious distinction than we sometimes think. Religion ought
to be the ruler in all the affairs of men; but before
we come to the absolute religion, which will one
day do this, men begin with certain  particular
27 




318  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
things which they claim as divine. Religion is to
have eminent domain over them, while over other
things it has a joint jurisdiction with " the world."
It was well that their idea of religion went as far as
it did. In the Middle Ages, if a fugitive slave fled
to the Catholic Church and got to the altar, his masters had no legal right to touch him but by permission of the priest.  The bishop interfered, made
terms with the masters, and then delivered him up
or not as they promised well or ill. The spirit of
religion was supposed to rule in the church, and to
protect the outcast.  Men counselled wiser than
they knew. It was a good thing that religion, such
a rude notion as men had of it, prevailed in that
narrow spot.  When the tyrant would not respect
God in all space, it was well that he should tremble
before the sanctuary of a stone altar in a meetinghouse.  He would not respect a man, let him learn
by beginning with a priest. If a murderer or a traitor took refuge in the heathen temples, nobody could
drive him away or disturb him, for only God had
jurisdiction in the holy place.  So was it with the
Hebrew  cities of refuge: without, the atrocity of
the world prevailed; within was the humanity of
religion. The great begins small.
I believe there is no nation acquainted with fire'but makes this artificial distinction. It is the first
feeble attempt of the religious faculty to assume




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 319
power in the outward world; in due time it will
extend its jurisdiction over all time and space, over
all things, all thoughts, all men, all deeds.
It is curious to see how this faculty goes on enlarging its territory: one day religion watches over
the beginning of human life; then over its end;
next over its most eminent events, such as marriage,
or the entrance upon an office, making a will, or
giving testimony, all of which are connected with
some act of religion. You see what it all points
towards, - a coordination of all human faculties with
the religious. Here is the great forest of human life,
- a tangled brushwood, full of wild appetites and
prowling calculations,- to be cleared up. Religion
hews down a few trees, burns over a little spot, puts
in a few choice seeds, and scares off therefrom the
wild beasts of appetite, the cunning beasts of calculation. This is only the beginning of clearing up
the whole forest. What pains the savage in New
England took with his little patch of artichokes,
beans, pumpkins, and corn!' With his rude tools,
how poorly he dug- and watered it, and for what a
stingy harvest! He often chose the worst spot, he
knew no better, and got but small return, not knowing how to make bread out of the ground. His
garden was a very little patch in the woods, and
looked ridiculous beside the square leagues of wild
woodland, a howling wilderness, that reached from




320  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
the Kennebec to the Mississippi. But it was the
first step towards cultivating the whole continent.
So is it with the sacred things of the Hottentot
and the Hebrew, the Caffre and the Christian. Let
us not despise the rude commencement of great
things.
To simplify the matter, let us consider only the
Actions pronounced religious.  Certain deeds are
selected and declared sacred, not on account of their
natural usefulness or beauty, but by some caprice.
These are declared the "ordinances of religion," the
" sacraments " thereof,  things which represent and
express religion, - which it is pronounced religious
to do, and irreligious not to do. If there is a national form of religion, then there is a national
sacrament, established by authority; so a social
sacrament for society, established, like the "law of
honor,' by custom, the tacit consent of society.
Thus is there a domestic sacrament for the family,
and a personal ordinance of religion for the individual man. Accordingly, these conventional actions
come to be thought the exclusive expression of religion, and therefore pleasing to God; they are not
thought educational, means of growth, but final, the
essential substance of religion. Some man is appointed to look after the performance of these actions,
and it is thought desirable to get the greatest possi



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 321
ble number of persons to participate in them; and
he that turns many to these conventional sacraments
is thought a great servant of God.
Look at some of these artificial sacraments. The
Indians of New England left tobacco or the fat of
the deer on the rocks, an offering to the Great Spirit.
With them it was an "ordinance of religion," and
stood for an act of piety and morality both. The
clerical Powwows recommended the action to the
people. What a time they had of it, those red savages here in the woods! It was thought impious
not to perform the ritual act; but their religion did
not forbid its votary to lie, to steal, to torture his foe
with all conceivable cruelty.
Two thousand years ago our Teutonic fathers in
the North of Europe worshipped a goddess named
Hertha. They had a forest consecrated to her on
an island; therein was a sacred image of her, which
was, now and then, carried about the country, on a
carriage drawn by cows, -the statue covered with
cloth and hid from  sight.  War was suspended
wherever the chariot came, and weapons of iron put
out of sight. It was then washed in a certain lake;
and, to shroud the whole in grim mystery, the priests
who had performed the ritual act were drowned in
the same lake. This was the great national sacrament of the people.  It was wholly artificial, neither
useful nor beautiful.  The statue was an idol of




322  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
wood; the cows who drew it were no better than
other cows. There was nothing holy in the image,
the grove, or the ceremony; the drowning of the
priests was a cruel butchery.
As a sacrament, the New-Hollander cuts off the
last joint of the little finger of his son's left hand;
it is an offering to God, who has made the finger a
joint too long for piety.
The Hebrews had their outward ordinances of
religion, -two personal sacraments of universal obligation, binding on each man, - circumcision, and
rest on the Sabbath. There were two more national
sacraments, binding on the nation, -the formal
worship of Jehovah, in Jerusalem, at stated times,
and by a prescribed ritual; and the celebration of
the three national festivals. These were the sacraments of religion. To eat the paschal lamb was a
"virtue," to taste swine's flesh a " sin."  It was a
capital crime to heal a sick man on Saturday. All
these were artificial. Circumcision was a bad thing
in itself, and gets its appropriate hit in the New
Testament. Rest on the seventh day was no better
than on the first; no better than work on the second;
and worship in Jerusalem, at that time, and by that
form, no better than worship at Jericho, by another
form, and at a different time. The three feasts were
no better than the festivals of Easter and of Yule.
Yet those things were made the tests of piety and of




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 323
morality. Not to attend to them was deemed impiety against God. The Hebrew priest took great
pains to interest the people. in all this matter, to
have the sacrifices offered, circumcision performed,
the Sabbath and the feasts kept. He who hobbled
the most in this lame way, and on these artificial
crutches, was thought the greatest priest. What a
reputation did puritanical Nehemiah get by his zeal
in these trifles! But when Jesus of Nazareth came,
his heart full of natural religion, he made way with
most of these ordinances.
Amongst Christians in general there is one specific sacramental opinion,- that Jesus of Nazareth is the only Son of God. The opinion itself
is of no value. You may admit all the excellence
of Jesus, and copy it all, and yet never have the
opinion. I do not find that the historical person,
Jesus, had any such opinion at all.  Nay, the
opinion is an evil, for it leads men to take this
noble man and prostrate their mind and conscience
before his words; just as much as Jesus is elevated
above the human is man sunk below it. But for
ages, in the Church, this has been thought the one
thing needful to make a man a Christian, to make
him "pious" and acceptable to God, - the great
internal ordinance and subjective sacrament of religion.
In the Catholic Church there is another sacra



324  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
mental opinion distinctive of that Christian sect,
-the belief that the Roman Church is divine and
infallible. The Protestants have also their distinctive, sacramental opinion, - that the Scriptures are
divine and infallible.
The consistent Catholic tells you  there is no
salvation without the belief of his sacramental doctrine; consistent Protestants claim the same value
for their Shibboleth.  So a man is to be "saved,"
and "reconciled with God" by faith; a general
faith, —the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the
only Son of God; a particular faith, - the belief in
the divine and infallible Church, or the divine and
infallible Scriptures.
Then the Catholics have certain additional outward sacraments, which are subsidiary, and called
the "ordinances of religion,"- such as baptism,
confirmation, penance, extreme unction, and  the
like.  The Protestants have likewise their additional outward sacraments subsidiary to the other,
and which are their "ordinances of religion,"such as bodily presence at church, which is enjoined
upon all, and is the great external artificial sacrament of the Protestants; baptism for a few; communion for a selecter few; and belief in all the
doctrines of the special sect,- an internal sacrament which is actually enjoyed by only the smallest
portion of the selectest few.




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 325
Now  all of these are purely artificial sacraments. They are not good' in themselves. Each
of them  has once had an educational value for
mankind; some of them still have, to a portion of
mankind. But they are not valued for their tendency to promote natural piety and natural morality, only as things good in themselves; not as;
means to the grace and helps to the glory of religion, but as religion itself.  Ecclesiastically it is
thought just as meritorious a thing to attend the
preaching of a dull, ignorant, stupid fellow, who
has nothing to teach and teaches it, as to listen to
the eloquent piety of a Fenelon, Taylor, or Buckminster, or to the beautiful philanthropy of St.
Roch, Oberlin, or Channing.  Bodily presence in
the church being the sacrament, it is of small consequence what bulk of dulness presses the pulpit
while the sacrament goes on. There is a "real
presence," if naught else be real. An indifferent
man baptized with water is thought a much better
" Christian" than a man full of piety and morality
but without the elemental sprinkling.
If you ask a New England Powwow for proof
of the religious character of a red man, he would
have cited the offering of tobacco to the Great
Spirit; a Teutonic priest would refer to the reverence of his countrymen for the ceremony just
spoken of; a New-Hollander would dwell on the
i28




326  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
devotion  of his neighbors, and  show  the little
fingers cut off; a Hebrew would expatiate on the
sacrament of circumcision, of Sabbath-keeping, of
attendance upon the formal sacrifice at Jerusalem,
the observance of the three feasts, and abstinence
from swine's flesh; the Christian dwells on his distinctive sacramental opinion, that Jesus is the Son
of Jehovah.  Ask the Catholic  priests for proof
that Joseph is a Christian, they will tell you, " He
believes in the divine and infallible Roman Church,
and receives its sacraments;" ask the Protestant
priests for a proof of their brother's piety, they will
refer to his belief in the divine and infallible Scriptures, to his attendance at church, his baptism with
water, his communion in wine and bread; and, if
he is an eminent " saint," to his belief in all the
technical opinions of his sect. True, they may all
add other things which belong to real religion, but
you will find that these artificial sacraments are
the things relied on as proofs of religion, of Christianity, the signs of acceptableness with God, and
of eternal bliss. The others are only " of works," 
these "of faith;"  one of " natural religion," the
next of "revealed religion;" morality is provisional,
and the sacraments a finality.
Accordingly, great pains are taken to bring men
to these results.  If a minister does this to large
numbers, he is called "an eminent servant of the




