LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 MRS. BRUCE C. HOPPER
 
 
 -J 
 
 *t* 

 
 TEN 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 OF RELIGION. 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE PARKER, 
 
 MINISTER OP THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, IN BOSTON. 
 
 9ECOXD EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 
 
 1855. .
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S52, by 
 
 THEODORE PARKER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 ALI.EN AND FARNIIAM, PRINTERS.
 
 TO 
 
 / 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 WITH ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS, 
 AND WITH KINDLY AFFECTION FOR WHAT IN HIM IS FAR NOBLER 
 
 THAN GENIUS, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED . 
 
 BY HIS FRIEND, 
 
 THEODORE PARKER.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I have often been asked by personal friends to publish 
 a little volume of Sermons of Religion, which might come 
 home to their business and bosoms in the joys and sorrows 
 of their daily life. And nothing loth to do so without 
 prompting, I have selected these which were originally 
 part of a much longer course, and send them out, wish- 
 ing that they may be serviceable in promoting the religious 
 welfare of mankind on both sides of the ocean. They are 
 not Occasional Sermons, like most of those I have lately 
 published, which heavy emergencies pressed out of me ; but 
 they have all, perhaps, caught a tinge from the events of 
 the day when they were preached at first. For as a coun- 
 try girl makes her festal wreath of such blossoms as the 
 fields offer at the time, — of violets and wind-flowers in the 
 spring, of roses and water-lilies in summer, and in autumn 
 of the fringed gentian and the aster, — so must it be with 
 the sermons which a minister gathers up under serene or 
 stormy skies. This local coloring from time and circum- 
 stances I am not desirous to wipe off; so the sad or joyous 
 aspect of the day will be found still tinging these printed
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 Sermons, as indeed it colored the faces and tinged the 
 prayers of such as heard them first. 
 
 Sometimes the reader will find the same fundamental 
 idea reappearing under various forms, in several places of 
 this hook ; and may perhaps also see the reason thereof in 
 the fact, that it is the primeval Rock on which the whole 
 thing rests, and of necessity touches the heavens in the 
 highest mountains, and, receiving thence, gives water to the 
 deepest wells which bottom thereon. 
 
 I believe there are great Truths in this book, — both 
 those of a purely intellectual character, and those, much 
 more important, which belong to other faculties nobler than 
 the mere intellect ; truths, also, which men need, and, as I 
 think, at this time greatly need. But I fear that I have not 
 the artistic skill so to present these needful truths that a 
 large body of men shall speedily welcome them ; perhaps 
 not the attractive voice which can win its way through the 
 commercial, political, and ecclesiastical noises of the time, 
 and reach the ears of any multitude. 
 
 Errors there must be also in this book. I wish they 
 might be flailed out and blown away ; and shall not com- 
 plain if it be done even by a rough wind, so that the pre- 
 cious Truths be left unbroke and clean after this winnowing, 
 as bread-stuff for to-day, or as seed-corn for seasons yet 
 to come. 
 
 August 24th, 1852.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO MANLY LIFE 3 
 
 II. 
 
 OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT . . . . . .33 
 
 III. 
 
 OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 6G 
 
 IV. 
 
 OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 102 
 
 V. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL . . . 139 
 
 VI. 
 
 OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS . . . 185 
 
 VII. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH . 225 
 
 VIII. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF JOY . . . 259 
 
 IX. 
 
 OF CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS . . 312 
 
 X. 
 
 OF COMMUNION WITH GOD ....... 3G4
 
 SERMONS.
 
 I. 
 
 OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO 
 MANLY LIFE. 
 
 Thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, 
 - and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. — matt. 
 xxii. 37. 
 
 There are two things requisite for complete and 
 perfect religion, — the love of God and the love of 
 man ; one I will call Piety, the other Goodness. In 
 their natural development they are not so sharply 
 separated as this language would seem to imply ; 
 for piety and goodness run into one another, so 
 that you cannot tell where one begins and the other 
 ends. But I will distinguish the two by their centre, 
 where they are most unlike ; not by their 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 facul- 
 ties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake,
 
 4 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 distribute these faculties of the human spirit into 
 four classes : the intellectual, — including the aes- 
 thetic, — moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind 
 be the name of the intellectual faculty, — including 
 the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, 
 and understanding; Conscience shall be the short 
 name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and 
 Soul for the religious faculties. 
 
 I shall take it for granted that the great work of 
 mankind on earth is to live a manly life, to use, 
 discipline, develop, and enjoy every limb of the 
 body, every faculty of the spirit, each in its just 
 proportion, all in their proper place, duly coordinat- 
 ing what is merely personal, and for the present 
 time, with what is universal, and for ever. This 
 being so, what place ought piety, the love of God, 
 to hold in a manly life ? 
 
 It seems to me, that piety lies at the basis of all 
 manly excellence. It represents the universal action 
 of man according to his nature. This universal 
 action, the bent of the whole man in his normal 
 direction, is the logical condition of any special 
 action of man in a right direction, of any particu- 
 lar bent that way. If I have a universal idea of 
 universal causality in my mind, I can then under- 
 stand a special cause ; but without that universal 
 idea of causality in my mind, patent or latent, 
 I could not understand any particular cause what-
 
 THE FOURFOLD F_ORM OF PIETY. 5 
 
 ever. 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 
 connection in causality. If you have not a uni- 
 versal idea of beauty, you do not know that this 
 is a handsome and that a homely dress ; you notice 
 only the form and color, the texture and the fit, but 
 see no relation to an ideal loveliness. If you have 
 not a universal idea of the true, the just, the holy, 
 you do not comprehend the odds betwixt a correct 
 statement and a lie, between the deed of the priest 
 and that of the good Samaritan, between the fidel- 
 , ity 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 uni- 
 versal object of the human spirit, is the logical con- 
 dition of all manly life. 
 
 This is clear, if you look at man acting in each 
 of the four modes just spoken of, — intellectual, 
 moral, affectional, and religious. 
 
 The Mind contemplates God as manifested in 
 truth; for truth — in the wide meaning of the word 
 including also a comprehension of the useful and 
 the beautiful — is the universal category of intel- 
 lectual cognition. To love God with the mind, is 
 to love him as manifesting himself in the truth, or 
 to the mind ; it is to love truth, not for its uses, but 
 
 1*
 
 b THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 for itself, because it is true, absolutely beautiful 
 and lovely to the mind. In finite things we 
 read the infinite truth, the absolute object of the 
 mind. 
 
 Love of truth is a great intellectual excellence; 
 but it is plain you must have the universal love 
 of universal truth before you can have any special 
 love for any particular truth whatsoever; for in all 
 intellectual affairs the universal is the logical con- 
 dition 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 uni- 
 versal category of moral cognition. To love God
 
 THE FOUKFOLD FOKM OF PIETY. 7 
 
 with the conscience, is to love him as manifested 
 in right and justice ; is to love right or justice, not 
 for its convenience, its specific uses, but for itself, 
 because it is absolutely beautiful and lovely to the 
 conscience. In changeable things we read the 
 unchanging and eternal right, which is the absolute 
 object of conscience. 
 
 To love right is a great moral excellence ; but it 
 is plain you must have a universal love of universal 
 right before you can have any special love of a 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 
 convenience it may bring to you in your selfish 
 schemes. None was so ready to draw the sword 
 for Jesus, or look after the money spent upon him, 
 as the disciple who straightway denied and betrayed 
 him. Many wish right on their side, who take 
 small heed to be on the side of right. You shall 
 find men enough who seem to love right in general, 
 because they clamor for a specific, particular right ; 
 but erelong it becomes plain they only love some 
 limited or even personal convenience they hope 
 therefrom. The people of the United States claim 
 to love the unalienable right of man to life, lib-
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 erty, 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 unalienable right 
 which they love, but only the selfish advantage it 
 affords them. If you love the right as right, for 
 itself, because it is absolutely just and beautiful 
 to your conscience, then you will no more deprive 
 another of it than submit yourself to be deprived 
 thereof. Even the robber will fight for his own. 
 The man who knows no better rests in the selfish 
 love of the private use of a special right. 
 
 The Heart contemplates God as manifested in 
 love, for love is the universal category of affectional 
 cognition. To love God with the heart, is to love 
 him as manifested in love ; it is to love Love, not 
 for its convenience, but for itself, because it is abso- 
 lutely beautiful and lovely to the heart. 
 
 Here I need not reiterate what has already been 
 twice said, of mind and of conscience- 
 Love of God as love, then, is the affectional part 
 of piety, and lies at the basis of all affectional excel- 
 lence. The mind and the conscience are content 
 with ideas, with the true and the right, while the 
 heart demands not ideas, but Beings, Persons ; and 
 loves them. It is one thing to desire the love of a 
 person for your own use and convenience, and
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 9 
 
 quite different to have your personal delight in 
 him, and desire him to have his personal delight 
 in you. From the nature of the case, as persons 
 are concrete and finite, man never finds the complete 
 satisfaction of his affectional nature in them, for no 
 person is absolutely lovely, none the absolute object 
 of the affections. But as the mind and conscience 
 use the finite things to help learn infinite truth and 
 infinite right, and ultimately rest in that as their 
 absolute object, so our heart uses the finite persons 
 whom we reciprocally love as golden letters in the 
 book of life, whereby we learn the absolutely lovely, 
 the infinite object of the heart. As the philosopher 
 has the stars of heaven, each lovely in itself, where- 
 by to learn the absolute truth of science, — as the 
 moralist has the events of human history, each of 
 great moment to mankind, whereby to learn the 
 absolute right of ethics, — so the philanthropist has 
 the special persons of his acquaintance, each one a 
 joy to him, as the rounds of his Jacob's ladder 
 whereby he goes journeying up to the absolutely 
 lovely, the infinite object of the affections. 
 
 The Soul contemplates God as a being who 
 unites all these various modes of action, as mani- 
 fested in truth, in right, and in love. It appre- 
 hends him, not merely as absolute truth, absolute 
 right, and absolute love alone, but as all these uni-
 
 10 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 fied into one complete and perfect Being, the In- 
 finite God. He is the absolute object of the soul, 
 and corresponds thereto, as truth to the mind, as 
 justice to the conscience, as love to the heart. He 
 is to the soul absolutely true, just, and lovely, the 
 altogether beautiful. To him the soul turns in- 
 stinctively at first; then also, at length, with con- 
 scious and distinctive will. 
 
 The love of God in this fourfold way is the 
 totality of piety, which comes from the normal use 
 of all the faculties named before. Hence it appears 
 that piety of this character lies at the basis of all 
 manly excellence whatever, and is necessary to a 
 complete and well-proportioned development of the 
 faculties themselves. 
 
 There may be an unconscious piety : the man 
 does not know that he loves universal truth, jus- 
 tice, love ; loves God. He only thinks of the 
 special truth, justice, and love, which he prizes. 
 He does not reflect upon it ; does not aim to love 
 God in this way, yet does it, nevertheless. Many a 
 philosopher has seemed without religion even to 
 a careful observer; sometimes has passed for an 
 atheist. Some of them have to themselves seemed 
 without any religion, and have denied that there
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 11 
 
 was any God. But all the while their nature was 
 truer than their will; their instincts kept their per- 
 sonal 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, 
 before it bursts the sod and shoots into the light 
 of self-consciousness. Sheathed in unconsciousness 
 lies the bud, erelong to open a bright, consummate 
 flower. These philosophers, with a real love of 
 truth, and yet a scorn of the name of God, under- 
 stand 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 exhaus- 
 tive inventory of the facts of their own nature. 
 Such men have unconsciously much of the intellec- 
 tual 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 con- 
 science, — have loved it with a disinterested, even a 
 self-denying love, — who yet scorned religion, denied 
 all consciousness of God, denied his providence,
 
 12 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 perhaps his existence, and would have resolved 
 God into matter, and no more. Yet all the while 
 in these men, dim and unconscious, there lay the 
 religious element ; neglected, unknown, it gave the 
 man the very love of special justice which made 
 him strong. He knew the absolutely just, but did 
 not know it as God. 
 
 I have known philanthropists who undervalued 
 piety; they liked it not, — they said it was 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 delight. Yet underneath this philanthropy 
 there lay the absolute and disinterested love of other 
 men. They knew only the special form, not the 
 universal substance thereof, — the particular love of 
 Thomas or of Jane, not the universal love of the 
 Infinite. They had the affectional form of piety, 
 though they knew it not. 
 
 I have known a man full of admiration and of 
 love for the universe, yet lacking consciousness of 
 its Author. He loved the truth and beauty of the 
 world, reverenced the justice of the universe, and 
 was himself delighted at the love he saw pervad- 
 ing all and blessing all ; yet he recognized no God,
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 13 
 
 saw only a cosmic force, which was a power of 
 truth and beauty to his mind, a power of justice 
 to his conscience, and a power of love to his heart. 
 He had not a philosophic consciousness of the 
 deeper, nobler action which went on within him, 
 building greater than he knew. But in him also 
 there were the several parts of piety, only not joined 
 into one total and integral act, and not distinctly 
 known. 
 
 This unconsciousness of piety is natural with a 
 child. In early life it is unavoidable ; only now 
 and then some rare and precious boy or girl opens 
 from out its husk of unconsciousness his childish 
 bud of faith, and blossoms right early with the con- 
 sciousness of God, a " strong and flame-like flower." 
 This instinctiveness of piety is the beauty of child- 
 hood, the morning-red widely and gorgeously dif- 
 fused before the rising of the sun. But as a man 
 becomes mature, adds reflection to instinct, trans- 
 mutes 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, jus- 
 tice, love, he should know that it is God he loves 
 underneath these special forms, and should unite 
 them all into one great act of total piety. As the 
 state of self-consciousness is a more advanced state 
 than unconsciousness ; as the reflective reason of the 
 man is above the unreflective instinct of the child ; 
 
 2
 
 14 TIIE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 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. Accord- 
 ingly, 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 phi- 
 lanthropist who has such love of love, that he would 
 lay down his life for men, is less a philanthropist, 
 and has less affectional power, because he knows 
 not that in his brave benevolence he loves the God 
 of love. The man full of profound love of the 
 universe, -of reverence for its order, its beauty, its 
 justice, and the love which fills the lily's cup with 
 fragrant loveliness, who wonders at the mighty 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 wor- 
 ships ; aye, far less a man because he does not 
 know he loves and worships God. When he be- 
 comes conscious of his own spiritual action, con-
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 15 
 
 scious of God, of loving God with mind and con- 
 science, heart and soul, his special love will in- 
 crease, he will see the defects there are in his 
 piety ; if it be disproportionate, through redun- 
 dance here or failure there, he can correct the de- 
 formity and make his entire inner life harmonious, 
 a well-proportioned whole. Then he feels that he 
 goes in and out, continually, in the midst of the 
 vast forces of the universe, which are only the 
 forces of God ; that in his studies, when he attains 
 a truth, he confronts the thought of God ; when 
 he learns the right, he learns the will of God laid 
 down as a rule of conduct for the universe ; and 
 when he feels disinterested love, he 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, sensi- 
 ble of God's sentiment, and his own existence is in 
 the Infinite Being of God. Thus he joins into a 
 whole integral state of piety the various parts de- 
 veloped 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 rela- 
 tion piety sustains to manly life ; — it is the basis
 
 16 TIIE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 of all the higher excellence of man, and when the 
 man is mature, what was instinctive at first becomes 
 a state of conscious love of God. * 
 
 Now, when this universal fourfold force is once 
 developed and brought to consciousness, and the 
 man has achieved something in this way, his piety- 
 may be left to take its natural form of expression, 
 or it may be constrained to take a form not natural. 
 Mankind has made many experiments upon piety ; 
 books of history are full of them. Most of these, 
 as of all the experiments of man in progress, are 
 failures. We aim many times before we hit the 
 mark. The history of religion is not exceptional 
 or peculiar in this respect. See how widely men 
 experiment in agriculture, navigation, government, 
 before they learn the one right way. The history of 
 science is the history of mistakes. The history of 
 religion and the history of astronomy are equally 
 marked by error. It is not surprising that mistakes 
 have been made in respect to the forms of piety 
 after it is procured. 
 
