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SERMONS OF RELIGION

Sermons of Religion

BY

THEODORE PARKER

EDITED WITH A PREFACE
BY
SAMUEL A. ELIOT

BOSTON
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION
25 Beacon Street

Copyright, 1908
American Unitarian Association

Pbesswobe by The University Fbbbs, Cambridge, TJ. S. A.

EDITOR'S PREFACE
The first ten sermons in this volume were published
by Mr. Parker in 1852, under the title " Ten Sermons
of Religion," with a second edition in 1855, and after
wards included in all the editions of his works.
In this edition there are added to the original dis
courses, the sermon on "Religious Rest," preached at
the Melodeon on April 2, 1848, and the sermon on
" Immortal Life " preached at the same place on Sep
tember 2, 1846. In the original preface, auspiciously
dated August 24, 1852, which was the author's forty-
second birthday, Mr. Parker described as follows the
origin and purpose of the ten sermons.
" I have often been asked by personal friends to pub
lish 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
loath 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 service
able 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 sum
mer, and in autumn of the fringed gentian and the
aster, — so must it be with the sermons which a minis-

vi EDITOR'S PREFACE
ter gathers up under serene or stormy skies. This lo
cal coloring from time and circumstances I am not de
sirous to wipe off; so the sad or joyous aspect of the
day will be found still tingeing these printed sermons,
as indeed it colored the faces and tinged the prayers of
such as heard them first.
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 ; 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."
The personality of Theodore Parker combined two
natures. One was that of the agitator who strove to
overthrow the evils and abuses of his time. The other
was that of the mystic who meditated and prayed and
walked humbly before God. One was roused to ardent
denunciation by the sense of wrong, the other was
stirred to grateful utterance by the sense of the divine
love. One was belligerent, aggressive and sometimes
ruthless, the other was contemplative, poetic, hungry
for affection. Parker the agitator had his mighty

EDITOR'S PREFACE vii
work to do, but his fame rests more permanently on the
work he did as a revealer of the things of the spirit.
There is a curious similarity to be traced in the na
tures of Theodore Parker and of Martin Luther.
Both were leaders of a great advance in religious think
ing and doing. Both were rough-tongued and tender
of heart. In both a passionate desire that righteous
ness might reign was joined with a spiritual hunger
and sense of dependence. Both were fierce and un
measured in invective and yet gentle and at bottom al
most sentimental. Hear Luther's denunciation of the
great Erasmus and match it with many a cry of Par
ker's against honest and patriotic men of his own gen
eration. "Erasmus," cried Luther, " is the vilest mis
creant that ever disgraced the earth. Whenever I
pray I pray a curse upon Erasmus." What he meant
was that Erasmus preached and practised toleration
and discovered good in the things that Luther held to
be wholly evil. Parker could fulminate with equal vio
lence against good men of his own time who did not
happen to agree with him. Yet just as the triumph
of Luther owed nothing to his prejudices, so the per
manent influence of Theodore Parker rests on some
thing firmer than his personal likes and dislikes. The
great service of both of these reformers was in purify
ing and deepening the ways by which men communicate
with God.
Theodore Parker was above everything else a
preacher. His theological treatises deal often with
doctrines that have lost all interest for modern men ; his
political speeches and essays treat for the most part of
issues once burning but now merely matters of history.
The sermons of religion alone are timeless. They deal
with unchanging conditions and problems. They are

viii EDITOR'S PREFACE
the interpretation into terms of rational thought of
the universal and ever divine mysteries.
Parker was the most human of preachers. He
found his sermons not so much in his books as in the
lives and needs of his fellow-men. He spoke to men on
equal terms, putting himself in their places, sharing
their perplexities, taking them into his confidence and
reasoning things out from common experiences to log
ical conclusions. While instinct with sentiment and
ballasted with abundant learning each sermon is practi
cal down to the homeliest detail. Each discourse con
tains, to be sure, the elements of a theology, — every
good sermon does that, — but Parker was chiefly inter
ested in showing how theology can be transmuted into
religion and how what a man knows can become what
he does. The sermons, that is, reflect that combina
tion of ideality and practicality which is characteristic
of men of the Puritan descent.
It must be confessed that almost every sermon con
tains some phrases which the reader may wish had been
left unwritten ; some over-emphasis on a matter of local
or temporary significance, or some tasteless illustra
tion; but these defects were part of Parker's nature
and complete the revelation of his personality. They
are readily forgotten as one follows the great sweep of
the preacher's thought, the keenness of the vision that
looks right into the heart of things, the honest direct
ness that convincingly reports what that vision dis
cerns. An unconscious art lends power to the thought.
The sermons march with steady tread. They were evi
dently thought through before a word was written.
The target was plain before the bow was bent. How
ever wide the sweep there is no wandering from the
point, no groping after ideas, no uncertainty of touch,

EDITOR'S PREFACE ix
no pursuit of tempting byways. The sermons reveal
a nature that abhorred shams, that shunned conven
tional phrases, that was careless of traditions because
it hungered for realities, a nature independent in judg
ment, and often combative in argument, but fundamen
tally reverent and prayerful.
The religion which unites the passion for righteous
ness with confidence in the present love of God has per
manent claims upon humanity. Always is God sum
moning men to do justly and love mercy. Always are
men reaching after God if haply they may find him.
Always is the word of the prophet of faith and con
science a word for which people are listening. These
discourses have that perennial charm and power. No
sermons in our language are more commanding in their
moral imperative or more penetrating in their spiritual
insight. They interpret the eternal commands of God
to men and they utter the universal cry of man to God.
Samuel A. Eliot.

CONTENTS Page
I. Of Piety, and the Relation thereof to
Manly Life '  1

255078
107

II. Of Truth and the Intellect . . .
III. Of Justice and the Conscience . .
IV. Of Love and the Affections . .
V. Of Conscious Religion and the Soul
VI. Of the Culture of the Religious Powers 143
VII. Of Conscious Religion as a Source of
Strength  174
VIII. Of Conscious Religion as a Source of Joy 200
IX. Of Conventional and Natural Sacraments 241
X. Of Communion with God  281
XI. Of Religious Rest  304
XII. Of Immortal Life  320

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 center,
where they are most unlike; not by their circum
ference 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, distribute
these faculties of the human spirit into four classes:
the intellectual, — including the aesthetic, — moral,
affectional, and religious. Let mind be the name of
the intellectual faculty, — including the threefold
mental powers, reason, imagination, and understand
ing; 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
V-l 1

2 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 with
out that universal idea of causahty in my mind, patent
or latent, I could not understand any particular cause
whatever. My eye might see the fact of a man cut
ting down a tree, but my mind would comprehend
only the conjunction in time and space, not their con
nection in causality. If you have not a universal
idea of beauty, you do not know that this is a hand
some 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 condition 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.

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 3
The mind contemplates God as manifested in truth;
for truth — in the wide meaning of the word in
cluding 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 for it
self, 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 uni
versal 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 with the
conscience is to love him as manifested in right and

4 SERMONS OF RELIGION
justice; is to love right or justice, not for its con
venience, 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 par
ticular 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 con
venience 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 ere long it becomes
plain they only love some limited or even personal con
venience they hope therefrom. The people of the
United States claim to love the unalienable right of
man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But the long-continued cry of three million slaves,
groaning under the American yoke, shows beyond
question or cavil that it is not the universal and un
alienable 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 de
prive another of it than submit yourself to be de-

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 5
prived 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 cog
nition. To love God with the heart is to love him as
manifested in love; it is to love love, not for its con
venience, but for itself, because it is absolutely beauti
ful 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 hes at the basis of all affectional excel
lence. The mind and the conscience are content with
ideas, with the true and the right, while the heart de
mands 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 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 phi
losopher 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

6 SERMONS OF RELIGION
great moment to mankind, whereby to learn the ab
solute right of ethics, — iso 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 in
finite object of the affections.
The soiil 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 unified into one complete
and perfect being, the Infinite God. He is the ab
solute 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 excel
lence whatever, and is necessary to a complete and
well-proportioned development of the faculties them
selves. There may be an unconscious piety: the man does
not know that he loves universal truth, justice, love;
loves God. He only thinks of the special truth,
justice, and love, which he prizes. He does not re
flect upon it; does, not aim to love God in this way,
yet does it, nevertheless. Many a philosopher has

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 7
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 was any God. But all the
while their nature was truer than their will; their in
stincts 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 ger
minates in us, and grows under ground, as it were, be
fore it bursts the sod and shoots into the light of self-
consciousness. Sheathed in unconsciousness lies the
bud, ere long 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 per
sonal 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 conscious
ness of God, denied his providence, perhaps his ex
istence, and would have resolved God into matter, and
no more. Yet all the while in these men, dim and un
conscious, there lay the religious element; neglected,
unknown, it gave the man the very love of special

8 SERMONS OF RELIGION
justice which made him strong. He knew the ab
solutely just, but did not know it as God.
I have known philanthropists who undervalued
piety; they liked it not, — they said it was moon
light, 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 de
light. 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 him
self delighted at the love he saw pervading all and
blessing all; yet he recognized no God, 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 philo
sophic 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

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 9
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 Di
stinctiveness 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;
so the man's conscious piety belongs to a higher
stage of development, and is above the mere instinc
tive 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 phi
lanthropist, 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

10 SERMONS OF RELIGION
justice, and the love which fills the lily's cup with
fragrant loveliness, who wonders at the mighty cos
mic 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, conscious 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-propor
tioned whole. Then he feels that he goes in and out,
continually, in the midst of the vast forces of the uni
verse, 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 knows
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 be
ing 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 of all

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 11
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. Man
kind 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 re
spect. 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 sur
prising 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 develop
ment of the love of God, but which are not needed
after the religious character is somewhat mature.
Then the man needs not those former outward 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

12 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 calcula
ting the orbit of a planet not yet seen. But the
fingers and the solar system are alike helps to mathe-
matic thought. When the boy is grown up to man's
estate, his body vigorous and mature, he tries his
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 man
kind 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

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 13
necessary or beautiful for the accomplished scholar
to go back to his alphabet, and repeat it over, to re
turn to his early arithmetic and paradigms of gram
mar, when he knows them all; for this is not needful
to keep an active mind in a normal condition, and per
form 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 baby
hood. Because these little trifles sufficed once, they
cannot help him now. Man, reaching forward, for
gets the things that are behind.
Now the mischief is, that, in matters of religion,
men demand that he who has a mature and well-pro
portioned 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 rehgion, 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 school-dame's slate, not the diagrams of
God writ on the heavens in points of fire. We are
told that what once thus helped to mold 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 fan
ning and blowing itself, perpetually firing itself up,
while it turns no wheels but its own, and does no work

14 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 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 up
right 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 say
ing, " save us, good Lord." If a man thinks him
self a miserable offender, let him away with the of
fense, 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 in
stitutions 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 Christen
dom exhibit the same thing in their adherence to cere
monies and opinions which once were the greatest helps
and the highest expression of piety to mankind, but
which have long 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 ridicu
lous, and only succeeding by the destruction of reason.
It was easy to make the mistake, but when made it
need not be made perpetual.

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 15
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 be
lieve 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? Sup
pose you told him that the proof of his manhood con
sisted in his fondness for little boys' playthings, and
the little story-books and the little games of little
children, and kept him securely fastened 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 man
kind. Then this method of procedure disgusts well-edu
cated 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

16 SERMONS OF RELIGION
which environs it, and turns off from rehgion 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 in
terest 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 niggardly turn
ing back, — 'they dislike to mention the word. So re
ligion 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, through
out 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 their control, 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

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 17
religion." Such fatal errors come from this mis
take.

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 do the work of a strong 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 re
ligion; 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 mo
tive 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 httle 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 op
position, not conjunction; but duty rules. That is the
goodness of a boy in rehgion, the common goodness of
the world. V— 2

18 SERMONS OF RELIGION
At length the rising man shoots above this rudi
mentary state, has an increase of love of God, and
therefore of love of man; his goodness is spontane
ous, 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 con
junction now. Not in vain does the poor, the op
pressed, 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 Catho
lic; in all the great religious parties of the civilized
world, among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews.
They are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeach
able 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, lov
ing truth, justice, love, loving God the more. What
is piety within must be morality without. The quality
and quantity of the outward must increase as the
quality and quantity of the inward. So his eminent
piety must become eminent morality, which is philan
thropy. He loves not only his kindred and his coun
try, 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

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 19
to do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his love,
his piety, over all the world. His daily life is a pro
fession 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 gush
ing 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 plows over the bar
ren spot with his remorse, sows with new seed, and the
old desert blossoms like a 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 re
gards 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 rehgion 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

20 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 tran
quillity, a calmness and repose, which nothing else
can give, and also a beauty of character which you
vainly seek elsewhere. When a man has the intellec
tual, 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 love
liness 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, iii manly quan
tity and in a manly form, is an uncommon thing. It is
marvelous what other wants the want of this brings
in : look over the long list of brilliant names that glit
ter 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

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 21
piety. They did not 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 genera
tions; 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 marvelously hke the thin, cold
dazzle of northern lights upon the wintry ice. In
our own country it is still the same; the high intellec
tual 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 them
selves 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?
Ask the State, ask the Church, ask society, and ask our
bomes. 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 conscious
ness of mankind to-day. When the world thinks in

22 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 re
ligion of the intellect, of the conscience, of the affec
tions, 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 incar
nate 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. 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 jour
ney 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 wilder
ness, 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 intel
lectual, 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

OF PIETY AND THE MANLY LIFE 23
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 pretense of the
hypocrite. Can philosophy satisfy us without relig
ion? Even the head feels a coldness from the want of
piety. The greatest intellect is ruled by the same in
tegral 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.
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 develop
ment, 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 de
light in Him; He his in you. Is it not worth while
to live so that you know you are in unison with God ;

24 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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.

II
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 preserva
tion 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 pro
portion 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 mind. We say
" knowledge is power," but mean wisdom, which is
general intellectual abihty, 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 intel
lectual side of piety ; and, secondly, the power to pos
sess 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

26 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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, they will become distinguished for these three
things. In hke 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 nat
ural 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
regulate the development of mind, in the individual or
the race, are as certain as the laws of matter. Observ-

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 27
ance thereof is sure to bring certain consequences to
the individual, the nation, and mankind. The intel
lectual peculiarity of a nation is transmitted from
age to age, and only disappears when the nation per
ishes or mingles with some other tribe inferior to it
self; then it does not cease, but is spread more thinly
over a wider 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 in
crease of Socratic excellence ever since the death of the
Athenian sage.

28 SERMONS OF RELIGION
This is a remarkable law of Providence, but a law
it is ; and cheering is it to know that all the good qual
ities 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 pos
terity, 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 universe, so is there a spiritual
temperature of the interpersonal spaces, a certain com
mon 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

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 29
penetrate progressively the human mass, giving man
kind 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 subtle 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 affec
tion. The healthy eye does not more naturally turn
to the hght, than the honest mind turns towards the
truth. See how we seek after it 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 pro
pose no corporeal benefit to themselves, none to the
human race. They love each truth of nature for its
own fair sake. What is the pecuniary value of the
satellites of Neptune to us? See how laborious nat
uralists ransack the globe to learn the truth 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

30 SERMONS OF RELIGION
his life to mosses and lichens, which grow unheeded on
the rocks ; he loves them as if they were his own chil
dren, 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
fire nor fill his children's hungry mouths! No In
quisition 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 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 disinter
ested 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 fair-faced 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 plow.

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 31
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 spirit
ual 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 com
prehended 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 to aid
the search for truth: not only visible tools to magnify
the little and bring near us the remote, but the invis
ible weapons of the mind, — mathematics and the vari
ous 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.

32 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 conscious
ness 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 con
scious of the universe, and have mastered 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 Eng
land 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 un
grateful; 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

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 33
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, not a bride. The reason of
this seeming falseness to the intellectual 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
" foohsh," 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 Testa
ment, and wisdom sometimes turned off rather rudely.
Perhaps the reason was, that then, as now, men often
V— 3

34 SERMONS OF RELIGION
cultivated the mind alone, and not the highest facul
ties of that; and, though ever learning, never hit the
truth. Doubtless men of accomplished mind and man
ners sneered at the rudeness of the Galilean, and with
their demonstrations sought to parry the keen intui
tions 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 gen
erous 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-bot
tomed 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 world-wide leaves laid open before us, with
their " millions of surprises."
Let me say a word in behalf of the largest culture
of the intellect, of all faculties thereof, — understand
ing, imagination, reason. I admit there have been
men of able mind and large intellectual development
who have turned off from religion, their science driv
ing 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

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 35
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 perse
cution 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 re
ligion 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 govern
ment 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. 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

36 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 abnega
tion 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, Voltaire,
even Hobbes and Hume, performed a work indispens
able 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 preach
ing 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 think
ing 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 re
ligion. 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. Cutivate 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,

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 37
America, and France. Thinking men care little for
the " opinions of the clergy," except on the 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 be
lieve that He inspires men, not only through the con
science, the affections, and the soul, but also through
the intellect — through the reason, imagination, and
understanding. But he does this, not arbitrarily,
miraculously, 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 ocean-bosom is thirsty for a
whole heaven of truth? 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

38 SERMONS OF RELIGION
contents of his primer ; he should not censure his neigh
bor 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 for
bear 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; in
vulnerable as God ; " of the Eternal coeternal beam,"
shall we call it an accident of his being, or rather sub
stance 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, im
mortal, 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

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 39
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 he, 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 other
wise? 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 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, na
tional jealousies, wrangling betwixt Babylonian or
Theban priests, and the antagonism of the Gentile and
the Jew. Now all are " one in Christ." They bless

40 SERMONS OF RELIGION
the hps 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,
knowing no man after his national flesh. His soul has
a better prospect of God, now the partition-wall be
tween the Jew and Gentile is thrown down.
We often estimate the value of a nation by the
truths it brings to hght. To take the physical cen
sus, 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
the truths. The nations may perish, the barbarian
sweep over Thebes, the lovely places of Jerusalem be
come a standing pool, and the favorite spot of Soc
rates 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 great truths are seen and wel
comed as political economy before they are thought of
as part of political morality, human affection, and

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 41
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 Lernasan Marsh of
modern society; widened his affections, till his heart
prayed, aye, and his hands, for the poor negro in
the Southern swamps, — for all the oppressed. It
touched and wakened up his soul, tiU 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

42 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 awakens a love for itself;
first, perhaps, in the recipient heart of some woman,
waiting for the consolation. Then a few minds pre
pared 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 com
panionship. The circle grows wider. Men oppose the
new idea, with little skill or much, sometimes with vio
lence, or only with intellect. Then comes a httle
pause, — the ablest representatives of the truth must
get fully conscious of their truth, and of their re
lation to the world; a process like that in the growing
corn of summer, which in hot days spindles, as the
farmers say, but in 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 de
vise 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 fol
lows, 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,

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 43
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. 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 noth
ing 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 in
stitutions; they are for him, accidents of his develop
ment, not he for them. That is a very simple state
ment, 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 op-

44 SERMONS OF RELIGION
posed; one of the Stuarts said, " It shall not 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, lib
erty, 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 defense has already
become a garden for the town.
Here in America, men full .of this truth rise up
against ungodly customs, now become a law, and un
der this demand the freedom of the slave. See how
it spreads 1 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 be
longs to the nature of man, and can only perish when

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 45
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 im
portant 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. "O 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 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

46 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 scepters broken, their thrones overturned; and
the fair-faced daughter of the Eternal King leads
forward happy tribes of men, and with pious vow in
augurates 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 can
not be ; the slaves of America must "be bondmen for
ever; the nations of Europe can never be free." 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 wis
dom 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

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 47,
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 and
strength and lovehness, as much nobler than all cor
poreal 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 wiU 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 end of time.
As the men who discovered corn, tamed the ox, the
horse, invented language and letters, who conquered
fire and water, and yoked these two brute furious ele-

48 SERMONS OF RELIGION
ments 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 de
velops 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 ac
quired 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 ex
istence 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 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

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 49
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 thing, works in
the same line with Moses, has intellectual sympathy
with God, and is a fellow-laborer with Him. The best
gift we can bestow upon man' is manhood. Under
value not material things ; but remember that the gen
eration 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 Gahlee, and the remembrance of his manly life.
V— 4

in
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 be
long to the nature of things, to the constitution of
the universe; this fact is universal. In different de
partments 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, men
tal, or moral forces, the mode in which commonly they
are seen to act, and in which it is their ideal to act al
ways. 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.
The laws of matter we can learn only by observation
and experience. We cannot divine them and antici
pate, 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
50

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 51
without hesitation. In the solar system, or the com
position of a diamond, no margin is left for any oscil
lation of disobedience; margins of oscillation there al
ways 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 growth and decomposition, in the repul
sions 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 httle 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 more close and intimate, we call it vegetation in
plants, vitality in animals. But for the present pur
pose 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 sur
prises 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

52 SERMONS OF RELIGION
a chink that opens in a garden-walk of a dry day in
summer. A sponge is porous, having small spaces be
tween 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 the sponge,
the system, and the universe. Every particle of mat
ter 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 conscious
ness, 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
f rpm all hindrance ; it develops itself through conscious
agents, that continually change, and pass by experi
ment 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, con
trolled by individual will ; this may act in the same line
with the great normal force of justice, or it may con
flict for a time with the general law of the universe,
having private nutations, oscillations, and aberrations,
personal or national. But these minor forces, after a

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 53
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 un
like! 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 httle 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-out
lasting 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; 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.