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 327
Lord,"- that is, a  great circumciser, a great
sprinkler or plunger. Francis Xavier "converted"
thousands of men to what he called Christianity;
they took the sacrament of belief, and of baptism,
- in due time the others; and Francis was made a
saint. But it does not appear that he made them
any better men, better sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, better neighbors and friends. He only brought
them to the artificial sacrament. It is often the
ambition of a Protestant minister to extend the
jurisdiction of his artificial sacraments, to bring
men to baptism and communion, not to industry,
temperance, and bodily well-being; not to wisdom,
justice, friendship, and philanthropy; not to an
absolute love of God, a joyous, absolute faith in
the Dear Mother of us all.
Let us do no injustice to those poor, leaky vessels of worship which we have borrowed from the
Egyptians to whom  we were once in bondage.
They all have had their use.  Man sets up his
mythologies and his sacraments to suit his condition of soul at the time. You cannot name a ceremony connected with religion, howsoever absurd or
wicked it may appear, but once it came out of the
soul of some man who needed it; and it helped him
at the time. The tobacco offered to Hobomock at
Narragansett, the procession of Hertha in Pannonia,




328  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
the ritual mutilation in New  Holland, in Judea,
or, still worse, in Phrygia and Crete, all once had
their meaning. Nay, human sacrifice was once the
highest act of worship which some dark-minded
savage could comprehend, and in good faith the
victim was made ready at Mexico or at Moriah.
But the best of them are only educational, not final;
and the sooner we can outgrow those childish
things, the better.
Men often mock at such things. What mouths
Arnobius and Augustine made at the heathen superstitions, taking their cue from  pagan Lucian of
Samosata, the prince of scoffers; they have given
the face of Christendom an anti-Pagan twist which
it keeps to this day. How Voltaire and his accomplished coadjutors repeated the mock, at the cost of
the followers of Augustine and Arnobius! This is
hardly wise, and not reverent. Those things are to
be regarded as the work of children, who have their
snow-houses in winter, their earth-houses in summer, their games and plays,-trifles to us, but serious things to the little folk; of great service in the
education of the eye and hand,    nay, of the understanding itself. How the little boy cries because
he cannot spin his top like the older brothers  He
learns to spin it, and is delighted with its snoring
hum; learning skill by that, he by and by goes on
to higher acts of boyish life. So is it with these




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 329
artificial sacraments. Xavier brought a new top to
the men of India; Charlemagne slew the Saxons
who would not accept his, - as rude boys force the
little ones from old to new sports.
It is no evil to have some things of the sort; no
more than it is for a boy to ride a stick before he
can mount a horse; or for a little girl to fill her arms
with a Nuremberg baby before she can manage human children. Only the evil is, that these things
are thought the real and natural sacrament of religion; and so the end thereof is lost in the means.
That often happens, and is fatal to religious growth.
If the boy become a man, still kept to his wooden
stick, counting it a real horse, better than all the
trotters and pacers in Connecticut, if he had stables
for sticks in place of steeds, and men to groom and
tend his wooden hobby; if the girl, become a woman now, still hugged her doll from  Nuremberg,
making believe it was a child,    loved it better than
sons and daughters, and left her own baby to dandle
a lump of wood, counting a child only provisional,
and the doll a finality, —then we should see the
same error that was committed by Xavier and
others, and repeated by clergymen and whole troops
of Christians. I have seen assemblies of Christian
divines, excellent and self-denying men, in earnest
session and grave debate, who seemed to me only
28*




330  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
venerable boys riding cockhorse on their grandam's
crutch.
The general Christian belief, that Jesus was the
Son of God, is now  no spiritual sacrament; the
specific belief of the Catholic or Protestant at this
day is worth no more. Nay, all these stand in the
way of the human race, and hinder our march. So
the outward Christian sacraments - baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, penance, and the
rest — seem to me only stones of stumbling in the
way of mankind; they are as far from the real ordinances of religion as dandling a doll is from the
mother's holy duty.
The natural and real ordinance of religion is in
general a manly life, all the man's faculties of body
and spirit developed or developing in their natural
and harmonious way, the body ruled by the spirit,
its instincts all in their places, the mind active, the
conscience, the affections, the soul, all at work in
their natural way.  Religion is the sacrament of
religion; itself its ordinance. Piety and goodness
are its substance, and all normal life its form. The
love of God and the love of man, with all that
belongs thereto, worship with every limb of the
body, every faculty of the spirit, every power we
possess over matter or men,- that is the sacra



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 331
mental substance of religion; a life obedient to the
love of God and of man, -that is the sacramental
form of religion. All else is means, provisional;
this the end, a finality. Thus my business, my
daily work with the hand, if an honest and manly
work, is the ordinance of religion to my body; seeking and expressing truth and beauty is the ordinance
of religion to my mind; doing justice to all about
me is the moral ordinance of religion; loving men
is the natural sacrament of the affections; holiness
is the natural ordinance of the soul. Putting all
together, - my internal consciousness of piety and
goodness, my outward life which represents that, is
the great natural sacrament, the one compendious
and universal ordinance. Then my religion is not
one thing, and my life another; the two are one.
Thus religion is the sacrament of religion, morality
the test of piety.
If you believe God limited to one spot, then
that is counted specifically holy; and your religion
draws or drives you thither. If you believe that
religion demands only certain particular things,
they will be thought sacramental, and the doing
thereof the proof of religion. But when you know
that God is infinite, is everywhere, then all space
is holy ground; all days are holy time; all truth is
God's word; all persons are subjects of religious
duty, invested with unalienable religious rights,




332  CONVENTIONAL AND'NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
and claiming respect and love as fellow-children
of the same dear God. Then, too, all work becomes sacred and venerable; common life, your
highest or your humblest toil, is your element of
daily communion with men, as your act of prayer is
your communion with the Infinite God.
This is the history of all artificial sacraments.
A man rises with more than the ordinary amount of
religion; by the accident of his personal character,
or by some circumstance or event in his history, he
does some particular thing as an act of religion.
To him it is such, and represents his feeling of penitence, or resolution, or gratitude, or faith in God.
Other men wish to be as religious as he, and do
the same thing, hoping to get thereby the same
amount of religion. By and by the deed itself is
mistaken for religion, repeated again and again.
The feeling which first prompted it is all gone,
the act becomes merely mechanical, and thus of no
value.
Thousands of years ago some man of wicked
ways resolved to break from them and start anew,
converted by some saint. He calls the neighbors
together at the side of the Euphrates, the Jordan,
or the Nile, -— elements which he deems divine,
- and plunges in: " Thus I will wipe off all ancient sin," says he; "by this act I pledge my



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 333
self to a new  life, — this holy element is witness
to my vow; let the saints bear record!"   The
penitence is real, the resolution is real, the act of
self-baptism  means something. By and by other
penitent men do the same, from the same motive,
struck by his example. Crowds look on from
curiosity; a few idly imitate the form; then many
from fashion. Soon it is all ceremony, and means
nothing. It is the property of the priest; it is
cherished still, and  stands in  place of religion.
The single, momentary dispensation of water is
thought of more religious importance than the
daily  dispensation  of righteousness.  Men  go
leagues long on pilgrimage, —to dip them  in the
sacred stream, and return washed, but not clean;
baptized, but neither beautiful nor blameless. At
length it is thought that baptism, the poor, outward act, atones for a life of conscious sin. Imperial
Constantine, hypocritical and murderous, mourning that the Church will not twice baptize, is converted, but cunningly postpones his plunge till old
age, that he may sin his fill, then dip and die clean
and new.
So is it with all artificial forms. When they
become antiquated, the attempt to revive them, to
put new life therein, is always useless and unnatural; it is only a show, too often a cheat. At
this day the routine of form  is valued most by




334  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
those who care only for the form, and tread the
substance underneath their feet. Put the wig of
dead men's hair on your bald head, it is only a
barber's cap, not nature's graceful covering, and
underneath, the hypocritic head lies bald and bare.
Put it on your head if you will, but do not insist
that little children and fair-haired maids shall shear
off the the locks of nature, and hide their heads
beneath your deceitful handiwork.  The boy is
grown up to manhood, he rides real horses; nay,
owns, tames, and rears them  for himself.  How
idle to ask him  to mount again his hobby, or
to ride cockhorse on his grandam's crutch once
more!  You may galvanize the corpse into momentary and convulsive action, not into life. You
may baptize men by the thousand, plunging them
in the Jordan and Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, and
Irrawaddy, if you will, surpassing even Ignatius
and Francis Xavier. Nay, such is the perfection
of the arts, that, with steam  and Cochituate to
serve you, you might sprinkle men in battalions,
yea, whole regiments at a dash. What boots it all?
A drop of piety is worth all the Jordan, Euphrates,
Indus, Ganges, Irrawaddy,-worth all the oceans
which the good God ever made.
Men love dramatic scenes. Imagine, then, a troop
of men - slave-traders, kidnappers, and their crew -
come up for judgment at the throne of Christ. " Be



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 335
hold your evil deeds!" cries Jesus in their ears.
"Dear Lord," say they, "speak not of that; we
were all baptized, in manhood or in infancy, gave
bodily presence at a church, enrolled our names
among the priest's elect, believed the whole creed,
and took the sacrament in every form. What
wouldst thou more, dear Christ?  Dost thou ask
provisional morality of us? Are not these things
ultimate, the finality of salvation? "
I always look with pain on any effort to put the
piety of our times into the artificial sacraments of
another and a ruder age. It is often attempted,
sometimes with pure and holy feelings, with great
self-denial; but if is always worthless. The new
wine of religion must be put into new bottles. -See
what improvements are yearly made in science, in
agriculture, weaving, ship-building, in medicine, in
every art. Shall there be none in religion, none in
the application of its great sentiments to daily life?
Shall we improve only in our ploughs, not also in
the forms of piety?
At this day great pains are taken to put religion
into artificial sacraments, which, alas! have no connection with a manly life. I do not know of a score
of ministers devoting their time and talents solely to
the advancement of natural piety and natural morality. I know of hundreds who take continual pains
to promote those artificial sacraments, - earnest,




336  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
devout, and self-denying men. Why is this so?  It
is because they think the ceremony is religion; not
religion's accidental furniture, but religion itself. It
is painful to see such an amount of manly and
earnest effort, of toil and self-denial and prayer, devoted to an end so little worth.  The result is very
painful, more so than the process itself.
We call ourselves a Christian people, a religious
nation.  Why?  Are we a religious people because
the heart. of the nation is turned towards God and
his holy law?  The most prominent churches just
now have practically told us, thht there is no law of
God above the statute politicians write on parchment in the Capitol; that Congress is higher than
the Almighty, the President a finality; and that
God must hide his head behind the Compromise!
Is it because the highest talent of the nation, its
ablest zeal, its stoutest heroism, is religious in its
motive, religious in its aim, religious in its means,
religious in its end?  Nobody pretends that.  A
respectable man would be thought crazy, and called
a "fanatic," who should care much for religion in
any of its higher forms.  Self-denial for popularity
and  for money or office, — that is common; it
abounds in every street.  Self-denial for religion,is that so common?  Are we called Christians because we value the character of Jesus of Nazareth,
and wish to be like him?  Is it the ambition of cal