 For there are various helps which are needful, 
 and perhaps indispensable, in childhood, to the de- 
 velopment of the love of God, but which are not 
 needed after the religious character is somewhat 
 mature. Then the man needs not those former out-
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 17 
 
 ward helps; he has other aids suited to his greater 
 strength. This is true of the individual, repeating 
 no more the hymns of his nursery, — true also of 
 mankind, that outgrows the sacrifices and the my- 
 thologies 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 unad- 
 venturous nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his 
 flock in the same close-cropped circle where they 
 first learned to browse, while the progressive man 
 roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures new." 
 See how parents help develop the body of the 
 child. The little boy is put into a standing-stool, 
 or baby-jumper, till he learns to walk. By and by 
 he has his hoop, his top, his ball; each in turn is 
 laid aside. He has helps to develop his mind not 
 less, — little puzzles, tempting him to contrive, — 
 prints set off with staring colors ; he has his alpha- 
 bet of wooden letters, in due time his primer, his 
 nursery rhymes, and books full of most wonderful 
 impossibilities. He has his early reader, his first 
 lessons in arithmetic, and so goes on with new 
 helps proportionate to his strength. It is a long 
 slope from counting the fingers up to calculating 
 the orbit of a planet not yet seen. But the fingers 
 and the solar system are alike helps to mathematic 
 thought. When the boy is grown up to man's 
 estate, his body vigorous and mature, he tries his
 
 18 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 strength in the natural work of society, is a mer- 
 chant, a sailor, a mechanic, a farmer; he hews 
 stones, or lifts up an axe upon the thick timber. 
 For a long time his body grows stronger by his 
 work, and he gets more skill. His body pays for 
 itself, and refunds to mankind the cost of its train- 
 ing up. When his mind is mature, he applies that 
 also to the various works of society, to transact 
 private business, or manage the affairs of the public ; 
 for a long time his mind grows stronger, gaining 
 new knowledge and increase of power. Thus his 
 mind pays for its past culture, and earns its tuition 
 as it goes along. 
 
 In this case the physical or mental power of the 
 man assumes its natural form, and does its natural 
 work. He has outgrown the things which pleased 
 his childhood and informed his youth. Nobody 
 thinks it necessary or beautiful for the accomplished 
 scholar to go back to his alphabet, and repeat it 
 over, to return to his early arithmetic and para- 
 digms of grammar, when he knows them all; for 
 this is not needful to keep an active mind in a 
 normal condition, and perform the mental work of 
 a mature man. Nobody sends a lumberer from the 
 woods back to his nursery, or tells him he cannot 
 keep his strength without daily or weekly sleeping 
 in his little cradle, or exercising with the hoop, or 
 top, or ball, which helped his babyhood. Because
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 19 
 
 these little trifles sufficed once, they cannot help him 
 now. Man, reaching forward, forgets the things that 
 are behind. 
 
 Now the mischief is, that, in matters of religion, 
 men demand that he who has a mature and well- 
 proportioned piety should always go back to the 
 rude helps of his boyhood, to the ABCof religion 
 and the nursery books of piety. He is not bid to 
 take his power of piety and apply that to the com- 
 mon works of life. The Newton of piety is sent 
 back to the dame-school of religion, and told to 
 keep counting his fingers, otherwise there is no 
 health in him, and all piety is wiped out of his con- 
 sciousness, 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 mould a religious character must 
 be continually resorted to, and become the perma- 
 nent form thereof. 
 
 This notion is exceedingly pernicious. It wastes 
 the practical power of piety by directing it from 
 its natural work ; it keeps the steam-engine always 
 fanning and blowing itself, perpetually firing itself 
 up, while it turns no wheels but its own, and does 
 no work but feed and fire itself. This constant 
 firing up of one's self is looked on as the natural 
 work and only form of piety. Ask any popular
 
 20 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 minister, in one of the predominant sects, for the 
 man most marked for piety, and he will not show 
 you the men with the power of business who do 
 the work of life, — the upright mechanic, merchant, 
 or farmer ; not the men with the power of thought, 
 of justice, or of love ; not him whose whole life is 
 one great act of fourfold piety. No, he will show 
 you some men who are always a dawdling over 
 their souls, going back to the baby-jumpers and 
 nursery rhymes of their early days, and everlast- 
 ingly 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 
 offence, and be done with the complaint at once 
 and for ever. It is dangerous to reiterate so sad 
 a cry. 
 
 You see this mistake, on a large scale, in the 
 zeal with which nations or sects cling to their re- 
 ligious institutions long after they are obsolete. 
 Thus the Hebrew cleaves to his ancient ritual and 
 ancient creed, refusing to share the religious sci- 
 ence which mankind has brought to light since Mo- 
 ses and Samuel went home to their God. The two 
 great sects of Christendom exhibit the same thing in 
 their adherence to ceremonies and opinions which 
 once were the greatest helps and the highest ex- 
 pression of piety to mankind, but which have long
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 21 
 
 since lost all virtue except as relics. The same 
 error is repeated on a small scale all about us, men 
 trying to believe what science proves ridiculous, and 
 only succeeding by the destruction of reason. It 
 was easy to make the mistake, but when made it 
 need not be made perpetual. 
 
 Then this causes another evil : not only do men 
 waste the practical power of piety, but they cease 
 to get more. To feed on baby's food, to be dan- 
 dled in mother's arms, — to play with boys' play- 
 things, to learn boys' lessons, and be amused with 
 boys' stories, — this helps the boy, but it hinders 
 the man. Long ago we got from these helps all 
 that was in them. To stay longer is waste of 
 time. Look at the men who have been doing 
 this for ten years ; they are where they were ten 
 years ago. They have done well if they have not 
 fallen back. If we keep the baby's shoes for ever 
 on the child, what will become of the feet ? What 
 if you kept the boy over his nursery rhymes for 
 ever, or tried to make the man grown believe that 
 they contained the finest poetry in the world, that 
 the giant stories and the fairy tales therein were 
 all true ; what effect would it have on his mind ? 
 Suppose you told him that the proof of his man- 
 hood consisted in his fondness for little boys' play- 
 things, and the little story-books and the little games 
 of little children, and kept him securely fastened
 
 22 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 to the apron-strings of the school-dame; suppose 
 you could make him believe so ! You must make 
 him a fool first. What would work so bad in 
 intellectual affairs works quite as ill in the matter 
 of piety. The story of the flood has strangled a 
 world of souls. The miracles of the New Testa- 
 ment no longer heal, but hurt mankind. 
 
 Then this method of procedure disgusts well- 
 educated and powerful men with piety itself, and 
 with all that bears the name of religion. " Go 
 your ways," say they, " and cant your canting as 
 much as you like, only come not near us with your 
 grimace." Many a man sees this misdirection of 
 piety, and the bigotry which environs it, and turns 
 off from religion itself, and will have nothing to 
 do with it. Philosophers always have had a bad 
 name in religious matters; many of them have 
 turned away in disgust from the folly which is 
 taught in its name. Of all the great philosophers 
 of this day, I think no one takes any interest in 
 the popular forms of religion. Do we ever hear 
 religion referred to in politics? It is mentioned 
 officially in proclamations and messages ; but in 
 the parliamentary debates of Europe and America, 
 in the State papers of the nations, you find hardly 
 a trace of the name or the fact. Honest men and 
 manly men are ashamed to refer to this, because it 
 has been so connected with unmanly dawdling and
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 23 
 
 niggardly turning back, — they dislike to mention 
 the word. So religion has ceased to be one of the 
 recognized forces of the State. I do not remember 
 a good law passed in my time from an alleged 
 religious motive. Capital punishment, and the laws 
 forbidding work or play on Sunday, are the only 
 things left on the statute-book for which a strict- 
 ly "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 Amer- 
 ica 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 intel- 
 lectual culture, throughout all Christendom, is heed- 
 less 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 re- 
 ligion." Such fatal errors come from this mis- 
 take. 
 
 But there is a natural form of piety. The natu- 
 ral use of the strength of a strong man, or the wis- 
 dom of a wise one, is to the work of a strong
 
 24 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 man or a wise one. What is the natural work of 
 piety ? Obviously it is practical life ; the use of all 
 the faculties in their proper spheres, and for their 
 natural function. Love of God, as truth, justice, 
 love, must appear in a life marked by these quali- 
 ties ; that is the only effectual " ordinance of re- 
 ligion." 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 motive of a pious man. Real piety, love of 
 God, if left to itself, assumes the form of real 
 morality, loyal obedience to God's law. Thus the 
 power of religion does the work of religion, and is 
 not merely to feed itself. 
 
 There are various degrees of piety, the quality 
 ever the same, the quantity variable, and of course 
 various degrees of goodness as the result thereof. 
 "Where there is but little piety, the work of good- 
 ness 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 obe- 
 dience to a law of God felt within the conscience 
 or the soul, a law which bids the deed. The 
 man's desires and duty are in opposition, not con- 
 junction; but duty rules. That is the goodness
 
 THE FOUKFOLD FOKM OF PIETY. 25 
 
 of a boy in religion, the common goodness of the 
 world. 
 
 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 con- 
 science, heart, and soul, and feels small temptation 
 to do to others what he would not receive from 
 them ; he will deny himself for the sake of his 
 brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the 
 line of his duty, both in conjunction now. Not 
 in vain does the poor, the oppressed, the hunted 
 fugitive look up to him. This is the goodness of 
 men well grown in piety. You find such men 
 in all Christian sects, Protestant and Catholic; in 
 all the great religious parties of the civilized world, 
 among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. They 
 are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable 
 in their business, beautiful in their daily lives. You 
 see the man's piety in his work, and in his play. 
 It appears in all the forms of his activity, individual, 
 domestic, social, ecclesiastic, or political. 
 
 But the man goes on in his growth of piety y 
 loving truth, justice, love, loving God the more. 
 What is piety within must be morality without. 
 The quality and quantity of the outward must 
 
 3
 
 26 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 increase as the quality and quantity of the inward. 
 So his eminent piety must become eminent morality, 
 which is philanthropy. He loves not only his kin- 
 dred and his country, but all mankind ; not only 
 the good, but also the evil. He has more good- 
 ness than the channels of his daily life will hold. 
 So it runs over the banks, to water and to feed 
 a thousand thirsty plants. Not content with the 
 duty that lies along his track, he goes out to seek 
 it; not only willing, he has a salient longing to 
 do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his love, 
 his piety, over all the world. His daily life is a 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 gushing melody, than the man of real piety 
 lives it in this beautiful outward life. So from 
 the perennial spring wells forth the stream to 
 quicken the meadow with new access of green, 
 and perfect beauty bursting into bloom. 
 
 Thus piety does the work it was meant to do: 
 the man does not sigh and weep, and make grim- 
 aces, for ever in a fuss about his soul ; he lives 
 right on. Is his life marked with errors, sins, — he 
 ploughs over the barren spot with his remorse, sows 
 with new seed, and the old desert blossoms like a
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 27 
 
 rose. He is free in his spiritual life, not confined 
 to set forms of thought, of action, or of feeling. 
 He accepts what his mind regards as true, what 
 his conscience decides is right, what his heart 
 deems lovely, and what is holy to his soul ; all else 
 he puts far from him. Though the ancient and 
 the honorable of the earth bid him bow down to 
 them, his stubborn knees bend only at the bidding 
 of his manly soul. His piety is his freedom before 
 God, not his bondage unto men. The toys and 
 child's stories of religion are to him toys and child's 
 stories, but no more. No baby-shoes deform his 
 manly feet. 
 
 This piety, thus left to obey its natural law, 
 keeps in sound health, and grows continually more 
 and more. Doing his task, the man makes no more 
 ado about his soul than about his sense. Yet 
 it grows like the oak-tree. He gets continually 
 more love of truth and right and justice, more love 
 of God, and so more love of man. Every faculty 
 becomes continually more. His mind acts after 
 the universal law of the intellect, his conscience 
 according to the universal moral law, his affections 
 and his soul after the universal law thereof, and 
 so he is strong with the strength of God, in 
 this fourfold way communicating with him. With 
 this strengthening of the moral faculties there comes 
 a tranquillity, a calmness and repose, which nothing
 
 28 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 else can give, and also a beauty of character which 
 you vainly seek elsewhere. When a man has the 
 intellectual, the moral, the affectional part of piety, 
 when he unites them all with conscious love of 
 God, and puts that manifold piety into morality, 
 his eminent piety into philanthropy, he attains 
 the highest form of loveliness which belongs to 
 mortal man. His is the palmy loftiness of man, — 
 such strength, such calmness, and such transcendent 
 loveliness of soul. 
 
 I know some men mock at the name of piety ; 
 I do not wonder at their scoff; for it has been 
 made to stand as the symbol of littleness, meanness, 
 envy, bigotry, and hypocritical superstition ; for 
 qualities I hate to name. Of what is popularly 
 called piety there is no lack ; it is abundant 
 everywhere, common as weeds in the ditch, and 
 clogs the wheels of mankind in every quarter of 
 the world. Yet real piety, in manly quantity 
 and in a manly form, is an uncommon thing. It 
 is marvellous what other wants the want of this 
 brings in : look over the long list of brilliant names 
 that glitter in English history for the past three 
 hundred years, study their aims, their outward and 
 their inner life ; explore the causes of their mani- 
 fold defeat, and you will see the primal curse 
 of all these men was lack of piety. They did not
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 29 
 
 love truth, justice, or love; they did not love God 
 with all their mind and conscience, heart and soul. 
 Hence came the failure of many a mighty-minded 
 man. Look at the brilliant array of distinguished 
 talent in France for the last five generations ; what 
 intellectual gifts, what understanding, what imagi- 
 nation, what reason, but with it all what corruption, 
 what waste of faculty, what lack of strong and calm 
 and holy life, in these great, famous men ! Their 
 literature seems marvellously like the thin, cold 
 dazzle of Northern Lights upon the wintry ice. In 
 our own country it is still the same ; the high intel- 
 lectual gift or culture is ashamed of religion, and 
 flouts at God ; and hence the faults we see. 
 
 But real piety is what we need ; we need much 
 of it, — need it in the natural form thereof. Ours 
 is an age of great activity. The peaceful hand was 
 never so busy as to-day ; the productive head never 
 created so fast before. See how the forces of nature 
 yield themselves up to man : the river stops for him, 
 content to be his servant, and weave and spin ; the 
 ocean is his vassal, his toilsome bondsman ; the 
 lightning stoops out of heaven, and bears thought- 
 ful burdens on its electric track from town to 
 town. All this comes from the rapid activity of 
 the lower intellect of man. Is there a conscious 
 piety to correspond with this, — a conscious love 
 of truth and right and love, — a love of God ? 
 