54 SERMONS OF RELIGION
Viewed as an object not in man, justice is the con
stitution 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 uni
versal 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 experi
enced sight and the experienced thought 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 con
science, 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

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 55
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 mat
ter. Man, though finite, is indefinitely progressive,
continually unfolding the 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 ac
tivity, 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, but in the inward cause, and
by my nature I love this law of right, this rule of con
duct, this justice, with a deep and abiding love. I
find that justice is the object of my conscience, fitting

56 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 man
kind. Attraction is the most general law in the material
world, and prevents a schism in the universe; temper
ance is the law of the body, and prevents a schism in
the members; justice is the law of conscience, and pre
vents 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 temperance in the
world of men. It keeps just relations between men;
one man, however little, must not be sacrificed to an
other, however great, to a majority, or to all men. It
holds the balance betwixt nation and nation, for a na
tion 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 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 57
of all, — a universal human debt, a universal hu
man 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 im
possible, — a contradiction to our idea of God; re
ligiously speaking, it is impious, — a contradiction to
our feehng of God. Both the philosophic and the re
ligious consciousness declare it impossible that God
should be unjust. The nature of finite men claims jus
tice of God; His infinite nature adjusts the claim.
Every man 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 con
stant 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

58 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 capil
lary attraction conflicting with the universal gravita
tion. But in my maturity, in my cool and personal
hours, when I am most myself, and 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 lovehness
thereof. Then if justice crown me I am glad, not
merely with my personal 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 com
mon 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 injus
tice 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 suffer
ing 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

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 59
has its earliest spring. Commonly, men love justice
a little more than truth ; they are more moral than in
tellectual; 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 ab
stract 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 com
monly 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 uni
versal 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 intel
lectual 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 semina
ries of education, from the Propaganda of the 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 litera
ture of the world. The foremost class in culture,
wealth, and social rank have less than the average pro-

60 SERMONS OF RELIGION
portion 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 prac
tice 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 defense. 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 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 jus
tice, administered without passion. I know the gov
ernment 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

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 61
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 Norse
men it was deemed a crime against society to forgive
a grievous wrong, and " nidding " is a word of con
tempt to this day. It was not merely personal malice
which led to private revenge; which bade the Scot
tish 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 attempt, and filled her with a hor
rid joy when the third succeeded. It was "wild jus
tice " 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 of
fended people come forth and hold their court, with
summary process, brief and savage, to decree some
thing hke 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 repre
sentatives of right. A few years ago men were sur
prised 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

62 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 gov
ernment, or statute law, until it comes up to 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 de
mands. 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 stu
dents of English history rejoice at the downfall of
Judge Jeffries. In romances we love to read of some
man or maid oppressed by outward circumstances, but
victorious over them ; hawked at by villians whose foot
is taken in their own snare. This is the principal
charm in the ballads and people's poetry of Eng
land 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 beautiful,
make sin triumphant, men shrink away from the poison
atmosphere he breathes. Authors like Filmer, Ma-
chiavel, and Hobbes arouse the indignation of man-

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 63
kind. The fact of personal error it is easy to ex
cuse, 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 jus
tice 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 f roward 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 oppres
sion, no fear of man, no fear of God, but 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 jus
tice in him, which gradually gets developed in the
world. But in Himself justice is infinite. This jus
tice of God must appear in the world, and in the his
tory 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

64 SERMONS OF RELIGION
of the gods grind slow, but they grind to powder;"
" 111 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 but
ter 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 con
tinual 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 by
the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.
And from what I see I am sure it bends towards jus
tice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jef
ferson trembled when he thought of slavery and re
membered that God is just. Ere long 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 bish
ops; 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

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 65
mother weakened the ties of language, literature, reli
gion, — the Old England and the New read the same
Bible, — kindred blood and institutions inherited
from the same fathers; we thought only of the injus
tice ; and there was an ocean between us and the mother
country. The fairest jewel fell from the British
crown. 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, sad patience, and
tore away this triple torment, — as Paul, escaped from
wreck, shook off the viper from his hand, — and trod
the venomous beast to 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 up
start 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 his great
strength, the ablest monarch since Charlemagne sits
down on a httle island in the tropic sea, and dies upon
V— 5

66 SERMONS OF RELIGION
that lonely rock, his life a warning, to bid mankind
be just and not despise the Lord. No mightiness 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 al
ways 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. 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 from him.
So I have 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

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 67
his conduct, selfish, grasping, inhuman, and fraudu
lently 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.
He 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 states
men, 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 Washing
ton 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 Chris
tendom, of Judaism, and of every 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. Lit
tleness has its compensation. A small man is seldom
pinched for want of room. Greatness is its own tor
ment. 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 man
kind. Men mocked him, gave him a gallows between
two thieves. " Savior, 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 an
swer 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

68 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 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 in
stinct, not satisfied on earth, reaches out to the future
world, and in an ideal heaven would realize ideal jus
tice. 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 hfe. In the old mihtary civilization
that was not possible; in the present industrial civili
zation it is not thought desirable by the mercantile
chiefs of Church and State. Hitherto, the actual

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 69
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 the expense of the weak, to pro
tect the capitalist and tax the laborer. The powerful
have sought a monopoly of development and enjoy
ment, loving to eat their morsel alone. Accordingly,
httle respect is paid to absolute justice by the con
trolling statesmen of the Christian world. Not con
science 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
httle 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 the uses of truth, not
truth itself; they scorn duty and its higher law; to
be ignorant and weak-minded is thought worse than
to be voluntarily unjust and wicked; idiocy of con
science is often thought an excellence, is never out of
fashion. Morality is thought no part of piety in the

70 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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, col
leges, learned societies, and all of the special institu
tions for agriculture, manufactures, and commerce,
to develop the understanding and apply it to various
concrete interests. 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 in
stinct; its development is accidental, not a consider
able part of our 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 pur
pose for the moral sense? The popular clergy think
miracles better than morality; and have even less jus
tice 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 eccle
siastical defenses of African slavery: The negroes
are the descendants of Ham, who laughed at his

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 71
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 man " 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 httle 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 be
fore the natural piety of the conscience. " Trusting
in good works " is an offense to the Christian Church,
as well Protestant as Catholic.
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 dif
fused 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 peo
ple 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 Vir
gin," and in illuminating cardinals and popes set in
the magic lantern of the great ecclesiastical show-box.
No pains, or httle, 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 them
selves, and with their thunder blasted the mortal life
of the prophets of justice sent by God to establish

72 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 privi
lege, and they who enjoyed it made this their practical
motto : " Down with the poor ! " The feudal sys
tem fell before Dr. Faustus and his printing-press.
Military civilization slowly gives way to industrial.
Common schools teach men to read. The steam-press
cheapens literature; the complicated tools of modern
industry make the shop a college for the understand
ing ; the laborer is goaded by his hate of wrong, which
is the passion of morality, as love of right is the affec
tion 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 com
munism 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 obe
dience from the vassal, the noble took delight in the
Oppression which trod his brother down. Now num
bers 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 ! "

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 73
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 selfish
ness 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 be
fore the higher law its worshipers 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 Britian
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 de
votion," 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 righteousness, and a State with
out 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

74 SERMONS OF RELIGION
convictions, that is justice to yourself; a life in obe
dience 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 pros
per, 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
woolen tread, and her iron hands are around his neck.
No man can escape from this, no more than from
himself. At first sight of the consequences of justice, re
dressing the evils of the world, its aspect seems stern
and awful. Men picture the palace of this king as
hell; there is torment and anguish; the waters are in
trouble. The chariot of justice seems a car of Jug
gernaut 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 Jug
gernaut is the triumphant chariot of mankind riding
forth to welfare. With swift and noiseless feet jus
tice 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 stir-

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 75
reth 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 to fly, so comes justice unto
men. Sometimes men fear that justice will fail, wicked
ness 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 any thing 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
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 devel
oped, 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 hap
piness, 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,

76 SERMONS OF RELIGION
the wisdom of God, and the justice of God are on his
side, and it cannot fail, — no more than God himself
can perish. Wrong is the accident of human devel
opment. Right is of the substance of humanity;
justice the goal we are to reach.
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, ob
scurely faithful, may prepare the way for the repub
lic 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 ma
jestic 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 human1-
kind. Even the crumbs that fall from our table may
save a brother's life. You and I may help deepen the

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 77
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-con
quering tide of right, the river of God that is full of
blessing.

rv
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 condi
tion and history. The affections deal with persons;
with nothing but persons, for animate, and even in
animate, things get invested with a certain imaginary
personality as soon as they become objects of affec
tion. Ideas are the persons of the intellect, and per
sons 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 sim
ple feeling, not capable of analysis, not easily de
scribed, 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 de
lighting. 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 con
venience to us. Love is its own satisfaction; it is the
love of loving, not merely of enjoying, another.
78

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 79
Such is love itself, described by its central char
acter; but it appears in many forms, and is specifi
cally 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 pas
sions 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 as 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 specifi
cally by other emotions which connect themselves with
it. Love is the piety of the affections.
Of course there are not only forms of love, where
the quahty 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 com
fort, 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 con
science, 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,

80 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 re
ward 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.
The highest ideal degree of love is sometimes at
tained, 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 per
formance of mankind. It is rarely that human na
ture 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 proph
ecy. 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 de
gree of love which the loftiest men now cannot com
prehend. 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 can
not receive the same quantity. Thus you cannot love a

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 81
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 can
not 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 ex
cessive degree of this: and Love for the normal feel
ing 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 impene
trability is to the atoms of matter, and what the cen
tripetal 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, de
structive of others, and appropriate what is theirs to
my own purposes.
Love is the greater gravitation which unites me
V— 6

82 SERMONS OF RELIGION
to others; the expansive and centrifugal power that
extends my personality, and makes me find my de
light 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 propor
tionate 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 offense for which
the law demanded the two eyes 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 prepon
derance 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 httle in advance of love of the
abstract right, and that spontaneous love triumphs
over voluntary morality ; the heart carries the day be
fore 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 repre
sent the natural tendency of human nature better than

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 83
men. I think they seldom sacrifice a person to an ab
stract rule of conduct; or at least, if there is a col
lision 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 them
selves, 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, 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 offense,
and orders his head struck off, sacrificing his private
and paternal love to the 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 man
ner to 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 quahty of finite
morality, for it is the same as divine justice. Abso
lute 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 exam
ples of this. Here is one who loves her own family

84 SERMONS OF RELIGION
with intense love, — her husband, children, grand
children, 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 vulgarity and worldly and
ignoble materialism. She is generous to them, no she-
crow more bounteous to her young, but no hawk wa-
ever more niggardly to all beyond. Her 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 degen
erated 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 self-denying for their
sake. Yet he did not hesitate to break up a thou
sand homes in Africa, that he might adorn his own
in New England. The hon, 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 be
yond that limit. All the aristocracies of the world,
the little sects of Christendom, and the great sects
of the human race, furnish examples of this.

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 85
What is called patriotism is another form of the
same limited love, — a culture of the affections with
out regard to justice. Hence it has been held pa
triotic to build up your country by the ruin of an
other land, to love Jacob and hate Esau. This feel
ing 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 love is limited to the
family, class, sect, or nation, the aim is this: Mu
tuality 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, arbi
trarily 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 af
fection. The domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and po
litical institutions of the world, the educational and
commercial machinery of the world, tend to produce
this result. All the rehgions 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.
But this expansive and centrifugal power may be
cultivated to the neglect of natural and well-pro
portioned self-love. This also is a defect, for the
conservative or self -preserving power is quite as neces
sary as the beneficent and expansive power. Im
penetrability is the necessary concomitant of attrac
tion. The individual is first an integer, then a frac
tion 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

86 SERMONS OF RELIGION
bodies is not less so of spirits. Here is a man with
so httle 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 center nowhere. He keeps other
men's vineyards, not his own. This is a fault; doubt
less a rare one, still a fault which destroys the in
dividual 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 cul
ture; a difference, also, in respect to the mode of cul
ture of the heart, which may be developed jointly with
mind and conscience, or independently of them, —
a difference in proportion. Thus, practically, the
affectional power of men varies as much as the in
tellectual 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 de
velopment, 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 ani
mals 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, —

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 87
the male and female parting fellowship when the an
nual 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 ma
terial 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 necessitated, 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 man
ner 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 af
fections 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 in
stinctive as the groupings of bees or beavers; but
man is capable of modifying the action of this gre
garious 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 asso
ciations 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

88 SERMONS OF RELIGION
a distinct self-consciousness of universal brotherhood.
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 ri
sings in successive creations. It helps us to see the
unity of the world, and also to foretell the develop
ment of human nature ; for what is there accomphshed
by successive creation of new races, with us takes
place by the continual development of the same in
dividual. 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 ac
tion, the mind mediating between the inward senti
ment 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 per
sons before we know things; indeed, things are in
vested 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 chil
dren is one of the most beautiful phenomena in na
ture. The child has self-love, but no selfishness; his
nebulous being not yet solidified to the impene
trability which is to come. His first joys are ani
mal, 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 con
fined sphere of the family, class, sect, or nation.
Men trust the heart more than the head. The mass

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 89
of men have more confidence in a man of great af
fection than in one of great thought; pardon is com
monly 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 abun
dant interest felt in talk about persons, the popular
fondness for personal anecdotes, biographies, ballads,
love-stories, and the hke. 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 re
ligious teachers. Men sympathize with the person
before they take his doctrine. Hence the popular
fondness for portraits of great men, for their auto
graphs, 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 rea
son, religious 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 con
science ; — 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.

90 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 de
light 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
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, Shakespeare,
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.

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 91
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.
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 sumptu
ous food, and " wine too good for the tables of pon
tiffs," thereby often only thickening and gilding the
chain which binds the soul to earth. Some men
idealize their life a httle 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 de
lighting 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 wine'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."

92 SERMONS OF RELIGION
I have heard a boorish pedant wonder how a woman
could spend so many years of her hfe 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 edu
cation of the heart. At one period of hfe we need
objects of instinctive passion, at another, of instinc
tive benevolence without passion.
I am not going to undervalue the charm of wis
dom, 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 na
tive powers, but with a genius for love, developed in
its domestic, social, patriotic, human form, with a
wealth of affection which surpasses even her afflu
ence 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 so-

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 93
ciety. 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
Shakespeare, 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 great
est 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 over
looks the mountain tops from the Mississippi to the
Atlantic main, and has no fellow from the 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 un
equalled loftiness, but freezing cold; while in the low
valleys and on the mountain's southern slopes the
snow- melts quickly 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.

94 SERMONS OF RELIGION
See the array of natural means provided for the
development and education of the heart. Spiritual
love joining with the instinctive passion which peo
ples 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 con
scious love. The first human feehng extended to
wards 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 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 woman's
love. All this tends to waken and unfold the affec
tions, to give them their culture, and hasten their
growth. The other children of kindred blood, ask
ing 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
one to offend. As the roughest of men will gather
flowers for httle 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 hps

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 95
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
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 mis
fortune to fail of finding an opportunity for the cul
ture of conscience in childhood, and to acquire bad
habits in youth, which at great cost you must revo
lutionize 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 con
ceal, 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
beautiful to see the examples of love which we some-

96 SERMONS OF RELIGION
times 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 feehng of its personal and voluntary
character. I will speak of spontaneous love not con
nected 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 hfe,
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 graced
with its specific piety, whose chief delight it is to do
kind deeds to those beloved. Her hfe is poured out,
like the fair light of heaven, around the bedside of
the sick. She comes like a last sacrament to the dy
ing man, bringing back a reminiscence of the best
things of mortal life, and giving a foretasted pro
phecy of the joys of heaven, her very presence an
alabaster box of ointment, exceeding precious, filling

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 97
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
hfe 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
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 savior 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 hither; then it heals your smart,
or when beheld fills you with wonder at its human
lovehness. The calling of a clergyman in a great, wicked
town brings him acquainted with ghastly forms of
human wickedness, — with felons of conscience, and
V— 7

98 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 affec
tion 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 wicked
ness 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-
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 coun
try, 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 hght.
This virtue of patriotism is common with the mass
of men in this republic. In aristocratic govern
ments the rich men and nobles have it in a large de
gree ; it is, however, somewhat selfish, — a love of their
private privileges more than of the general rights
of their countrymen. With us in America, espe
cially 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.

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 99
But apart from patriotism, charity, friendship, I
have seen most noble examples of the same affec
tion on a yet wider scale, — I mean philanthropy, the
love of all mankind. You all know men whose af
fection, 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, over-leaped
the far barriers of our native land, and now, loving
family, friend, and country, loves likewise all human
kind. 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 like-minded, — everybody can
do that ; — all save an ill-born few, whom we may
pity, but must not blame, for their congenital de
formity and dwarfishness ; — but to love the un
lovely, 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 de
gree of love; you must be but httle lower than the
angels to do that. It is one of the noblest attain
ments of man, and in this he becomes most like God.
The intellect acquaints you with the truth, the
thought of God; conscience informs you with his
justice, the moral will of God; and the heart fitly ex
ercised gives you a fellowship with his eternal love,
the most intimate feeling of the Infinite Father ; having
that, you can love men spite of the imperfections of
their conduct and character, — can love the idiot, the
criminal, hated or popular, — be towardly to the fro-

100 SERMONS OF RELIGION
ward, 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 lov
ing, 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 nar
rower 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 stand
the light, nor devils love. My affections bind me
to God, and as the heart grows strong my ever-
deepening 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 affec
tions hold in the natural economy of man, and the
abundant opportunities for their culture and develop-

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 101
ment 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 week
day virtue; friendship is deemed too romantic for a
trading town. Philanthropy is mocked at by states
men 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 calum
niating philanthropy ; " Even the golden rule hath its
exceptions," says one of them just now. It is deemed
important to show that Jesus of Nazareth 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 un
derstanding 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 com
merce and politics; controlling men have no faith in
disinterested benevolence; to them the nation is a mon
strous shop, a trading city but a bar-room in a com
mercial tavern, the church a desk for the accountant,

102 SERMONS OF RELIGION
the world a market ; men are buyers and sellers, employ
ers 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
gentleness. Love has httle 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 end
less hell. The long line of scoffers from Lucian,
their great hierophant, down to Voltaire and his liv
ing 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 can
not 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 coun
tries. But the sterner Protestant sects have the Ro
man 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

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 103
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 here
after ; " 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 prog
ress 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 plowshare.
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
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 be
yond the bounds of kin and country, and taught him
to love mankind. He grows old in learning to love,

104 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 affec
tion, to the great Mother of mankind ; and in the senti
ment 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?
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 com
forted; 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

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 105
sure; the poor must be fed, must have his human
right to a vote, to justice, truth, and love; the ig
norant 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 manli-
fied; 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 ex
punge 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 while irreligion 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,
— self-love, 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, dis
interested love at last; the nature of God is war
rant that what is promised in man's nature shall be
fulfilled in his development. Human nature is hu
man destiny; God's nature, universal Providence.
The mind tells us of truth which will prevail; con
science, 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

106 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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; Csesars and Alex
anders are instantial men, men of force and fight.
One day this will be inverted, these conquerors swept
off and banished, the philanthropists become com
mon, the kingdom of hate forgot in the common
wealth of love. Here is work for you and me to do ;
for our affectional piety, assuming its domestic so
cial, 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 senti
ment 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."