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 337
culating fathers, that their sons be closely like the
friend of publicans and sinners? Nay, is it the ambition of reverend and most Christian clergymen to
be like him? - I mean, to think with the freedom
he thought withal; to be just with such severe and
beauteous righteousness; to love with such affection, - so strong, yet so tender, so beautiful, so wide,
so womanly and deep? Is it to have faith in God
like his absolute trust; a faith in God's person and
his function too; a faith in truth, in justice, in holiness, and love; a faith in God as Cause and Providence, in man as the effect and child of God? Is it
the end of laymen and clergymen to produce such a
religion, —to build up and multiply Christians of
that manly sort?
Compliance with forms is made the test of piety,
its indispensable condition. These forms are commonly twofold: liturgical,  compliance with the
ritual; dogmatical, - compliance with the creed. It
is not shown that the rite has a universal, natural
connection with piety; only that it was once historically connected with a pious man. Nobody thinks
that circumcision, baptism, or taking the Lord's supper, has a natural and indispensable connection with
piety; only it is maintained that these things have
been practised by pious men, and so are imposed on
others by their authority. It is not shown that the
29




338  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
creed has its foundation in the nature of man, still
less in the nature of God; only that it rested once
in the consciousness of some pious man, and has
also been imposed on us by authority. So, it is not
shown that these tests have any natural connection
with religion; only that they once had an historical connection; and that, of course, was either temporary, naturally ending with the stage of civilization which it belonged to, or even personal, peculiar
to the man it begun with.
Yet it is remarkable how much those temporary
or mere personal expedients are set up as indispensable conditions and exclusive tests of piety. The
Catholic Church, on the whole, is an excellent institution; Christendom could no more do without it,
than Europe dispense with monarchies; but the
steadfast Catholic must say, " Out of the Church
there is no piety, no religion beyond the Church's
ritual and creed." The Protestant churches are, on
the whole, an excellent institution; Christendom
could no more dispense with them, than New England with her almshouses and jails; but the steadfast
Protestant will say, " There can be no piety without
accepting the Bible as the word of God, no saving
religion without faith in the letter of Scripture."
Not only has the Catholic his Shibboleth, and the
Protestant his, but each sect its own. The Calvinist
says, " There is no piety without a belief in the Trin



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 339
ity."  The Unitarians say, " There is no piety without a belief in the miracles of the New Testament.'
The Jews require a knowledge of Moses; Mahometans, a reverence for their prophet; and Christians,
in general, agree there is no " saving piety " without
submissive reverence to Christ. The late Dr. Arnold, a most enlightened and religious man, declared
that he had no knowledge of God except as manifested through Jesus Christ. Yet all the wide world
over, everywhere, men know of God and worship
Him, —the savage fearing, while the enlightened
learns to love.
Since compliance with the ritual and the creed is
made the sole and exclusive test of piety, religious
teachers aim to produce this compliance in both
kinds, and succeeding therein, are satisfied that
piety dwells in their disciples' heart. But the ritual
compliance may be purely artificial; not something
which grows out of the man, but sticks on. The
compliance with the doctrine may be apparent, and
not real at all. The word belief is taken in a good
many senses. It does not always mean a total experience of the doctrine, a realizing sense thereof;
not always an intellectual conviction. They bften
are the best believers of the creed who have the
least experience in the love of God, but little intellect, and have made no investigation of the matter
credited. Belief often means only that the believer




340  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
does not openly reject the doctrine he is said to
hold. So the thing thus believed is not always a
new branch growing out of the old bole; nor is it a
foreign scion grafted in, and living out of the old
stock, as much at home as if a native there, and
bearing fruit after its better kind; it is merely stuck
into the bark of the old tree, -nay, often not even
that, but only lodged in the branches,- fruitless,
leafless, lifeless, and dry as a stick, - a deformity,
and without use.
In this way it comes to pass that compliance with
the rite, and belief in a doctrine, which in some
men were the result of a long life of piety and hard
struggle, actually mean nothing at all. So that the
ritual and the creed have no more effect in promoting the "convert's" piety and morality, than
would belief in the multiplication-table and the
habit of saying it over. You are surprised that the
doctrines of Christ do not affect the Christian, and
ceremonies which once revolutionized the heart they
were born in, now leave the worshipper as cold as
the stone beneath his knee. Be not astonished at
the result.  The marble does not feel the commandments which are graven there; the communion chalice never tastes the consecrated wine.
The marble and metal are only mechanical in their
action; it was not meant that they should taste or
feel.




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 341
Then piety, as a sentiment, is taken as the whole
of religion; its end is in itself. The tests, liturgical
or dogmatic, show that piety is in the man; all he
has next to do is to increase the quantity. The
proof of that increase is a greatening of love for the
form  and for the doctrine; the habit of dawdling
about the one and talking about the other. The
sentiment of religion is allowed to continue a sentiment, and nothing more; soon it becomes less, a
sentimentalism, a sickly sentiment which will never
beget a deed.
It is a good thing to get up pious feeling; there
is no danger we shall have too much of that. But
the feeling should lead to a thought, the thought to
a deed, else it is of small value; at any rate, it does
not do all of its work for the individual, and nothing for any one beside. This religious sentimentality is called Mysticism or Pietism, in the bad
sense of those two words. In most of the churches
which have a serious purpose, and are not content
with the mere routine of office, it is a part of the
pastor's aim to produce piety, the love of God.
That is right, for piety, in its wide sense, is the
foundation of all manly excellence. But in general
they seem to know only these liturgical and dogmatic tests of piety; hence they aim to have piety
put in that conventional form, and reject with scorn
29 




342  CO-NVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
all other and natural modes of expressing love to
God.
It is a good thing to aim to produce piety, a.great good: an evil, to limit in this way; a great
evil, not to leave it free to take its natural form; a
very great evil, to keep it indoors so long, that it
becomes sick and good for nothing, not daring to go
out at all.
It is remarkable how often ecclesiastical men
make this mistake. They judge a man to be religious or otherwise, solely by this test. You hear
strict ministers speak of a layman as an "amiable
-man," but " not pious."  They do not know that
amiableness is one form of natural piety, and that
the more piety a man gets, the more amiable he
becomes. The piety which they know has no connection with honesty, none with friendship, none
with philanthropy; its only relations are with the
ritual and creed.  When the late John Quincy
Adams died, his piety was one topic of commendation in most of the many sermons preached in
memory of the man. What was the proof or sign
-of that piety?  Scarcely any one found it in his
integrity, which had not failed for many a year; or
his faithful attendance on his political duty; or his
unflinching love of liberty, and the noble war the
aged champion fought for the unalienable rights




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 343
of man. No! They found the test in the fact that
he was a member of a church; that he went to
meeting, and was more decorous than most men
while there; that he daily read the Bible, and repeated each night a simple and beautiful little
prayer, which mothers teach their babes of grace.
No "regular minister," I think, found the proof of
his piety in his zeal for man's welfare, in the cleanness of his life, and hands which never took a bribe.
One, I remember, found a sign of that piety in the
fact, that he never covered his reverend head till
fairly out of church 
You remember the Orthodox judgment on Dr.
Channing. Soon after his death, it was declared in
a leading Trinitarian journal of America, that without doubt he had gone to the place of torment, to
expiate the sin of denying the Deity of Christ. All
the noble life of that great and good and loving man
was not thought equal to the formal belief, that the
Jesus of the Gospels is the Jehovah of the Psalms.
After ecclesiastical men produce their piety, they
do not aim to set it to do the natural work of mankind. Morality is not thought to be the proof of
piety, nor even the sign of it. They darn up the
stream of human nature till they have got a sufficient head of piety, and then, instead of setting it
to turn the useful mill of life, or even drawing it off
to water the world's dry grounds, they let the waters




344  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
run over the dam, promoting nothing but sectarian
froth and noise; or, if it be allowed to turn the
wheels, it must not grind sound corn for human
bread, but chiefly rattle the clapper of the theologic
mill.
The most serious sects in America now and then
have a revival.  The aim  is to produce pietism;
but commonly you do not find the subjects of a revival more disposed to morality after that than
before; it is but seldom they are better sons or more
loving lovers, partners or parents more faithful than
before. It is only the ritual and the creed which
they love the better. Intelligent men of the serious
sects will tell you, such revivals do more harm than
good, because the feelings are excited unnaturally,
and then not directed to their appropriate, useful
work.
The most important actual business of the clergy
is, first, to keep up the present amount of morality.
All sects agree in that work, and do a service by the
attempt. For there are always sluggish men, slumberers, who need to be awaked, loiterers, who must
be called out to, and hurried forward. Next, it is to
produce piety, try it by these tests, and put it into
these forms. All sects likewise agree in that, and
therein they do good, and a great good. But after
the piety is produced, it is not wholly natural piety,




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 345
nor do they aim to apply it to the natural work
thereof.
Such is the most important business of the pulpit,
-almost its only business. Hence unpopular vices,
vices below the average virtue of society, get abundantly preached at. And popular virtues, virtues up
to the average of society, get abundantly praised.
But popular vices go unwhipped, and unpopular
virtues all unhonored pass the pulpit by. The great
Dagon of the popular idolatry stands there in the
market-place, to receive the servile and corrupting
homage of the crowd, dashing the little ones to ruin
at his feet; the popular priest is busy with his Philistine pietism, and never tells the people that it is an
idol, and not God, which they adore. It is not his
function to do that. Hence a man of more than
the average excellence, more than the average wisdom, justice, philanthropy, or faith in God, and resolutely bent on promoting piety and morality in all
their forms, is thought out of place in a sectarian
pulpit; and is just as much out of place there, as a
Unitarian would be in a Trinitarian pulpit, or a Calvinist in a Unitarian,- as much so as a weaver of
broadcloth would be in a mill for making ribbons or
gauze.
Hence, too, it comes to pass, that it is not thought
fit to attack popular errors in the pulpit, nor speak of
wide spread public sins; not even to expose the fault