 3*
 
 30 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 Ask the State, ask the church, ask society, and ask 
 our homes. 
 
 The age requires a piety most eminent. What 
 was religion enough for the time of the Patriarchs, 
 or the Prophets, or the Apostles, or the Reformers, 
 or the Puritans, is not enough for the heightened 
 consciousness of mankind to-day. When the world 
 thinks in lightning, it is not proportionate to pray in 
 lead. The old theologies, the philosophies of re- 
 ligion of ancient times, will not suffice us now. 
 We want a religion of the intellect, of the con- 
 science, of the affections, of the soul, — the natural 
 religion of all the faculties of man. The form also 
 must be natural and new. 
 
 We want this natural piety in the form of normal 
 human life, — morality, philanthropy. Piety is not 
 to forsake, but possess the world; not to become 
 incarnate in a nun and a monk, but in women and 
 in men. Here are the duties of life to be done. 
 You are to do them, do them religiously, conscious- 
 ly 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 phi- 
 losophy, theology, politics, to be made way with. 
 It is the function of piety to abolish these and sup- 
 ply their place with new truths all radiant with God.
 
 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 31 
 
 Here are the great evils of church and State, of 
 social and domestic life, wrongs to be righted, evils 
 to be outgrown : it is the business of piety to mend 
 all this. Ours is no age when Religion can forsake 
 the broad way of life. In the public street must she 
 journey on, open her shop in the crowded square, 
 and teach men by deeds, her life more eloquent than 
 any lips. Hers is not now the voice that is to cry 
 in the wilderness, but in the public haunts of men 
 must she call them to make straight their ways. 
 
 We must possess all parts of this piety, — the 
 intellectual, moral, affectional, — yea, total piety. 
 This is not an age when men in religion's name 
 can safely sneer at philosophy, call reason " carnal," 
 make mouths at immutable justice, and blast with 
 their damnation the faces of mankind. Priests have 
 had their day, and in dull corners still aim to pro- 
 tract their favorite and most ancient night ; but the 
 sun has risen with healing in his wings. Piety 
 without goodness, without justice, without truth or 
 love, is seen to be the pretence of the hypocrite. 
 Can philosophy satisfy us without religion ? Even 
 the head feels a coldness from the want of piety. 
 The greatest intellect is ruled by the same integral 
 laws with the least, and needs this fourfold love of 
 God ; and the great intellects that scorn religion are 
 largest sufferers from their scorn. 
 
 Any man may attain this piety ; it lies level to all.
 
 32 THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 
 
 Yet it is not to be won without difficulty, manly 
 effort, self-denial of the low for the sake of the high- 
 est 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-de- 
 nial, now of instinctive desire, now of selfish am- 
 bition. Much you must sacrifice. But you will 
 gain the possession, the use, the development, and 
 the joy of your own mind and conscience, heart and 
 soul. You will never sacrifice truth, justice, holi- 
 ness, or love. All these you will gain ; gain for 
 to-day, gain for ever. What inward blessedness 
 will you acquire ! what strength, what tranquillity, 
 what loveliness, what joy in God ! You will have 
 your delight in Him ; He his in you. Is it not 
 worth while to live so that you know you are in 
 unison with God ; in unison, too, with men ; in 
 quantity growing more, in quality superior ? Make 
 the trial for manly excellence, and the result is 
 yours, for time and for eternity.
 
 II. 
 
 OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 BUT THE TRUTH, AND SELL IT NOT J ALSO WISDOM, AND IN- 
 STRUCTION, AND UNDERSTANDING. PlOV. Xxiii. 23. 
 
 Temperance is corporeal piety ; it is the preser- 
 vation of divine order in the body. It is the har- 
 mony of all the members thereof; the true sym- 
 metry and right proportion of part with part, of each 
 with all, and so the worship of God with every 
 limb of the body. Wisdom is to the mind what 
 temperance, in this sense, is to the body ; it is 
 intellectual piety ; the presence of divine order in 
 the mind; the harmony of all the faculties thereof; 
 the true symmetry and right proportion of faculty 
 with faculty, of each with all. It is a general 
 power of intellect, which may turn in any one 
 or in all directions ; the poet is a* wise man in 
 what relates to poetry ; the philosopher, the states- 
 man, the man of business, each in what relates to 
 his particular function. So it is a general power of
 
 34 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 mind. We say " knowledge is power," but mean 
 wisdom, which is general intellectual ability, the 
 power of knowing and of using truth. 
 
 This wisdom implies two things : the love of 
 truth as truth, which I spoke of the other day as 
 the intellectual side of piety; and, secondly, the 
 power to possess and use this truth, either in the 
 specific form which is sought by the philosopher, 
 poet, statesman, and man of business, or else in 
 some more general form including all these ; the 
 power of getting truth either by the mode of reflec- 
 tion, as truth demonstrated, or by the mode of intui- 
 tion, as truth seen and known at sight. For the 
 acquisitive part of wisdom is the generic power 
 which includes both the specific powers, — of intui- 
 tion 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 con- 
 ditions of the body, and observe the laws thereof,
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 35 
 
 they will become distinguished for these three 
 things. 
 
 In like manner, if a man keep the law of his 
 mind, and fulfil its natural conditions, he acquires 
 wisdom, — acquires intellectual health, strength, and 
 beauty. Here also there may be particular and 
 personal exceptions, but such is the rule. Let 
 any race of men, say the New Englanders, for a 
 hundred years fulfil the natural condition of mind 
 and keep the law thereof, we should have these 
 three qualities to a greater degree than the ancient 
 inhabitants of Athens, long regarded as the most 
 intellectual race in the world; we should have the 
 quality of wisdom which they had, but with more 
 intellectual health, strength, and loveliness, more 
 truth and more power to use it, inasmuch as the 
 human race has acquired a greater intellectual 
 development in the two thousand years that have 
 passed since the days of Aristotle and Alexander. 
 The laws which regulate the development of mind, 
 in the individual or the race, are as certain as the 
 laws of matter. Observance thereof is sure to bring 
 certain consequences to the individual, the nation, 
 and mankind. The intellectual peculiarity of a 
 nation is transmitted from age to age, and only 
 disappears when the nation perishes or mingles 
 with some other tribe inferior to itself ; then it does 
 not cease, but is spread more thinly over a wider
 
 36 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 field, and does not appear in its ancient form for 
 years to come. Intellectual talent dies out of a 
 particular family. There are seldom two men of 
 genius of the same name. Stuarts and Tudors, 
 Guelphs and Bourbons, there are in abundance, 
 but only one Luther, Shakspeare, Milton, Crom- 
 well, 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 man- 
 kind; 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 man- 
 kind, 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 gen- 
 eration. The piety of Jesus of Nazareth did not 
 die out of mankind when he gave up the ghost ; 
 the second century had more of Christ than the 
 first; there has been a perpetual increase of So-
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 37 
 
 cratic excellence ever since the death of the Athe- 
 nian sage. 
 
 This is a remarkable law of Providence, but a 
 law it is ; and cheering is it to know that all the 
 good qualities you give example of, not only have 
 a personal immortality in you beyond the grave, 
 but a national, even a human, immortality on earth, 
 and, while they bless you in heaven, are likewise 
 safely invested in your brother man, and shall go 
 down to the last posterity, blessing your nation 
 and all mankind. So the great men of antiquity 
 continue to help us, — Moses, Confucius, Buddha, 
 Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, — not to 
 dwell upon the name dearest of all. These men 
 and their fellows, known to all or long since for- 
 gotten 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 per- 
 sonal 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 tem- 
 perature of the interstellar spaces, betwixt sun and 
 sun, which may be called the temperature of the 
 
 4
 
 38 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 universe, so is there a spiritual temperature of the 
 interpersonal spaces, a certain common temperature 
 of spirit, not barely personal, not national alone, 
 but human and of the race, which may be called 
 the temperature of mankind. On that in general 
 we all depend, as on our family in special, or 
 in particular upon our personal genius and our 
 will. Those great men added wisdom to mankind, 
 brought special truths to consciousness, which now 
 have spread throughout the enlightened nations of 
 the world, and penetrate progressively the human 
 mass, giving mankind continual new power. So 
 shall you see an iron bar become magnetic; first 
 it was a single atom of the metal which caught 
 the electric influence, spark by spark ; that atom 
 could not hold the subtile fire, whose nature was 
 to spread, and so one atom gave the spark to the 
 next, and soon it spread through the whole, till 
 the cold iron, which before seemed dead as stone, 
 is all magnetic, acquires new powers, and itself 
 can hold its own, yet magnetize a thousand bars 
 if rightly placed. 
 
 According to his nature man loves truth with a 
 pure and disinterested love, the strongest intellec- 
 tual affection. The healthy eye does not more 
 naturally turn to the light, than the honest mind 
 turns toward the truth. See how we seek after it
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 39 
 
 in nature. All the National Academies, Institutes, 
 and Royal Societies are but so many companies 
 organized for the pursuit of truth, — of truth chiefly 
 in some outward form, materialized in the visible 
 world. These societies propose no corporeal benefit 
 to themselves, none to the human race. They love 
 each truth of nature for its own fair sake. What 
 is the pecuniary value of the satellites of Neptune 
 to us ? See how laborious naturalists ransack the 
 globe to learn the truths writ in its elements. One 
 goes to Florida to look after the bones of a masto- 
 don, hid in a bog some thousands of years ago ; 
 another curiously collects chips of stone from all 
 the ledges of the world, lives and moves and has 
 his being in the infra-carboniferous sandstones and 
 shales, a companion of fossil plants and fossil shells- 
 This crosses land and ocean to study the herbage 
 of the earth ; that, careless of ease and homefelt 
 joys, devotes his life to mosses and lichens, which 
 grow unheeded on the rocks ; he loves them as if 
 they were his own children, yet they return no 
 corresponding smile, nor can he eat and drink of 
 them. How the astronomer loves to learu the truth 
 of the stars, which will not light his fire nor fill 
 his children's hungry mouths ! No Inquisition can 
 stop Galileo in his starry quest. I have known a 
 miser who loved money above all things ; for this, 
 would sacrifice reason, conscience, and religion, and
 
 40 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 break affection's bond ; but it was the use of money 
 that was loved, with a mean and most ignoble 
 selfish lust, vulgarizing and depraving the man. 
 The true disciple of science loves truth far more, 
 with a disinterested love; will endure toil, priva- 
 tion, 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 ques- 
 tions ! How the famous scholars light their lamps 
 and dim their eyes over this work, and how the 
 world rejoices in their books, which will not bake 
 bread, nor make two blades of grass grow where 
 only one rose up before ; which will not build a 
 railroad, nor elect a president, nor give a man an 
 office in any custom-house of the wide world ! 
 There is a deep love of truth in men, even in 
 these poor details. A natural king looks royal at 
 the plough.
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 41 
 
 How men study yet higher modes of truth, writ 
 in the facts of human consciousness ! How the 
 ablest men have worked at the severest forms of 
 intellectual toil, yet proposing no gain to them- 
 selves, only the glorious godliness of truth! A 
 corporeal gain to men does come from every such 
 truth. There is such a solidarity betwixt the mind 
 and body, that each spiritual truth works welfare 
 in the material world, and the most abstract of 
 ideas becomes concrete in the widest universe of 
 welfare. But philosophers love the truth before 
 they learn its material use. Aristotle, making an 
 exhaustive analysis of the mind of man, did not 
 design to build a commonwealth in New England, 
 and set up public schools. 
 
 This love of truth, instinctive and reflective both, 
 is so powerful in human nature, that mankind 
 will not rest till we have an idea corresponding 
 to every fact of Nature and of human conscious- 
 ness, and the contents of the universe are repeated 
 in the cosmic mind of man, which grasps the 
 whole of things. The philosophic work of obser- 
 vation, 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 
 
 4*
 
 42 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 to aid the search for truth : not only visible tools 
 to magnify the little and bring near us the remote, 
 but the invisible weapons of the mind, — mathe- 
 matics and the various sciences, the mining-tools 
 with which we dig for truth, — logic, the Lydian 
 stone to test the true, — rhetoric, the art to com- 
 municate, — language, speech itself, the most amaz- 
 ing weapon of the human mind, an instrument 
 half made on purpose, and half given without our 
 thought. 
 
 This love of truth is the natural and instinctive 
 piety of the mind. In studying the facts of nature, 
 material or human, I study the thought of God ; 
 for in the world of real things a fact is the 
 direct speech of the Father. Words make up the 
 language of men ; facts and ideas are the words 
 of God, his universal language to the Englishman 
 and the Chinese, in which He speaks from all 
 eternity to all time. Man made " in the image of 
 God" loves his Father's thought, and is not con- 
 tented till he hears that speech; then he is satis- 
 fied. All intellectual error is but the babble of the 
 baby-man. Every truth which I know is one point 
 common to my consciousness and the consciousness 
 of God; in this we approach, and, so far as that 
 goes, God's thought is my thought, and we are 
 at one. Mankind will not be content till we also 
 are conscious of the universe, and have mastered
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 43 
 
 this Bible of God writ in the material world, a per- 
 petual lesson for the day. 
 
 I cannot think we value wisdom high enough ; 
 not in proportion to other things for more vulgar 
 use. We prize the material results of wisdom 
 more than the cause which produces them. Let 
 us not undervalue the use. What is it which 
 gives Christendom its rank in the world ? What 
 gives Old England or New England her material 
 delight, — our comfortable homes, our mills and 
 ships and shops, these iron roads which so cover 
 the land ? It is not the soil, hard and ungrateful ; 
 not the sky, cold and stormy half the year; it is 
 the educated mind, the practical wisdom of the 
 people. The Italian has his sunnier sky, his la- 
 bored land, which teems with the cultured luxuri- 
 ance of three thousand years. Our outfit was the 
 wilderness and our head. God gave us these, and 
 said, " Subdue the earth ; " and we have toiled at 
 the problem, not quite in vain. The mind is a 
 universal tool, the abstract of all instruments ; it 
 concretizes itself in the past present and future 
 weapons of mankind. 
 
 We value wisdom chiefly for its practical use, as 
 the convenience of a weapon, not the function of 
 a limb ; and truth as a servant, not a bride. The 
 reason of this seeming falseness to the intellectual
 
 44 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 instinct is found partly in the low development 
 of man, — the external precedes the spiritual in 
 order of unfolding, — and partly in this, that the 
 human race is still too poor to indulge in merely 
 intellectual delights, while material wants are not 
 yet satisfied. Mankind rejoices in rough aprons 
 of camel's hair, and feeds on locusts and wild 
 honey, before there is purple and fine linen for all, 
 with sumptuous faring every day. Even now a 
 fourth part of the human family is as good as 
 naked. It is too soon to ask men to rejoice ex- 
 clusively in the beauty of wisdom, when they need 
 its convenience so much. Let us not be too severe 
 in our demands of men. God " suffereth long, and 
 is kind." 
 