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, — out
ward 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 al
ways seeking 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 ob
ject 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
107

108 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 plowed
into the history of every tribe that has occupied time
or peopled space. Consider mankind as one man, im
mortal and not growing old, universal history as his
biography; study the formation of his religious con
sciousness, 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 in
ward 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 can
not 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,

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 109
" But who made God? " the child's causality heed
lessly leaping at the Infinite, he having a dim senti
ment of the Maker of all itself unmade. You have
seen little babies, early deprived of their mother, in
voluntarily 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 feel with our souls 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 senti
ment — 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 es
cape 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 perplex
ity of indistinctness. Sometimes you loved it; some
times 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 ini the sunshine, then in the
storm; now it gave life, then it took life away. You
connected it with all that was strange and uncom
mon; 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, travehng 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 emo-

110 SERMONS OF RELIGION
tions 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 monu
ments 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, feel
ing after God, and trying to express with their re
flective 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 legiti
mate 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 won
drous 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 in
ward feeling; but while there are so many elements
of confusion within him, no one embodiment is
enough; he must have many, each one a step be
yond 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 con
solidate the Divine in man, and has personifications
thereof, instead of his primitive embodiments in na-

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 111
ture. Then his feeling of the Divine becomes an idea
of Deity ; he has his personal gods, with all the ac
cidents of human personality, — the passions, feel
ings, thoughts, mistakes, and all the frailties of mor
tal 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, transferring 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 Thales and Ptolemy, Galileo and Kep
ler, 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 personifica
tion thereof in man, has been a step forward in re
ligious progress. The grossest fetishism is only the
early shoot from the instinctive seed, one day to
blossom into the idea of the Infinite God. The con
fusion of past and present mythologies is not only
a witness to the confusion in the religious conscious
ness 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

112 SERMONS OF RELIGION
been much different from what it has been ; the margin
for human caprice is not a very wide one. All man
kind had the same process to pass through. The in
stinct 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 con
tinual growth. There is a special progress of the in
tellectual, moral, affectional, and religious faculties;
so a general progress of man ; with that, a progress in
the ideas which men form from 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 form of material or animal nature then person
ified 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 man
kind has been before us, and made a road to travel
on ; so we j ourney 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,
demons 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 excep-

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 113
tional men, and accordingly disowned as heretics, con
demned, but no longer burnt, as of old time.
It is plain that the religious faculty is the strong
est spiritual power in the constitution of man. Ac
cordingly, what is called religion is always one of
the mightiest forces in the world of men. It over
rides 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 elec
tricity, shattering that it may reach its end, and shat
tering what it reaches ; the power of the religious fac
ulty 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 plows 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 re
ligious 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 national sacrament.
Nothing so holds a nation together as unity of reli-
V— 8

114 SERMONS OF RELIGION
gious 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 morn
ing sacrament for birth, the evening sacrament for
death, and the noon-day 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 repre
sent 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 during 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 Mor
mons, 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 hier
archic despotism under a republic. In such commu
nities the ablest men and the most ambitious form a

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 115
sacred class; the Church offers the fairest field for
activity. There religion is obviously the most power
ful 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 re
veals 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 men 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 Gahlean woman bore the Almighty God in her
bosom, and nursed Him at her 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 re
spective 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." Thou
sands of men, in the name of religion, believe that this

116 SERMONS OF RELIGION
medical advice of a Hebrew fisherman was given by
the infallible inspiration of God; and it is cler
ically 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 hke manner religion is made to silence the moral
faculties. The Hebrews will kill the Canaanites by
thousands; Catholic Spaniards will build the Inquisi
tion for their countrymen; English Protestants, un
der the bloody Elizabeth, will dip their hands in their
Catholic brothers' blood; Puritan Boston has had her
Autos 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 pohtical economy, but as " divine
service ; " not for the conversion of man, but in the
name of God, — one of the few relics of human sac
rifice. " 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 re
nounce the dearest joys of the heart, degrading wom
an 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

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 117
too much." How many a man has made his son " pass
through the fire unto Moloch? " The Protestant
thinks it was an act of rehgion in Abraham to sac
rifice his only son unto Jehovah; the 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 magnifi
cently great, things elegantly little, continually im
press mankind. Even to the barbarian nature re
veals 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 sav
age in northern chmes : he trembles at his Deity throned
in ice and snow. The lightning, the storm, the earth
quake, 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 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 Scrip
tures for the human race are writ in earth and heaven.

118 SERMONS OF RELIGION
Even now we say, " An undevout astronomer is mad."
What a religious mosaic is the surface of the earth, —
green 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, hke Hum
boldt, 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 hke tales
of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or poetical biogra
phies 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 les
sons for every day. In cities men tread on an arti
ficial 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 httle
how the stars themselves keep the police of the sky.
Ladies and gentlemen in towns see nature only at sec
ond hand. It is hard to deduce God from a brick
pavement. Yet ever and anon the mold 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

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 119
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 mate
rial 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. 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
soul. The hearse obstructs the omnibus of commerce,
arid draws the eyes of even the silly and the vain and
empty creatures who buzz out their ephemeral phenom
ena in wealthy towns, the butterflies of this garden of
bricks, and forces them to confront one reality of life,

120 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 instinc
tively astir with feelings infinite. Thus material na
ture joins with human nature in natural fellowship;
outward occasions and inward means of piety are
bountifully given, and man is led to develop his relig
ious 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 man
kind. 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 under foot, 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.

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 121
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 demon-brain.
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, mel
ancholy, and grim. The affections may also have a de
velopment 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 ex
pels 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 corre
sponding action of the mind, the conscience and the
heart. Attempts are often made to produce this inde
pendent development of the soul. It is no new thing
to seek to develop piety while you omit its several ele
ments, the intellectual love of truth, the 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

122 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 forbade 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 relig
ion, 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 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 in
iquity. 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 re
garded 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

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 123
interest of the politician and the calculation of the
merchant must bear rule in the State. The whim of
some priest, a new or 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 hfe. 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 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 ele
ment while they depress the affectional. Then they
promote fanaticism, — hate before God, which so often
has got organized in the world. Then God is repre
sented 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, nar
row 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 tor
ments lasting for ever and ever. Then, in the name of
God, men are bid to have no fellowship with unbe
lievers, no sympathy with sinners. Nay, you are bid
den to hate your brethren of a different mode of re
ligious belief. This fanaticism organizes itself, now

124 SERMONS OF RELIGION
into brief and temporary activity, to persecute a samt,
or to stone a philanthropist ; now into permanent insti
tutions for the defense of heathenism, Judaism, Moham
medanism, or Christianity. The fires in which Cath
olics and Protestants have burnt their brother Chris
tians, the dreadful tortures which savage heathens have
inflicted on the followers of Jesus, have all been pre
pared 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 affec
tionate man turns off from the God who is " a consum
ing 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 arises 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
enjoyment while seeking only to delight! What beau-

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 125
tiful 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 sur
render, aggravate the instinctive love to the unnatural
selfishness of lust seeking its own enjoyment, heedless
of its victim, and how hateful is the beastly conjunc
tion of David, Solomon, Messalina, Mohammed, of
Gallic Cassanova, or Moscovian Catharine. Re
ligion 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 Cas-
sanovas of the soul, are to me more hideous than Bac
chanalians 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 conscious
ness of God, into a complete, perfect, and total reli
gion, 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, 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.

126 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 develop
ment, 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 re
ligious element is always a httle 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 fore-
ordination idealizes the life of the Mohammedan : he
feels elevated to the rank of an instrument of God; he
has an inflexible courage, and a patience which bears
all that courage cannot overcome. The camel-driver
of the Arabian prophet rejoiced in this intimate con
nection with God, a spoke in the wheel of the Unalter
able. 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 hke 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 com
forted our fathers here in New England. Their affec
tions went wandering over the waters to many a pleas
ant home in the dear old island of the sea, and a tear

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 127
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 disappoint
ment, 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 can not 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
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 repub
lican, giving him citizenship in the democracy of ever
lasting 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 dis
tractions of hfe 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,

128 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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. What are the prizes of wealth, of
fame, of genius, nay, of affection, compared with what
we all anticipate ere long? 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 tor
mented with a partner, cruel and hard-hearted, ingen
ious 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 per
sons 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 re
ligious 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 ob
servers 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 intellec
tual culture, and continual exclusion from the common
means of refinement, you find piety without narrow-

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 129
ness, zeal without bigotry, and trust in God with no
cant. Their world of observation was not a wide
world, not much varied, not rich; but their rehgious
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 forever. They felt that God was
about them, immanent in matter, within not less,
dwelhng 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 dark
ness 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 Mo-
hammeds, Luthers, are born of such a stock, and it is
from these little streams that the great ocean of reli
gion is filled full.
Yet it is not in cases like these that you see the
fairest effects of rehgion. The four prismatic rays
of piety must be united into one natural and four
fold beam of hght, 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 rehgion I worship the 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
V— 9

130 SERMONS OF RELIGION
no more. The finiteness of my friend admits no abso
lute affection. Partial love must not disturb the uni
versal 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
hke Him. The idea of God becomes continually more,
your achievement of the divine becomes more. You
love with no divided love : there is no collision of facul
ties, the head 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 well 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 fam
ily, tribe, or nation; but, co-extensive with justice,
applies to all mankind ; faith is not mystical or merely

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 131
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 satisfac
tion by feeling the hfe 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
developing the other part of man's spiritual nature.
The intellect is called " carnal," conscience " danger
ous," and the heart " deceitful." We are told to
trust none of these in matters of religion. Accord
ingly, 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 mir
acles of the Jews, the Greeks, the Hindoos, and the
Christians, to the same dust-hole of the ages and repos
itory 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 licentious
ness of men ; and calls on mankind in the name of God
to put away all this wickedness. The churches say:

132 SERMONS OF RELIGION
" Rather receive our sacraments. Religion has noth
ing to do with such matters."
This being the case, men of powerful character
no longer betake themselves to the Church as their
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 first-
rate 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 salva
tion. 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 estab
lished pulpit? Even Priestly 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 fair
est names on our little hill of the Muses are 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

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 133
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 first-rate powers and at
tainments 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 al
mighty 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. The great philoso
phers of Europe are far enough from Christian.
It is, doubtless, a present misfortune that the posi
tions 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

134 SERMONS OF RELIGION
genius that ever lit the world, and sealed by his martyr
dom, 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 man
kind 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 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 un
derstood 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

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 135
results of this for the last hundred years; in the re
form 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 with
out 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, — its agony and
bloody sweat. See what a love of freedom there is
shaking the institutions of the aged world. Tyran
nies 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 monopo
lies, to promote freedom of intercourse between all na
tions 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 drunk
ard 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,

136 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 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 ; ecclesiasti
cal 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 hin
ders? 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 in
finite, 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 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 Rehgion, finding it wide enough for all

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 137
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 in
stitutions will it build, what welfare will it produce
on earth, what men bring forth! Even now the sev
eral 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
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 work
man; 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 dream
ing 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

138 SERMONS OF RELIGION
are nothing, armies fall before you. The idea sways
them in its flight as the wind of summer bows the un
ripe 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 democ
racy in that name, a democracy which rests on
human nature, and, respecting that, reenacts the nat
ural 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 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 hu
man 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 em
ployed, in one bond of human fellowship; we need
it to break down the wall between class and class, na
tion 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; calcula
tions of interest cannot effect it; pohtical economv
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 guid
ance of one great man with ideas to direct the march,
and mind to plan the structure of the future age, but

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 139
under many men, who know each his little speciality,
all their several parts, while the Infinite Architect fore
sees 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, nor see: it is the silent de
velopment of the several parts of a complete piety,
one day to be united into a consciousness of the Ab
solute 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 in
dustrial 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 sheepskins, 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 man. 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, squar
ing 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 low
ing of oxen and complaint from the camels! Thou
sands of men were quarrying stone at Moriah for
the foundation of the work. Yet only one man com-

140 SERMONS OF RELIGION
prehended it all; the lumberers felhng the cedar and
sycamore, the carpenters and the muleteers, under
stood 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 go
ing forward. The girl that weaves muslins at Brus
sels, the captain of the emigrant 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 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 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 uni
verse, the more, so will this religion continue to in
crease, and the results thereof appear in common life,
in the individual, domestic, social, national, and uni
versal human form.
Some men say they cannot love, or even know, God,
except in the form of man. God as the Infinite seems

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION 141
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 them
selves with this crutch of the fancy, as boys use sticks
to leap a ditch or spring a wall; yet let them remem
ber 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 hfe itself a psalm of gratitude
and prayer of aspiration.
It is Palm Sunday to-day, and men in churches re
member 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 re
store the integrity of the world of men.
The religious actions of old times it is now easy to
understand. They left their monuments, their pyra
mids, and temples which they built, the memory of the

142 SERMONS OF RELIGION
wars they fought against their brothers in the dear
name of Jesus, or of Allah the Only. But the reli
gious 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 in their deep
est, 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 forever and forever.

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 re
ligious, 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 fac
tors, namely, of our nature, both that which is human,
and which we have as men in common with all man
kind, 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 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 ac
tion upon us.
What is true in general of all culture is true in spe
cial of religious education. Religious character is the
result of these three factors.
I suppose every earnest man, who knows what re
ligion 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
143

144 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 calcula
tion in manhood, yet never meaning to deceive our
selves. 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 bet
ter pleased with men than we are with 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 tor
ment to poor Mr. Fiery, which he has not had courage
or strength to remove in fifty winters. To " see our
selves 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 unpro
tected 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 145
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; 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, do
mestic, 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 " ex
emplary members " of " Christian churches " where
philanthropy gets roundly rated by the minister from
week to week, and call themselves " miserable of
fenders " 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 dedi
cated 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 kidnappers 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 men
tion these things to show that men who are commonly
thought eminently atrocious in their conduct and char
acter, yet would not willingly be without religion. I
V— 10

146 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 cir
cumstances ; 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 In
finite 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 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, develop-

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 147
ment, 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, repre
sented by the Business, the State, the Press, and the
Church.* These have a general influence in the for
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 func
tion. 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 rehgion 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 educa
tional forces in religion.
* See Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, by Theo
dore Parker, Boston, 1852, Vol. I., p. 407 et seq., where these
educational forces are dwelt on at length.

148 SERMONS OF 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 prac
tical duties, — 'personal, domestic, social, 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
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 beheve in the Trinity; and the Uni
tarians 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 rehgion 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 149
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
rehgion. These educational forces will teach you
evanescent principles which seem to suit your present
and partial interests, not eternal principles, which really
suit your universal and everlasting interests. In Je
rusalem 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 newspa
pers 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 have made
thereof, have risen far above the average of Christians.

150 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 ecclesi
astical 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 rehgious
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, — lighthouses 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 thor
oughfares 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 any
where, 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 shop-lights to
guide men to its particular huckstery of salvation, and
little hand-lights to take into corners where the sales
men 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 whole-

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 151
ness 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 re
ligion, 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 thrash
ing 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 rehgious, — none of theological ideas, — will
have yet an eminence of justice, and teach personal
and social morality as no other man. He may turn
to a single specialty 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 wel
come 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 rehgion to common life, in the special or the uni-

152 SERMONS OF RELIGION
versal 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 plow of the settler, and would devour his child
if he dared. So every nuisance in society has its sup
porters, whose property is invested therein. Paul
found it so at Ephesus, Telemachus at Rome, and Gar
rison 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:
" Preach us religion ; preach us Christianity, Christ
and him crucified, and not this infidel matter of end
ing 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 thou
sand 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, im
pure 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 153
time, have done more than all others to promote the
feehng of piety which the churches profess so much
to covet. The new ground of rehgion which the
churches occupy is always won for them by men whom
the churches hated. In the last thirty years 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 feel
ings, giving example of his deed, and laying out reli
gious 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 springs up in
corners where once old houses stood, or wherever the
winds have borne the seed; and, cropped by the oxen,

154 SERMONS OF RELIGION
and trodden with their feet, it grows ever fresh and
ever new. When Scribes and Pharisees become idola
ters at Jerusalem, and the sheep without a shepherd
" Look up 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 car
penter's son at Nazareth, whose lightning terrifies the
non-conducting Scribe; the new encounters the perish
able 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 gener
ation. 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 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 compre
hend 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 155
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 hght is moonshine." But ere long our
sentimentalist writes of philosophy, and his keen eye
sees mines of wisdom not quarried heretofore, and he
brings a power of 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 de
nounces the evil, attacks the institution which thus de
ceives 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 ava
lanche. 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

156 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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
hfe. 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 go
leagues long to listen to such a man, and come back
well paid. He gives us seeds of future life for our
httle 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 hfe 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 marveled 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 them, 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 be
ing 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.

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 157
It is a great thing to meet such a man once in your
lifetime, to be cheered and comforted in your sad way
faring, 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 com
pany of pilgrims journeying in the wilderness, dry,
footsore, 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. Straightway their weari
ness 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 fresh
ened hfe, 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 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

158 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 hfe 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 spec
tacle. Did you ever see cattle on 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 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 159
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, mushn, thread, starch, gum, and sundry
chemicals, French milliners make by dozens what they
call roses, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, and the
hke. 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 scis
sors; between the forget-me-not of the meadow and
the forget-me-not of the shop ! Such an odds is there
betwixt rehgious 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 hfe 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 "hfe in God" would be sitting in a
meeting-house, and the baptism in water from an aque
duct 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!