346  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
of your own denomination to itself. The sins of
Unitarians may be aimed at only from Trinitarian
pulpits. It is not lawful for a sect to be instructed
by a friend. The sins of commerce must not be rebuked in a trading town. In time of war we must
not plead for peace. The sins of politics the minister must never touch. Why not? Because they are
"actual sins of the times," and his kingdom "is not
of this world."  Decorous ministers are ordained and
appointed to apologize for respectable iniquity, and
to eulogize every wicked but popular, great man.
So long as the public sepulchres may not be cleansed,
there must be priestly Pharisees to wash their outside white. The Northern priest is paid to consecrate the tyranny of capital, as the Southern to consecrate the despotism of the master over his negro
slave. Men say you must not touch the actual sins
of the times in a pulpit, - it would hurt men's feelings; and they must not be disquieted from their
decorous, their solemn, their accustomed  sleep.
"You must preach the Gospel, young fanatic,"
quoth the world. And that means preaching the
common doctrines so as to convict no man's conscience of any actual sin; then press out a little
pietism, and decant it off into the old leathern bottles of the Church.
The late Mr. Polk affords a melancholy example
of the effect of this mode of proceeding. On his




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL.SACRAMENTS. 347
death-bed, when a man ought to have nothing to do
but to die, the poor man remembers that he has
"not been baptized," wishes to know if there is any
"hope" for him, receives the dispensation of water
in the usual form, and is thought to die " a Christian! "  What a sad sign of the state of religion
amongst us! To him or to his advisers it did not
seem to occur, that, if we live right, it is of small
consequence how we die; that a life full of duties is
the real baptism in the name of man and God, and
the sign of the Holy Spirit. The churches never
taught him so. But snivelling at the end is not a
Christian and a manly death.
The effect of getting up the feeling of piety, and
stopping with that, is like the effect of reading novels and nothing else. Thereby the feelings of benevolence, of piety, of hope, of joy, are excited, but
lead to no acts; the character becomes enervated,
the mind feeble, the conscience inert, the will impotent; the heart, long wont to weep at the novelist's unreal woes, at sorrows in silk and fine linen, is
harder than Pharaoh's when a dirty Irish girl asks
for a loaf in the name of God, or when a sable
mother begs money wherewith to save her daughter
from the seraglios of New Orleans. Self-denial for
the sake of noble enterprise is quite impossible to
such. All the great feelings naturally lead to com



348  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
mensurate deeds; to excite the feeling and leave undone the deed, is baneful in the extreme.
I do not say novels are not good reading and
profitable; they are, just so far as they stimulate the
intellect,.the conscience, the affections, the soul, to
healthful action, and set the man to work; but just
so far as they make you content with mere feeling,
and constrain the feeling to be nothing but feeling,
they are pernicious. Such reading is mental dissipation. To excite the devotional feelings, to produce a great love of God, and not allow that to
become work, is likewise dissipation, all the more
pernicious, - dissipation of the conscience, of the
soul. I do not say it comes in the name of self-indulgence, as the other; it is often begun in the
name of self-denial, and achieved at great cost of
self-denial too.
Profligacy of the religious sentiment, voluptuousness with God, is the most dangerous of luxuries.
Novel-reading, after the fashion hinted at, is highly
dangerous.  How  many youths and maidens are
seriously hurt thereby! But as far as I can judge,
in all Christendom there are more that suffer from
this spiritual dissoluteness.  I speak less to censure
than to warn.  I hate to see a man uncharitable,
dishonest, selfish, mean, and sly, —" for ever standing on his guard and watching" unto fraud. I am




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 349
sorry to hear of' a woman given up to self-indulgence, accomplished, but without the highest grace,
- womanly  good  works, - luxurious, indolent,
"born to consume the corn," -that is bad enough.
But when I learn that this hard man is a class
leader, and has "the gift of prayer," is a famous
hand at a conference, the builder of churches, a
great defender of ecclesiastical doctrines and devotional forms, that he cries out upon every heresy,
banning men in the name of God; when I hear
that this luxurious woman delights in mystic devotion, and has a wantonness of prayer, — it makes
me far more sad; and there is then no hope! The
kidnapper at his court is a loathly thing; but the
same kidnapper at his "communion! "- great God!
and has thy Church become so low! Let us turn
off our eyes and look away.
Hence it comes to pass, that much of all this
ecclesiastic pains to produce piety is abortive; it
ends in sickness and routine. Men who have the
reputation of piety in a vulgar sense are the last
men you would look to for any great good work.
They will not oppose slavery and war and lust of
land, - national sins that are popular; nor intemperance and excessive love of gold, - popular, personal, and social sins. They would not promote
the public education of the people, and care not to
raise woman to her natural equality with man. "It
30




350  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
is no part of piety to do such things," say they;
"we are not under the covenant of works, but of
grace only.  What care we for painful personal
righteousness, which profiteth little, when only the
imputed can save us, and that so swiftly  "
Nay, they hinder all these great works. The bitterest opposition to the elevation of all men is made
in the name of devotion; so is the defence of
slavery and war, and the flat degradation of woman. Here is a church, which at a public meeting
solemnly instructs its minister elect not to preach
on politics, or on the subjects of reform. They
want him to "preach piety," "nothing but piety,"
"evangelical piety;" not a weekday piety but a
Sabbath piety, which is up and at church once in
seven days, - keeps her pew of a Sunday, but her
bed all the week, - ghastly, lean, dyspeptic, coughing, bowed together, and in nowise able to lift up
herself.
Hence "piety" gets a bad reputation amongst
philanthropists, as it serves to hinder the development of humanity. Even amongst men of business
a reputation for " piety" would make a new comer
distrusted; the money-lender would look more carefully to his collateral security.
At Blenheim  and at Windsor you will find
clipped yew-trees, cut into the shape of hearts and
diamonds, nay, of lions and eagles, looking like any




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 351
thing but trees. So in Boston, in all New England, everywhere in Christendom, you find clipped
men, their piety cut into various artificial forms,
looking like any thing but men. The saints of the
popular theology, what are they good for? For
belief and routine,  for all of religion save only
real piety and morality.
Persons of this stamp continually disappoint
us. You expect manly work, and cannot get it
done. Did you ever see little children play" Money?"  They clasp their hands together and strike
them  gently on their knee; the elastic air compressed by this motion sounds like the jingling of
small silver coin. You open the hand: there is
nothing in it, —not small money enough to buy a
last year's walnut or a blueberry.'It was only
the jingle of the money, -all of money but the
money's worth. So is this unnatural form  of
piety; it has the jingle of godliness, and seems just
as good as real piety, until you come to spend it;
then it is good for nothing, — it will not pass anywhere amongst active men. A handful of it comes
to nothing. Alas me! the children play at  Money,"
and call it sport; men grown play with a similar
delusion, and call it the worship of God.
Now there is much of this false piety in the
world, produced by this false notion, that there are
only these two tests of piety. It leads to a great




352  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
deal of mischief.  Men are deceived who look to
you for work; you yourself are deceived in hoping
for peace, beauty, comfort, and gladness, from such
a deception.
"So, floating down a languid stream,
The lily-leaves oft lilies seem,
Reflecting back the whitened beam
Of morning's slanting sun;But as I near and nearer came,
I missed the lily's fragrant flame, 
The gay deceit was done.
No snow-white lily blossomed fair,
There came no perfume on the air;
Only an idle leaf lay there,
And wantoned in the sun."
Under these circumstances, piety dies away till
there is nothing left but the name and the form.
There is the ritual, the belief, such as it is, but
nothing else.  It is the symbol of narrowness and
bigotry, often of self-conceit, sometimes of envy
and malice and all uncharitableness.  It leads to
no outward work, it produces no inward satisfaction, no harmony with yourself, no concord with
your brother, no unity with God.  It leads to no
real and  natural tranquillity, no  income of the
Holy Spirit, no access of new  being, no  rest in
God.  There is the form  of godliness, and nothing
of its power.  Some earnest-minded men see this,




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 353
and are disgusted with all that bears the name of
religion.  Do you wonder at this?  Remove the
cause, as well as blame the consequence.
If pains be taken to cultivate piety, and, as it
grows up, if it be left to its own natural development, it will have its own form of manifestation.
The feeling of love to God, the Infinite Object, will
not continue a mere feeling. Directed to the Infinite Object, it will be directed also towards men,
and become a deed. As you love God the more,
you must also love men the more, and so must
serve them  better. Your prayer will not content
you, though beautiful as David's loftiest Psalm;
you must put it into a practice more lovely yet.
Then your prayer will help you, your piety be a
real motive, a perpetual blessing. It will increase
continually, rising as prayer to come down again
as practice, - will first raise " a mortal to the skies,"
then draw that angel down. So the water which
rises in electric ecstasy to heaven, and gleams in
the rising or descending sun, comes down  as
simple dew and rain, to quiet the dust in the common road, to cool the pavement of the heated town,
to wash away the unhealthiness of city lanes, and
nurse the common grass which feeds the horses andthe kine.
30 




354  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
At the beginning of your growth in piety, there
is, doubtless, need of forms, of special time and
place. There need not be another's form, or there
may be, just as you like.  The girl learning to
write imitates carefully each mark on the copy,
thinking of the rules for holding the pen. But as
you grow, you think less of the form, of the substance more. So the pen becomes not a mere instrument, but almost a limb; the letters are formed
even without a thought. Without the form, you
have the effect thereof.
If there be piety in the heart, and it be allowed
to live and grow and attain its manly form, it will
quicken every noble faculty in man. Morality will
not be dry, and charity will not be cold; the reason
will not grovel with mere ideas, nor the understanding with calculations; the shaft of wit will lose its
poison, merriment its levity, common life its tedium.
Disappointment, sorrow, suffering, will not break the
heart, which will find soothing and comfort in its
saddest woe.  The consciousness of error, that
vexes oft the noble soul, will find some compensation for its grief. Remorse, which wounds men
so sadly and so sore, will leave us the sweetest
honey, gleaned up from the flowers we trod upon
when we should have gathered their richness, and
happily will sting us out of our offence.