 Then, sour theologies confront us, calling wisdom 
 "foolish," reason "carnal," scoffing at science with 
 a priestly sneer, as if knowledge of God, of God's 
 world, and of its laws, could disturb the natural 
 service of God. We are warned against the " arro- 
 gance 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 j value of the intellect 
 is a little underrated by some writers in the New 
 Testament, and wisdom sometimes turned off rather 
 rudely. Perhaps the reason was, that then, as
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 45 
 
 now, men often cultivated the mind alone, and 
 not the highest faculties of that; and, though ever 
 learning, never hit the truth. Doubtless men of 
 accomplished mind and manners sneered at the rude- 
 ness of the Galilean, and with their demonstrations 
 sought to parry the keen intuitions of great-souled 
 men. It is not to be wondered at, that James 
 attacked the rich, and Paul the learned, of their 
 time. Fox and Bunyan did the same. Many a 
 Christian Father has mocked at all generous culture 
 of the mind. Even now, with us, amongst men 
 desiring to be religious, there is an inherited fear 
 of reason and of common sense. Science is thought 
 a bad companion for religion. Men are cautioned 
 against " free thinking " in religion, and, as all 
 thinking must be free, against all thinking in that 
 quarter. Even common sense is thought danger- 
 ous. Men in pews are a little afraid, when a 
 strong man goes into the pulpit, lest he should 
 shake the ill-bottomed fabric to the ground ; men 
 in pulpits are. still more fearful. It is a strange 
 fear, that the mind should drive the soul out of us, 
 and our knowledge of God annihilate our love of 
 God. Yet some earnest men quake with this panic 
 terror, and think it is not quite safe to follow the 
 records writ, in the great Bible of Nature, its world- 
 wide leaves laid open before us, with their " millions 
 of surprises."
 
 46 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 Let me say a word in behalf of the largest cul- 
 ture of the intellect, of all faculties thereof, — under- 
 standing, imagination, reason. I admit there have 
 been men of able mind and large intellectual de- 
 velopment who have turned off from religion, their 
 science driving them away from the doctrines taught 
 in this name. But such men have been few. Did 
 they oppose the truths of religion ? Oftener the 
 follies taught in its name. All the attacks made 
 on religion itself by men of science, from Celsus 
 to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring 
 religion into contempt as a single persecution for 
 witchcraft, or a Bartholomew massacre, made in 
 the name of God. At this day, in America, the 
 greatest argument against the popular form of 
 religion is offered by the churches of the land, 
 a twofold argument : first, the follies taught as 
 religious doctrine, the character assigned to God, 
 the mode of government ascribed to him, both 
 here and hereafter, the absurdities and impossi- 
 bilities taught as the history of God's dealing 
 with mankind ; next, the actual character of these 
 churches, as a body never rebuking a popular and 
 profitable sin, but striking hands by turns with 
 every popular form of wrong. Men of science, as 
 a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness, and 
 the piety that are taught as religion, only on the 
 errors, the evil, the impiety, which bear its name.
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 47 
 
 Science is the natural ally of religion. Shall we 
 try and separate what God has joined? We injure 
 both by the attempt. The philosophers of this 
 age have a profound love of truth, and show 
 great industry and boldness in search thereof. In 
 the name of truth they pluck down the strong-holds 
 of error, venerable and old. But what a cry has 
 been raised against them! It was pretended that 
 they would root out religion from the hearts of 
 mankind ! It seems to me it would be better for 
 men who love religion to understand philosophy 
 before they declaim against " the impiety of modern 
 science." The study of Nature, of human history, 
 or of human nature might be a little more profit- 
 able than the habit of " hawking at geology and 
 schism/' A true philosophy is the only cure for 
 a false philosophy. The sensational scheme of 
 philosophy has done a world of harm, it seems to 
 me, in its long history from Epicurus to Comte ; 
 but no-philosophy would be far worse. The abne- 
 gation of mind must be the abnegation of God. 
 The systems built by priests, who deemed reason 
 not fit to trust, are more dangerous than " infidel 
 science." Those have been found sad periods of 
 time, when the ablest men were forced to spend 
 their strength in pulling down the monstrous pa- 
 godas built in the name of religion, full of idols 
 and instruments of torture. Epicurus, Lucretius,
 
 48 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 Voltaire, even Hobbes and Hume, performed a 
 work indispensable to the religious development 
 of mankind. Yet destruction is a sad work; — set 
 your old house afire, you do not know how much 
 of it will burn down. It was the ignorance, the 
 folly, the arrogance, and the tyranny of a priest- 
 hood 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 unwel- 
 come demonstration is ill answered by the preach- 
 ing of foolishness. How can a needle's eye em- 
 brace a continent ? In the name of religion, I 
 would call for the spirit of wisdom without meas- 
 ure ; have free thinking on the Bible, on the 
 Church, on God and man, — the largest liberty of 
 the intellect. I would sooner have an unreasonable 
 form of agriculture than of religion. The state of 
 religion is always dependent, in a good measure, 
 on the mental culture of mankind. A foolish man 
 cannot give you a wise form of piety. All men 
 by nature love truth. Cultivate their mind, they 
 will see it, know it, value it. Just now we need a 
 large development of mind in the clergy, who fall 
 behind the men of leading intellect in England, 
 America, and France. Thinking men care little 
 for the " opinions of the clergy," except on the
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 49 
 
 mere formalities of a ritual and church-show. De- 
 pend upon it, the effect will be even more baneful 
 for the future than at present. 
 
 I love to look on the wise mind as one means 
 of holding communion with the Infinite God ; for 
 I believe that He inspires men, not only through the 
 conscience, the affections, and the soul, but also 
 through the intellect — through the reason, imagina- 
 tion, 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 attrac- 
 tion 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? 
 
 5
 
 50 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 Bring larger intellect, and you have the more. A 
 drop would overflow a hollow cherry-stone, while 
 whole Mediterranean Seas fill but a fraction of the 
 Atlantic's mighty deep. There still is truth in the 
 sweet heaven, near and waiting for mankind. A 
 man of little mind can only take in the contents of 
 his primer ; he should not censure his neighbor whose 
 encyclopedic head dines on the science of mankind, 
 and still wanders crying for lack of meat. 
 
 How mankind loves the truth ! We will not let 
 it go; 
 
 " One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 The heedless world hath never lost ;" 
 
 so native is it to the mind of man. Look on the 
 power of a special truth, a great idea; view it 
 merely as a force in the world of men. At first, 
 nothing seems so impotent. It has no hands nor 
 feet ; how can it go alone ? It seems as if the 
 censor of the press could blot it out for ever. It 
 flatters no man, offers to serve no personal and 
 private interest and then forbear its work, will be 
 no man's slave. It seems ready to perish; surely 
 it will give up the ghost the next moment. There 
 now, a priest has it in the dust and stamps it out! 
 O idle fear! stamp on the lightning of the sky! 
 Of all things truth is the most lasting; invulnerable 
 as God ; " of the Eternal coeternal beam," shall
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 51 
 
 we call it an accident of his being, or rather 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 moun- 
 tains, whence they first were hewn, may all vanish, 
 evaporate to the sky and spread over the world ; 
 but truth shall still remain, immortal, unchang- 
 ing, and not growing old. Heaven and earth may 
 pass away, but a truth never. A true word can- 
 not fail from amongst men; it is indorsed by 
 the Almighty, and shall pass current with man- 
 kind for ever. Could the armies of the world alter 
 the smallest truth of mathematics; make one and 
 one greater or less than two ? As easily as they 
 can alter any truth, or any falsehood, in morals, 
 in politics, or in religion. A lie is still a lie, a truth 
 a truth. 
 
 See the power of some special truth upon a sin- 
 gle man. Take an example from a high mode of 
 truth, a truth of religion. Saul of Tarsus sees that 
 God loves the Gentile as well as the Jew. It 
 seems a small thing to see that. "Why did men 
 ever think otherwise? Why should not God love 
 the Gentile as well as the Jew ? It was impossi- 
 ble that He should do otherwise. Yet this seemed 
 a great truth at that time, the Christian Church 
 dividing upon that matter. It burnt in the bosom
 
 52 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 of Paul of Tarsus, then a young man. What 
 heroism it wakens in him ! what self-denial he can 
 endure ! Want, hardships, persecution, the con- 
 tempt and loathing of his companions and former 
 friends, shipwreck, scourging, prison, death, — all 
 these are nothing to him. A truth has inspired 
 him ; he is eloquent with its new force, his letters 
 powerful. Go where he will he finds foes, the 
 world bristling with peril ; but go where he may 
 he makes friends, makes them by this truth and 
 the heroism it awoke in him. Men saw the new 
 doctrine, and looked back on the old error, — that 
 Jove loved Rome, Pallas Athens, Juno Samos and 
 Carthage most of all, Jehovah Mount Zion, and 
 Baal his Tyrian towns ; that each several deity 
 looked grim at all the rest of men, and so must 
 have his own forms and ceremonies, unwelcome 
 to the rest. Men see this is an error now ; they 
 see the evil which came thereof, — the wars and 
 ages full of strife, national jealousies, wrangling 
 betwixt Babylonian or Theban priests, and the 
 antagonism of the Gentile and the Jew. Now all are 
 ' : one in Christ." They bless the lips which taught 
 the doctrine and brought them freedom by the 
 truth. Meantime the truth uplifts the Apostle ; his 
 mind expands, his conscience works more freely 
 than before, no longer burdened with a law of 
 sin and death. His affections have a wider range,
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 53 
 
 knowing no man after his national flesh. His sonl 
 has a better prospect of God, now the partition- 
 wall between the Jew and Gentile is thrown clown. 
 
 We often estimate the value of a nation by the 
 truths it brings to light. To take the physical 
 census, and know how many shall vote, we count 
 the heads, and tell men off by millions, — so many 
 square miles of Russians, Tartars, or Chinese. 
 But to take the spiritual census, and see what 
 will be voted, you count the thoughts, tell off the 
 great men, enumerate the truths. The nations may 
 perish, the barbarian sweep over Thebes, the lovely 
 places of Jerusalem become a standing pool, and 
 the favorite spot of Socrates and Aristotle be grown 
 up to brambles, — yet Egypt, Judea, Athens, do 
 not die ; their truths live on, refusing death, and 
 still these names are of a classic land. I do not 
 think that God loves the men or the nations He 
 visits with this lofty destiny better than He loves 
 other ruder tribes or ruder men : but it is by this 
 standard that we estimate the nations ; a few truths 
 make them immortal. 
 
 A great truth does not disdain to ride on so hum- 
 ble a beast as interest. Thus ideas go abroad in 
 the ships of the desert, or the ships of the sea. 
 Some nations, like the English and others, seem 
 to like this equipage the best, and love to handle 
 and taste a truth in the most concrete form ; so 
 
 5*
 
 54 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 great truths are seen and welcomed as political 
 economy before they are thought of as part of 
 political morality, human affection, and cosmic piety. 
 All the great truths of political science seem to have 
 been brought to the consciousness of men stimu- 
 lated 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 be- 
 tween 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 Lernaean 
 Marsh of modern society ; widened his affections,
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 55 
 
 till his heart prayed, ay, and his hands, for the 
 poor negro in the Southern swamps, — for all the 
 oppressed. It touched and wakened up his soul, 
 till he felt a manly piety in place of what might 
 else have been a puny sentimentalism, mewling 
 and whining in the Church's arms. The idea goes 
 abroad, sure to conquer. 
 
 See how a great idea, a truth of morals or relig- 
 ion, has an influence on masses of men. Some 
 single man sees it first, dimly for a long time, 
 without sight enough to make it clear, the quality 
 of vision better than his quantity of sight. Then 
 he sees it clearly and in distinct outline. The truth 
 burns mightily within him, and he cannot be still ; 
 he tells it, now to one, then to another; at each 
 time of telling he gets his lesson better learned. 
 Other men see the idea, dimly at first as he. 
 It wakens a love for itself; first, perhaps, in the 
 recipient heart of some woman, waiting for the 
 consolation. Then a few minds prepared for the 
 idea half welcome it ; thence it timidly flashes 
 into other minds, as light reflected from the water. 
 Soon the like-minded meet together to sun them- 
 selves in one another's prayers. They form a family 
 of the faith, and grow strong in their companion- 
 ship. The circle grows wider. Men oppose the 
 new idea, with little skill or much, sometimes with 
 violence, or only with intellect. Then comes a
 
 56 TRUTH" AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 little pause, — the ablest representatives of the truth 
 must get fully conscious of their truth, and of 
 their relation to the world ; a process like that in 
 the growing corn of summer, which in hot days 
 spindles, as the farmers say, but in cool nights 
 gets thick, and has a green and stocky growth. 
 The interruptions to a great idea are of correspond- 
 ing value to its development in a man, or a nation, 
 or the world. Oar men baptized with a new idea 
 pause and reflect to be more sure, — perfecting the 
 logic of their thought ; pause and devise their mode 
 to set it forth, — perfecting their rhetoric, and seek 
 to organize it in an outward form, for every thought 
 must be a thing. Then they tell their idea more 
 perfectly ; in the controversy that follows, errors 
 connected with it get exposed ; all that is merely 
 accidental, national, or personal gets shaken off, 
 and the pure truth goes forth to conquer. In 
 this way all the great ideas of religion, of phi- 
 lanthropy, 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.
 
 TRUTII AND THE INTELLECT. 57 
 
 Soon it has philosophers to explain it, apologists 
 to defend it, orators to set it forth, institutions 
 to embody its sacred life. It is a new force in 
 the world, and nothing can dislodge or withstand 
 it. It was in this way that the ideas of Chris- 
 tianity got a footing in the world. Between the 
 enthusiasm of Peter and James at the Pentecost, 
 and the cool demonstrations of Clarke and Schleier- 
 macher, what a world of experience there lay ! 
 
 Some four hundred years ago this truth began 
 to be distinctly seen : Man has natural empire 
 over all institutions ; they are for him, accidents 
 of his development, not he for them. That is a 
 very simple statement, each of you assents to it. 
 But once it was a great new truth. See what it 
 has led to. Martin Luther dimly saw its applica- 
 tion 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. Revo- 
 lutions followed thick and fast in Holland, Eng- 
 land, America, and France, and one day all Europe 
 and the world will be ablaze with that idea. Men 
 opposed ; one of the Stuarts said, " It shall not
 
 58 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 cross the four seas of England;" but it crossed 
 the Stuart's neck, and drove his children from the 
 faithful soil. It came to America, that idea so 
 destructive at first, destined to be so creative and 
 conservative. It brought our fathers here, grim 
 and bearded men, full of the fear of God ; they 
 little knew what fruit would come of their planting. 
 See the institutions which have sprung up on the 
 soil then ' cumbered by a wilderness, and hideous 
 with wild beasts and wilder men. See what new 
 ideas blossomed out of the old truth : All men have 
 natural, equal, and unalienable rights to life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness; — that was a new 
 flower from the old- stem. See the one-and-thirty 
 States which have sprung up under the shadow 
 of this great idea. 
 