160 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 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 He
brews 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 re
ceives 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 or
ganizers, 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; this

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 161
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 hfe. 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 the earth; a boy's
school-bag would hold them all, from 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, horn
blende, 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 Hebrew prophet, full of faith in God, a war
rior 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
V— 11

162 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 Fenelon, of Jeremy Taylor, of
John Bunyan, of William Law, have proved exceed
ing 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 nar
rowness of his traditionary creed and the puerile lit
tleness 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 httle
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 lit
erature " is this. It is the work of narrow-minded

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 163
men, sectarians, and often bigots, who cannot see be
yond their own little partisan chapel; men who know
little of anything, less of man, and least of all of real
religion. What criticism do such men make on noble
men? The criticism of 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 mis
leads common men from religion, and it makes power
ful men hate rehgion itself; at least hate its name.
It bows weak men down till they tremble and fear all
their mortal life. I lack words to express my det
estation of this trash, — concocted of sectarian cant
and superstitious fear. I tremble when I think of
the darkness it spreads over human hfe, 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 in
fidels, 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 Catho
lic, Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, and Mahometan.
All these books should be read with caution and dis-

164 SERMONS OF RELIGION
trust. 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.
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 de
velopment of the human race, slow, but as constant
and as normal as the growth of a cedar or the dis
closing of an egg; Newton and Laplace, Descartes
and Kant, indirectly, through their science, stir de
vout souls to deeper devotion. A thoughtful man
dissolves the matter of the universe, leaving only its
forces ; dissolves away the phenomena of human his
tory, 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 rever
ence, with trust, with boundless love of the Infinite
God who devised these laws of matter and of mind,
and thereby bears up this marvelous 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
cultivation of rehgion. Familiarity with the grass
and the trees teaches us deeper lessons of love and
trust than we can glean from the writings of Fene-
lon and Augustine. What lessons did Socrates, Jesus,

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 165
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 blos
soms 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 rehgious growth must not
be on anything 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 rehgious 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 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 we
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 earnest-

166 SERMONS OF RELIGION
ness 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 buy
ing a quantity of 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 167
which has a deeper and mysterious look, and a ter
rible throbbing of 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."
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 sud
den experience, and give themselves to piety as they
espouse a bride found when not looked for, and wel
comed 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, hsting In the popular armada of worldhness to

168 SERMONS OF RELIGION
do battle in that leprous host? " That, I say, is a
time of trial.
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 differ
ent dispositions, all of us ; what tempts one, is noth
ing 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
peri} by his ambition, — his love of riches, place, and
the respect of men. The Devil rings a dollar In 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 dif
ferent baits to lure his diverse prey. Love of ap
plause 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 that is
wrong, — what have I said, or thought, or felt?
What that is right? " It Is well thus to orient your
self before your Idea and your God, and see if there
be any evil thing in you. This Is needful until the

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 169
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 posi
tion. 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. Ere
long 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, 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

170 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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.
There 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 and the un
conquerable 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

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 171
also religious men, — what noble images of God it
would make us! aye, 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 shps of his pear-trees, prunings from
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

172 SERMONS OF RELIGION
a broad tree, and under its arms you 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 er
rors 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.
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 your
self a noble, manly character, to be religious men and
women, with a liberal development of mind and con
science, heart and soul? You will meet with losses,
trials, disappointments, in your business, in your

OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS 173
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 rehgious
growth. Your time, young men, what life and man
hood you may make of that !
Some of you are old men, your heads white with
manifold experience, and life is writ in storied hiero
glyphics 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 hu
man blessedness without this. It is the sole sufficient
and assured defense 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 reli
gious power; these depend on what may be called the
natural spiritual constitution of the individual. One
man is born with a strong spiritual constitution, an
other 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, affec
tional, 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 ad
vantage to possess the highest 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 be
ing, 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
174

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 175
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 misdi
rection 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 man
kind." 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 great
ness will be visible. The ruin of a colossus is gigan
tic, — its fragments are on a grand scale. You read
the size of the ship in the timbers of the wreck, fas
tened with mighty bolts. The Tuscan bard is true to
nature 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 differ
ence 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 train
ing 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,

176 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 con
cord 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 faculty
of the spirit, every hmb of the body, and every por
tion of material or social power.
Without this conscious religious development, it
seems to me that no strength or greatness is admira
bly human; and with it, no smallness of opportu
nity, no littleness of gift, Is contemptible or low. I
reverence great powers, given or got; but I rever
ence 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 ham
mer 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 vol
ume of character. The reason is plain: religion is
keeping the natural law of human nature in its three
fold 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 na-

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 177
ture. 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 pro
vides 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 epd, — you lose also the
means. This is true of the natural, as of the arti
ficial 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 facul
ties 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 be
comes 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
dwindling 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
V— 12

178 SERMONS OF RELIGION
growth, and the whole man becomes the greatest he is
capable of being here and now.
You see this strength of character, which natu
rally 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 tor
ments that are used to put down new forms of reli
gion, or extinguish the old. While men believe in the
divinity of matter, they try suspected persons by ex
posure to the elements, — walking over redhot plow
shares, 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 be
twixt 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 suddenly 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, Ire-
naeus, and the rest. They all went out to preach the

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 179
form of religion themselves had practised, and en
joyed in their own souls. What could they offer men
as an inducement to conversion? The common argu
ment at this day, — respectability, a comfortable 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 the sword; aye, 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 tormen
tor's rack. Unabashed they stood before wild beasts ;
aye, they looked in the face of the marshals and com
missioners and district judges of those times, — men
who perverted law and spit on justice with blasphe
mous 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 Hunerlc,
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

180 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 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 hfe.
The Church may burn Arnaldo da Brescia, Savonarola,
Huss ; — what profits it ? The rehgion which the ty
rant 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 Eng
land, the Covenanters in Scotland ; you know how they
bore trial. You have heard of John Graham, com
monly called Lord Claverhouse. He lived about two
hundred years ago in England and Scotland, one of
that brood of monsters which still disgrace mankind
and, as vipers and rattlesnakes, seeni born to centralize

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 181
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 commis
sion to root out the Covenanters with fire and sword,
and went 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 Scot
land, as of their descendants here, — his commissioners,
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 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 Mor-

182 SERMONS OF RELIGION
mons 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 endur
ance 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 al
ways there; oppression, which makes wise men mad,
in making religious men martyrs, only finds and reveals
the heroism ; it does not make it, more 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 en
durance which rehgion 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 com-

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 183
mon ills of life, — poverty, sickness, disappointment,
the loss of friends, the withering of the fondest hopes
of mortal men. One Is occasional lightning, thunder
ing and grand, but transient; the other is daily sun
shine which makes no noisy stir on any day, but
throughout the year is constant, creative, and exceed
ing 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 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 facul
ties, 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 sor
rows to which Nebuchadnezzar's sevenfold-heated fur
nace 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 pesti
lential 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

184 SERMONS OF RELIGION
off in Ortygia, spreading greenness and growth in the
valley where the anemone and asphodel paid 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 hfe. 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 hfe. 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 provided for all, — pro
vided 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 develop
ment 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

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 185
quiver not; the will is firm, and firm is the unconquer
able 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 Bunj'an, and Fox, and Lati
mer, 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 him
self into the drunkard, and, falling Into the grave,
crush underneath his lumbering weight all of their
mortal hopes. Rehgion gives them all a strength to
suffer, and be blessed by the trials they endure. There
are times when nothing outward 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 defense that lies in boundless love
Of His perfection; with habitual dread
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured
Impatiently, ill done or left undone,
To the dishonor of His holy Name.

186 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 aifections 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."
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 re
ligion, 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 man
kind, 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 intel
lectual labor he could perform after his conversion
than before. Ignatius Loyola makes the same con
fession. They each attribute it to the technical pecul
iarity of their sectarianism, to Methodism or Cathol
icism, to Christianity; but the fact is universal, and
applies to religion under all forms. It Is easily ex
plained 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

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 187
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 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 strengthened me." Buddhists and He
brews and Mohammedans say the same of their
religion. Then rehgion 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 with
out 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 anything but this total integrity which I call
religion, that can be trusted to keep a 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

188 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 repu
tation. Charity impairs an estate; unpopular excel
lence 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 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 sel
fishness ! 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?

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 189
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 rehgion, 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 dis
solved in the mass of men, as a lump of clay in the
ocean. Selfishness is the abnormal excess of this self-
love. It takes various forms. In the period of pas
sion, It commonly shows itself as intemperate love of
sensual pleasure; in the period of ambition, as intem
perate 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 be
longs 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 instinc
tive self-love into conscious self-respect, Into faithful
ness 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 dally life.
Much of a man's ability consists in his power to

190 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 deep in the sea, and
holds on its way through sunshine and through storm,
and unabashed by tempests, comes safe to port. I
suppose you all know men 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
noble-hearted men and women, they are as the mush
room 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 obli
gation and dependence upon God.
In youth the seductions of passion lead us easily
astray ; In manhood there are the more dangerous seduc
tions of ambition, when lust of pleasure gives way to
lust of profit ; and in old age the man is often the vic
tim 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.

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 191
Rehgion 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 cour
age, which can look danger and death in the face un-
awed 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 howl
ing and of scorn, — aye, 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 quahty. I think it never comes
without rehgion. 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 intel
lect, and great culture, and occupying a great place.
You see all about you how httle such men are worth;
too cowardly to brave a temporary 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 groveling,
have laid their proud foreheads in the dust, and mean
men have triumphed over the mighty !

192 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 cour
age conscious religion gave to our fathers. Their cor
poral courage grew more firmly knit, as men learned
by bitter blows who crossed swords with them on the
battlefield; but their moral courage grew giant high.
You know how they dwelt here, 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 un
flinching 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

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 193
religious faith. But you see it in forms far more beau
tiful, as represented by the missionaries who carry the
glad tidings of their faith to other lands, and endure
the sorrows of persecution with the long-suffering 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, the riches of con
science 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 philanthro
pist. 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'
Parish in Protestant London, despised and hated by the
well-endowed clergy, whose church aisles are never trod
den 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 loving kindness 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
V— 13

194 SERMONS OF RELIGION
courted too by their associates, but now despised for
their justice and their charity, hated for the eminent
affection which makes them look 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 hfe 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 my
self, 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
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

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 195
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 ever
lasting hfe !
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 knowl
edge. 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 preju
dices of men ; of the interests 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
httle for love. They know the animal that is in us,
not the human, far less the godlike. Mighty in cun
ning, they are weak in knowledge of the true, the just,
the good, the holy, and the ever-beautiful. They look

196 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 ere long 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 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 forever live, long after Rome and
America have gone to the ground. Tyrants have a
short breath, their fame a sudden ending; and the
power 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 forever
live, in the admiration of mankind, and in " the pure
eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove." Cham-
pollion 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

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 197
name shall still endure when the last stones of the last
pyramid become gas and exhale to heaven. The peas
ant of Galilee has embosomed his own name in the
religion of mankind, 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 cun
ning 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 ice-temple 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 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 tempta
tion, perhaps our agony, but our triumph too.

198 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 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
plowed 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

OF RELIGION AND STRENGTH 199
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.
0 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
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. Rehgion is true Being, normal life in your
self, 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 of those men, so bony and gaunt and grim ;
of the women, so austere and unloving in their look.
The un joyous 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 Cathohc 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,
200

OF RELIGION AND JOY 201
not an Exultemus or a Te Deum. The joyous chant
ing 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 Irae are the most char
acteristic hymns of the Catholic Church. The paint
ings 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 feel
ing and thought of Christendom, In literature, paint
ing, and music, it is strangely deficient in joy.
Religion is unnatural self-denial; morality is symbol
ized by a celibate monk, eating parched pease and a
watercress; 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 hero
ism 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 himself, 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 them-

202 SERMONS OF RELIGION
selves " 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 sus
pected. 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 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 satisfac
tion, 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 par
ticular 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 com
plete 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 appe
tite, 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 capable of complete

OF RELIGION AND JOY 203
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 cus
tomary 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 fool
ish fondness for gay apparel has served a purpose.
Nay, so marvelous is the economy of God in his engi
neering 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 subordina
tion to the material world.
There is another man whose chief joy is not merely

204 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 pohtician, 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 wide-
mouthed httle ones; sheep and oxen intent upon their
grassy bread; reapers under a hedge enjoying their
midday meal, reposing on sheaves of corn new cut.
All this Is nature ; the element of necessity 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, and 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
marvelous 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 mas
ters, Dutch or Italian, and to the poetry which chron-

OF RELIGION AND JOY 205
icles 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 thou
sand 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."
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 gripping 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 corre
sponding scale of joys, dehght 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.
The partial and transient joy of any faculty comes

206 SERMONS OF RELIGION
from the fractional and brief fulfilment of the condi
tions of its nature ; the complete and permanent joy of
the whole man comes from a total and continuous sup
ply of the conditions of the entire nature of man.
Now, for this complete and lasting joy, these con
ditions 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 my
self from the family, society, nation, and from all man
kind, it is but for a moment. Practically I am bound
up with all the world; an integer indeed, but a frac
tion 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
jeweled 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, 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.

OF RELIGION AND JOY 207
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 ele
ment 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
playground. Their food is plenteous as the water
itself. Society is abundant, and of the most unim
peachable respectability. They have their little child's
games which last all day. No one is hungry, ill-man
nered, ill-dressed, dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy.
They fear no hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and
bloodless httle 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 neg
lect. They recollect no past, they provide for no
future, 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 hfe 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, get
ting greetings in the markets and the uppermost seat at
feasts, and called of men " Rabbi," is ever so brim
ful 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

208 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 wak
ing, 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 fields ; and in a clear sun
rise 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 hibernating 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 writ
ten 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 wel
come 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 209
great church, where He that taketh thought for oxen
suffers no sparrow to faU to the ground without his
fatherly love. A new lamb, or calf, or colt, just open
ing its eyes on the old world, is happy as fabled Adam
in his Eden. With what sportings, and frisklngs, and
frohckings 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 lan
guage 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 per
sonal 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 kid
napper 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.
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 crea
tures? Nay, He who leaves not forsaken Jesus alone
never deserts the spider and the toad.
Walt a few weeks and go into the fields, of a warm
V— 14

210 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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, httle
in quantity, and soon forgot. When you look micro
scopically and telescopically at the natural 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 indi
vidual animal or man, — the pain a warning to mark
the bound.
A similar joy appears In young children well bom
and well nurtured. But the human power of error,

OF RELIGION AND JOY 211
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."
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 conscious
ness, 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

212 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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, hke 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
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
That hath 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 special

OF RELIGION AND JOY 213
individual, or of the race, is all legitimate and merci
ful ; 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 brother
hood. 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 common heart
by which we hve 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 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

214 SERMONS OF RELIGION
of the want, the pain, and the misdirection of men. It
was unavoidable that Jesus of Nazareth should oft-
times 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 oppo
site extreme. Men in whom the religious and moral
powers are not developed in proportion with the intel
lectual, the aesthetic, or the physical appetites, will try
to possess this joy, and without religion. But nothing
is long fruitful of delight when divorced from the con
sciousness of God; nothing thrives that is at enmity
with God. Such joy is poor, heartless, and unsatisfy
ing. Men in churches set up a Magdalen, a nun, a
monk, a hermit, or a priest, as a representative of
rehgion. 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, wan
dering 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 215
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 ruhng. According to the common opinion of the
Christian churches, God's is the most unsuccessful des
potism 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 con
spicuous characteristics of God are great force,
great self-esteem, 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. Chris
tian divines tell us of a God that will not kill, but tor
ment In hell the greater portion of his children, and
will feed fat his " glory " with the damnation of man
kind, 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

216 SERMONS OF RELIGION
God is painted as a grim and awful judge, man a poor,
trembling culprit, shivering 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 Reve
lation, 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 suc
cessfully to devour them., gnawed upon eternally in hell.
In general, theological books represent God as terrible.
They make rehgion a melancholy sort of thing, unnat
ural to man, which he would escape from If he dared,
or if he could. It is seldom spoken of as a thing good
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 ma
jority 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 respectable theologians, rehgion
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 yel
low leaves smitten by the frost, not with rosebuds and
violets. The leading men in the more serious churches

OF RELIGION AND JOY 217
are earnest persons, self-denying, but grim, unlovely,
and joyless men. Look through the ecclesiastial liter
ature 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 trod
den 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 sur
prises 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, Edwards, Chal
mers, 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, con
tented, and happy In he*r work, but as a reluctant nun,
abstracted, idle, tearful, and with a profound melan
choly; 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 dis
trust 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 ! "

218 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 sac
rifice 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 rehgion.
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 cir
cumstances ; 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 mys
tics, in Tauler and 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 hfe. 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 nat
urally 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 ham
pered and restricted, and the man must be belittled
before he is capable thereof. In the ecclesiastical saint

OF RELIGION AND JOY 219
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 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 her
self 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 philos
ophers, 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.
Rehgion 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 pro
claims peace. On the one side is the " world," on the
other "religion;" and there is a great gulf fixed
between the two, which neither 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

220 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 reli
gion 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 medi
tation, and dreamy sentimentalism to all other and
manlier joys. The natural result of this is 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.
I believe what I say will apply to almost the whole
class of writers on sentimental religion,. — to the mys
tical writers of the Brahminlc, 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 cor
rupt 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 221
reason, the affections, and all the high faculties of a
sound man. You may see the excess of this unhealthl-
ness in the works of St. Bridget or of St. Theresa, in
Molinos and Swedenborg, even in Taylor, in Fenelon,
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 clergy
men, 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 con
duct 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 men and
women early caught and imprisoned in some of the
popular forms of fear of God. I have sometimes shud
dered 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, say
ing, " This life is all given us for weeping and pen
ance, 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

222 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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, sober thought of chem
ists and astronomers! The mistakes in rehgion are
not greater in proportion to the strength of the reh
gious 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," admin
ister the popular theology, are not much more mis
taken 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, extrava
gance, madness. You attend a meeting " for con
ference and prayer," and you come away a little dis
gusted, 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 loss, for,
setting aside the extravagance, the claim to miraculous

OF RELIGION AND JOY
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 coordina
tion. 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 authoritative than the Ten which Jehovah is said
to have written on stone at Sinai.
Do you seek the active business of life? This re
ligion 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 chan
nel ; to preserve the integrity of your own spirit ; and

224 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 man
kind the richer, for all that you do and enjoy. Then
the approbation of your own soul and the sense of con
cord with men and of unity with God, will add a cer
tain 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 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY
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 intel
lectual joy of scientific and thoughtful men.
Do you seek the joy of the affections which cling to
finite objects of attraction, to wife and child, brother
and sister, parent and friend ? Religion will tell you it
is impossible to love these too much; that it is im
possible 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 intel
lectual 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
V— 15

226 SERMONS OF RELIGION
comes of the religious use of the faculties. 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 wel
fare of other men.
I will not say that this religion increases the powers
of instinctive affection, except indirectly and in gen
eral, 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 constitu
tion, 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 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 227
justice, which has the range of the world. Who can
claim friendship of any one? The New England kid
napper has a right to the philanthropy even of his vic
tim ; 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 friend
ship 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 con
duct ; and would feed and clothe and warm and bless the
murderer, or even the Boston kidnapper. Philan
thropy 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 conse
quently enhances the delight of both. Look a moment
at the joy of each.
The joy of friendship is a deep and beautiful de
light. Here you receive as well as give, get not only
from yourself, as your unconsciousness becomes con
scious, and the seed you planted for the bread of an
other becomes a perfect flower for your own eye and

228 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 giving. 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 f ellow-f eehng 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 instru
ments, 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,

OF RELIGION AND JOY 229
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 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 kid
napper 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 savior, — 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 philan
thropy 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 bene
diction of one of the great 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."

230 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 Samari
tan, " 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 affec
tion by such deeds of love, till he has the heart of God
in his bosom, and a whole paradise of delight. Mean
time 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 phylac
teries 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 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, Him
self dropping the sun and moon into the alms-box of
the world ; and the grave, sober father, who had earned

OF RELIGION AND JOY 231
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 philanthro
pist 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 bring more delight than all the gew
gaws they could buy.
I have seen a man buy baskets of cherries in a for
eign 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 col
leges, 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 treas
ures 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

232 SERMONS OF RELIGION
outward recompense for truth and justice and love, —
think you that he has less dehght than the worldly man
well gifted, cultivated well, whose mind hes a prosti
tute to the opinion of the mob, and is tricked off with
the ornaments of shame, and in office shines " the first
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 ex
change 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 friend
ship and philanthropy, and so the quantity of joy
which comes thereof, the happiness of the affections.
This religion has delights peculiar to the rehgious
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 con
science, 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 popu
lar 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
content to be afraid of some men, stronger and wick
eder 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 233
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 httle herb of grace, or plant that flowers
for the 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
without naming the object of horror, perhaps calling
it Chance or Fate ; in superstition, the form of affirma
tion, you fear Him by name, believe and tremble.
Superstition and atheism are fellow-trunks from the
same root of bitterness. I would as soon worship in
the wigwam of Odin and Thor, 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

234 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 hfe ; decay of sense may per
plex 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 comfort
less. 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
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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 235
no calamity, irresistible, sudden, seemingly total, but
religion can abundantly defend the head and heart
against its harm. So I can be calm. Defeated, and
unable to rise, I will " lie low in the hand of the
Father," smiling with the dehght of most triumphant
trust. " These surface troubles come and go
Like rufllings 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 him
self, he is self-possessed and cool. There is no esctasy,
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 and
its joy. Religion is not everything. But yet the
happiness of this inner human world, the 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

236 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 subordinates 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 de
light in human love in all its forms, instinctive or vol
untary, in friendship and philanthropy ; the mutuality
of persons is a dear and sacred joy to me. But the
dehght in God is yet more, — dearer than each of these ;
one we like not much to name. Add to it all these sev
eral delights, which get each a charm from this con
sciousness of God, and you taste and see the real hap
piness of religion.
Religion without joy, — it is no religion. Super
stition, the fear of God, might well be sad. The dev
otees thereof seek their delight in violating the func
tions 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

OF RELIGION AND JOY 237
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 httle life of men is full of wine and up
roar 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 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 ade
quate delight for men who look to immortality. Re
ligion 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 igno
rance and want and crime, and let in the gladdening

238 SERMONS OF RELIGION
hght 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.
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 con
science, 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
passed by will be assuaged by the experience you there
by 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 awaits to be mastered by man's wis
dom, ruled by man's justice, directed by man's love, as
part of the great human worship of the Infinite God.