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 355
The common  test of Christianity is not the
natural sacrament; it is only this poor conventional
thing. Look at this. The land is full of Bibles. I
am glad of it. I am no worshipper of the Bible, yet
I reverence its wisdom, I honor its beauty of holiness, and love exceedingly the tranquil trust in God
which its great authors had. Some of the best
things that I have ever learned from man this book
has taught me. Think of the great souls in this
Hebrew Old Testament; of the two great men in
the New,-Jesus, who made the great religious
motion in the world's parliament, and Paul, who
supported it!  I am  glad the Bible goes everywhere. But men take it for master, not for help;
read it as a sacrament, not to get a wiser and a
higher light. They worship its letter, and the better spirit of Moses, of Esaias, of the Holy Psalms,
so old and yet so young, so everlasting in their
beauteous faith in God, - the sublime spirit of one
greater than the temple, and lord of the Sabbath,
who scorned to put the new wine of God into the
old and rotten bags of men -that is not in Christendom. 0, no! men do not ask for that. The yeasty
soul would rend asunder tradition's leathern bags.
Worship of Bibles never made men write Bibles;
it hinders us from living them. Worship no things
for that; not the created, but, O  Creator! let




356  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
us worship Thee.  Catholicism  is worship of a
church, instead of God; Protestantism is worship
of a book. Both could not generate a Jesus or a
Moses.
For proof of religion men appeal to our churches,
built by the self-denial of hard-working men. They
prove nothing, - nay, nothing at all. The polygamous Mormons far outdo the Christians in their
zeal. The throng of men attending church is small
proof of religion. Think of the vain things which
lead men to this church or to that; of the vain
thoughts which fill them there; of the vain words
they hear, or which are only spoke, not even heard!
What a small amount of real piety and real morality is needed to make up a popular " Christian!"
Alas! we have set up an artificial sacrament; we
comply with that, then call ourselves religious,yea, Christians. We try ecclesiastic metal by its
brassy look and brassy ring, then stamp it with
the popular image of our idolatry, and it passes current in the shop, tribute fit for Caesar. The humble
publican of the parable, not daring to lift up his
eyes to heaven; the poor widow, with her two
mites that made a farthing; the outcast Samaritan, with his way-side benevolence to him that fell
among the thieves, - might shame forth from the
Christian  Church  each Pharisee who drops his
minted and his jingling piety, with brassy noise,




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 357
into the public chest.  Render unto Caesar the
things that be Casar's.
The real test of religion is its natural sacrament,
- is life. To know whom you worship, let me see
you in your shop, let me overhear you in your trade;
let me know how you rent your houses, how you
get your money, how you keep it, or how it is spent.
It is easy to pass the Sunday idle, idly lounging in
the twilight of idle words, or basking in the sunshine of some strong man's most earnest speech. It
is easy to repeat the words of David, or of Jesus,
and to call it prayer. But the sacramental test of
your religion is not your Sunday idly spent, not the
words of David or of Jesus that you repeat; it is
your weekday life, your works, and not your words.
Tried by this natural test, the Americans are a heathen people, not religious; far, far from that. Compare us with the Chinese by the artificial standard
of the missionary, we are immensely above them;
by the natural sacrament of obedience to the law of
God, how much is the Christian before the heathen
man?
The national test of religion is the nation's justice, -justice to other states abroad, the strong, the
weak, and justice to all sorts of men at home. The
law-book is the nation's creed; the newspapers
chant the actual liturgy and service of the day.
What avails it that the priest calls us " Christian,"




358  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
while the newspapers and the Congress prove us
infidel? The social sacrament of religion is justice
to all about you in society, -is honesty in trade
and work, is friendship and philanthropy; the religious strong must help the weak. The ecclesiastical
sacrament of a church must be its effort to promote
piety and goodness in its own members first, and
then to spread it round the world.  Care for the
bodies and souls of men, that is the real sacrament
and ordinance of religion for society, the Church
and State.
For the individual man, for you and me, there are
two great natural sacraments. One is inward and
not directly seen, save by the eye of God and by
your own, - the continual effort, the great life-long
act of prayer to be a man, with a man's body
and a man's spirit, doing a man's duties, having a
man's rights, and thereby enjoying the welfare of a
man. That is one, -the internal ordinance of religion. The other is like it, -the earnest attempt to
embody this in outward life, to make the manly act
of prayer a manly act of practice too. These are
the only sacraments for the only worship of the only
God. Let me undervalue no means of growth, no
hope of glory; these are the ends of growth, the
glory which men hope.
Is not all this true? You and I, - we all know
it. There is but one religion, natural and revealed




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 359
by nature,- by outward nature poorly and ir hints,
but by man's inward spirit copiously and at large.
It is piety in your prayer; in your practice it is morality. But try the nations, society, the Church, persons, by this sacramental test, and what a spectacle
we are! For the religion of the State, study the
ends and actions of the State; study the religion of
the Church by the doctrines and the practice of the
Church; the religion of society,-read it in the
great cities of the land.   Thy kingdom come, Thy
will be done," prays the minister. Listen to the
" Amen" of the courts and the market, responding
all the week! The actual religion of mankind is
always summed up in the most conspicuous men.
Is that religion Christian? Spirit of the Crucified!
how we take thy honored name in vain! Yet we
did not mean to be led astray: the nations did not
mean it; the cities meant it not; the churches prayed
for better things; the chief men stumbled and fell.
We have altogether mistaken the ordinance of religion, and must mend that.
The New England Indian insisted upon his poor,
hungry sacrament; so did the barbarian German;
so the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant; and each
sectarian has his Shibboleth of ritual and creed.
How poor and puerile are all these things! How
puerile and poor the idea of God asking such trifles




360  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
of mortal man   We shall never mend matters till
we take the real religious sacrament, scorning to
be deluded longer by such idle shows.
Now it has come to such a pass, that men wish to
limit all religion to their artificial sacraments. The
natural ordinance of human piety must not be even
commended in the church. You must not apply religion to politics; it makes men mad. There is no
law of God above the written laws of men. You
must not apply it to trade: business is business;
religion is religion. Business has the week for his
time, the world for his market-place; religion has
her Sunday and her meeting-house; let each pursue
his own affairs. So the minister must not expose
the sins of trade nor the. sins of politics. Then, too,
public opinion must be equally free from the incursions of piety. "   Religion!" say men, " be busy
with thy sacramental creeds, thy sacramental rites,
thy crumb of bread, thy sip of wine, thy thimbleful
of water sprinkled on a baby's face, but leave the
state, the market and all men, to serve the Devil, and
be lost."  " Very well," says the priest, "I accept the
condition. Come and take our blessed religion! "
I began by saying how beautiful is real piety; so
let me end. I love to study this in the forms of the
past, in the mystic forms of Thomas a Kempis and
William Law, in Fenelon and Swedenborg, in John




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 361
Tauler in St. Bernard and St. Victor, in Taylor and
Herbert. But there it appears not in its fairest form.
I love to see piety at its work better than in its play
or its repose; in philanthropists better than in monks
and nuns, who gave their lives to contemplation and
to wordy prayer, and their bodies to be burned. I
love piety embodied in a Gothic or Roman cathedral, an artistic prayer in stone, but better in a nation
well fed, well housed, well clad, instructed well, a
natural prayer in man or woman.  I love the water
touched by electric fire, and stealing upwards to the
sky, lovely in the light of the uprising or slowly sinking sun. I love it not the less descending down as
dew and rain, to still the dust in all the country
roads, to cool the pavement in the heated town, to
wash the city's dirtiest lane, and in the fields giving
grass to the cattle, and bread to men.  What is so
fair as sentiment, is lovelier as life.
All the triumphs of ancient piety are for you and
me; the lofty sentiment, the high resolve, the vision
filled with justice, beauty, truth, and love.  The
great, ascending prayer, the manly consciousness of
God, his income to your soul as justice, beauty,
truth, and faith and love,- all these wait there for
you, —happiness now and here; hereafter the certain blessedness which cannot pass away.
Piety is beautiful in all; to a great man it comes
as age comes to the Parthenon or the Pyramids,
31




362  CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.
making what was vast and high majestic, venerable,
sublime, and to their beauty giving a solemn awe
they never knew before. To men not great, to the
commonest men, it also comes, bringing refinement
and a loveliness of substance and of shape; so that
in a vulgar ecclesiastic crowd they seem like sculptured gems or beryl and of emerald among the common pebbles of the sea.
Piety is beautiful in all relations of life. When
your wooing, winsome soul shall wed the won to be
your other and superior self, a conscious piety hallows and beautifies the matrimonial vow, - deepens
and sanctifies connubial love. When a new soul is
added to your household, - a new rose-bud to your
bosom,- a bright, particular star dropped from the
upper sphere and dazzling in your diadem, -your
conscious love of God will give the heavenly visitant the truest, the most prophetic and most blessed
baptismal welcome here. And when, out of the
circle that twines you round with loving hearts beloved, some one is taken, born out of your family,
not into it, a conscious piety will seem to send celestial baptism to the heaven-born soul. And when
the mists of age gather about your eye, when the
silver cord of life is loosed and the golden bowl
at the fountain begins to break, with what a blessed
triumph shall you close your mortal sense to this
romantic moon and this majestic sun, to the stars of




CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS.  363
earth that bloom'below, the starry flowers that burn
above, to open your soul on glory which the eye
has not seen, nor yet the heart of man been competent to dream!
"Thy sweetness hath betrayed Thee, Lord!
Dear Spirit! it is Thou;
Deeper and deeper in my heart
I feel Thee nestling now!
"Dear Comforter! Eternal Love!
Yes, Thou wilt stay with me,
If manly thoughts and loving ways
Build but a nest for Thee!"