 That truth long since recognized as true, now 
 proved expedient by experiment, goes back over 
 the sea, following the track the Mayflower broke, 
 and earnest nations welcome it to their bosom, 
 that sovereign truth : Man is supreme over institu- 
 tions, not they over him. How it has thundered 
 and lightened over Europe in the last few years ! 
 It will beat to the dust many a godless throne, and 
 the palm of peace shall occupy the ground once 
 reserved for soldiers' feet; here and there a city 
 ditch of defence has already become a garden for 
 the town.
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 59 
 
 Here in America, men full of this truth rise up 
 against ungodly customers, now become a law, and 
 under this demand the freedom of the slave. See 
 how it spreads! It cannot be written down, nor 
 voted down, nor sneered and frowned down ; it 
 cannot be put down by all the armies of the world. 
 This truth belongs to the nature of man, and can 
 only perish when the race gives up the ghost. 
 Yet it is nothing but an idea; it has no hands, 
 no feet. The man who first set it agoing on the 
 earth, — see what he has done ! Yet I doubt 
 not the villagers around him thought the ale-house 
 keeper was the more useful man; and when beer 
 fell a penny in the pot, or the priest put on a new 
 cassock, many a man thought it was a more 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 celes- 
 tial 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
 
 60 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 brow, coming from the street, the field, or shop, 
 pause and turn inward all his strength ; now he 
 smiles as he gets glimpses of this bashful truth, 
 which flies, yet wishes to be seen, — a daughter of 
 the all-blessed God. It is at her beauty that he 
 smiles, the thought of kindred loveliness, she is to 
 people earth withal. And then the smile departs, 
 and a pale sadness settles down upon his radiant 
 face, as he remembers that men water their gardens 
 for each new plant with blood, and how much 
 must be shed to set a truth like this! He shows 
 his thought to other men ; they keep it nestled 
 in the family awhile. In due time the truth 
 has come of age, and must take possession of the 
 estate. Now she wrestles with the Roman Church ; 
 the contest is not over yet, but the deadly wound 
 will never heal. Now she wrestles with the North- 
 ern kings ; see how they fall, their sceptres broken, 
 their thrones overturned ; and the fair-faced daughter 
 of the Eternal King leads forward happy tribes of 
 men, and with pious vow inaugurates the chiefs 
 of peace, of justice, and of love, and on the one 
 great gospel of the human heart swears them to 
 keep the constitution of the universe, written by 
 God's own hand. 
 
 But this last is only prophecy ; men say, " It can- 
 not be; the slaves of America must be bondmen 
 for ever ; the nations of Europe can never be free."
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 61 
 
 I laugh at such a word. Let me know a thing is 
 true, I know it has the omnipotence of God on 
 its side, and fear no more for it than I fear for 
 God. Politics is the science of exigencies. The 
 eternal truth of things is the exigency which controls 
 the science of men as the science of matter. Depend 
 upon it, the Infinite God is one of the exigencies 
 not likely to be disregarded in the ultimate events of 
 human development. Truth shall fail out of geom- 
 etry and politics at the same time ; only we learn 
 first the simpler forms of truth. Now folly, passion, 
 and fancied interest pervert the eye, which cannot 
 always fail to see. 
 
 Truth is the object of the intellect; by human 
 wisdom we learn the thought of God, and are 
 inspired by his mind, — not all of us with, the same 
 mode, or form, or quantity of truth ; but each 
 shall have his own, proportionate to his native 
 powers and to the use he makes thereof. Love 
 of truth is the intellectual part of piety. Wisdom 
 is needful to complete and manly religion ; a thing 
 to be valued for itself, not barely for its use. Love 
 of the use will one day give place to love of truth 
 itself. 
 
 To keep the body's law brings health and strength, 
 and in long ages brings beauty too; to keep the 
 laws of mind brings in the higher intellectual health 
 
 6
 
 62 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 and strength and loveliness, as much nobler than 
 all corporeal qualities as the mind is nobler than 
 the muscles it controls. Truth will follow from 
 the lawful labor of the mind, and serve the great 
 interest of men. Many a thousand years hence, 
 when we are forgotten, when both the Englands 
 have perished out of time, and the Anglo-Saxon 
 race is only known as the Cherethites and Peleth- 
 ites, — nothing national left but the name, — the 
 truths we have slowly learned will be added to 
 the people that come after us ; the great political 
 truth of America will go round the world, and 
 clothe the earth with greenness and with beauty. 
 All the power of mind that we mature and give 
 examples of shall also survive ; in you and me 
 it will be personally immortal, — a portion of our 
 ever-widening consciousness, though all the earthly 
 wisdom of Leibnitz or Aristotle must soon become 
 a single drop in the heavenly ocean of the sages 
 whom death has taught; but it will be not less 
 enduring on the earth, humanly immortal ; for the 
 truths you bring to light are dropped into the world's 
 wide treasury, — where Socrates and Kant have cast 
 in but two mites, which made only a farthing in the 
 wealth of man, — and form a part of the heritage 
 which each generation receives, enlarges, holds in 
 trust, and of necessity bequeathes to mankind, the 
 personal estate of man entailed of nature to the
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 63 
 
 end of time. As the men who discovered com, 
 tamed the ox, the horse, invented language and 
 letters, who conquered fire and water, and yoked 
 these two brute furious elements with an iron 
 bond, as gentle now as any lamb, — as they who 
 tamed the lightning, sending it of their errands, 
 and as they who sculptured loveliness in stone 
 two thousand years ago, a thing of beauty and 
 a joy for ever, — as these and all such transmit 
 their wealthy works to man, so he who sets forth a 
 truth and develops wisdom, any human excellence 
 of gift or growth, greatens the spiritual glory of 
 his race. And a single man, who could not make 
 one hair white or black, has added a cubit to the 
 stature of mankind. 
 
 All the material riches inherited or actively 
 acquired by this generation, our cultivated land, our 
 houses, roads of earth, of wood, of iron, our facto- 
 ries and ships, — mechanical inventions which make 
 New England more powerful than Russia to create, 
 though she have forty-fold our men, — all these 
 contrivances, the crown-jewels of the human race, 
 the symbols of our kingly power over the earth, 
 we leave to the next age ; your children's burden 
 will be lighter, their existence larger, and their joy 
 more delightful, for our additions to this heritage. 
 But the spiritual truths we learn, the intellectual 
 piety which we acquire, all the manly excellence
 
 64 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 
 
 that we slowly meditate and slowly sculpture into 
 life, goes down in blessing to mankind, the cup 
 of gold hid in the sack of those who only asked 
 for corn, richer than all the grain they bought. 
 Into our spiritual labors other men shall enter, 
 climb by our ladder, then build anew, and so go 
 higher up towards heaven than you or I had time 
 and power to go. There is a spiritual solidarity of 
 the human race, and the thought of the first man 
 will help the wisdom of the last. A thousand gen- 
 erations live in you and me. 
 
 It is an old world, mankind is no new creation, 
 no upstart of to-day, but has lived through hard 
 times and long. Yet what is the history of man 
 to the nature that is in us all! The instinctive 
 hunger for perfect knowledge will not be contented 
 with repetitions of the remembered feast. There 
 are new truths to come, — truths in science, morals, 
 politics, religion; some have arrived not long ago 
 upon this planet, — many a new thing underneath 
 the sun. At first men give them doubtful welcome. 
 But if you know that they are truths, fear not; 
 be sure that they will stay, adding new treasures 
 to the consciousness of men, new outward wel- 
 fare to the blessedness of earth. No king nor 
 conqueror does men so great a good as he who 
 adds to human kind a great and universal truth; 
 he that aids its march, and makes the thought a
 
 TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 65 
 
 thing, works in the same line with Moses, has 
 intellectual sympathy with God, and is a fellow- 
 laborer with Him. The best gift we can bestow 
 upon man is manhood. Undervalue not material 
 things; but remember that the generation which, 
 finding Rome brick, left it marble and full of 
 statues and temples too, as its best achievement 
 bequeathed to us a few words from a young Car- 
 penter of Galilee, and the remembrance of his manly 
 life.
 
 III. 
 
 OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 turn and do jdstice. — Tobit xiii. 6. 
 
 Everywhere in the world there is a natural law, 
 that is a constant mode of action, which seems 
 to belong to the nature of things, to the consti- 
 tution of the universe : this fact is universal. In 
 different departments we call this mode of action 
 by different names, as the law of Matter, the law of 
 Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean 
 thereby a certain mode of action which belongs to 
 the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in 
 which commonly they are seen to act, and in which 
 it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of 
 matter we only know from the fact that they are 
 always obeyed ; to us the actual obedience is the 
 only witness of the ideal rule, for in respect to the 
 conduct of the material world the ideal and the 
 actual are the same.
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 67 
 
 The laws of matter we can learn only by observa- 
 tion and experience. We cannot divine them and 
 anticipate, or know them at all, unless experience 
 supply the facts of observation. Before experience 
 of the fact, no man could foretell that a falling 
 body would descend sixteen feet the first second, 
 twice that the next, four times the third, and sixteen 
 times the fourth. The law of falling bodies is 
 purely objective to us; no mode of action in our 
 consciousness anticipates this rule of action in the 
 outer world. The same is true of all the laws 
 of matter. The ideal law is known because it 
 is a fact. The law is imperative ; it must be 
 obeyed, without hesitation. In the solar system, 
 or the composition of a diamond, no margin is left 
 for any oscillation of disobedience ; margins of oscil- 
 lation there always are, but only for vibration as a 
 function, not as the refusal of a function. Only the 
 primal will of God works in the material world, no 
 secondary finite will. 
 
 In Nature, the world spread out before the 
 senses, — to group many specific modes of action 
 about a single generic force, — we see there is the 
 great general law of Attraction, which binds atom 
 to atom in a grain of sand, orb to orb, system to 
 system, gives unity to the world of things, and 
 rounds these worlds of systems to a universe. At 
 first there seem to be exceptions to this law, — as in
 
 68 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 growth and decomposition, in the repulsions of 
 electricity ; but at length all these are found to be 
 instantial cases of this great law of attraction 
 acting in various modes. We name the attraction 
 by its several modes, — cohesion in small masses, 
 and gravitation in large. When the relation seems 
 a little more intimate, we call it affinity, as in the 
 atomic union of molecules of matter. Other modes 
 we name electricity, and magnetism ; when the 
 relation is yet more close and intimate, we call it 
 vegetation in plants, vitality in animals. But for 
 the present purpose all these may be classed under 
 the general term Attraction, considered as acting 
 in various modes of cohesion, gravitation, affinity, 
 vegetation, and vitality. 
 
 This power gives unity to the material world, 
 keeps it whole ; yet, acting under such various 
 forms, gives variety at the same time. The variety 
 of effect surprises the senses at first; but in the 
 end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated 
 mind. Looked at in reference to this globe, an 
 earthquake is no more than a chink that opens 
 in a garden-walk, of a dry day in summer. A 
 sponge is porous, having small spaces between the 
 solid parts ; the solar system is only more porous, 
 having larger room between the several orbs ; the 
 universe yet more so, with vast spaces between 
 the systems ; a similar attraction keeps together
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 69 
 
 the sponge, the system, and the universe. Every 
 particle of matter in the world is related to each 
 and all the other particles thereof; attraction is the 
 common bond. 
 
 In the spiritual world, the world of human con- 
 sciousness, 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 rela- 
 tion in the world of conscience, that attraction 
 bears in the world of sense. I mean justice is 
 the normal relation of men, and has the same to 
 do amongst moral atoms, — individual men, — 
 moral masses, — that is, nations, — and the moral 
 whole, — I mean all mankind, — which attraction 
 has to do with material atoms, masses, and the 
 material whole. It appears in a variety of forms 
 not less striking. 
 
 However, unlike attraction, it does not work 
 free from all hinderance; it develops itself through 
 conscious agents, that continually change, and 
 pass by experiment from low to high degrees of 
 life and development, to higher forms of justice. 
 There is a certain private force, personal and pecu- 
 liar to each one of us, controlled by individual 
 will; this may act in the same line with the great 
 normal force of justice, or it may conflict for a
 
 70 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 time with the general law of the universe, having 
 private nutations, oscillations, and aberrations, per- 
 sonal or national. But these minor forces, after a 
 while, are sure to be overcome by the great general 
 moral force, pass into the current, and be borne 
 along in the moral stream of the universe. 
 
 What a variety of men and women in the world ! 
 Two hundred million persons, and no two alike 
 in form and lineament ! in character and being 
 how unlike ! how very different as phenomena and 
 facts ! What an immense variety of wish, of will, 
 in these thousand million men! of plans, which 
 now rise up in the little personal bubble that 
 we call a reputation or a great fortune, then in 
 the great national bubble which we call a State ! 
 for bubbles they are, judging by the space and 
 time they occupy in this great and age-outlast- 
 ing 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 pater- 
 nal Providence presides, and keeps eternal watch 
 above the little and the great, producing variety 
 of effect from unity of force. This Providence 
 allows the little bubbles of his child's caprice, 
 humors him in forming them, gives him time and 
 space for that, understands his little caprices and 
 his whims, and lets him carry them out awhile ;
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 71 
 
 but Himself, with no whim and no caprice, rules 
 there as universal justice, omniscient and all-pow- 
 erful. Out of His sea these bubbles rise ; by His 
 force they rise ; by His law they have their con- 
 sistence, and the private personal will, which gives 
 them size or littleness and normal or abnormal 
 shape, has its limitation of error marked out for 
 it which cannot be passed by. In this human 
 world there is a wide margin for oscillation ; refusal 
 to perform the ideal function has been provided 
 for, redundance made to balance deficiency ; checks 
 are provided for every form of abnormal action of 
 the will. 
 
 Viewed as an object not in man, justice is the 
 constitution or fundamental law of the moral uni- 
 verse, 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 para- 
 mount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, 
 what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohe- 
 sions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, 
 must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation 
 towards the eternal right. 
 
 We learn the laws of matter, that of attraction, 
 for example, by observation and reflection; what 
 we know thereof is the result of long experience, 
 — the experienced sight and the experienced thought
 
 72 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 of many a thousand years. We might learn 
 something of the moral law of justice, the law 
 of right, in the same way, as a merely external 
 thing. Then we should know it as a phenomenon, 
 as we know attraction ; as a fact so general, 
 that we called it universal and a law of nature. 
 Still it would be deemed only an arbitrary law, 
 over us, indeed, but not in us, — or in our ele- 
 ments, 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 can ever disclose it. For the facts 
 of man's history do not fully represent the faculties 
 of his nature as the history of matter represents 
 the qualities of matter. Man, though finite, is 
 indefinitely progressive, continually unfolding the
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 73 
 
 qualities of his nature ; his history, therefore, is 
 not the whole book of man, but only the portion 
 thereof which has been opened and publicly read. 
 So the history of man never completely represents 
 his nature ; and a law derived merely from the facts 
 of observation by no means describes the normal 
 rule of action which belongs to his nature. The 
 laws of matter are known to us because they are 
 kept ; there the ideal and actual are the same ; but 
 man has in his nature a rule of conduct higher 
 than what he has come up to, — an ideal of nature 
 which shames his actual of history. Observation 
 and reflection only give us the actual of morals ; 
 conscience, by gradual and successive intuition, 
 presents us the ideal of morals. On condition that 
 I use this faculty in its normal activity, and in 
 proportion as I develop it and all its kindred 
 powers, I learn justice, the law of right, the divine 
 rule of conduct for human life ; I see it, not as an 
 external fact which might as well not be at all as 
 be, or might have been supplanted by its opposite, 
 but I see it as a mode of action which belongs to 
 the infinitely perfect nature of God; belongs also 
 to my own nature, and so is not barely over me, 
 but in me, of me, and for me. I can become co- 
 ordinate with that, and not merely subordinate 
 thereto ; I find a deep, permanent, and instinctive 
 
 delight in justice, not only in the outward effects, 
 
 7 *
 
 74 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 • 
 
 but in the inward cause, and by my nature I love 
 this law of right, this rule of conduct, this justice, 
 with a deep and abiding love. I find that justice is 
 the object of ray conscience, fitting that as light the 
 eye and truth the mind. There is a perfect agree- 
 ment between the moral object and the moral sub- 
 ject. Finding it fit me thus, I know that justice 
 will work my welfare and that of all mankind. 
 