OF RELIGION AND JOY 239
The Past, the Present, and the Future will appear work
ing 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 uni
versal, 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 house
keeping 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 our life the
joy of rehgion, 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.

240 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 SACRA
MENTS
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice. — Matt. ix. 13.
Nothing in human experience is so lovely as the
consciousness of God; nothing so tranquilizing, eleva
ting, beautifying. See it on a merely personal scale in
a man, imagine it on a national scale in a great peo
ple, — the natural development of religion into its vari
ous 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 anything but trees, not works of nature,
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
V— 16 g4i

242 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 jour
neymen 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 hang
ing barbaric pendants thereon. Attempts are made to
interfere with the religious faculty, and give it a con
ventional direction ; to make it take on certain forms of
human caprice, not human nature. Some monstrous
fancy is adopted for the model 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, dis
torting, and tattooing of the invisible spirit, what a
sight it would be, — these dwarfs and cripples, one-
legged, one-eyed, one-handed, and half-headed, half
hearted men ! what a harlequin-show there would be !
what motley on men's shoulders ! what caps and bells on
reverend heads, and tattooing which would leave Aus
tralia far behind! What strange jewels are the fash
ionable theological opinions of Christendom ! Surely
such liveries were never invented before ! In that pict
ure men would look as striped as the Pope's guard.

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 243
And if some Adamitic men and women were also repre
sented, 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 theolog
ical folly in a picture would be a more instructive
" 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 immor
tality 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 con
ventional distinction between laical and clerical, sacred
and profane, applies to places, as groves, hilltops,
temples, and the hke ; to times, as new moons with one,
full moons with another, Friday with the Turks, Satur
day with the Jews, Sunday with the Christians; to
things, as statues of saints and deities, the tools of
public worship ; to persons, and some are set apart
from mankind as " the Lord's lot," and deemed holy ;
to actions, some of which are reckoned pleasing to God,

244 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 law
ful to " gamble," except on Saturday night and Sun
day; 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 blame
less, " 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
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

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 245
places, times, things, persons, actions, and opinions,
and the law gave them a peculiar protection ; but reh
gion 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 dis
tinction 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 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 counseled
wiser than they knew. It was a good thing that reli
gion, such a rude notion as men had of it, prevailed
in that narrow spot. When the tyrant would not re
spect God in all space, it was well that he should trem
ble before the sanctuary of a stone altar in a meeting
house. He would not respect a man, let him learn by

246 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 power in
the outward world; in due time it will extend its juris
diction over all time and space, over all things, all
thoughts, all men, all deeds.
It is curious to see how this faculty goes on enlarg
ing its territory : one day religion watches over the be
ginning 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 arti
chokes, 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

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 247
was a very little patch in the woods, and looked ridic
ulous beside the square leagues of wild woodland, a
howling wilderness, that reached from 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, riot 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 rehgion. Some man
is appointed to look after the performance of these
actions, and it is thought desirable to get the greatest
possible 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

248 SERMONS OF RELIGION
the deer on the rocks, an offering to the Great Spirit.
With them it was an " ordinance of rehgion," 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 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 drown
ing 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 reli
gion, — two personal sacraments of universal obligation,
binding on each man, — circumcision, and rest on the
Sabbath. There were two more national sacraments,

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 249
binding on the nation, — the formal worship of Jeho
vah, in Jerusalem, at stated times, and by a prescribed
ritual; and the celebration of the three national fes
tivals. 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
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 sacri
fices 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 reh
gion, 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 con
science before his words; just as much as Jesus is

250 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 sacramental
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 ; con
sistent Protestants claim the same value for their Shib
boleth. 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 " ordi
nances of religion," — such as baptism, confirmation,
penance, extreme unction, and the like. The Protes
tants 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 ; com
munion for a selecter few; and belief in all the doc
trines of the special sect, — an internal sacrament which
is actually enjoyed by only the smallest portion of the
selectest few.
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

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 251
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 rehgion 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 elo
quent 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 dul-
ness 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 moral
ity 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 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

252 SERMONS OF RELIGION
his belief in the divine and infallible Scriptures, to his
attendance at church, his baptism with water, his com
munion 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 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 am
bition of a Protestant minister to extend the jurisdic
tion of his artificial sacraments, to bring men to bap
tism 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 joy
ous, 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 sacra-

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 253
ments to suit his condition of soul at the time. You
cannot name a ceremony connected with religion, how
soever 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, 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 sav
age 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 Ar-
nobius and Augustine made at the heathen supersti
tions, taking their cue from pagan Lucian of Samo-
sata, 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 coadju
tors 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 win
ter, 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 artificial sacraments. Xavier brought a new top
to the men of India ; Charlemagne slew the Saxons who

254 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 httle girl to fill her arms with a Nur
emberg 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 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 be
lief 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, con
fession, 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.

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 255
The natural and real ordinance of religion is in gen
eral a manly life, all the man's faculties of body and
spirit developed or developing in their natural and har
monious 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.
Rehgion is the sacrament of religion; itself its ordi
nance. 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 sac
ramental 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 rehgion 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
rehgion; 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 compen
dious 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 de
mands only certain particular things, they will be
thought sacramental, and the doing thereof the proof

256 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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, and claiming respect and love as fel
low-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 re
ligion ; 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 feehng of penitence, or reso
lution, 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, — ele
ments which he deems divine, — and plunges in:
" Thus I will wipe off all ancient sin," says he ; " by
this act I pledge myself to a new life, — this holy ele
ment 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 peni-

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 257
tent 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 prop
erty of the priest; it is cherished still, and stands in
place of religion. The single, momentary dispensa
tion 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 post
pones his plunge till old age, that he may sin his fill,
then dip and die clean and new.
So it is 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 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
httle children and fair-haired maids shall shear off
the locks of nature, and hide their heads beneath your
deceitful handiwork. The boy is grown up to man
hood, 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 mo-
V— 17

258 SERMONS OF RELIGION
mentary 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
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 sal
vation? "
I always look with pain on any effort to put the
piety of our times into the artificial sacraments of an
other and a ruder age. It is often attempted, some
times with pure and holy feelings, with great self-
denial; but it is always worthless. The new wine of
religion must be put into new bottles. See what im
provements 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 plows, not also in the forms of piety?
At this day great pains are taken to put religion

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 259
into artificial sacraments, which, alas! have no connec
tion 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 pro
mote those artificial sacraments, — earnest, 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 rehgious
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, that there is no law of God above
the statute politicians write on parchment in the Cap
itol; 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 tal
ent 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 com
mon? Are we called Christians because we value the
character of Jesus of Nazareth, and wish to be hke
him? Is it the ambition of calculating fathers, that
their sons be closely hke the friend of publicans and

260 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 com
monly twofold : liturgical, — compliance with the rit
ual ; 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 main
tained that these things have been practiced by pious
men, and so are imposed on others by their authority.
It is not shown that the 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 civiliza
tion which it belonged to, or even personal, peculiar to
the man it begun with.

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 261
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 ; Chris
tendom could no more do without it, than Europe dis
pense 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 Protest
ant 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 sav
ing 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
ity." The Unitarians say, " There is no piety with
out 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 gen
eral, agree there is no " saving piety " without sub
missive 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 fear
ing, 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

262 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 con
viction. They often are the best believers of the creed
who have the least experience in the love of God, but
httle intellect, and have made no investigation of the
matter credited. Belief often means only that the
believer 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 bear
ing 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 " con
vert'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 revolu
tionized the heart they were born in, now leave the wor
shiper 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.

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 263
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 reli
gion 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 feehng ; 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 Mysti
cism 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 officei 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 gen
eral they seem to know only these liturgical and dog
matic tests of piety ; hence they aim to have piety put
in that conventional form, and reject with scorn 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 hmit it 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

264 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 com
mendation 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 pohtical duty ; or his unflinching love
of liberty, and the noble war the aged champion fought
for the unalienable rights 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 " regu
lar 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 remem
ber, 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. Chan-
ning. Soon after his death, it was declared in a lead
ing 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.

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 265
After ecclesiastical men produce their piety, they
do not aim to set it to do the natural work of man
kind. Morality is not thought to be the proof of piety,
nor even the sign of it. They dam up the stream of
human nature till they have got a sufficient head of
piety, and then, instead of setting it to turn the use
ful mill of life, or even drawing it off to water the
world's dry grounds, they let the waters 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 com
monly 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, part
ners 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, slum-
berers, who need to be awaked, loiterers, who must be
called out to, and hurried forward. Next, it is to pro
duce 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, nor do they
aim to apply it to the natural work thereof.

266 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 pop
ular vices go unwhipped, and unpopular virtues all un-
honored 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 sec
tarian 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
of your own denomination to itself. The sins of Uni
tarians 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

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 267
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 South
ern 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 doc
trines 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 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 sniveling 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,

268 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 impos
sible to such. All the great feelings naturally lead
to commensurate 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 profit
able; they are, just so far as they stimulate the intel
lect, the conscience, the affections, the soul, to health
ful 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 per
nicious. Such reading is mental dissipation. To ex
cite the devotional feelings, to produce a great love of
God, and not allow that to become work, is likewise dis
sipation, 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, voluptuous
ness 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 sorry to hear of a

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 269
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 devo- ,
tional forms, that he cries out upon every heresy, ban
ning 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 be
come so low ! Let us turn off our eyes and look away.
Hence it comes to pass, that much of all this ecclesi
astic pains to produce piety is abortive ; it ends in sick
ness 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
golds — 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 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 im
puted can save us, and that so swiftly ! "
Nay, they hinder all these great works. The bit
terest opposition to the elevation of all men is made in
the name of devotion ; so is the defense of slavery and
war, and the flat degradation of woman. Here is a

270 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 repu
tation for " piety " would make a new comer dis
trusted ; 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 anything but trees.
So in Boston, in all New England, everywhere in Chris
tendom, you find clipped men, their piety cut into
various artificial forms, looking like anything 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 blue
berry. It was only the jingle of the money, — all
of money but the money's worth. So is this un-

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 271
natural 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 deal of mis
chief. 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 un-
charitableness. It leads to no outward work, it pro
duces no inward satisfaction, no harmony with your
self, 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

272 SERMONS OF RELIGION
nothing of its power. Some earnest-minded men see
this, and are disgusted with all that bears the name
of rehgion. 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 be
come 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
and the kine.
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 imi
tates 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

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 273
pen becomes not a mere instrument, but almost a limb ;
the letters are formed even without a thought. With
out 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 calcula
tions; 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 rich
ness, and happily will sting us out of our offense.
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 rev
erence 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 Testa
ment ; of the two great men in the New, — Jesus, who
made the great religious motion in the, world's parlia
ment, 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
V— 18

274 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 Sab
bath, who scorned to put the new wine of God into the
old and rotten bags of men — that is not in Christen
dom. O, 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 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 polyga
mous 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 ec
clesiastic 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

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 275
Church each Pharisee who drops his minted and his
jingling piety, with brassy noise, into the public chest.
Render unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's.
The real test of rehgion 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 re
ligion 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 sacra
ment 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," while the news
papers 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

276 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 out
ward 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 un
dervalue 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 by
nature, — by outward nature poorly and in hints, but
by man's inward spirit copiously and at large. It
is piety in your prayer; in your practice it is mo
rality. 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 Chris-

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 277
tian? Spirit of the Crucified! how we take thy hon
ored 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 sec
tarian 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 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 re
ligion 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; re
ligion is religion. Business lias 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, pub-
he opinion must be equally free from the incursions
of piety. " O 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*

278 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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
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 bless
edness which cannot pass away.

OF THE NATURAL SACRAMENTS 279
Piety is beautiful in all; to a great man it comes
as age comes to the Parthenon or the Pyramids,
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 com
monest men, it also comes, bringing refinement and
a loveliness of substance and of shape; so that in a
vulgar ecclesiastic crowd they seem hke sculptured
gems of 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 hal
lows 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 bap
tismal 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 ma
jestic sun, to the stars of 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!

280 SERMONS OF RELIGION
"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 ! "

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, think
ing 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 mon
asteries 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 up to God ; or to appease His " wrath."
So also are the mosques of the Mahometans, the syna
gogues, 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
281

282 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 con
siderable growth of soul.
I love to look at common hfe — 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 law
of God. But if religion is good for any thing, it is
as a rule of conduct for daily hfe, 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 meta
physics — 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 intel
lect is good for any thing, it is good to try the

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 283
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 provisionally,
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 ex
istence 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 con
ceive of any finite thing existing without God, the
infinite basis and ground thereof ; nor of God existing
without something. God is the necessary logical con
dition 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

284 "SERMONS OF RELIGION
God's nature to create, and so objectify Himself, and
then preserve and 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 re
ceives, 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 con
scious of yourself; not of yourself perhaps as sub
stance, surely as power to be, to do, to suffer. But
you are conscious of yourself not as self -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 self-conscious
ness; amongst them you find the idea of God. Care
fully examined by the scrutinizing intellect, it is the
idea of God as Infinite, — perfectly powerful, wise,
just, loving, holy, — absolute being, with no limita
tion. It is this which made you, 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

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 285
natural mode of action; set each at its several aim.
Self -consciousness 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 in
sect's wing, no httle 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.
Follow the eye of the great space-penetrating tele
scope 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 mil
lions that people an inch of stone, once animate with
swarming life, a spot too small for mortal mind ade
quately 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

286 SERMONS OF RELIGION
duration of a solar system by itself to get an immen
sity 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 be
coming, a being created and continued. This is so
in the nebula of Orion's 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 Cole
ridge 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 meas
ure 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 prin
ciples of modern science." All that is true, but the
finite mechanic is not in his work ; he makes it and then
withdraws. God is in His work, —

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 287
"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 New
ton's philosophy, that it makes the world all mechan
ism, 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 wonder
ful, 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 crea
tion 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 com
munion 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 with
draw any quality of his nature therefrom, and they
must cease to be. All must partake of Him, im
manent in each and yet transcending all.
In this communion, these and all things receive 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 de-

288 SERMONS OF RELIGION
grees of existence; and hence so many modes and de
grees 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 con
scious 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 communion of the
vegetable, the mineral, the animal world. My body,
this hand, for example, is subject to statical, dynam
ical 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

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 289
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 commun
icants 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 marvel
ous 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 my
self know God. I am a mind 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 de
pendent 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 Him
self 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
V— 19

290 SERMONS OF RELIGION
spirit is a dependence on God, and so far a communion
with Him.
I cannot wholly separate my spirit from this com
munion; for that would be destruction of the spirit,
annihilation, which is in no man's power. Only the In
finite can create or annihilate an atom of matter or a
monad of spirit. There is a certain amount of com
munion 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 spirit rushes out of the
body, and while the static and dynamic laws of nature
reassume their sway over my material husk, rechang-
ing it to dust, still I am, I depend, and so involun
tarily commune with God. Even the popular theology
admits this truth, for it teaches that the living wicked
still commune with God through pain and wander
ing and many a loss; and that the wicked dead com
mune 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 com
mune with God. If I live only as mere body, I have
only corporeal and unconscious communion, as a min
eral, 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 self-

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 291
conscious, I feel that dependence, and know of this
communion, whereby I receive from Him.
The quantity of my receipt is largely under my
control. As I will, I can have less or more. I cul
tivate 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 en
large my affections; each grain of love — 'philan
thropic 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 four
fold 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 com
munion. 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. 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 un-

292 SERMONS OF RELIGION
faithfulness 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 geolo
gist chipping the stones, or studying the earthquake-
waves ; here a metaphysician 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 offense; 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 God. As far
as it can see, his finite conscience reads in the book
the eternal right of God. A man's power of con
science is the measure of his moral communion with
the Infinite.
I repress my animal self-love, I learn to be well-
tempered, 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

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 293
my soul as active as my sense; I quicken my con
sciousness of the dear God; I learn to reverence and
trust and love, seeking to keep his every rule of con
duct for my sense and soul; I make my soul some ten
times larger than it was, and just as I enhance its quan
tity 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.
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 re
ligious 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.

294 SERMONS OF RELIGION
" 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 child
hood, and takes in all the main facts of his outward
and inward history. He sees much to mend, some
thing also to approve. Here he erred through pas
sion, there sinned by ambition; the desire from within,
leagued with opportunity from without, making temp
tation 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 reso
lutions 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 Wis
dom, the Eternal Justice, the Eternal Love, the Eter
nal Holiness, which surrounds him, and now fills up his
consciousness, waiting to bless. He reaches out his
arms towards the Infinite Motherliness which created
him at first and preserved him ever since; which sur
passed 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

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 295
and Conscience, Heart and Soul. He is made calmer
by the thought of the immense tranquillity which en
folds 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, con
verting 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 per
fect love to never-ending bliss. Yea, the tranquillity,
pity, love, of the Infinite Mother 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
phant 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 up
ward-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 keep
the web from raveling 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;

296 SERMONS OF RELIGION
some great sorrow sends me in upon myself and God;
out of the flower of self-indulgence the bee of remorse
stings 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 giv
ing. 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 domes
tic, household hearth; the clouds confine it in, those
airy walls, that it flee not off, nor spread to boundless
space; the frost becomes the less intense, and men
are gladdened with the milder day. So, when mag
netic bars in time have lost their force, men hang
them up in the hne of the meridian, and the great load
stone, the earth, from her own breast, restores their
faded magnetism. Thus is it that human souls com
municate 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."

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 297
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 conscious
ness of friendship 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 blossom
ings 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 mar
riage 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 kneel
ing 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; rehgious joy blossoms in
his face, and glitters in his eye. How glad is the con
verted man!

298 SERMONS OF RELIGION
" Then when he kneels to meditate,
Sweet thoughts come o'er his soul,
Countless, and bright, and beautiful,
Beyond his own control."
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 excite
ment 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 recipro
cating 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 volun
tary 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 hfe 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, 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,

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 299
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, 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,

300 SERMONS OF RELIGION
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 repro
duce this part of nature's discipline, and so have times
of watching, fasting, bodily torture. But in com
mon hfe such discipline asks not our consent to 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 more a load. With no sor
rows you would be more sorrowful. For all the sor
rows that man has faithfully contended with, he 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 bound
less, 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

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 301
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 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 inspira
tion. 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 Defense."
He who has that is sure of conscious spiritual com
munion with the Father; sure to find his character en
larging in every manly part; sure 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.

302 SERMONS OF RELIGION
There are continual means of help even for men
who dwell hedged up in towns. There are always liv
ing 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, Words
worth, 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 Ever-Present ; the Sun of
righteousness will beautify his every day.
God is partial to no one, foreign to none. Did he
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, every
where, is a Patmos, a Sinai, a Gethsemane ; the Infinite
Mother spreads wide her arms to fold us to that uni
versal breast, ready to inspire your soul. God's world
of truth is ready for your intellect; His ocean of jus
tice 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

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 303
bounty shall we be fed. The Motherly Love invites
all, — as much communion as we will, as much inspira
tion 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 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 jus
tice, holiness, and love of God.
"O, blessed be our trials then,
This deep in which we lie;
And blessed be all things that teach
God's dear Infinity."