X.
OF COMMUNION WITH GOD
THE COMMUNION OF THE HOLY GHOST BE WITH YOU ALL.2 Cor. xiii. 14.
SIMEON the Stylite lived on the top of the pillar
at Antioch for seven-and-thirty-years, for the sake of
being nearer to God and holding communion with
Him. Some men shut themselves up in convents
and nunneries under vows of perpetual asceticism,
thinking that God will come into the soul the easier
if the flesh be worn thin, the body looped and windowed with bad usage and unnatural hard fare.
All the monasteries are designed to produce communion -with God. "He dwells," say the priests,
"not in the broad way and the green, but in the
stillness of the cloister." All the churches in Christendom are built to promote access to Him in various forms. " This is the gate of heaven," says the
priest, of his church. All the ritual services are for
this end,- to draw God down to men, or draw men




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           365
up to God; or to appease His "wrath."  So also
are the mosques of the Mahometans, the synagogues
of the Jews, and all the temples of the world. The
Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon at Athens, St.
Peter's at Rome, the Mormon temple at Nauvoo,all are but the arms of man artificially lengthened
and reached out to grasp the Holy Ghost, enfold
it to the human heart, and commune with it, soul
to soul. The little hymn which a mother teaches
her child, cradled on her knee, the solemn litany
which England pays her thousand priests to chant
each day in every cathedral of the land,- all are
for the same end, to promote communion with God.
For this the Quaker sits silent in his unadorned
meeting-house waiting for the Spirit, lying low in
the hand of God to receive His inspiration. For
this you and I lift up our hearts in silent or unspoken prayer. The petition for this communion is
common to the enlightened of all mankind. It may
ascend equally from Catholic or Quaker, from bond
and free, from  Hebrew, Buddhist, Christian, Mahometan,- from  all who have any considerable
growth of soul.
I love to look at common life, business and politics, from the stand-point of religion, and hence am
thought to be hard upon the sins of the State and
the sins of business, trying all things by the higher
31*




366           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
law of God. But if religion is good for any thing,
it is as a rule of conduct for daily life, in the business of the individual and the business of the nation. It is poor policy and bad business that cannot bear to be looked at in the light that lighteneth
every man, and tried by the divine measure of all
things. It is a poor clock that will not keep the
time of the universe.
I love to look at philosophy- science and metaphysics - from the stand-point of religion, and see
how the conclusions of the intellect square with the
natural instincts of the heart and soul. Then I love
to change places, and look at religion and all the
spontaneous instincts of the soul, with the eye of
the intellect, from the stand-point of philosophy.
Hence I am thought to be hard upon the Church;
amiable enough toward natural human religion, but
cruel toward revealed, divine theology. Yet if the
intellect is good for any thing, it is good to try the
foundations of religion with. The mind is the eye
of consciousness. It is a poor doctrine that cannot
bear to be looked at in the dry light of reason. Let
us look hard and dry at this notion of communion
with God, and by reason severely ascertain if there
be such a thing; what it is; how it is to be had;
and what comes thereof.
There must be such a thing as communion between God and man, I mean, defining that provis



COMMUNION WITH GOD.           367
ionally, there must be a giving on God's part, and
a taking on man's part. To state the matter thus is
to make it evident,- since it follows from  the
nature of God; for from the necessity of his nature the Infinite Being must create and preserve the
finite, and to the finite must, in its forms, give and
communicate of his own kind. It is according to
the infinite nature of God to do so; as according to
the finite nature of light to shine, of fire to burn, of
water to wet. It follows as well from the nature of
man as finite and derivative. From the necessity of
his nature, he must receive existence and the means
of continuance.  He must get all his primitive
power, which he starts with, and all his materials
for secondary and automatic growth, from the Primitive and Infinite Source. The mode of man's finite
being is of necessity a receiving; of God's infinite
being, of necessity a giving. You cannot conceive
of any finite thing existing without God, the Infinite basis and ground thereof; nor of God existing without something. God is the necessary logical condition of a world, its necessitating cause;
a world, the necessary logical condition of God,
his necessitated consequence. Communion between
the two is a mutual necessity of nature, on God's
part and on man's part.  I mean it is according
to the infinite perfection of God's nature to create,
and so objectify Himself, and then preserve and




368           COMMUNION WITH GOD,
bless whatever He creates.  So by His nature He
creates, preserves, and gives. And it is according to
the finite nature of man to take. So by his nature,
soon as created, he depends and receives, and is
preserved  only  by  receiving  from  the  Infinite
Source.
That is the conclusion of modern metaphysical
science. The stream of philosophy runs down from
Aristotle to Hegel and Hickok, and breaks off' with
this conclusion; and I see not how it can be gainsaid.  The statements are apodictic, self-evident at
every step.
All that is painfully abstract; let me make it
plainer if, I can, - at least shoot one shaft more at
the same mark from the other side. You start with
yourself, with nothing but yourself. You are conscious of yourself:; not of yourself perhaps as Substance, surely as Power to be, to do, to suffer. But
you are conscious of yourself not asself-originated
at all, or as self-sustained alone; only as dependent,
-first for existence, ever since for support.
You take  the primary ideas of consciousness
which are inseparable from it, the atoms of selfconsciousness; amongst them  you find the idea of
God.  Carefully examined by the scrutinizing intellect, it is the idea of God as Infinite, - perfectly
powerful, wise, just, loving, holy,- absolute being,
with no limitation.  It is this which made you,




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           369
made all; sustains you, sustains all; made your
body, not by a single act, but by a series of acts
extending over millions of years,   for man's body
is the resultant of all created things; made your
spirit, - your mind, your conscience, your affections,
your soul, your will; appointed for each its natural
mode of action; set each at its several aim. Selfconsciousness leads you to consciousness of God;
at last to consciousness of Infinite God. He is the
Primitive, whence you are the derivative.  You
must receive, or you could not be a finite man; and
He must give, or He could not be the Infinite God.
Hence the communion is unavoidable, an ontological fact.
God must be omnipresent in space. There can
be no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no spot-on
an insect's wing, no little cell of life which the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss,
and brings to light, but God is there, in,the mote
that peoples the sunbeams, in that spot on the insect's wing, in that cell of life the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss.
God must be also omnipresent in time. There is
no second of time elapsing now, there has been
none millions of years ago, before the oldest stars
began to burn, but God was in that second of
time.




370           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
Follow  the eye of the great space-penetrating
telescope at Cambridge into the vast halls of creation, to the furthest nebulous spot seen in Orion's
belt, — a spot whose bigness no natural mind can
adequately conceive,- and God is there. Follow
the eye of the great sharply defining microscope at
Berlin into some corner of creation, to that little
dot, one of many millions that people an inch of
stone, once animate with swarming life, a spot too
small for mortal mind adequately to conceive,and God is there.
Get you a metaphysic microscope of time to
divide a second into its billionth part; God is in
that.  Get you a metaphysic telescope of time, to
go back in millenniums as the glass in miles, and
multiply the duration of a solar system by itself to
get an immensity of time, — still God is there, in
each elapsing second of that millennial stream of
centuries; His Here conterminous with the all of
space, his Now coeval with the all of time.
Through all this space, in all this time, His
Being extends,, "spreads undivided, operates unspent;" God in all his infinity, - perfectly powerful, perfectly wise, perfectly just, perfectly loving
and holy. His being is an infinite activity, a creating, and so a giving of Himself to the world.
The world's being is a becoming, a being created
and continued. This is so in the nebula of Orion's




COMMUNION WITH GOD.            371
belt, and in the seed-sporule of the smallest moss.
It is so now, and was the same millions of millenniums ago.
All this is philosophy, the unavoidable conclusion
of the human mind. It is not the opinion of Coleridge and Kant, but their science; not what they
guess, but what they know.
In virtue of this immanence of God in matter,
we say the world is a revelation of God; its existence a show  of His.  Some good books picture to
us the shows of things, and report in print the whisper of God which men have heard in the material
world.  They say that God is a good optician,for the eye is a telescope and a microscope, the two
in one; that He is a good chemist also, ordering all
things "by measure and number and weight;" that
he is a good mechanic, - for the machinery of the
world, old as it is, is yet "constructed after the
most approved principles of modern science." All
that is true, but the finite mechanic is not in his
work; he wakes it and then withdraws.  God is in
His work, -
"As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;"
"Acts not by partial, but by general laws."
All nature works from within; the force that animates it is in every part. It was objected to Sir
Isaac Newton's philosophy, that it makes the world




372          COMMUNION WITH GOD.
all mechanism, which goes without external help,
and so is a universe without a God; men thinking
that He could not work at all in the world-machine,
unless they saw  the Great Hand on the crank
now and then, or felt the jar of miraculous interposition when some comet swept along the sky.
The objection was not just, for the manifold action
of the universe is only the Infinite God's mode of
operation.  Newton merely showed the mode of
operation, - that it was constant and wonderful,
not changing and miraculous; and so described a
higher mode of operation than those men could
fathom, or even reverence.
These things being so, all material things that are
must needs be in communion with God; their creation was'their first passive act of communion; their
existence, a continual act of communion. As God
is infinite, nothing can be without Him, nothing
without communion with Him. The stone I sit
on is in communion with God; the pencil I write
with; the gray field-fly reposing in the sunshine at
my foot.  Let God withdraw from the space occupied by the stone, the pencil, and fly, they cease
to be. Let Him withdraw any quality of his nature therefrom, and they must cease to be.  All
must partake of Him, immanent in each and yet
transcending all.
In this communion, these and all things receive




COMMUNION WITH GOD..         373
after their kind, according to their degree of being
and the mode thereof. The mineral, the vegetable,
and the animal represent three modes of being, three
degrees of existence; and hence so many modes
and degrees of dependence on God and of communion with Him. They are, they grow, they move
and live, in Him, and by means of Him, and only
so. But none of these are conscious of this communion. In that threefold form of being there is
no consciousness of God; they know  nothing of
their dependence and their communion. The water-fowl, in the long pilgrimage of many a thousand miles, knows naught of Him who teaches its
way
" Along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost."
To the dog, man stands for God or devil. The
"half-reasoning elephant" knows nobody and is
conscious of nothing higher than his keeper, who
rides upon his neck, pulling his ears with curved
hook. All these are ignorant of God.
We come to man. Here he is, a body and a
spirit. The vegetable is matter, and something
more; the animal is vegetable also, and something
more; man is animal likewise, and something more.
So far as I am matter, a vegetable, an animal,and I am each in part, — I have the appropriate
32




374          COMMUNION WITH GOD.
communion of the vegetable, the mineral, the animal world. My body, this hand, for example, is
subject to statical, dynamical, and vital laws. God
is in this hand; without his infinite existence, its
finite existence could not be. It is a hand only by
its unconscious communion with Him.  It wills
nothing; it knows nothing; yet all day long, and
all the night, each monad thereof retains all the
primary statical and dynamical qualities of matter;
continually the blood runs through its arteries and
veins, mysteriously forming this complicated and
amazing work. Should God withdraw, it were a
hand no more; the blood would cease to flow in
vein and artery; no monad would retain its primary
dynamical and static powers; each atom  would
cease to be.
All these things, the stone, the pencil, and the fly
and hand, are but passive and unconscious communicants of God; they are bare pipes alone into
which His omnipotence flows. Yes, they are poor,
brute things, which know  Him  not, nor cannot
ever know. The stone and pencil know not themselves; this marvellous hand knows naught; and
the fly never says, reasoning with itself, "Lo, here
am I, an individual and a conscious thing sucking
the bosom of the world."  It never separates the
Not-me and the Me. But I am conscious; I know
myself, and through myself know God. I am a mind