 Attraction is the most general law in the mate- 
 rial world, and prevents a schism in the universe ; 
 temperance is the law of the body, and prevents 
 a schism in the members ; justice is the law of 
 conscience, and prevents a schism in the moral 
 world, amongst individuals in a family, communi- 
 ties 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 propor- 
 tional 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 tem- 
 perance in the world of men. It keeps just rela- 
 tions between men ; one man, however little, must
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 75 
 
 not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a 
 majority, or to all men. It holds the balance be- 
 twixt nation and nation, for a nation is but a larger 
 man ; betwixt a man and his family, tribe, nation, 
 race ; between mankind and God. It is the uni- 
 versal regulator which coordinates man with man, 
 each with all, — me with the ten hundred millions 
 of men, so that my absolute rights and theirs do 
 not interfere, nor our ultimate interests ever clash, 
 nor my eternal welfare prove antagonistic to the 
 blessedness of all or any one. I am to do justice, 
 and demand that of all, — a universal human debt, 
 a universal human claim. 
 
 But it extends further; it is the regulator be- 
 tween men and God. It is the moral spontaneous- 
 ness 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 crea- 
 ture of a right, or balk it of a natural claim ? Phi- 
 losophically speaking, it is impossible, — a contra- 
 diction to our idea of God ; religiously speaking, it 
 is impious, — a contradiction to our feeling of God. 
 Both the philosophic and the religious consciousness 
 declare it impossible that God should be unjust. 
 The nature of finite men claims justice of God; 
 His infinite nature adjusts the claim. Every man
 
 76 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 in the world is morally related to each and all the 
 rest. Justice is the common human bond. It joins 
 us also to the infinite God. Justice is his constant 
 mode of action in the moral world. 
 
 So much for justice, viewed as objective; as a 
 law of the universe, the mode of action of the uni- 
 versal moral force. 
 
 Man naturally loves justice, for its own sake, as 
 the natural object of his conscience. As the mind 
 loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the 
 right ; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties. 
 Conscience rests in justice as an end, as the mind in 
 truth. As truth is the side of God turned towards 
 the intellect, so is justice the side of Him which 
 conscience looks upon. Love of justice is the moral 
 part of piety. 
 
 When I am a baby, in my undeveloped moral 
 state, I do not love justice, nor conform to it ; when 
 I am sick, and have not complete control over this 
 republic of nerves and muscles, I fail of justice, and 
 heed it not ; when I am stung with beastly rage, 
 blinded by passion, or over attracted from my proper 
 sphere of affection, another man briefly possessing 
 me, I may not love the absolute and eternal right, 
 private capillary attraction conflicting with the uni- 
 versal gravitation. But in my maturity, in my cool 
 and personal hours, when I am most myself, and
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 77 
 
 the accidents of my bodily temperament and local 
 surroundings are controlled by the substance of my 
 manhood, then I love justice with a firm, unwaver- 
 ing love. That is the natural fealty of my con- 
 science to its liege-lord. Then I love justice, not for 
 its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for 
 the moral truth and loveliness thereof. Then if 
 justice crown me I am glad, not merely with my 
 persona] feeling, because it is I who wear the crown, 
 but because it is the crown of justice. If justice 
 discrown and bind me clown to infamy, I still am 
 glad with all my moral sense, and joy in the univer- 
 sal justice, though I suffer with the private smart. 
 Though all that is merely selfish and personal of me 
 revolts, still what is noblest, what I hold in common 
 with mankind and in common with God, bids me 
 be glad if justice is done upon me; to me or upon 
 me, I know it is justice still, and though my private 
 injustice be my foe, the justice of the universe is 
 still my friend. God, acting in this universal mode 
 of moral force, acts for me, and the prospect of 
 future suffering has no terror. 
 
 Men reverence and love justice. Conscience is 
 loyal ; moral piety begins early, the ethical instinct 
 prompting mankind, and in savage ages bringing 
 out the lovely flower in some woman's character, 
 where moral beauty has its earliest spring. Com- 
 monly, men love justice a little more than truth; 
 
 7 *
 
 78 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 they are more moral than intellectual; have ideas 
 of the conscience more than of the mind. This is 
 not true of the more cultivated classes in any 
 civilization, but of the mass of men in all; their 
 morals are better than their philosophy. They see 
 more absolute truth with the moral than with the 
 intellectual faculty. The instinct for the abstract 
 just of will is always a little before the instinct for 
 the abstract true of thought. This is the normal 
 order of development. But in the artificial forms 
 of culture, what is selfish and for one takes rank 
 before what is human and for all. So cultivated 
 men commonly seek large intellectual power, as 
 an instrument for their selfish purposes, and neg- 
 lect and even hate to get a large moral power, the 
 instrument of universal benevolence. They love 
 the exclusive use of certain forms of truth, and 
 neglect justice, which would make the convenience 
 of every truth serve the common good of all. Men 
 with large moral power must needs work for all ; 
 with merely large intellectual power they may work 
 only for themselves. Hence crafty aristocracies 
 and monopolists seek for intellectual culture as 
 a mode of power, and shun moral culture, which 
 <can never serve a selfish end. This rule holds good 
 of all the great forms of civilization, from the 
 Egyptian to the British ; of all the higher semina- 
 ries of education, from the Propaganda of the
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 79 
 
 Jesuits to a New England college. In all the civil- 
 ized nations at this day, the controlling class is 
 intellectual more than moral; has more power of 
 thought than power of righteousness. The same 
 fact appears in the literature of the world. The 
 foremost class in culture, wealth, and social rank 
 have less than the average proportion of morality. 
 Hence comes the character of laws, political, social, 
 and ecclesiastical institutions, — not designed for all, 
 but for a few, at best a part, because the makers did 
 not start with adequate moral power, nor propose 
 justice as an end. 
 
 Yet the mass of men are always looking for the 
 just ; all this vast machinery which makes up a 
 State, a world of States, is, on the part of the peo- 
 ple, an attempt to organize justice; the minute 
 and wide-extending civil machinery which makes 
 up the law and the courts, with all their officers 
 and implements, on the part of mankind, is chiefly 
 an effort to reduce to practice the theory of right. 
 Alas ! with the leaders of civil and political affairs 
 it is quite different, often an organization of self- 
 ishness. Mankind reaches out after the absolute 
 right, makes its constitutions to establish justice, 
 and provide for the common defence. We report 
 the decisions of wise men, and of courts ; we keep 
 the record of cases decided, to help us judge more 
 wisely in time to come. The nation would enact
 
 80 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 laws : it aims to get the justest men in the State, 
 that they may incorporate their aggregate sense of 
 right into' a statute. We set twelve honest men to 
 try an alleged offender ; they are to apply their joint 
 justice to the special case. The people wish law to 
 be embodied justice, administered without passion. 
 I know the government seldom desires this ; the peo- 
 ple 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 self- 
 ishness and injustice of their rulers, not a govern- 
 ment would stand a year. The world would 
 ferment with universal revolution. 
 
 In savage times, duelling and private revenge 
 grew out of this love of justice. They were rude 
 efforts after the right. In its name a man slew his 
 father's murderer, or, failing thereof, left the rever- 
 sion of his vengeance as a trust in the hands of his 
 own son, to be paid to the offender or his heir. 
 With the Norsemen it was deemed a crime against 
 society to forgive a grievous wrong, and "nidding" 
 is a word of contempt to this day. It was not 
 merely personal malice which led to private revenge • 
 which bade the Scottish mother train up one son 
 after another filled with a theological hatred against 
 their father's murderer; not a private and selfish 
 lust of vengeance alone which sustained her after 
 the eldest and then the next of age perished in the
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 81 
 
 attempt, and filled her with a horrid joy when 
 the third succeeded. It was "wild justice" in a 
 wild age, but always mixed with passion, and 
 administered in hate ; private vengeance edged the 
 axe with which wild justice struck the blow. Even 
 now, in the ruder portions of America, South and 
 West, where the common law is silent, and of 
 statutes there are none, or none enforced, when a 
 wrong is done, the offended people come forth and 
 hold their court, with summary process, brief and 
 savage, to decree something like justice in a brutal 
 way; rage furnishing the occasion, conscience is 
 still the cause. 
 
 All these things indicate a profound love of jus- 
 tice inherent in mankind. It takes a rude form 
 with rude men, is mixed with passion, private hate ; 
 in a civilized community it takes a better form, 
 and attempts are made to remove all personal 
 malice from the representatives of right. A few 
 years ago men were surprised to see the people of 
 a neighboring city for the first time choose their 
 judges : common elections had been carried there 
 by uncommon party tricks ; but when this grave 
 matter came before the people, they laid off their 
 party badges, and as men chose the best officers for 
 that distinguished trust. 
 
 The people are not satisfied with any form of 
 government, or statute law, until it comes up to
 
 S2 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 their sense of justice ; so every progressive State 
 revises its statutes from time to time, and at each 
 revision comes nearer to the absolute right which 
 human nature demands. Mankind, always pro- 
 gressive, revolutionizes constitutions, changes and 
 changes, seeking to come close to the ideal jus- 
 tice, 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 out- 
 ward, but always real, and made known to the 
 reader. All students 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 villains whose foot is taken in their 
 own snare. This is the principal charm in the bal- 
 lads and people's poetry of England and Ger- 
 many, 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 bafHing the suitors for twenty 
 years. It is his justice and humanity which give 
 such a wide audience to the most popular novelist 
 of our day. But when a writer tries to paint vice
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 83 
 
 beautiful, make sin triumphant, men shrink away 
 from the poison atmosphere he breathes. Authors 
 like Filmer, Machiavel, and Hobbes arouse the in- 
 dignation of mankind. The fact of personal error 
 it is easy to excuse, but mankind does not forgive 
 such as teach the theory of sin. We always honor 
 men who forget their immediate personal interests, 
 and use an author's sacred function to bear witness 
 to the right. 
 
 The majority of men who think have an ideal 
 justice better than the things about them, juster 
 than the law. Some paint it behind them, on the 
 crumbling walls of history, and tell us of " the 
 good old times ; " others paint it before them, on 
 the morning mist of youthful life, and in their 
 prayers and their daily toil strive after this, — their 
 New Jerusalem. We all of us have some ideal ; 
 our dream is fairer than our day ; we will not let it 
 go. If the wicked prosper, it is but for a moment, 
 say we ; the counsel of the froward shall be carried 
 headlong. What an ideal democracy now floats 
 before the eyes of earnest and religious men, — fairer 
 than the « Republic " of Plato, or More's " Utopia," 
 or the " golden age " of fabled memory ! It is 
 justice that we want to organize, — justice for all, 
 for rich and poor There the slave shall be free 
 from his master. There shall be no want, no 
 oppression, no fear of man, no fear of God, but
 
 84 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 only love. " There is a good time coming," — so 
 we all believe when we are young and full of life 
 and healthy hope. 
 
 God has made man with the instinctive love of 
 justice in him, which gradually gets developed in 
 the world. But in Himself justice is infinite. This 
 justice of God must appear in the world, and in the 
 history of men ; and, after all " the wrongs that 
 patient merit of the unworthy takes," still you see 
 that the ploughshare of justice is drawn through 
 and through the field of the world, uprooting the 
 savage plants. The proverbs of the nations tell us 
 this : " The mills of the gods grind slow, but they 
 grind to powder ; " " 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 butter will stick to a bad 
 man's bread." Sometimes these sayings come from 
 the instinct of justice in man, and have a little ethical 
 exaggeration about them, but yet more often they 
 represent the world's experience of facts more than 
 its consciousness of ideas. 
 
 Look at the facts of the world. You see a 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
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 85 
 
 by the experience of sight ; I can divine it by con- 
 science. And from what I see I am sure it bends 
 towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged 
 long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery 
 and remembered that God is just. Erelong all 
 America will tremble. The Stuarts in England 
 were tyrannical and strong: respectable and peace- 
 ful 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. Sueh 
 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 unbear- 
 able even to barons and bishops ; one tyrant loses 
 his head, another his crown ; no Stuart must tread 
 again the English soil; legitimacy becomes a pre- 
 tender. 
 
 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 in- 
 justice of the mother weakened the ties of language, 
 literature, religion, — the Old England and the New 
 read the same Bible, — kindred blood and institu- 
 tions inherited from the same fathers ; we thought 
 only of the injustice ; and there was an ocean be- 
 tween us and the mother country. The fairest 
 jewel fell from the British crown. 
 
 8
 
 86 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Ill 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 gath- 
 ered about him, gave him their treasure and their 
 trust. He was strong through the people's faith ; his 
 foes fell before him ; ancient thrones tottered and 
 reeled, and came heavy to the ground. The name 
 of justice, of the rights of man, shook down their 
 thrones, and organized victory at every step. But 
 he grows giddy with his height ; selfishness takes 
 the place of justice in his counsels ; a bastard giant 
 sits on the throne whence the people had hurled off 
 " legitimate " oppression ; he fights no more the 
 battles of mankind ; justice is exiled from his upstart 
 court. The people fall away ; victory perches no 
 more on his banner. The snows of Russia cut off 
 his army, but it was his own injustice that brought 
 Napoleon to the ground. Self-shorn of this great 
 strength, the ablest monarch since Charlemagne sits 
 down on a little island in the tropic sea, and dies
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 87 
 
 upon that lonely rock, his life a warning, to bid man- 
 kind be just and not despise the Lord. No mighti- 
 ness of genius could save him, cut off from the 
 moral force of the human race. Can any tyrant 
 prosper where such a master fell ? 
 
 Look at the condition of Christendom at this 
 day; what tyrant sits secure? Revolution is the 
 Lynch-law of nations ; it creates an anarchy, and 
 then organizes its provisional government of mo- 
 mentary despotism. It is a bloody process, but jus- 
 tice does not disdain a rugged road ; the Desire of 
 all nations comes not always on an ass's colt. All 
 Europe is, just now, in a great ferment; terrible 
 questions are getting ready for a swift tribunal. 
 Injustice cannot stand. No armies, no " Holy Al- 
 liance," 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 depart- 
 ure from justice is attended with loss to the unjust 
 man, but the loss is not reported to the public.
 
 88 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Sometimes a man is honored as a brave, good man, 
 but trial rings him and he gives an empty, hollow 
 sound. All the ancient and honorable may bid the 
 people trust that man, — they turn off their affec- 
 tions from him. 
 