XI
OF RELIGIOUS REST
" Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek
and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
Matthew, xi, 29.
Religious rest for the soul. What is it? Who has
it? How did he get it? That is a state of rest for
the soul where all man's powers work harmoniously
together, none conflicting with another, none hinder
ing another; where the law of God is our law. This
rest is complete when every special power in man's
nature is active and works in this direction, free to act,
and to act entirely in harmony, each with all and all
with each. That is what may be called self-command,
self-possession, tranquillity, peace, rest for the soul.
It is not indifference to good things and ill things, but
it is the very highest degree of interestedness. It is
not sluggishness, it is not sleep ; it is activity in its
perfect character and highest mode. Says one: —
" Rest is not quitting the busy career,
Rest is the fitting of self for its sphere."
It is a state of equilibrium, of equipoise between the
senses and the soul, between what is special and what
is general, between man and God.
Some men seem to be born for this. With them it
is a matter of temperament, and when such an one is
at the same time gifted with force, energy, and
strength of character, he is indeed well-born — born
into the natural aristocracy of God, born with ten tal
ents, and those talents well invested and insured on
liberal terms. Such a man starts from a loftier stand-
304

OF RELIGIOUS REST 305
ing than the rest of us. When other men with fire and
axes are hewing down the ancient savage forests, or
scaring the wild beasts from the enclosure just made,
he, on the other hand, is putting in the seed, or reap
ing the harvest, or, at any rate, rejoicing in the falling
fruit in its autumnal hour. But, in most cases, they
who are thus born are men of feeble powers, of httle
energy, and are, taking the whole world together, the
last men that are to be envied. They hate weakly,
and love as weakly ; they fear httle, but hate no more ;
they venture nothing, and nothing have. They are
slow of blood, passion, will, reason, impulse, every
thing is weak with them. They will never be far out
of the way, and never very far on in it. The roar of
the world's battle disturbs them not, but they have no
victories to rejoice in. They shriek not at the sight
of human woe ; they bend not the quiet arm to wrestle
for human welfare. The oyster has a calm hfe of it,
instead of seeking adventure taking what comes, but
its life is somewhat monotonous and tiresome. He is
not to be envied who is born with the equipoise of the
oyster, because he has only weakness and no more.
However born, born with whatsoever weakness or
ability, there is generally a life-battle. Most of the
men, and, above all, most strong men, are so born and
organized, that they feel the riddle of the world, and
there is a struggle for them. At first they are not
balanced. One part of their nature preponderates
over another, and the center of their magnitude is not
the center of their motion. They are not in an equi
librium. Like the troubled sea they cannot rest, only,
because they seek a rest and are not in an equipoise.
Spite of our failings, positive and negative, Our
simulation and dissimulation, our faces are, after all,
V— 20

306 SERMONS OF RELIGION
a very good index of our soul. Here and there the
parents have interfered too much and it is the father's
character that you see imprinted on the silent face,
the man's own face not being the man's own work ; but
as a general rule, the face is the index of the soul, and
the simple hearted, and the pure hearted man reads us
through the front from height to depth. Look at the
man's face and read that ; and then study the record
of his acts. Ask them the question, and you will find
very few men who have attained entire composure,
entire self-possession, and rest for their souls. This
young man is waiting until age shall somewhat chill
the fire in his blood before he aims to settle himself
down, calm and self collected, to rest. This old man
finds the habit of unrest growing upon him from child
hood and manhood, and he also is discomposed, and
though the snows of 70 winters have passed over his
head, yet still his face does not tell you of a soul at
rest. Yet nature tends everywhere to equilibrium. There
is no oak growing on all the hillsides of New England
but puts out an arm upon one side, and another just as
long and heavy upon the other side, and so it stands
erect and in even poise. God has so distributed things
in heaven that the planets balance one another and
though they make the most complicated motions there
is always just as much weight on one side of the sun
as upon the other, and so the balance is not disturbed.
Their center of motion is their center of magnitude
and with the smallest expenditure of force they move
in groups most beautiful and never miss their way.
So when the air becomes light in Boston all the two and
thirty winds rush hitherward to restore the balance.
The same thing appears both in the material and the

OF RELIGIOUS REST 307
spiritual world because they are all rooted in the same
soil and the same God has made the whole. The un
conscious planets by attraction obey the same law
which gently draws us conscious creatures towards
goodness and towards God. So looked at from a
point of view that commands the world of matter and
the world of spirit, piety is only the gravitation of a
conscious soul tending directly to its balance and to
God. All men are seeking, in a way better or worse, this
same rest. Some seek it objectively in mere outward
activity. They are frivolous persons, seeking rest by
travelling, by running from place to place, changing
ever their sky, never themselves. They are hke the
ass in the story, who ran into the Elysian fields, having
taken off his pannier, but though he left them behind
he carried still himself, and could only bray amidst
the celestial music there. Such persons, deeply to be
pitied, seek by dress to hide the nakedness of their
souls, or by the gaiety of their own prattle to chill the
fire which burns away their hearts. The merriest
faces, it is said, are sometimes seen in mourning
coaches, and so the most melancholy souls, pinched and
pining, sometimes stare at you out of the midst of
superficial smiles and light laughter. So the skeleton
at Egyptian feasts glared from the midst of festive
mirth. I knew a man who always talked much lest
men should discover that he was foolish and suppose
that he had nothing to say. He was an emblematic
man, a caricature of human experience, if you please,
but a caricature of a fact, and a very wide fact, too.
One cannot help rejoicing in the goodness of God,
who, having provided such earnest work for earnest
souls, has also left dust and straw and leaves as em-

308 SERMONS OF RELIGION
ployment for httle boys in spirit, who seek in this way
to conceal from themselves their unrest. We see an
awkward person in the presence of strangers seeking
to conceal and not to cure his awkwardness, always
changing his positions, fidgeting about with his vest,
neck cloth, or buttons, striving to conceal his clown-
ishness by perpetually opening doors and shutting
windows, and so not resting, he seeks to hide his want
of rest by corresponding foolishness of outward act —
to find rest by marking the disquiet within him.
Much sickness comes from this want of rest, only it
is sickness which drugs and leeches cannot touch.
Others of a character somewhat more earnest, for I
have begun at the very bottom of the scale and taken
the lightest characters first, others seek rest in out-
word works, tumultuous action. Such become marin
ers and soldiers, who cannot stay at home because a
restless spirit gnawing upon them drives them forth.
To-morrow they seek fresh fields and pastures new.
Such are traders, speculators, scholars, impelled to
adventurous life to relieve the aching void in their
hearts. The storm on the battle fields, the hazards of
trade, and the changes of political hfe cause them to
forget themselves and so they are rocked into the
oblivion of inward disquiet by the toss of the ocean
waves. They forget the hollowness of their own
hearts and cheat themselves in the belief that they are
still happy. Coleridge, in his " Ancient Mariner "
fables that his hero's disquiet returned at an uncertain
hour, and his heart burned within until he told his tale
to some one. It was true to nature. He that had no
rest in his heart sought rest without, just as a super
stitious man, fearing at night to be alone, seeks rest
and quiet in revelry and company.

OF RELIGIOUS REST 309
The greatest poet of the last century and of this —
for in the last century his life-star arose, and in the
present came to its meridian and set, when troubled
with doubts, dreads, fears, and disappointments, wrote
off a song, an ode, a novel, tragic or comic verse, and
thus he found forgetfulness his rest. When he remem
bered his life as a poem he forgot it as a fact. Many
a scholar, many a preacher, has done the same thing.
That beautiful genius, so rich, but so wrong, who
sang of Scottish men and maids, thus sought relief
from a wounded conscience when the ills of life rained
down upon him thick and terrible. When it came not
in that way, in delirious intemperance, he drugged
himself into oblivion, but not rest. Oh, no ! not rest ;
oblivion, only, for a moment. At an uncertain hour
his agony returned. David, in the Psalms, mourning
for that terrific sin, sought relief by making poems
and pious hymns, but they were writ in blood and
wrung his tortured soul. But that could not be
written off. Perhaps in all antiquity there is no man
so to be pitied as the erring David. His flame aspired
towards heaven, but gusts of passion ever quelled it
down. The Trojan Hector is a noble sight when he stands
there centering in himself the force of his band, stand
ing single armed and single handed to fight the Argive
foes. But he was warring against an outward foe.
David was a far more tragic sight when the armies en
camped about him were his own passions, when the
traitor was his own heart. He did not disguise the
fact, but fronted his devil and looked him boldly in
the face. He sought not to divert himself from the
encounter, but met him man to man, face to face.
There was an old notion that alms deeds were an atone-

310 SERMONS OF RELIGION
ment for sin, filled up the chasm, and that rest within
proceeded from good works without. And so many a
pirate and freebooter, after a life of iniquity, hoped to
die in peace by giving to the church or to the mon
astery fair woods and meadows, — selfish to the last,
hoping to get into heaven because he robbed his heir
upon earth. I doubt not that many a heroic action
has come from the same source. St. Augustine, Jerome,
Peter the Hermit, and even St. Louis, good as he was,
owed a great deal of their outward work to this dis
quiet within. Ignatius, John Calvin, John Wesley,
even, were great examples of this fact.
The man who cannot sleep will not rest, but turns
over and over again. The man who in battle charges
hke the tiger, and rushes to the cannon's mouth, draws
his valor from this polluted source; but when he is
dead men forget all that, and call it fame. Others
seek rest in helping to turn the machinery of religious
institutions. I have seen a man very far in arrears in
Christianity pass over in a single day from his cups
and his courtezans to the church, and then no man was
so earnest in his forms and rituals and creeds. He
shall denounce sin, by the denunciations of to-day seek
ing to cover up and bury forever the sin of yesterday.
And still this man's rest is only a form of disquietude.
It cannot last, and, while it lasts is unsatisfying. In
the old churches they sought rest in penances. The
man goes to the officer of the church and whispers in
his ear the sin he has committed and performs an out
ward act to remove it; but it is a very boyish concep
tion. I know there are times when consciousness of
our unworthiness and sin is so great and so keen, when
it tears so at the heart, that we feel it would be a relief
to go and do that, but it is a weakness to say so. It

OF RELIGIOUS REST 311
is in our hour of weakness that we rely upon such help,
and not in the great, strong hour when, looking it
firmly in the face, we can swear before God and man
it shall never be again. It only postpones the day of
rest. I have committed a sin; shall I come and tell
you of it? and will you tell me, after I have performed
a certain act, the church is satisfied? I answer I am
not satisfied, and until I am it is in vain that earth
and heaven are propitiated. Do you tell me that
Christ made atonement and was crucified for me? It
is not enough. I must make my own atonement and I
demand that I may be crucified in my own person for
my own offense, and so by my own cross may be
carried nearer to God. That is the man's best heart in
the man's best hour.
How often do we see men of a troubled spirit most
active in promoting revivals, running to and fro in
the land to proclaim some new austerity, condemning
some innocent amusement, or frightening into panic
women and children by telling them the world is soon
coming to an end and that the dear Son of God is
coming back to damn us all.
I know that many solemn rites seem to have come
from this cause. A man feels unrest and by these
forms he seeks rest. So, when a child smarts with
some pain we know not how to cure, we seek to divert
him, using words of endearment when words of com
fort avail not, and at last the boy finds he has only
been cheated and by no means cured. The parent is
sorry and "Mourns she knew not how to heal
With medicated hand the smarting ill."
Who has not seen some men of unbalanced mind, in
tellectual always, but spiritual never, heady, not

312 SERMONS OF RELIGION
hearty, roving from church to church, now Trini
tarian, then unbeliever, then Universalist, Unitarian,
Catholic, everything by turns, but nothing long, seek
ing rest by turning perpetually over, and becoming
at last a man having experienced many theologies, but
never religion, not a Christian, but only a verbal index
of Christianity, a commonplace book of theology.
Such a man runs from church to church, from Cam
bridge to Oxford, and from Oxford to Rome, in his
belief only as a stone runs down hill, and for the same
reason, because its center of gravity is not supported.
How different the progress of his life who leaves be
hind him that which is outgrown and never turns back,
but with all his progress is never an apostate !
In this way of seeking rest some men become formal
ists, and nothing more. They gradually become
superstitious. Their only rest is in forms because
they have no root in themselves. And then they lean
on those poor miserable props. So the passionate
Catholic accepts the sacraments of the church but con
tinues just the same as ever, the sacraments having
only blinded his sight to his sin. Others go to austeri
ties and condemn innocent hilarity, sport, and even
cheerfulness. Knowing no real peace within, they
would have no actual peace without. This is the
source of a great deal of that austerity which hangs
earth in gloom and makes religion cold and sad.
Some have gone so far as to declare that the soul
itself was cursed like the troubled sea that could not
rest. They denounce their nature, mortify their souls,
make themselves adverse to the powers of reason and
conscience, tread nature under their feet, abandon all
as worthless. It seems to me that the dark doctrine of
total depravity, of original sin, of renouncing one's

OF RELIGIOUS REST 313
self wholly as if there were no good in self, have come
from this same wicked root.
We read in the story of Christ's temptation, that he,
not having settled in his heart the questions, Whence,
what, and where am I, became subject to a threefold
temptation, bidding him to seek rest in merely out
ward things. But at last he says, Get thee behind
me, Satan! and resolves by the true way to seek his
everlasting peace, by obedience to his own conscience;
and then angels come and minister to him, and the
devil is far away. Seeking rest in that wild way, a
man finds it not. He gets only oblivion, and at best
makes himself into a mere worker, a formalist, mystic
trifler, or toy. Unrest which comes from the body may
by the body be cured; but what comes from the soul,
in the soul's open temple must be met and healed. All
men who have tried these side ways are men in whom
we must pardon many things before we can accept
them. That poet who only wrote off his troubles con
tinued selfish, and you look vainly for any high poetic
conception. You have many things to forgive before
you find any sound spots in his heart though
you may admire him, and though he may astonish you
with his verses. Goethe, Byron and Burns: the
first sought rest most successfully, and won out only
by his better nature, and the others won it not at all,
but died imperfect and immature.
There is another way of obtaining this rest, by
internal activity, looking the devil full in the face,
making all right in the heart first. This is no very
reluctant thing with the brave man, yet it will cause a
struggle. It demands a strong will, a resolute pur
pose, a high idea, a mind that learns by experience
what is wrong. He does not rush blindly into intoxi-

314 SERMONS OF RELIGION
cation, seeking to forget his trouble and his temper of
soul, but strives to cure it. He makes the center of
his life the center of his action. The battle of his
soul he fights out in the soul itself. He acquires the
mastery over himself, and then his duties become his
deeds, and his passions his servants. If he has lost a
friend he doesn't seek to forget that friend ; he doesn't
say there is no grave in this world ; but he seeks rather
faith to bear it; and so goes on until it becomes to
him a loss no longer, but rather a gain — a son, a
daughter, brother, or wife immortal in the kingdom
of God, rather than mortal and perishing on earth.
Gradually he acquires a perfect command of himself,
an equilibrium, and so is at rest.
I don't say this is a thing to be done at once. It
took longer for God to make a diamond than the
flower that blossoms in a day. It takes longer for a
great man to become balanced and settled. These
strong natures, capable of so much good, and which
may be perverted to so much ill, take longer to become
at rest, as the strongest wine is the longest in its fer
mentation. But I do say this is possible for every
man, and possible in a much shorter time than is sup
posed, if men will devote themselves to it. Then, if
this is done, what a superiority it has given him over
others! His action is harmonious, in triple harmony
with himself, with his brother, with his God. He
works not only because he must, but because he can
and because he will. The free volition of God at
taches to him. Like God's, his own action is calm.
He moves easily because his center is sustained. He
acts where, he acts when, and he acts how, he will.
With a little power he shall rapidly surpass men of
superior ability from the tranquillity of his work.

OF RELIGIOUS REST 315
He is come near to God. Christ and the Father of
Christ dwell in him and work through him. Trouble
will not readily disturb this man. Fear will not
readily make him afraid. Nothing can make him
despair. Not sorrow, or suffering, or sin of any
kind. The great angel of misfortune with blinded
eyes draws his bow and deftly shoots his arrow at a
venture. The open hearts thus fortified, the arrows fix
not. They leave no rankling wound. Such a man's
life is like a midsummer day in which there may be
clouds, indeed, but they only give picturesqueness to
the landscape, and in which every storm is rounded off
with a rainbow at last. The possession of this rest
for the soul is the very highest beauty of the soul.
As beauty of person consists not merely in beauty of
features, complexion, and expression alone, but in the
general result of all three, so beauty of soul does not
depend wholly upon the strength of mind, the will,
imagination, conscience, piety, but in the perfect union
of all these. This beauty appears in man's whole
action though failing inward and outward life.
Divinity enshrines itself in such a man. His
words are prophecy, his deeds fulfilment. You would
not say that he was a practical, or a speculative, but a
whole man. You see something of this rest for the
soul in John the Evangelist. You see something of
it in the nature of Mary, sketched in lines so rounded
and so few, who sat still in the house while Martha
was cumbered with much serving. There is nothing
in my mind so beautiful in Jesus himself as this manly
equipoise and rest. In him we find the most perfect
beauty of soul. In the 10th chapter of John he most
fitly calls himself the beautiful shepherd, and not
merely the good shepherd as we translate it in our

316 SERMONS OF RELIGION
cold English. He was ready for any emergency;
equal to the greatest duty, not above the least, and so
overcame for them. He was in union with God, and
through this union with God he overcame the world.
You would not select Caesar, Virgil, or Rafael as
models of men, for they sought rest in the specialty
of their vocation, not in the universality of men.
They were great as warriors, poets, painters. But he
who partakes of this inward repose carries the univer
sality of men into his special vocation. He unites
three special things: the beauty of human goodness,
the beauty of truth, and the sentiment of religious
love, and groups these three into the altogether beau
tiful of human excellence. Nature loves this man,
waits on him ; God flows into his open and steadfast
soul, and he becomes thereby a partaker in the nature
of God. His sentiment is an inlet of the divine peace
and his action is an outlet of the divine thought. In
all his walking he walks with God. He fives not
merely as a fraction, however large it may be, but as
a man. His calling is not merely a smith, a mer
chant, a preacher, or a politician, but he is a man,
engaged in those callings subduing them to himself,
bringing the universality of man to bear upon the
specialty of the calling. What a contrast is there
between such a one in trade, toil, science, religion, or
what you will, and a hot troubled man, unbalanced
himself and oversetting everything which he strives to
hold on to, in business, state or church.
He that is not happy in his home, says the proverb,
goes for satisfaction to his friends. And so he that
is not at rest in his heart travels out thereof to tumult
for repose. He that has rest in his own bosom need
not journey for the rewards of heaven He walks in

OF RELIGIOUS REST 317
paradise, he eats of the tree of knowledge without sin
and without shame, and hears his father's voice, not
frightened at the call. What a light in the life and
religion of such a man ! Religious faith and love,
these are the rest. The absence of these, and the
presence of sin, is disquietude of mind. With that in
your conscience there is no rest. There is no peace
for the wicked because there is no peace in them. To
escape from that, to make that escape, is regeneration
— is to be born again. To forget and to outgrow
that estate, that is forgiveness and return to God. To
obtain this rest will cost something. It will cost de
nial, watchfulness, and toil. Yet it is richly worth
what it will cost. You need not abandon anything
manly in men or graceful in women. It is rather
man's manliest manhood and woman's loveliest grace.
With them you shall bear easily the crosses of life.
When the blind archer shoots the bolts of misfortune
at a venture you are triply armed against them. You
shall rise fresh from the grave of sorrow and bravely
confront the dangers, toils, and disappointments of
your life. You shall not despise nature, but honor
it. You shall not shun the broad way and green of
life, which winds so pleasantly amidst the sweet
charities of this world. You shall walk there with
your fellows in the heat of the day and shall tread
down the dangerous shadows which at first sight lie as
giants in your path. You shall woo for yourself the
spirit of God, which shall come to your breast and be
married to your soul forever.
The hope of the world, who came to give us rest in
this way, dared to say, Peace, I leave with you, my
peace I give to you — for it is the fairest gift he
brings, and yet how little prized because so seldom won,

318 SERMONS OF RELIGION
and won so rarely because not oftener sought. Seek
this peace and you shall obtain it. Then, when all
your winged schemes, hopes and fancies fly out from
the golden nests of your expectations and elude your
grasp and vanish out of sight, then peace shall remain,
a household deity at your side to charm and bless you
and transfigure your own soul into the image of God ;
to give you his peace and his tranquillity forever.
They tell a story that one day Rabbi Judah and his
brethren, the seven pillars of wisdom, sat in his great
Temple on a feast day, disputing about rest. One
said that it was to have attained sufficient wealth yet
without sin. The second thought it was fame and the
praise of all men. The third that it was possession of
power to rule the state. The fourth that it consisted
only in a happy home. The fifth thought it must be
in the old age of one who is rich, powerful, famous,
surrounded by children and children's children. The
sixth said that they all were vain unless a man kept all
the ritual of Moses. And Rabbi Judah, the venerable,
the tallest of the brothers, said, Ye all have spoken
wisely, but one thing more is necessary: He only can
find rest who to all things addeth this, that he keepeth
the traditions of the elders.
There sat in the crowd a fair-haired boy playing
with lilies in his lap, and, hearing the talk, he dropped
them with astonishment from his hands and looked
up — that boy of twelve — and said, Nay, nay, fathers,
he only loveth rest, who loves his brother as himself,
and God with his whole mind and heart and soul. He
is greater than wealth and fame and power, happier
than a happy home, happy without it, better than hon
ored age, he is a law to himself and above all traditions.
The doctors were astonished. They said, When the

OF RELIGIOUS REST 319
Christ cometh shall he tell us greater things? And
they thanked God, for they said, The old men are not
always wise, yet God be praised that out of the mouth
of this young suckling has his praise become perfect.