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           375
to think, a conscience to perceive the just and right;
I am  a heart to love, a soul to know of God.
For communion with my God I have other faculties than what He gives to stone and pencil, hand
and fly.
Put together all these things which are not body,
and call them  Spirit: this spirit as a whole is dependent on God, for creation first, and for existence
ever since; it lives only by communion with Him,
So far as I am a body, I obviously depend on God,
and am no more self-created and self-sufficing than
the pencil or the fly. So far as I am a spirit, I
depend equally on Him. Should God withdraw
Himself or any of His qualities from my mind, I
could not think; from conscience, I should know
nothing of the right; from the heart, there could be
no love; from the soul, then there could be no holiness, no faith in Him that made it. Thus the very
existence of the spirit is a dependence on God, and
so far a communion with Him.
I cannot wholly separate my spirit from this communion; for that would be destruction of the spirit,
annihilation, which is in no man's power.  Only
the Infinite can create or annihilate an atom of matter or a monad of spirit. There isa certain amount
of communion of the spirit with God, which is not
conscious; that lies quite beyond my control. I
"break into the bloody house of life," and my




376          COMMUNION WITH GOD.
spirit rushes out of the body, and while the static
and dynamic laws of nature reassume their sway
over my material husk, rechanging it to dust, still
I am, I depend, and so involuntarily commune
with God. Even the popular theology admits this
truth, for it teaches that the living wicked still commune with God through pain and wandering and
many a loss; and that the wicked dead commune
with Him through hell against their will, as with
their will the heavenly saints through heavenly joy.
I cannot end this communion with my God; but
I can increase it, greaten it largely, if I will. The
more I live my higher normal life, the more do I
commune with God. If I live only as mere body,
I have only corporeal and unconscious communion,
as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal, no more. As
children, we all begin as low as this. The child
unborn or newly born has no self-consciousness,
knows nothing of its dependence, its spontaneous
communion with its God, whereon by laws it depends for being and continuance. As we outgrow
our babyhood we are conscious of ourselves, distinguish the Me and the Not-me, and learn at length
of God.
I live as spirit, I have spiritual communion with
God. Depend on Him I must; when I become selfconscious, I feel that dependence, and know of this
communion, whereby I receive from Him.




COMMUNION WITH GOD.          377
The quantity of my receipt is largely under my
control. As I will, I can have less or more. I cultivate my mind, greatening its quantity; by all its
growth I have so much more communion with my
Father; each truth I get is a point common to
Him and me. I cultivate my conscience, increasing my moral sense; each atom of justice that I
get is another point common with the Deity. So
I cultivate and enlarge my affections; each grain
of love - philanthropic or but friendly - is a new
point common to me and God. Then, too, I cultivate and magnify my soul, greatening my sense
of holiness, by fidelity to all my nature; and all that
I thus acquire is a new point I hold in common
with the Infinite. I earnestly desire His truth, His
justice, His holiness and love, and He communicates the more. Thus I have a fourfold voluntary
consciousness of God through my mind and conscience, heart and soul; know Him as the absolutely true and just and amiable and holy; and
thereby have a fourfold voluntary communion with
my God. He gives of his infinite kind; I receive
in my finite mode, taking according to my capacity
to receive.
I may diminish the quantity of this voluntary
communion. For it is as possible to stint the spirit
of its God, as to starve the body of its food; only
not to the final degree,- to destruction of the spirit.
32*




378          COMMUNION WITH GOD.
This fact is well known. You would not say that
Judas had so much and so complete communion
with God as Jesus had. And if Jesus had yielded
to the temptation in the story, all would declare that
for the time he must diminish the income of God
upon his soul. For unfaithfulness in any part lessens the quantity and mars the quality of our communion with the Infinite.
In most various ways men may enlarge the
power to communicate with God; complete and
normal life is the universal instrument thereof.
Here is a geologist chipping the stones, or studying the earthquake-waves; here a metaphysian chipping the human mind, studying its curious laws,psychology, logic, ontology; here is a merchant, a
mechanic, a poet, each diligently using his intellectual gift; and as they acquire the power to think,
by so much more do they hold intellectual communion with the thought of God, their finite mind
communing with the Infinite. My active power of
understanding, imagination, reason, is the measure,of my intellectual communion with Him.
A man strives to know the everlasting right, to
keep a conscience void of all offence; his inward
eye is pure and single; all is true to the Eternal
Right. His moral powers continually expand, and
by so much more does he hold communion with his




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           379
God. As far as it can see, his finite conscience
reads in the book the Eternal Right of God. A
man's power of conscience is the measure of his
moral communion with the Infinite.
I repress my animal self-love, I learn to be welltempered, disinterested, benevolent, friendly to a
few, and philanthropic unto all; my heart is ten
times greater than ten years ago.  To him  that
hath shall be given according to the quantity and
quality of what he has, and I communicate with
God so much the more. The greatness of my heart
is the measure of my affectional communion with
Him.
I cultivate the religious faculty within me, keeping my soul as active as my sense; I quicken my
consciousness of the dear God; I learn to reverence and trust and love, seeking to keep his every
rule of conduct for my sense and soul; I make my
soul some ten times larger than it was, and just
as I enhance its quantity and quality, so much the
more do I religiously commune with God. The
power of my religious sense is the measure of my
communion with my Father. I feed on this, and
all the more I take, the more I grow, and still the
more I need.
In all this there is nothing miraculous, nothing
mysterious, nothing strange.  From  his mother's
breast it is the largest child that takes the most.




380           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
At first a man's spiritual communion is very little,
is most exceeding small; but in normal life it becomes more and more continually. Some of you,
grown men, can doubtless remember your religious
experience when you were children.  A very little
manna was food enough for your baby-soul. But
your character grew more and more, your intellectual, moral, and religious life continually became
greater and greater; when you needed much, you
had no lack, when little, there seemed nothing over;
demand and supply are still commensurate. Nothing.is more under our control than the amount of
this voluntary communion with God.
" Misfortunes, do the best we can,
Will come to great and small."
We cannot help that, but we can progressively
enlarge the amount of inspiration we receive from
Heaven, spite of the disappointments and sorrows of
life; nay, by means thereof.
"Thy home is with the humble, Lord!
The simple are Thy rest;
Thy lodging is in childlike hearts,
Thou makest there Thy nest."
Sometimes a man makes a conscious and serious
effort to receive and enlarge this communion.  He
looks over his daily life; his eye runs back to childhood, and takes in all the main facts of his outward




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           381
and inward history. He sees much to mend, something also to approve. Here he erred through passion, there sinned by ambition; the desire from
within, leagued with opportunity from  without,
making temptation too strong for him. He is penitent for the sin that was voluntary, or for the heedlessness whereby he went astray, - sorrowful at his
defeat. But he remembers the manly part of him,
and with new resolutions braces himself for new
trials. He thinks of the powers that lie unused in
his own nature. He looks out at the examples of
lofty men, his soul is stirred to its deeper depths.
A new image of beauty rises, living from that troubled sea, and the Ideal of human loveliness is folded
in his arms. " This fair Ideal," says he, " shall be
mine. I also will be as whole and beautiful. Ah,
me! how can I ever get such lovely life?    Then
he thinks of the Eternal Wisdom, the Eternal Justice, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Holiness, which
surrounds him, and now fills up his consciousness,
waiting to bless. He reaches out his arms towards
that Infinite Motherliness which created him at first
and preserved him  ever since; which surpassed
when he fell short, furnishing the great plan of his
life and the world's life, and is of all things perfect
Cause and Providence.  Then, deeply roused in
every part, he communicates with the Infinite Mind
and Conscience, Heart and Soul.  He is made




382           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
calmer by the thought of the immense tranquillity
which enfolds the nervous world in its all-embracing, silent arms. He is comforted by the motherly
aspect of that Infinite Eye, which never slumbers
in its watch over the suffering of each great and
every little thing, converting it all to good. He is
elevated to confidence in himself, when he feels so
strong in the never-ending love which makes, sustains, and guides the world of matter, beasts, and
men; makes from  perfect motives, sustains with
perfect providence, and guides by perfect love to
never-ending bliss. Yea, the tranquillity, pity, love,
of the Infinite Moth'er enters into his soul, and he
is tranquil, soothed, and strong, once more. He has
held communion with his God, and the Divine has
given of the Deity's own kind. His artistic fancy
and his plastic hand have found an Apollo in that
pliant human block.
That is a prayer.  I paint the process out in
words, -they. are not my prayer itself, only the
cradle of my blessed heavenly babe. I paint it not
in words, - it is still my prayer, not less the aspiration of my upward-flying. soul. I carry my child
cradled only in my arms.
I have this experience in my common and daily
life, with no unusual. grief to stir, or joy to quicken,
or penitence to sting me into deep emotion: then
my prayer is only a border round my daily life, to




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           383
keep the web from ravelling away through constant
use and wear'; or else a fringe of heaven, whereby. I beautify my. common consciousness and daily
work.
But there strikes for me a greater hour; some
new joy binds me. to this, or puts another generation into my arms; another heart sheds its life into
my: own; some great sorrow  sends me in upon
myself and God; out of the flower of self-indulgence the bee of remorseestings me into agony.
And then I rise from; out my- common consciousness, and take a higher, wider flight into the vast
paradise of God, and'come back laden from the
new and honeyed fields wherein I have a newer
and a fresher life and sweeter communings with
loftier loveliness than I had known before. Thus
does the man, that will, hold commune with his
Father, face to face, and get great income from the
Soul of all.
In all this there is nothing miraculous; there has
been no change on God's part, but a great change
on man's. We have received what He is universally giving. So in winter it is clear and cold, the
winds are silent, clouds gather over the city's face,
and all is still. How cold it is! In a few hours the
warmth steals out from the central fire, - the earth's
domestic, household hearth; the clouds confine it
in, those airy walls, that it flee not off, nor spread to




384           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
boundless-space; the frost becomes the less intense,
and men are gladdened with the milder day. So,
when magnetic bars in time have lost their force,
men hang them up in the line of the meridian, and
the great loadstone, the earth, from her own breast,
restores their faded magnetism. Thus is it that
human souls communicate with the great central
Fire and Light of all the world, the loadstone of
the universe, and thus recruit, grow young again,
and so are blessed and strong.
There may be a daily, conscious communion
with God, marked by reverence, gratitude, aspiration, trust, and love; it will not be the highest.
prayer.
"'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights that the soul is competent to gain."
And the highest prayer is no common event in a
man's life. Ecstasy, rapture, great delight in prayer,
or great increase thereby,- they are the rarest
things in the life of any man.  They should be
rare. The tree blossoms but once a year; blooms
for a week, and then fulfils and matures its fruit in
the long months of summer and of harvest-time,fruit for a season, and seed for many an age. The
sun is but a moment at meridian. Jesus had his
temptation but once, but once his agony, - the two
foci round which his life's beauteous ellipse was
drawn. The intensest consciousness of friendship