XII
OF IMMORTAL LIFE
"The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God: their
hope is full of immortality." — Wisdom or Solomon, iii. 1, 4.
It is the belief of mankind that we shall all live for
ever. This is not a doctrine of Christianity alone. It
belongs to the human race. You may find nations so
rude that they live houseless, in caverns of the earth;
nations that have no letters, not knowing the use of
bows and arrows, fire, or even clothes, — but no nation
without a belief in immortal life. The form of that
belief is often grotesque and absurd, the mode of proof
ridiculous, the expectations of what the future life is
to be are often childish and silly. But, notwithstand
ing all that, the fact still remains, — the belief that the
soul of a man never dies.
How did mankind come by this opinion ? " By a
miraculous revelation," says one. But, according to
the common theory of miraculous revelations, the race
could not have obtained it in this way ; for according to
that theory the heathen had no such revelations. Yet
we find this doctrine the settled belief of the whole
heathen world. The Greeks and Romans believed it
long before Christ; the Chaldees, with no pretense to
miraculous inspiration, taught the idea of immortality ;
while the Jews, spite of their alleged revelations, rested
only in the dim sentiment thereof.
It was not arrived at by reasoning. It requires a
good deal of hard thinking to reason out and prove
this matter. Yet you find this belief among nations
not capable as yet of that art of thinking and to that
degree, — nations who never tried to prove it, and yet
320

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 321
believe it as confidently as we. The human race did
not sit down and think it out; never waited till they
could prove it by logic and metaphysics ; did not delay
their belief till a miraculous revelation came to confirm
it. It came to mankind by intuition, by instinctive be
lief, — the belief which comes unavoidably from the
nature of man. In this same way came the belief in
God, the love of man, the sentiment of justice. Men
could see, and knew they could see before they proved
it ; before they had theories of vision, without waiting
for a miraculous revelation to come and tell them they
had eyes, and might see if they would look. Some
faculties of the body act spontaneously at first; so
others of the spirit.
Immortality is a fact of man's nature, so it is a part
of the universe, — just as the sun is a fact in the heav
ens and a part of the universe. Both are writings
from God's hand; each, therefore, a revelation from
him and of him, only not miraculous, but natural, regu
lar, normal. Yet each is just as much a revelation from
him as if the great Soul of all had spoken in English
speech to one of us, and said, " There is a sun there in
the heavens, and thou shalt live forever." Yes, the
fact is more certain than such speech would make it;
for this fact speaks always, — a perpetual revelation,
and no words can make it more certain.
As a man attains consciousness of himself, he attains
consciousness of his immortality. At first he asks
proof no more of his eternal existence than of his pres
ent life: instinctively, he believes both. Nay, he does
not separate the two ; this hfe is one link in that golden
and electric chain of immortality; the next life, an
other and more bright, but in the same chain. Immor
tality is what philosophers call an ontological fact. It
V— 21

322 SERMONS OF RELIGION
belongs essentially to the being of man, just as the eye
is a physiological fact and belongs to the body of man.
To my mind this is the great proof of immortality, —
the fact that it is written in human nature, written
there so plain that the rudest nations have not failed
to find it, to know it; written just as much as form is
written on the circle, and extension on matter in gen
eral. It comes to our consciousness as naturally as
the motions of time and space. We feel it as a desire,
we feel it as a fact. What is thus in man is writ there
of God, who writes no lies. To suppose that this uni
versal desire has no corresponding gratification is to
represent him not as the Father of all, but as only a
deceiver. I feel the longing after immortality, — a de
sire essential to my nature, deep as the foundation of
my being. I find the same desire in all men. I feel
conscious of immortality; that I am not to die, — no,
never to die, though often to change. I cannot believe
this desire and consciousness are felt only to mislead, to
beguile, to deceive me. I know God is my Father, and
the Father of the nations. Can the Almighty deceive
his children ? For my own part I can conceive of noth
ing which shall make me more certain of my immor
tality. I ask no argument from learned lips. No mir
acle could make me more sure; no, not if the sheeted
dead burst cerement and shroud, and, rising forth from
their honored tombs, stood here before me, — the disen
chanted dust once more enchanted with that fiery life.
No, not if the souls of all my sires since time began
came thronging round, and with miraculous speech
told me they lived and I should also live. I could only
say, " I knew all this before : why waste your heavenly
speech ! " I have now indubitable certainty of eternal
life. Death removing me to the next state can give me
infallible certainty.

OF IMMORTAL LIFE
But there are men who doubt of immortality. They
say they are conscious of the want, not of the fact.
They need a proof. The exception here proves the
rule. You do not doubt your personal and conscious
existence now. You ask no proof of that. You
would laugh at me, should I try to convince you that
you are alive and self-conscious. Yet one of the lead
ers of modern philosophy wanted a proof of his as a
basis for his science, and said, " I am because I think."
But his thought required proof as much as his being;
yes, logically more, for being is the ground of think
ing, not thinking of being. At this day there are
sound men who deny the existence of this outward
world, declaring it only a dream-world. This ground,
they say, and yonder sun have been but in fancy, like
the sun and ground you perchance dreamed of last
night, whose being was only a being dreamed. These
are exceptional men, and help prove the common rule, —
— that man trusts his senses and believes an outward
world. Yet such are more common amongst philoso
phers than men who doubt of their immortal life. You
cannot easily reason those men out of their philosophy
and into their senses, nor by your own philosophy per
haps convince them that there is an outward world.
I think few of you came to your belief in everlasting
life through reasoning. Your belief grew out of your
general state of mind and heart. You could not help
it. Perhaps few of you ever sat down and weighed the
arguments for and against it, and so made up your
mind. Perhaps those who have the firmest conscious
ness of the fact are least familiar with the arguments
which confirm that consciousness. If a man disbelieves
it, if he denies it, his opinion is not often to be changed
immediately or directly by argument. His special

324 SERMONS OF RELIGION
conviction has grown out of his general state of mind
and heart, and is only to be removed by a change in
his whole philosophy. I am not honoring men for
their belief, nor blaming men who doubt or deny. I do
not believe any one ever willingly doubted this, ever
purposely reasoned himself into the denial thereof.
Men doubt because they cannot help it; not because
they will, but must.
There are a great many things true which no man as
yet can prove true, — some things so true that nothing
can make them plainer or more plainly true. I think it
is so with this doctrine, and, therefore, for myself ask
no argument. With my views of man, of God, of the
relation between the two, I want no proof, satisfied with
my own consciousness of immortality. Yet there are
arguments which are fair, logical, just, which satisfy
the mind, and may perhaps help persuade some men
who doubt, if such men there are amongst you. I
think that immortality is a fact of consciousness, — a
fact given in the constitution of man, therefore a mat
ter of sentiment. But it requires thought to pick it
out from amongst the other facts of consciousness.
Though at first merely a feeling, a matter of sentiment,
on examination it becomes an idea, — a matter of
thought. It will bear being looked at in the sharpest
and dryest light of logic. Truth never flinches before
reason. It is so with our consciousness of God: that
is an ontological fact, a fact given in the nature of
man. At first it is a feeling, a matter of sentiment.
By thought we abstract this fact from other facts: we
find an idea of God. That is a matter of philosophy;
and the analyzing mind legitimates the idea, and at
length demonstrates the existence of God, which we
first learned without analysis, and by intuition. A

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 325
great deal has been written to prove the existence of
God, and that by the ablest men ; yet I cannot beheve
that any one was ever reasoned directly into a belief
in God by all those able men, nor directly out of it by
all the sceptics and scoffers. Indirectly, such works
affect men, change their philosophy and modes of
thought, and so help them to one or the other conclu
sion. The idea of immortality, like the idea of God, in a
certain sense is born in us ; and, fast as we come to con
sciousness of ourselves, we come to consciousness of
God, and of ourselves as immortal. The higher we ad
vance in wisdom, goodness, piety, the larger place do
God and immortality hold in our experience and in
ward life. I think that is the regular and natural pro
cess of a man's development. Doubt of either seems
to me an exception, an irregularity. Causes that re
move the doubt must be general more than special.
However, in order to have a basis of thought and
reasoning as well as of intuition and reason, let me
mention some of the arguments for everlasting life.
I. The first is drawn from the general belief of man
kind. The greatest philosophers and the most pro
found and persuasive religious teachers of the whole
world have taught this. That is an important fact;
for these men represent the consciousness of mankind
in the highest development it has yet reached, and in
such points are the truest representatives of man.
What is more, the human race believes it, not merely as
a thing given by miraculous revelation, not as a mat
ter proven by science, not as a thing of tradition
resting on some man's authority, but believes it instinc
tively, not knowing and not asking why or how; be
lieves it as a fact of consciousness. Now, in a matter

326 SERMONS OF RELIGION
of this sort, the opinion of the human race is worth
considering. I do not value very much the opinion
of a priesthood in Rome or Judea or elsewhere, on this
point or any other ; for they may have designs adverse
to the truth. But the general sentiment of the human
race in a matter hke this is of the greatest importance.
This general sentiment of mankind is a quite different
thing from public opinion, which favors freedom in
one country and slavery in another. This sentiment
of mankind relates to what is a matter of feeling with
most men. It is only a few thinkers that have made it
a matter of thought. The opinion of mankind, so far
as we know, has not changed on this point for four
thousand years. Since the dawn of history, man's be
lief in immortality has continually been developing and
getting deeper fixed.
Still more, this belief is very dear to mankind. Let
me prove that. If it were true that one human soul
was immortal and yet was to be eternally damned, get
ting only more clotted with crime and deeper bit by
agony as the ages went slowly by, then immortality
were a curse, not to that man only, but to all mankind ;
for no amount of happiness, merited or undeserved,
could ever atone or make up for the horrid wrong done
to that one most miserable man. Who of you is there
that could relish heaven, or even bear it for a moment,
knowing that a brother was doomed to smart with ever-
greatening agony, while year on year and age on age
the endless chain of eternity continued to coil round
the flying wheels of hell? I say the thought of one
such man would fill even heaven with misery; and the
best man of men would scorn the joys of everlasting
bliss, would spurn at heaven, and say, "Give me my
brother's place: for me there is no heaven while he is

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 327
there!" Now it has been popularly taught that not
one man alone, but the vast majority of all mankind,
are thus to be condemned, — immortal only to be ever
lastingly wretched. That is the popular doctrine now
in this land: it has been so taught in the Christian
churches these sixteen centuries and more, — taught in
the name of Christ ! Such an immortality would be a
curse to men, to every man, — as much so to the
" saved " as to the " lost " ; for who would willingly
stay in heaven, and on such terms? Surely not he
who wept with weeping men ! Yet, in spite of this vile
doctrine drawn over the world to come, mankind relig
iously believes that each shall live forever. This shows
how strong is the instinct which can lift up such a foul
and hateful doctrine and still hve on. Tell me not that
scoffers and critics shall take away man's faith in end
less life: it has stood a harder test than can ever come
again. II. The next argument is drawn from the nature of
man. 1. All men desire to be immortal. This desire is
instinctive, natural, universal. In God's world such a
desire implies the satisfaction thereof, equally natural
and universal. It cannot be that God has given man
this universal desire of immortality, this belief in it, and
yet made it all a mockery. Man loves truth, tells it,
rests only it: how much more God, who is the trueness
of truth! Bodily senses imply their objects, — the eye
light, the ear sound; the touch, the taste, the smell,
things relative thereto. Spiritual senses likewise fore
tell their object, — are silent prophecies of endless life.
The love of justice, beauty, truth, of man and God,
points to realities unseen as yet. We are ever hunger
ing after noblest things, and what we feed on makes

328 SERMONS OF RELIGION
us hunger more. The senses are satisfied, but the soul
never. 2. Then, too, while this composite body unavoidably
decays, this simple soul which is my hfe decays not:
reason, the affections, all the powers that make the man,
decay not. True, the organs by which they act be
come impaired. But there is no cause for thinking
that love, conscience, reason, will ever become weaker in
man, but cause for thinking that all these continually
become more strong. Was the mind of Newton gone
when his frame, long overtasked, refused its wonted
work? 3. Here, on earth, everything in its place and time
matures. The acorn and the chestnut, things natural
to this climate, ripen every year. A longer season
would make them no better nor bigger. It is so with
our body: that, under proper conditions, becomes ma
ture. It is so with all the things of earth. But man
is not fully grown, as the acorn and the chestnut ; never
gets mature. Take the best man and the greatest, —
all his faculties are not developed, fully grown and
matured. He is not complete in the qualities of a
man : nay, often half his qualities lie all unused. Shall
we conclude these are never to obtain development and
do their work? The analogy of nature tells us that
man, the new-born plant, is but removed by death to
another soil, where he shall grow complete and become
mature. 4. Then, too, each other thing, under its proper con
ditions, not only ripens, but is perfect also after its
kind. Each clover-seed is perfect as a star. Every
lion, as a general rule, is a common representation of
all lionhood : the ideal of his race made real in him ; a
thousand years of life would not make him more. But

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 329
where is the Adamitic man, — the type and representa
tive of his race, who makes actual its idea? Even
Jesus bids you not call him good: no man has all the
manhood of mankind. Yes, there are rudiments of
greatness in us all, but abortive, incomplete, and
stopped in embryo. Now all these elements of man
hood point as directly to another state as the unfinished
walls of yonder rising church intimate that the work
is not complete, that the artist here intends a roof, a
window there, here a tower, and over all a heaven-
piercing spire. All men are abortions, our failure
pointing to the real success. Nay, we are all waiting
to be born, our whole nature looking to another world,
and dimly presaging what that world shall be. Death,
however we misname him, seasonable or out of time,
is the birth-angel, that alone.
5. Besides, the presence of injustice, of wrong,
points the same way. The fact that one man goes out
of this life in childhood, in manhood, at any time be
fore the natural measure of his days is full; the fact
that any one is by circumstances made wretched, that
he is hindered from his proper growth, and has not
here his natural due, — all intimates to me his future
life. I know that God is just. I know his justice,
too, shall make all things right; for he must have the
power, the wish, the will therefor, to speak in human
speech. I see the injustice in this city, its pauperism,
suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by
no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemi
sphere to balance this; another life, wherein justice
shall come to all and for all. Else God were unjust;
and an unjust God to me is no God at all, but a
wretched chimera which my soul rejects with scorn. I
see the autumn prefigured in the spring. The flowers

330 SERMONS OF RELIGION
of May-day foretold the harvest, its rosy apples and
its yellow ears of corn. As the bud now lying cold and
close upon the bark of every tree throughout our
northern clime is a silent prophecy of yet another
spring and other summers, and harvests, too, so this
instinctive love of justice, scantly budding here and
nipped by adverse fate, silently but clearly tells of a
kingdom of heaven. I take some miserable child here
in this city, squalid in dress and look, ignorant and
wicked, too, as most men judge of vagrant vice, made
so by circumstances over which that child had no con
trol: I turn off with a shudder at the public wrong
we have done and still are doing; but in that child I
see proof of another world, — yes, heaven glittering
from behind those saddened eyes. I know that child
has a man's nature in him, perhaps a Channing's trust
ing piety, perhaps a Newton's mind, — has surely rudi
ments of more than these; for what were Channing,
Newton, both of them, but embryo men? I turn off
with a shudder at the public wrong, but a faith in
God's justice, in that child's eternal life, which nothing
can ever shake. ,
III. A third argument is drawn from the nature of
God. He, as the Infinite, the Unconditioned, the Ab
solute, is all-powerful, all-wise, all-good. Therefore,
he must wish the best of all possible things, must know
the best of all possible things, must will the best of all
possible things, and so bring it to pass. Life is a
possible thing. Eternal life is possible. Neither im
plies a contradiction. Yes, to me they seem necessary,
more than possible. Now, then, as life, serene and
happy life, is better than non-existence, so immortality
is better than perpetual death. God must know that,
wish that, will that, and so bring that about. Man,

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 331
therefore, must be immortal. This argument is brief,
indeed ; but I see not how it can be withstood.
I do not know that one of you doubts of eternal life.
If any does, I know not if these thoughts will ever affect
his doubt. Still, I think each argument is powerful,
to one that thinks, reasons, balances, and then de
cides, — exceeding powerful. All put together form
a mass of argument which, as it seems to me, no logic
can resist. Yet I beg you to understand that I do not
rest immortality on any reasoning of mine, but on
reason itself; not on these logical arguments, but on
man's consciousness, and the instinctive belief which is
common to the human race. I believed my immortality
before I proved it, — believed it just as strongly then
as now. Nay, could some doubter rise, and, to my
thinking, vanquish all these arguments, I should still
hold fast my native faith, nor fear the doubter's arms.
The simple consciousness of men is stronger than all
forms of proof. Still, if men want arguments, why,
there they are.
The belief in immortality is one thing ; the special
form thereof, the definite notion of the future life,
another, and quite different. The popular doctrine in
our churches, I think, is this, — that this body which
we lay in the dust shall one day be raised again, the
living soul joined on anew, and both together live the
eternal hfe. But where is the soul all this time, be
tween our death-day and our day of rising? Some
say it sleeps unconscious, dead all this time; others,
that it is in heaven now or else in hell; others, in a
strange and transient home, imperfect in its joy or
woe, waiting the final day and more complete account.
It seems to me this notion is absurd and impossible, —
absurd in its doctrine relative to the present condition

332 SERMONS OF RELIGION
of departed souls ; impossible in what it teaches of the
resurrection of this body. If my soul is to claim the
body again, which shall it be, the body I was born into
or that I died out of? If I live to the common age of
men, changing my body as I must, and dying daily,
then I have worn some eight or ten bodies. So, at the
last, which body shall claim my soul? for the ten had
her. The soul herself may claim them all. But, to
make the matter still more intricate, there is in the
earth but a certain portion of matter out of which hu
man bodies can be made. Considering all the millions
of men now living, the myriads of millions that have
been before, it is plain, I think, that all the matter
suitable for human bodies has been lived over many
times. So, if the world were to end to-day, instead of
each old man having ten bodies from which to choose
the one that fits him best, there would be ten men all
clamoring for each body. Shall I then have a handful
of my former dust, and that alone? That is not the
resurrection of my former body. This whole doctrine
of the resurrection of the flesh seems to me impossible
and absurd.
I know men refer this, as many other things no
better, to Jesus. I find no satisfactory evidence that
he taught the resurrection of the body: there is some
evidence that he did not. I know it was the doctrine of
the Pharisees of his time, of Paul, the early Christians,
and more or less of the Christian churches to this day.
In Christ's time, in Judea, there were the Sadducees,
who taught the eternal death of men; the Pharisees
who taught the resurrection of the flesh and its reunion
with the soul ; the Essenes, who taught the immortality
of the soul, but rejected the resurrection of the body.
Paul was a Pharisee ; and in his letters taught the resur-

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 333
rection of the dead, the belief of the Pharisees. From
him it has come down to us ; and in the creed of many
churches it is still written, " I believe in the resur
rection of the flesh." Many doubted this in early
times, but the council of Nice declared all men accursed
who dared to doubt the resurrection of the flesh. I
mention this as absurd and impossible, because it is
still, I fear, the popular belief, and lest some should
confound the doctrine of immortality with this tenet
of the Pharisees. Let it be remembered the immor
tality of the soul is one thing, the resurrection of the
body another and quite different.
What is this future life? what can we know of it be
sides its existence? Some men speak as if they knew
the way around heaven as around the wards of their
native city. What we can know in detail is cautiously
to be inferred from the nature of man and the nature
of God. I will modestly set down what it seems to me.
It must be a conscious state. Man is by his nature
conscious ; yes, self-conscious. He is progressive in
his self -consciousness. I cannot think a removal out
of the body destroys this consciousness ; rather, that
it enhances and intensifies this. Yet consciousness in
the next life must differ as much from consciousness
here as the ripe peach differs from the blossom, or the
bud, or the bark, or the earthly materials out of which
it grew. The child is no limit to the man, nor my
consciousness now to what I may be, must be, here
after. It must be a social state. Our nature is social, our
joys social. For our progress here, our happiness, we
depend on one another. Must it not be so there? It
must be an advance upon our nature and condition
here. All the analogy of nature teaches that,

334 SERMONS OF RELIGION
Things advance from small to great, from base to
beautiful. The girl grows into a woman ; the bud
swells into the beautiful blossom, that into the fruit.
The process over, the work begins anew. How much
more must it be so in the other life. What old powers
we shall discover, now buried in the flesh, what new
powers shall come upon us in that new state, no man
can know : it were but poetic idleness to talk of them.
We see in some great man what power of intellect,
imagination, justice, goodness, piety, he reveals, lying
latent in us all. How men bungle in their works of
art! No Raphael can paint a dewdrop or a flake of
frost. Yet some rude man, tired with his work, lies
down beneath a tree, his head upon his swarthy arm,
and sleep shuts, one by one, these five scant portals of
the soul ; and what an artist is he made at once ! How
brave a sky he paints above him, with what golden
garniture of clouds set off; what flowers and trees,
what men and women does he not create, and moving
in celestial scenes ! What years of history does he
condense in one short minute, and, when he wakes,
shakes off the purple drapery of his dream as if it were
but worthless dust, and girds him for his work anew!
What other powers there are shut up in men, less
known than this artistic fantasy, — powers of seeing
the distant, recalling the past, predicting the future,
feeling at once the character of men, — of this we
know little, only by rare glimpses at the unwonted
side of things. But yet we know enough to guess
there are strange wonders there waiting to be revealed.
What form our conscious, social, and increased
activity shall take, we know not. We know of that no
more than before our birth we knew of this world, of
sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch, or the things

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 335
which they reveal. We are not born into that world,
have not its senses yet. This we know: that the same
God, all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, rules there and
then, as here and now. Who cannot trust him to do
right and best for all? For my own part, I feel no
wish to know how or where or what I shall be hereafter.
I know it will be right for my truest welfare, for the
good of all. I am satisfied with this trust.
Yet the next life must be a state of retribution.
Thither we carry nothing but ourselves, our naked
selves. Our fortune we leave behind us; our honors
and rank return to such as gave; even our reputa
tion — the good or ill men thought we were — clings
to us no more. We go thither without our staff or
scrip, — nothing but the man we are. Yet that man
is the result of all life's daily work : it is the one thing
which we have brought to pass. I cannot beheve men
who have voluntarily lived mean, little, vulgar, and
selfish lives will go out of this and into that great,
noble, generous, good, and holy. Can the practical
saint and the practical hypocrite enter on the same
course of being together? I know the sufferings of
bad men here, the wrong they do their nature, and
what comes of that wrong. I think that suffering is
the best part of sin, the medicine to heal it with.
What men suffer here from their wrong-doing is its
natural consequence ; but all that suffering is a mercy,
designed to make them better. Everything in this
world is adapted to promote the welfare of God's crea
tures. Must it not be so in the next? How many
men seem wicked from our point of view who are not
so from their own; how many become infamous
through no fault of theirs, — the victims of circum
stances, born into crime, of low and corrupt parents

336 SERMONS OF RELIGION
whom former circumstances made corrupt! Such men
cannot be sinners before God. Here they suffer from
the tyranny of appetites they never were taught to
subdue; they have not the joy of a cultivated mind.
The children of the wild Indian are capable of the
same cultivation as children here ; yet they are savages.
Is it always to be so? Is God to be partial in granting
the favors of another life? I cannot believe it. I
doubt not that many a soul rises up from the dungeon
and the gallows — yes, from dens of infamy amongst
men — clean and beautiful before God. Christ, says
the Gospel, assured the penitent thief of sharing
heaven with him — and that day. Many seem in
ferior to me who in God's sight must be far before
me : men who now seem too low to learn of me here may
be too high to teach me there.
I cannot think the future world is to be feared, even
by the worst of men. I had rather die a sinner than
live one. Doubtless justice is there to be done: that
may seem stern and severe. But, remember, God's
justice is not like a man's : it is not vengeance, but
mercy; not poison, but medicine. To me it seems
tuition more than chastisement. God is not the jailer
of the universe, but the shepherd of the people; not
the hangman of mankind, but their physician ; yes, our
Father. I cannot fear him as I fear men. I cannot
fail to love. I abhor sin, I loathe and nauseate
thereat ; most of all at my own. I can plead for others
and extenuate their guilt, perhaps they for mine; not
I for my own. I know God's justice will overtake
me, giving me what I have paid for. But I do not,
cannot fear it. I know his justice is love ; that, if I
suffer, it is for my everlasting joy. I think this is
a natural state of mind. I do not find that men ever

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 337
dread the future hfe, or turn pale on their death-bed
at thought of God's vengeance, except when a priest
hood has frightened them to that. The world's liter
ature, which is the world's confession, proves what I
say. In Greece, in classic days, when there was no
caste of priests, the belief in immortality was current
and strong. But in all her varied literature I do not
remember a man dying, yet afraid of God's vengeance.
The rude Indian of our native land did not fear to
meet the Great Spirit face to face. I have sat by the
bedside of wicked men, and, while death was dealing
with my brother, I have watched the tide slow ebbing
from the shore ; but I have known no one afraid to go.
Say what we will, there is nothing stronger and deeper
in men than confidence in God, — a solemn trust that he
will do us good. Even the worst man thinks God his
Father; and is he not? Tell me not of God's ven
geance, punishing men for his own glory! There is
no such thing. Talk not to me of endless hell, where
men must suffer for suffering's sake, be damned for
an eternity of woe. I tell you there is no such thing,
nor can there ever be. Does not even the hireling
shepherd, when a single lamb has gone astray, leave
the ninety-and-nine safe in their fold, go forth some
stormy night and seek the wanderer, rejoicing to bring
home the lost one on his shoulders? And shall God
forget his child, his frailest or most stubborn child;
leave him in endless misery, a prey to insatiate sin, —
that grim, bloodthirsty wolf, prowling about the
human fold? I tell you, No; not God. Why, this
eccentric earth forsakes the sun awhile, careering fast
and far away ; but that attractive power prevails at
length, and the returning globe comes rounding home
again. Does a mortal mother desert her son, wicked,
V— 22

338 SERMONS OF RELIGION
corrupt, and loathsome though he be? If so, the
wiser world cries, Shame! But she does not. When
her child becomes loathsome and hateful to the world,
drunk with wickedness, and when the wicked world puts
him away out of its sight, — strangling him to
death — that mother forgets not her child. She had
his earliest kiss, from lips all innocent of coming ill;
and she will have his last. Yes, she will press his cold
and stiffened form to her own bosom: the bosom that
bore and fed the innocent babe yearns yet with mortal
longing for the murdered murderer. Infamous to the
world, his very dust is sacred dust to her. She braves
the world's reproach, buries her son, piously hoping
that as their lives once mingled, so their ashes shall.
The world, cruel and forgetful oft, honors the mother in
its deepest heart. Do you tell me that culprit's mother
loves her son more than God can love him? Then go
and worship her. I know that when father and
mother both forsake me, in the extremity of my sin, I
know my God loves on. Oh, yes, ye sons of men,
Indian and Greek, ye are right to trust your God. Do
priests and their churches say No ? — bid them go and
be silent forever. No grain of dust gets lost from off
this dusty globe; and shall God lose a man from off
this sphere of souls? Believe it not.
I know that suffering follows sin, lasting long as
the sin. I thank God it is so; that God's own angel
stands there to warn back the erring Balaams, wander
ing towards woe. But God, who sends the rain, the
dew, the sun, on me as on a better man, will, at last,.
I doubt it not, make us all pure, all just, all good,
and so, at last, all happy. This follows from the
nature of God himself; for the All-good must wish
the welfare of his child, the All-wise know how to

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 339
achieve that welfare, the All-powerful bring it to pass.
Tell me he wishes not the eternal welfare of all men,
then I say, That is not the God of the universe. I
own not that as God. Nay, I tell you it is not God
you speak of, but some heathen fancy, smoking up
from your unhuman heart. I would ask the worst of
mothers, Did you forsake your child because he went
astray, and mocked your word? " Oh, no," she says:
" he was but a child, he knew no better ; and I led him
right, corrected him for his good, not mine ! " Are we
not all children before God; the wisest, oldest, wicked
est, God's child? I am sure he will never forsake me,
how wicked soever I become. I know that he is love;
love, too, that never fails. I expect to suffer for each
conscious, wilful wrong: I wish, I hope, I long to
suffer for it. I am wronged if I do not: what I do
not outgrow, live over and forget here, I hope to ex
piate there. I fear a sin, — not to outgrow a sin.
A man who has lived here a manly life must enter
the next under the most favorable circumstances. I
do not mean a man of mere negative goodness, starting
in the road of old custom, with his wheels deep in the
ruts, not having life enough to go aside, but a pos
itively good man, one bravely good. He has lived
heaven here, and must enter higher up than a really
wicked man, or a slothful one, or one but negatively
good. He can go from earth to heaven, as from one
room to another, pass gradually, as from winter to
spring. To such an one no revolution appears needed.
The next life, it seems, must be a continual progress,
the improvement of old powers, the disclosure or ac
cession of new ones. What nobler reach of thought,
what profounder insight, what more heavenly imagina
tion, what greater power of conscience, faith, and love,

340 SERMONS OF RELIGION
will bless us there and then, it were vain to calculate,
it is far beyond our span. You see men now, whose
souls are one with God ; and so his will works through
them as the magnetic fire runs on along the unim-
peding line. What happiness they have, it is they,
alone can say. How much greater must it be there,
not even they can tell. Here the body helps us to
some things. Through these five small loopholes the
world looks in. How much more does the body hinder
us from seeing? Through the sickly body yet other
worlds look in. He who has seen only the daylight
knows nothing of that heaven of stars, which all night
long hang over head their lamps of gold. When
death has dusted off this body from me, who will dream
for me the new powers I shall possess ? It were vain to
try. Time shall reveal it all.
I cannot believe that any state in heaven is a final
state, only a condition of progress. The bud opens
into the blossom, the flower matures into the fruit.
The salvation of to-day is not blessedness enough for
to-morrow. Here we are, first, babes of earth, with
a few senses, and those imperfect, helpless, and igno
rant; then children of earth; then youths; then men,
armed with reason, conscience, affection, piety, and go
on enlarging these without end. So, methinks, it must
be there, that we shall be, first, babes of heaven, then
children, next youths, and so on growing, advancing
and advancing, — our being only a becoming more
and more, with no possibility of ever reaching the
end. If this be true, then there must be a continual
increase of being. So, in some future age, the time
will come when each one of us shall have more mind
and heart and soul than Christ on earth ; more than all
men now on earth have ever had ; yes, more than they

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 341
and all the souls of men now passed to heaven, — shall
have, each one of us, more being than they all have
had, and so more truth, more soul, more faith, more
rest, and bliss of life.
Do men of the next world look in upon this? Are
they present with us, conscious of our deeds or
thoughts? Who knows? Who can say ay or no?
The unborn know nothing of the life on earth ; yet the
born of earth know somewhat of them, and make ready
for their coming. Who knows but men born to
heaven are waiting for your birth to come, have gone
to prepare a place for us? All that is fancy, and not
fact; it is not philosophy, but poetry; no more. Of
this we may be sure, that what is best will be; what
best for saint or sinner; what most conducive to their
real good. That is no poetry, but unavoidable truth,
which all mankind may well believe.
There are many who never attained their true
stature here, yet without blameworthiness of theirs;
men cheated of their growth. Many a Milton walks
on his silent way, and goes down at last, not singing,
and unsung. How many a possible Newton or Des
cartes has dug the sewers of a city, and dies, giving no
sign of the wealthy soul he bore !
"Chill penury repressed his noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul."
What if the best of you had been born slaves in
North Carolina, or among savages at New Zealand;
nay, in some of the filthy cellars of Boston, and turned
friendless into the streets: what might you have be
come? Surely, not what you are; yet, before God,
you might perhaps be more deserving, and at death
go to a far higher place. What is so terribly wrong

342 SERMONS OF RELIGION
here must be righted there. It cannot be that God
will thrust a man out of heaven because his mother was
a savage, a slave, a pauper, or a criminal. It is men's
impiety which does so here, not Heaven's justice there !
How the wrong shall be righted I know not, care not
now to know: of the fact I ask no further certainty .
Many that are last shall be first. It may be that the
pirate, in heaven, having outgrown his earthly sins,
shall teach justice to the judge who hanged him here.
They who were oppressed and trampled on, kept down,
dwarfed, stinted, and emaciate in soul, must have
justice done them there and will doubtless stand higher
in heaven than we, who, having many talents, used
them poorly, or hid them idle in the dirt, knowing our
Father's will, yet heeding not. It was Jesus that said,
Many shall come from the east and the west, and sit
down in the kingdom of God, and men calling them
selves saints be thrust out.
Shall we remember the deeds of the former life, —
this man that he picked rags out of the mud in the
streets, and another that he ruled nations? Who can
tell ; nay, who need care to ask ? Such a remembrance
seems not needed for retribution's sake. The oak
remembers not each leaf it ever bore, though each
helped to form the oak, its branch and bole. How
much has gone from our bodies ! we know not how it
came or went ! How much of our past life is gone
from our memory, yet its result lives in our character !
The saddler remembers not every stitch he took while
an apprentice, yet every stitch helped to form the
saddle. Shall we know our friends again? For my own
part I cannot doubt it, least of all when I drop a tear
over their recent dust. Death does not separate them

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 343
from us here. Can life in heaven do it? They live
in our remembrance. Memory rakes in the ashes of
the dead, and the virtues of the departed flame up
anew, enlightening the dim, cold walls of our con
sciousness. Much of our joy is social here. We only
half enjoy an undivided good. God made mankind,
but sundered that into men, that they might help one
another. Must it not be so there, and we be with our
real friends? Man loves to think it. Yet to trust is
wiser than to prophesy. But the girl who went from
us a little one may be as parent to her father when
he comes ; and the man who left us have far outgrown
our dream of an angel when we meet again. I can
not doubt that many a man who not long ago left his
body here, now far surpasses the radiant manliness
which Jesus won and wore, — yes, is far better,
greater, too, than many poorly conceive of God.
There are times when we think little of a future life.
In a period of success, serene and healthy life, the day's
good is good enough for that day. But there comes
a time when this day's good is not good enough, its ill
too great to bear. When death comes down and
wrenches off a friend from our side, — wife, child,
brother, father, a dear one taken, — this life is not
enough. Oh, no, not to the coldest, coarsest, and most
sensual man. I put it to you, to the most heartless of
you all, or the most cold and doubting: when you lay
down in the earth your mother, sister, wife, or child,
remembering that you shall see their face no more, is
hfe enough? Do you not reach out your arms for
heaven, for immortality, and feel you cannot die?
When I see men at a feast or busy in the street, I
do not think of their eternal life, — perhaps feel not
my own ; but, when the stiffened body goes down to the

344 SERMONS OF RELIGION
tomb, sad, silent, remorseless, I feel there is no death
for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall cover
is not my brother. The dust goes to its place, the man
to his own. It is then I feel my immortality. I look
through the grave into heaven. I ask no miracle, no
proof, no reasoning for me. I ask no risen dust to
teach me immortality. I am conscious of eternal life.
But there are worse hours than these; seasons bit
terer than death ; sorrows that lie a latent poison in the
heart, slowly sapping the foundations of our peace.
There are hours when the best life seems a sheer failure
to the man who lived it, his wisdom folly, his genius
impotence, his best deed poor and small, when he
wonders why he was suffered to be born, when all the
sorrows of the world seem poured upon him, when he
stands in a populous loneliness, and, though weak, can
only lean in upon himself. In such hour he feels the
insufficiency of this life. It is only his cradle time,
he counts himself just born. All honors, wealth, and
fame are but baubles in his baby hand, his deep philos
ophy but nursery rhymes. Yet he feels the immortal
fire burning in his heart. He stretches his hands out
from the swaddling-clothes of flesh, reaching after the
topmost star, which he sees, or dreams he sees, and
longs to go alone. Still worse, the consciousness of
sin comes over him. He feels that he has insulted
himself. All about him seems little, himself little, yet
clamoring to be great. Then we feel our immortality :
through the garish light of day we see a star or two
beyond. The soul within us feels her wings, contend
ing to be born, impatient for the sky, and wrestles
with the earthly worm that folds us in.
" Mysterious Night ! when our first Parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

OF IMMORTAL LIFE 345
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came;
And, lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"
I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its
day and night: its flowers and its fruits are dear to
me. I would not wilfully lose sight of a departing
cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star, or in
a purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws,
too, of matter seem more wonderful, the more I study
them, in the whirling eddies of the dust, in the curious
shells of former life buried by thousands in a grain of
chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light above my
head. Even the ugly becomes beautiful when truly
seen. I see the jewel in the bunchy toad. The more I
live, the more I love this lovely world, — feel more its
Author in each little thing, in all that is great. But
yet I feel my immortality the more. In childhood the
consciousness of immortal life buds forth feeble,
though full of promise. In the man it unfolds its
fragrant petals, his most celestial flower, to mature its
seed throughout eternity. The prospect of that ever
lasting life, the perfect justice yet to come, the infinite
progress before us, cheer and comfort the heart. Sad
and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not
be so forever. The light of heaven breaks upon the
night of trial, sorrow, sin: the sombre clouds which
overhung the east, grown purple now, tell us the dawn
of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by

346 SERMONS OF RELIGION
that, smile in the new-born glow. We are beguiled of
our sadness before we are aware. The certainty of
this provokes us to patience, it forbids us to be sloth-
fully sorrowful. It calls us to be up and doing. The
thought that all will at last be right with the slave,
the poor, the weak, and the wicked, inspires us with
zeal to work for them here, and make it all right for
them even now.
There is small merit in being willing to die. It
seems almost sinful in a good man to wish it, when the
world needs him here so much. It is weak and un
manly to be always looking and sighing voluptuously
for that. But it is of great comfort to have in your
soul a sure trust in immortality, of great value here
and now to anticipate time and live to-day the eternal
life. That we may all do. The joys of heaven will
begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven and
do its duties. That may begin to-day. It is ever
lasting life to know God, to have his spirit dwelling in
you, yourself at one with him. Try that, and prove
its worth. Justice, usefulness, wisdom, religion, love,
are the best things we hope for in heaven. Try them
on: they will fit you here not less becomingly. They
are the best things of earth. Think no outlay of
goodness and piety too great. You will find your
reward begin here. As much goodness and piety, so
much heaven. Men will not pay you, God will, — pay
you now, pay you hereafter and forever.

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