COMMUNION WITH GOD.             385
does not last long.  They say men have but once
the ecstasy of love; human nature could not bear
such a continual strain..So all the blossomings
of rapture must needs be short.  The youthful
ecstasy of love leads man and maid by moonlight
up the steep, sheer cliffs of life, " while all below,
the world in mist lies lost;" then, in the daylight
of marriage they walk serenely on, along the high
table-land of mortal life, and though continually
greatening their connubial love and joy, it is without the early ecstasy.
Men sometimes seek to have their daily prayer
high and ecstatic as their highest hour and walk
with God; it cannot be; it should not be.  Some
shut themselves up in convents to make religion
their business, - all their life; to make an act of
prayer their only act. They always fail; their religion dwindles into ritual service, and no more; their
act of prayer is only kneeling with the knees and
talking talk with windy tongues.  A Methodist, in
great ecstasy of penitence or fear, becomes a member of a church.  He all at once is filled with rapturous delight; religious joy blossoms in his face, and
glitters in his eye.  How glad is the converted man!
"Then when he kneels to meditate,
Sweet thoughts come o'er his soul,
Countless, and bright, and beautiful,
Beyond his own control."
33




386          COMMUNION WITH GOD.
But by and by his rapture dies away, and he is
astonished that he has no such ecstasy as before.
He thinks that he has "fallen from  grace," has
"grieved away" the Holy Ghost, and tries by
artificial excitement to bring back what will not
come without a new  occasion. Certain religious
convictions once made my heart spring in my
bosom. Now it is not so.  The fresh leaping of
the heart will only come from a fresh conquest of
new  truth.  The old man loves his wife a thousand times better than when, for the first time, he
kissed her gracious mouth; but his heart burns no
longer as when he first saw  his paradise in her
reciprocating eye. The tree of religious consciousness is not in perpetual blossom, - but now in leaf,
now flower, now fruit.
It is a common error to take no heed of this voluntary communion with God, to live intent on business or on pleasure, careful, troubled about many
things, and seldom heed the one thing needed most;
to take that as it comes. If all this mortal life
turned out just as we wished it, this error would
be still more common; only a few faculties would
get their appropriate discipline. Men walking only
on a smooth and level road use the same muscles
always, and march like mere machines. But disappointment comes on us. Sorrow checks our course,




COMMUNION WITH GOD.          387
and we are forced to think and feel, — must march
now up hill, and then down, shifting the strain from
part to part. In mere prosperity most men are contented to enlarge their estate, their social rank, their
daily joy, and lift their children's faces to the vulgar
level of the vulgar flood whereon their fathers float.
There comes some new adventure to change and
mend all this. Now it is a great joy, success not
looked for, -some kindred soul is made one with
us, and on the pinions of instinctive connubial love
we fly upwards and enlarge our intercourse with
God, —the object of passion a communion angel
to lead the human soul to a higher seat in the universe and a more intimate acquaintance with the
Soul of all. Sometimes the birth of a new immortal into our arms does this, and on the pinions of
instinctive affection men soar up to heaven and
bring back healing on their wings,- the object of
affection the communion angel to convey and welcome them to heaven.
Sometimes it is none of these, but sorrow, grief,
and disappointment that do this.  I set my heart
upon.a special thing; - it is not mine, or if I get
the honor, the money, the social rank I sought, it
was one thing in my eye and another in my grasp.
The one bird which I saw in the bush was worth
ten like that. I hold in my hand. The things I
loved are gone, -the maid, the lover, husband,




388           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
wife, or child; the mortal is taken from longing
arms. The heart looks up for what can never die.
Then there is a marriage and a birth, not into your
arms, but out of them and into heaven; and the sorrow and the loss stir you to woo and win that Object of the soul which cannot pass away. Your
sorrow takes you on her wings, and you go up
higher than before; higher than your success, higher
than friendship's daily wing ascends; higher than
your early love for married mate had ever borne you
up; higher than the delight in your first-born child
or latest born. You have a new communion with
your Father, and get a great amount of inspiration
from Him.
This is the obvious use of such vicissitudes, and
seems a portion of their final cause. In the artificial, ecclesiastical life of monasteries, men aim to
reproduce this part of nature's discipline, and so
have times of watching; fasting, bodily torture. But
in common life such discipline asks not our consent
t6 come.
As I look over your faces and recall the personal
history of those I know, I see how universal is this
disappointment.  But it has not made you more
melancholy and less manly men; life is not thereby
the less a blessing, and the morea load. With no
sorrows you would be more sorrowful. For all the
sorrows that man has faithfully contended with, he




COMMUNION WITH GOD.            389
shall sail into port deeper fraught with manliness.
The wife and mother at thirty years of age imprisoned in her chair, her hands all impotent to
wipe a tear away, does not suffer for nothing. She
has thereby been taught to taste the fruits of sweeter
communion with her God. These disappointments
are rounds in the ladder whereby we climb to
heaven.
In cities there is less to help us communicate
with God than in the fields. These walls of brick
and stone, this artificial ground we stand on, all remind us of man; even the city horse is a machine.
But in the country it is God's ground beneath our
feet; God's hills on every side; his heaven, broad,
blue, and boundless, overhead; and every bush and
every tree, the morning song of earliest birds, the
chirp of insects at mid-day, the solemn stillness of
the night, and the mysterious hosts of stars that all
night long climb up the sky, or silently go down,
— these continually affect the soul, and cause us all
to feel the Infinite Presence, and draw near to that;
and earth seems less to rest in space than in the
love of God.  So, in cities, men build a great
church, - at London, Paris, Venice, or at Rome, 
seeking to compensate for lack of the natural admonitions of the woods and sky; and, to replace
the music of the fields and nature's art, enlist the
33 *




390           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
painter's plastic hand and the musician's sweetest
skill.
All that seek religion are in search for communion with God. What is there between Him and
thee?  Nothing but thyself. Each can have what
inspiration each will take. God is continually giving; He will not withhold from  you or me. As
much ability as He has given, as much as you have
enlarged your talent by manly use, so much will He
fill with inspiration. I hold up my little cup. He
fills it full. If yours is greater, rejoice in that, and
bring it faithfully to the same urn. He who fills
the violet with beauty, and the sun with light,who gave to Homer his gift of song, such reason
to Aristotle, and to Jesus the manly gifts of justice
and the womanly grace of love and faith in Him,will not fail to inspire also you and me. Were your
little cup to become as large as the Pacific sea, He
still would fill it full.
There is such a thing as having a godly heart, a
desire to conform to the ideal of man in all things,
and to be true to Him that is " of all Creator and
Defence."  He who has that is sure of conscious
spiritual communion with the Father; sure to find
his character enlarging in every manly part; sure




COMMUNION WITH GOD.           391
to be supplied with unexpected growth, and to hold
more of the Divine; sure of the voluntary inspiration
which is proper to the self-conscious man.
There are continual means of help even for men
who dwell hedged up in towns. There are always
living voices which can speak to us. A good book
helps one; this feeds his soul for a time on the fair
words of David, Paul, or John, Taylor, A Kempis,
Wordsworth, Emerson; that, on the life of him who
gives a name to Christendom. He who has more
than I, will help me; him that has less, I shall help.
Some men love certain solemn forms, as aids to
their devotion; I hope that they are helped thereby,
that baptism helps the sprinkler or the wet; that
circumcision aids the Jew, and sacrifice the heathen
who offers it. But these are not the communion,
only at most its vehicle. Communion is the meeting of the finite and the Infinite.
If a man have a truly pious soul, then his whole
inward, outward life will at length become religion;
for the disposition to be true to God's law will
appear the same in his business as in his Sunday
vow. His whole work will be an act of faith, he
will grow greater, better, and more refined by common life, and hold higher communion with the EverPresent; the Sun of righteousness will beautify his
every day.
God is partial to no one, foreign to none. Did he




392           COMMUNION WITH GOD.
inspire the vast soul of Moses, -the tender hearts
of lowly saints in every clime and every age? He
waits to come down on you and me, a continual
Pentecost of inspiration. Here in the crowded vulgar town, everywhere, is a Patmos, a Sinai, a Gethsemane; the Infinite Mother spreads wide her arms
to fold us to that universal breast, ready to inspire
your soul. God's world of truth is ready for your
intellect; His ocean of justice waits to flow in upon
your conscience; and all His heaven of love broods.continually by night and day over each heart and
every soul. From that dear bounty shall we be fed.
The Motherly Love invites all, -as much communion as we will, as much inspiration as our gifts and
faithfulness enable us to take. He is not far from
any one of us. Shall we not all go home, —the
prodigal rejoice with him that never went astray?
Even the consciousness of sin brings some into
nearness with the Father, tired of their draff and
husks; and then it is a blessed sin. Sorrow also
brings some, and then it is a blessed grief; joy
yet others, and  then it is blessed thrice.  In
this place is one greater than the temple, greater
than all temples; for the human nature of the lowliest child transcends all human history. And we
may live so that all our daily life shall be a continual approach and mounting up towards God.
What is the noblest life? Not that born in the




COMMUNION WITH GOD.                393
most famous place, acquiring wealth and fame and
rank and power over matter and over men; but that
which, faithful to itself continually, holds communion with the Infinite, and, thence receiving of God's
kind, in mortal life displays the truth, the justice,
holiness, and love of God.
" 0, blessed be our trials then,
This deep in which we lie;
And blessed be all things that teach
God's dear Infinity."
END.








The following works of Mr. Parker may be had of Messrs.
Little, Brown   G Co.:A DISCOURSE OF MATTERS PERTAINING TO RELIGION. 3d Ed.
1847. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, FROM THE GERMAN OF DE WETTE. 2d Ed. 1850. 2 vols. 8vo. $3.75.
CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 1843. 1 vol. 12mo.
$1.25.
ADDRESSES AND OCCASIONAL SERMONS. 1852. 2 vols. 12mo.
$2.50.
TEN SERMONS OF RELIGION. 1852. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.
SERMONS OF THEISM, ATHEISM, AND THE POPULAR THEOLOGY. 1853. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25.
ADDITIONAL SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, AND OCCASIONAL SERMONS. 1855. 2 vols. 12mo. $2.50.
PAMPHLETS.  Sermons on the following Subjects:OF OLD AGE. 1854. 15 cents.
OF THE NEW CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. 1854. 20 cents.
OF THE LAWS OF GOD AND THE STATUTES OF MEN. 1854.
15 cents.
OF THE DANGERS WHICH THREATEN THE RIGHTS OF MAN
IN AMERICA. 1854. 20 cents.
OF THE MORAL DANGERS INCIDENT TO PROSPERITY. 1855.
15 cents.
OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN IMMORAL PRINCIPLE. 1855.
15 cents.