 So have I seen an able man, witty and cunning, 
 graceful, plausible, elegant, and rich ; men honored 
 him for a time, tickled by his beauty to eye and 
 ear. But gradually the mean soul of the man ap- 
 peared in his conduct, selfish, grasping, inhuman, 
 and fraudulently unjust. The public heart forgot 
 him, and when he came to die, the town which once 
 had honored him so much gave him only earth to rest 
 his coffin on. 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 monu- 
 ments the world builds to its patriots ! Four great 
 statesmen, organizers of the right, embalmed in 
 stone, look down upon the lawgivers of France as 
 they pass to their hall of legislation, silent orators 
 to tell how nations love the just. What a monu- 
 ment Washington has built in the heart of America 
 and all the world ! not by great genius, — he had 
 none of that, — but by his effort to be just. The 
 martyrs of Christendom, of Judaism, and of every
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 89 
 
 form of heathen faith, — how men worship those 
 firm souls who shook off their body sooner than be 
 false to conscience. 
 
 Yet eminent justice is often misunderstood. Lit- 
 tleness has its compensation. A small man is sel- 
 dom pinched for want of room. Greatness is its 
 own torment. There was once a man on this earth 
 whom the world could not understand. He was too 
 high for them, too wide, was every way too great. 
 He came, the greatest moral genius of our history, 
 to bless mankind. Men mocked him, gave him a 
 gallows between two thieves. " Saviour, save thy- 
 self," said they, as they shot out the lip at him. 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
 do!" was the manly answer to the brutal taunt. 
 Now see how the world avenges its conscience on 
 itself for this injustice : for sixteen hundred years 
 men worship him as God throughout the Western 
 World. His name goes like the morning sun around 
 the earth, like that to waken beauty into life. This 
 conscience of ours is loyal ; only let us see the man 
 and know that he is King of Righteousness, and we 
 will do him homage all our days. 
 
 But we do not see that justice is always done 
 on earth ; many a knave is rich, sleek, and honored, 
 while the just man is poor, hated, and in torment. 
 The Silesian merchant fattens on the weavers' tears, 
 and eats their children's bones. Three million slaves 
 
 8*
 
 90 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 earn the enjoyment of Americans, who curse them 
 in the name of Christ ; in the North, capital is a 
 tyrant over labor. How sad is the condition of the 
 peasantry of Christendom ! The cry of a world of 
 suffering, from mythic Abel to the actual slaves of 
 America, comes up to our ear, and the instinct of 
 justice paints a world beyond the grave, where exact 
 justice shall be done to all and each, to Abel and to 
 Cain. The moral instinct, not satisfied on earth, 
 reaches out to the future world, and in an ideal 
 heaven would realize ideal justice. But even there 
 the tyranny of able-minded men has interfered, 
 painting immortality in such guise that it would be 
 a curse to mankind. Yet the instinct of justice 
 prevails above it all, and few men fear to meet the 
 eternal Mother of us all in heaven. 
 
 We need a great and conscious development of 
 the moral element in man, and a corresponding ex- 
 pansion of justice in human affairs ; an intentional 
 application thereof to individual, domestic, social, 
 ecclesiastical, and political life. In the old military 
 civilization that was not possible ; in the present 
 industrial civilization it is not thought desirable 
 by the mercantile chiefs of church and State. Hith- 
 erto, the actual function of government, so far as 
 it has been controlled by the will of the rulers, 
 has commonly been this: To foster the strong at
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 91 
 
 the expense of the weak, to protect the capitalist 
 and tax the laborer. The powerful have sought a 
 monopoly of development and enjoyment, loving 
 to eat their morsel alone. Accordingly, little respect 
 is paid to absolute justice by the controlling states- 
 men of the Christian world. Not conscience and 
 the right is appealed to, but prudence and the 
 expedient for to-day. Justice is forgotten in look- 
 ing at interest, and political morality neglected for 
 political economy; instead of national organization 
 of the ideal right, we have only national house- 
 keeping. Hence come the great evils of civiliza- 
 tion at this day, and the questions of humanity, 
 so long adjourned and put off, that it seems they 
 can only be settled with bloodshed. Nothing rests 
 secure save in the law of God. The thrones of 
 Christian Europe tremble ; a little touch and they 
 fall. Capitalists are alarmed, lest gold ill got 
 should find an equilibrium. Behind the question 
 of royalty, nobility, slavery, — relics of the old feu- 
 dalism, — there are other questions yet more radi- 
 cal, soon to be asked and answered. 
 
 There has been a foolish neglect of moral cul- 
 ture throughout all Christendom. The leading 
 classes have not valued it ; with them the mind 
 was thought better than the moral sense, and con- 
 science a dowdy. It is so in the higher education 
 of New England, as of Europe. These men seek
 
 92 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 the uses of truth, not truth itself; they scorn duty 
 and its higher law; to be ignorant and weak- 
 minded is thought worse than to be voluntarily 
 unjust and wicked; idiocy of conscience is often 
 thought an excellence, is never out of fashion. 
 Morality is thought no part of piety in the Church, 
 it " saves " no man ; ' ; belief" does that with the 
 Protestants, " sacraments " with the Catholics ; it is 
 no part of politics in the State, — not needed to save 
 the nation or the soul. 
 
 Of late years there has been a great expansion 
 of intellectual development in Europe and America. 
 Has the moral development kept pace with it? Is 
 the desire to apply justice to its universal function 
 as common and intense with the more intellectual 
 classes, as the desire to apply special truths to their 
 function ? By no means. We have organized our 
 schemes of intellectual culture : it is the function 
 of schools, colleges, learned societies, and all the 
 special institutions for agriculture, manufactures, 
 and commerce, to develop the understanding and 
 apply it to various concrete interests. No analogous 
 pains have been taken with the culture of con- 
 science. France has the only academy for moral 
 science in the Christian world! We have statistical 
 societies for interest, no moral societies for justice. 
 We rely only on the moral instinct; its develop- 
 ment is accidental, not a considerable part of our
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 93 
 
 plan ; or else is involuntary, no part of the will of 
 the most intellectual class. There is no college for 
 the conscience. 
 
 Do the churches accomplish this educational pur- 
 pose for the moral sense ? The popular clergy think 
 miracles better than morality ; and have even less 
 justice than truth. They justify the popular sins in 
 the name of God ; are the allies of despotism in all 
 its forms, military or industrial. Oppression by the 
 sword and oppression by capital successively find 
 favor with them. In America there are two com- 
 mon ecclesiastical defences of African slavery : The 
 negroes are the descendants of Ham, who laughed 
 at his father Noah, — overtaken with drink, — and 
 so it is right that Ham's children, four thousand 
 years later, should be slaves to the rest of the world ; 
 Slavery teaches the black men " our blessed relig- 
 ion." Such is ecclesiastical justice ; and hence 
 judge the value of the churches to educate the 
 conscience of mankind ! It is strange how little the 
 clergy of Christendom, for fifteen hundred years, have 
 done for the morality of the world ; much for deco- 
 rum, little for justice ; a deal for ecclesiastical cere- 
 mony, but what for ecclesiastical righteousness? 
 They put worship with the knee before the. natural 
 piety of the conscience. " Trusting in good works " 
 is an offence to the Christian Church, as well 
 Protestant as Catholic.
 
 9-i JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 In Europe the consequences of this defect of 
 moral culture have become alarming, even to such 
 as fear only for money. That intellectual culture, 
 which was once the cherished monopoly of the rich, 
 has got diffused amongst wide ranks of men, who 
 once sat in the shadow of intellectual darkness. 
 There is no development of conscience to corre- 
 spond therewith. The Protestant clergy have not 
 enlightened the people on the science of religion. 
 The Catholics had little light to spare, and that was 
 spent in exhibiting « the holy coat of Treves," or 
 images of " the Virgin," and in illuminating cardi- 
 nals and popes set in the magic-lantern of the great 
 ecclesiastical show-box. No pains, or little, have 
 been taken with the moral culture of the people ; 
 none scientifically and for the sake of justice and 
 human kind. So the selfishness of the rich has spread 
 with their intellectual culture. The few have long 
 demanded a monopoly for themselves, and with 
 their thunder blasted the mortal life of the prophets 
 of justice sent by God to establish peace on earth 
 and good-will amongst men. Now the many begin 
 to demand a monopoly for themselves. Education, 
 wealth, political power, was once a privilege, and 
 they who enjoyed it made this their practical motto : 
 "Down with the poor!" The feudal system fell 
 before Dr. Faustus and his printing-press. Military 
 civilization slowly gives way to industrial. Com-
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 95 
 
 mon schools 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 affection thereof; — he sees small respect for 
 justice in church or State. What shall save him 
 from the selfishness about him, long dignified as 
 philosophy, sanctified as religion, and reverenced as 
 the law of God ! Do you wonder at " atheism " 
 in Germany ; at communism in France ? Such 
 " atheism " is the theory of the Church made 
 popular ; the worst communism is only the principle 
 of monopoly translated out of aristocracy into de- 
 mocracy; the song of the noble in the people's 
 mouth. The hideous cry, " Down with the rich ! " — 
 is that an astonishment to the leaders of Europe, 
 who have trod down the poor these thousand years ? 
 "When ignorance, moral and intellectual stupidity, 
 brought only servile obedience from the vassal, the 
 noble took delight in the oppression which trod his 
 brother down. Now numbers are power ; that is the 
 privilege of the people, and if the people, the privi- 
 leged class of the future, have the selfishness of the 
 aristocracy, what shall save the darling dollars of the 
 rich ? " They that laughed at the grovelling worm, 
 and trod on him, may cry and howl when they see 
 the stoop of the flying and fiery-mouthed dragon ! "
 
 96 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The leaders of modern civilization have scorned 
 justice. The chiefs of war, of industry, and the 
 Church are joined in a solidarity of contempt ; in 
 America, not harlots, so much as politicians debauch 
 the land. Conscience has been left out of the list 
 of faculties to be intentionally developed in the 
 places of honor. Is it marvellous if men find their 
 own selfishness fall on their own heads? No army 
 of special constables will supply the place of mo- 
 rality 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 protec- 
 tion, and bows before the Higher Law its worship- 
 pers despise. 
 
 What moral guidance do the leading classes of 
 men offer the people in either England, — the Euro- 
 pean or American? Let the laboring men of Great 
 Britain answer ; let Ireland, about to perish, groan 
 out her reply ; let the three million African slaves 
 bear the report to Heaven. " Ignorance is the 
 mother of devotion," once said some learned fool ; 
 monopolists act on the maxim. Ignorance of truth, 
 ignorance of right, — will these be good directors, 
 think you, of the class which has the privilege 
 of numbers and their multitudinous agglomerated 
 power ? " Reverence the eternal right," says Con- 
 science, "that is moral piety!" "Reap as you sow," 
 quoth human History. Alas for a church without
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 97 
 
 righteousness, and a State without right ! All his- 
 tory shows their fate! What is false to justice 
 cannot stand; what is true to that cannot perish. 
 Nothing can save wrong. 
 
 A sentence is written against all that is unjust, 
 written by God in the nature of man and the nature 
 of the universe, because it is in the nature of the 
 Infinite God. Fidelity to your faculties, trust in 
 their convictions, that is justice to yourself; a life in 
 obedience thereto, that is justice towards men. Tell 
 me not of successful wrong. The gain of injustice 
 is a loss, its pleasure suffering. Iniquity seems to 
 prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. 
 The knave deceives himself. The miser, starving 
 his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at 
 death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, 
 poor and naked and miserable. Whoso escapes a 
 duty avoids a gain. Outward judgment often fails, 
 inward justice never. Let a man try to love the 
 wrong, and do the wrong, it is eating stones, and 
 not bread ; the swift feet of justice are upon him, 
 following with woollen tread, and her iron hands are 
 round his neck. No man can escape from this, no 
 more than from himself. 
 
 At first sight of the consequences of justice, 
 redressing the evils of the world, its aspect seems 
 stern and awful. Men picture the palace of this 
 
 9
 
 98 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 king as hell : there is torment and anguish ; the 
 waters are in trouble. The chariot of justice seems 
 a car of Juggernaut crushing the necks of men ; they 
 cry for mercy. But look again : the sternness all is 
 gone ; nothing is awful there ; the palace of justice 
 is all heaven, as before a hell ; the water is troubled 
 only by an angel, and to heal the sick ; the fancied 
 car of Juggernaut is the triumphal chariot of man- 
 kind riding forth to welfare. With swift and noise- 
 less feet justice follows the transgressor and clutches 
 the iron hand about his neck; it was to save him 
 that she came with swift and noiseless tread. This 
 is the angel of God that flies from east to west, and 
 where she stoops her broad wings it is to bring the 
 counsel of God, and feed mankind with angels' 
 bread. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, from her 
 own beak to feed its young, broods over their callow 
 frame, and bears them on her wings, teaching them 
 first 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 shal^
 
 JUSTICE AND. THE CONSCIENCE. 99 
 
 justice fail, then shall wrong be able continually to 
 endure ; not till then. 
 
 The unity of the material world is beautiful, kept 
 by attraction's universal force ; temperance in the 
 body has fair effects, and wisdom in the mind. The 
 face of Nature, how fair it is ; the face of strong 
 and healthy, beauteous manhood is a dear thing to 
 look upon. To intellectual eyes, the countenance of 
 truth has a majestic charm. Wise men, with culti- 
 vated mind, understanding, imagination, reason well 
 developed, discovering and disclosing truth and 
 beauty to mankind, are a fair spectacle. But I love 
 the moral side of Deity yet more; love God as 
 justice. His justice, our morality working with that, 
 shall one day create a unity amongst all men more 
 fair than the face of Nature, and add a wondrous 
 beauty, wondrous happiness, to this great family of 
 men. Will you fear lest a wrong should prove im- 
 mortal? So far as any thing is false, or wrong, it is 
 weak; so far as true and right, is omnipotently 
 strong. Never fear that a just thought shall fail to 
 be a thing ; the power of God, the wisdom of God, 
 and the justice of God are on its side, and it 
 cannot fail, — no more than God himself can perish. 
 Wrong is the accident of human development. 
 Right is of the substance of humanity, justice the 
 goal we are to reach.
 
 100 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 But in human affairs the justice of God must 
 work by human means. Men are the measures 
 of God's principles; our morality the instrument of 
 his justice, which stilleth alike the waves of the sea, 
 the tumult of the people, and the oppressor's brutal 
 laugh. Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man, 
 the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind. 
 The ideal must become actual, God's thought a 
 human thing, made real in a reign of righteousness, 
 and a kingdom — no, a Commonwealth — of justice 
 on the earth. You and I can help forward that 
 work. God will not disdain to use our prayers, our 
 self-denial, and the little atoms of justice that per- 
 sonally 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 founda- 
 tion of firm islands, slowly uprising from the tropic 
 wave, — the ocean working with their humble toil, 
 — so you and I in our daily life, in house, or field, 
 or shop, obscurely faithful, may prepare the way for 
 the republic of righteousness, the democracy of 
 justice that is to come. Our own morality shall 
 bless us here ; not in our outward life alone, but in 
 the inward and majestic life of conscience. All the 
 justice we mature shall bless us here, yea, and here- 
 after ; but at our death we leave it added to the 
 common store of humankind. Even the crumbs
 
 JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 101 
 
 that fall from our table may save a brother's life. 
 You and I may help deepen the channel of human 
 morality in which God's justice runs, and the wrecks 
 of evil, which now check the stream, be borne off 
 the sooner by the strong, all-conquering tide of right, 
 the river of God that is full of blessing.
 
 IV. 
 
 OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Love is of god. — 1 John iv. 7. 
 
 Conscience deals with universal principles of 
 morals. It has for its object justice, the divine law 
 of the world, to be made ideal in the consciousness 
 of mankind, and then actual in the facts of our con- 
 dition and history. The affections deal with per- 
 sons; with nothing but persons, for animate, and 
 even inanimate, things get invested with a certain 
 imaginary personality as soon as they become objects 
 of affection. Ideas are the persons of the intellect, 
 and persons the ideas of the heart. Persons are the 
 central point of the affectional world. The love of 
 persons is the function of the affections, as it is that 
 of the mind and conscience to discover and accept 
 truth and right. 
 
 This love is a simple fact of consciousness; a 
 simple feeling, not capable of analysis, not easily
 
 IOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 103 
 
 described, yet not likely to be confounded with any 
 other fact of consciousness, or simple feeling. It is 
 not directly dependent on the will, so is free from all 
 immediate arbitrariness and caprice of volition. It 
 is spontaneous, instinctive, disinterested, not seeking 
 the delight of the loving subject, but of the object 
 loved. So it is not a desire of enjoying, but of 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 
 convenience to us. Love is its own satisfaction ; it 
 is the love of loving, not merely of enjoying, an- 
 other. 
 
 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 
 passions and emotions mingling therewith. So it 
 appears as fraternal, filial, connubial, and parental 
 love; as friendship, love of a few who reciprocate 
 the feeling ; as charity, love of the needy ; as patriot- 
 ism, love of your nation ; and a philanthropy, the 
 love of all mankind without respect to kin or coun- 
 try. In all these cases love is the same thing in 
 kind, but modified specifically by other emotions 
 which connect themselves with it. Love is the piety 
 of the affections.
 
 104 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Of course there are not only forms of love, where 
 the quality is modified, but degrees which measure 
 the different quantity thereof. The degree depends 
 on the subject, and also on the object, of love. 
 
 There is a state of consciousness in which we wish 
 no ill to a man, but yet wish him no good. That is 
 the point of affectional indifference. The first re- 
 move 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, 
 ^nd to do this not merely by volition, as an act of 
 conscience, and in obedience to a sense of duty, — 
 not merely by impulse, in obedience to blind feeling, 
 as an act of instinct, — but to do all this consciously, 
 yet delightedly, with a knowledge of the conse- 
 quences, by a movement which is not barely instinc- 
 tive, and not merely of the will, but spontaneous ; 
 to do all this not merely out of gratitude for favors 
 received, for a reward paid in advance, nor for the 
 •sake of happiness in heaven, a recompense after- 
 wards ; with no feeling of grateful obligation, no 
 wish for a recompense, but from pure, entire, and 
 disinterested affection.
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 105 
 
 This highest ideal degree of love is sometimes 
 attained, but, like all the great achievements of hu- 
 man nature, it is rare. There are few masterpieces 
 in sculpture, painting, architecture, in poetry or 
 music. The ideal and actual are seldom the same 
 in any performance of mankind. It is rarely that 
 human nature rises to its highest ideal mark ; some 
 great hearts notch the mountains and leave their line 
 high up above the heads of ordinary men, — a history 
 and a prophecy. Yet the capacity for this degree 
 of love belongs to the nature of man as man. The 
 human excellence which is actual in Jesus, is possi- 
 ble in Iscariot ; give him time and opportunity, the 
 man will appear in him also. I doubt not that the 
 worst man ever hanged or even honored for his 
 crime, will one day attain a degree of love which the 
 loftiest men now cannot comprehend. This power 
 of loving to this degree, it seems to me, is generic, 
 of the nature of man ; the absence of it is a mark 
 of immaturity, of greenness, and clownishness of 
 the heart. But at this day the power of affection is 
 distributed as diversely as power of mind or con- 
 science, and so the faculty of loving is by no means 
 the same in actual men. All are not at once capa- 
 ble 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 yon cannot
 
 106 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 love a dog so well as a man, nor a base, mean man 
 so much as a great, noble man, with the excellences 
 of mind and conscience, heart and soul. Can you 
 and I love an Arnold as well as a Washington ? a 
 kidnapper as well as a philanthropist? God may 
 do so, not you and I. So with finite beings the 
 degree of love is affected by the character of both 
 the subject and the object of affection. 
 
 It is unfortunate that we have but one word in 
 English to express affectional action in respect to 
 myself and to other men ; we speak of a man loving 
 himself, and loving another. But it is plain that I 
 cannot love myself at all in the sense that I love 
 another ; for self-love is intransitive, — subject and 
 object are identical. It is one thing to desire my 
 own delight, and something quite opposite to desire 
 the delight of another. So, for the sake of clearness, 
 I will use the words Self-love for the normal feeling 
 of a man towards himself; Selfishness for the ab- 
 normal and excessive degree of this; and Love for 
 the normal feeling towards others. 
 
 Self-love is the lesser cohesive attraction which 
 keeps the man whole and a unit, which is necessary 
 for his consistency and existence as an individual. 
 It is a part of morality, and is to the man what 
 impenetrability is to the atoms of matter, and what
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 107 
 
 the centripetal force is to the orbs of heaven ; with- 
 out 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 inva- 
 sive, destructive of others, and appropriate what 
 is theirs to my own purposes. 
 
 Love is the greater gravitation which unites me 
 to others ; the expansive and centrifugal power that 
 extends my personality, and makes me find my 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 proportionate to my degree of love. So 
 affection makes one man into many men, as it were. 
 
 The highest action of any power is in combina- 
 tion with all the rest. Yet there is much imperfect 
 action of the faculties, working severally, not jointly. 
 The affections may act independent of the con- 
 science, as it of them. It is related that an eminent 
 citizen of Athens had a son who committed an 
 offence for which the law demanded the two eyes
 
 108 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 of the offender ; the father offered one of his to save 
 one of his son's. Here his heart, not his conscience, 
 prompted the deed. When the affections thus con- 
 trol the conscience, we have the emotion called 
 Mercy, which is the preponderance of love for a 
 person, not love for right, of love for the concrete 
 man over the abstract idea of justice. In a normal 
 condition, it seems to me that love of persons is a 
 little in advance of love of the abstract right, and 
 that spontaneous love triumphs over voluntary 
 morality ; the heart carries the day before the 
 conscience. This is so in most women, who are 
 commonly fairer examples of the natural power of 
 both the moral and affectional faculties, and repre- 
 sent the natural tendency of human nature better 
 than men. I think they seldom sacrifice a person 
 to an abstract rule of conduct ; or at least, if there 
 is a collision between conscience and the heart, with 
 them the heart carries the day. Non-resistants, 
 having a rule of conduct which forbids them to hurt 
 another, will yet do this for a wife or child, though 
 not for themselves, their love being greater than 
 their selfishness. This is so common that it seems 
 a rule of nature, — that the affectional is a little 
 stronger than the moral instinct, and where both 
 have received due culture, and there is still a col- 
 lision between the two, that mercy is the law. But 
 here no private love should prevail against right,
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 109 
 
 and only universal love come in to its aid to supply 
 the defect of conscience. Brutus, so the story goes, 
 finds his son committing a capital offence, and 
 orders his head strack off, sacrificing his private and 
 paternal love to his universal and human love of 
 justice, his love of a special man to his love of what 
 is right for all men. This is as it should be. 
 
 Conscience may be cultivated in an exclusive 
 manner 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 im- 
 proves the quality of finite morality, for it is the 
 same as divine justice. Absolute justice and abso- 
 lute love are never antagonistic, but identical. 
 
 The affections may be cultivated at the expense 
 of conscience. This often happens with such as 
 limit the range of their love to a few friends, to 
 their own family, class, or nation. The world is 
 full of examples of this. Here is one who loves 
 her own family with intense love, — her husband, 
 children, grandchildren, and collateral relations, — 
 the love always measured by their propinquity to 
 her. Like the crow in the fable, she thinks her own 
 young the fairest of the fair, heedless of their vul- 
 
 10
 
 110 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 garity, and worldly and ignoble materialism. She 
 is generous to them, no she-crow more bounteous 
 to her young, but no hawk was ever more niggardly 
 to all beyond. Here neglect of justice and scorn of 
 conscience have corrupted her affections ; and her 
 love is only self-love, — for she loves these but as 
 limbs of herself, — and has degenerated into selfish- 
 ness 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 remark- 
 ably 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 thousand homes in Africa, that he might 
 adorn his own in New England. The lion, the 
 tiger, the hyena, each is kind to his whelps, — for 
 instinctive love affects the beast also. No man 
 has universal love ; conscience gives the rule thereof, 
 and so in applying justice applies God's universal 
 love to that special case. Seek to exercise love 
 without justice, and you injure some one. 
 
 The same form of affection appears on a larger 
 scale in the members of a class in society, or a sect 
 in religion ; it leads to kindliness within the circle 
 of its range, but intense cruelty is often practised 
 beyond that limit. All the aristocracies of the
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. Ill 
 
 world, the little sects of Christendom, and the great 
 sects of the human race, furnish examples of this. 
 
 What is called patriotism is another form of the 
 same limited love, — a culture of the affections 
 without regard to justice. Hence it has been held 
 patriotic to build up your country by the ruin of 
 another land, to love Jacob and hate Esau. This 
 feeling is of continual occurrence. " Lands inter- 
 sected by a narrow frith abhor each other," cities 
 that are rivals in trade seek to ruin each other ; 
 nations do the same. 
 
 In all these cases, where ove is limited to the 
 family, class, sect, or nation, the aim is this : Mutu- 
 ality of love within the narrow circle ; without 
 its range, mutuality of selfishness. Thus love is 
 deemed only a privilege of convention and for a 
 few, arbitrarily limited by caprice ; not a right, of 
 nature and for all, the extension thereof to be lim- 
 ited only by the power, not the will, of the man 
 who loves. 
 
 All the above are common forms of limited 
 affection. The domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and 
 political institutions of the world, the educational 
 and commercial machinery of the world, tend to 
 produce this result. All the religions of the world 
 have practically fostered this mistake, by starting 
 with the idea, that God loved best the men who 
 worshipped Him in a certain conventional form.
 
 112 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Bat this expansive and centrifugal power may- 
 be cultivated to the neglect of natural and well- 
 proportioned self-love. This also is a defect, for 
 the conservative or self-preserving power is quite as 
 necessary as the beneficent and expansive power. 
 Impenetrability is the necessary concomitant of 
 attraction. The individual is first an integer, 
 then a fraction of society ; he must keep his per- 
 sonal integrity and discreteness of person, and not 
 be lost in the press and crowd of other persons. 
 What is true of bodies is not less so of spirits. 
 Here is a man with so little self-love, that his per- 
 sonality seems lost ; he is no person, but now 
 this man, now that, — a free port of trade, where 
 all individualities are unloaded and protected ; but 
 he has none. His circumference is everywhere ; 
 his centre nowhere. He keeps other men's vine- 
 yards, not his own. This is a fault ; doubtless a 
 rare one, still a fault which destroys the individual 
 character of the man. 
 
 There is, doubtless, a large difference amongst 
 men in respect to the original power of the affec- 
 tions, — a difference of nature ; a great difference in 
 respect to the acquired power of love, — a difference 
 of culture ; a difference, also, in respect to the mode 
 of culture of the heart, which may be developed 
 jointly with mind and conscience, or independent of
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 113 
 
 them, — a difference in proportion. Thus, practi- 
 cally, the affectional power of men varies as much 
 as the intellectual or the moral power. 
 
 Look at the place which the affections occupy in 
 the nature of man. In point of time they precede 
 the intellectual and moral powers in their order of 
 development, they have a wider range in the world 
 than those other faculties. You find affection in 
 animals. In some, love is very powerful. True, it 
 appears there as rudimentary, and for a short time, 
 as in birds, grouping them into brief cohesions. In 
 some animals it is continual, yet not binding one 
 individual to another in a perpetual combination, 
 but grouping many individuals into a flock. The 
 flock remains ; all the individuals sustain a constant 
 relation to the flock, but most unconstant relations 
 to one another, — the male and female parting 
 fellowship when the annual season of passion is 
 over, the parents neglecting their child as soon as it 
 outgrows the mother's care. Throughout the animal 
 world love does not appear to exist for its own sake, 
 but only as a means to a material end; now to 
 create, then to protect, the individual and the race. 
 Besides, it is purely instinctive, not also self-con- 
 scious and voluntary action. The animal seems not 
 an agent, but only a tool of affection, his love neces- 
 
 10*
 
 114 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 sitated, not spontaneous. Accordingly, in its more 
 permanent forms, love is merely gregarious, and 
 does not come to individual sociality ; it seems but 
 a more subtle mode of gravitation. A herd of 
 buffaloes is only an aggregation of members, not a 
 society of free individuals, who group from choice. 
 Friendship, I think, never appears amongst animals, 
 excepting such as are under the eye of man, and 
 have, in some manner not easily understood, ac- 
 quired his habits. The animal does not appear to 
 have private affinities, and to attach himself to this 
 or that fellow-being with the discrimination of love ; 
 development of the affections is never sought for as 
 a thing good in itself, but only as a means to some 
 other good. 
 
 With man there is this greater gravitation of men 
 into masses ; which, without doubt, is at first as 
 instinctive as the grouping of bees or beavers ; but 
 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 a distinct self-consciousness of universal 
 brotherhood.
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 115 
 
 It is instructive to look on the rudimentary love 
 in animals, and see the beginnings of human na- 
 ture, as it were, so low down, and watch the suc- 
 cessive risings in successive creations. It helps us 
 to see the unity of the world, and also to foretell 
 the development of human nature ; for what is there 
 accomplished by successive creation of new races, 
 with us takes place by the continual development of 
 the same individual. 
 
 It is according to the order of nature, that the 
 power to love should be developed before the power 
 to think. All things with us begin with a feeling ; 
 next enlarge to an idea ; then take the form of 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 
 invested with a dim personality in the mind of 
 children and of savages. We know father and 
 mother long before we have any notion of justice 
 or of truth. The spontaneous development of the 
 heart in children is one of the most beautiful phe- 
 nomena in nature. The child has self-love, but no 
 selfishness; his nebulous being not yet solidified to 
 the impenetrability which is to come. His first
 
 116 . LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 joys are animal, the next affectional, the delight of 
 loving and of being loved ! 
 
 Indeed, with most men the affections take the 
 lead of all the spiritual powers ; only they act in a 
 confined sphere of the family, class, sect, or nation. 
 Men trust the heart more than the head. The 
 mass of men have more confidence in a man of 
 great affection than in one of great thought; par- 
 don is commonly popular, mercy better loved than 
 severity. Men rejoice when the murderer is arrest- 
 ed; but shout at his acquittal of the crime. The 
 happiness of the greater part of men comes from 
 affectional more than intellectual or moral sources. 
 Hence the abundant interest felt in talk about per- 
 sons, the popular fondness for personal anecdotes, 
 biographies, ballads, love-stories, and the like. 
 The mass of men love the person of their great 
 man, not his opinions, and care more to see his 
 face and hear his voice than to know his ideas of 
 truth and of justice. It is so with religious teachers. 
 Men sympathize with the person before they take 
 his doctrine. Hence the popular fondness for por- 
 traits of great men, for their autographs, and even 
 for relics. The person of Jesus of Nazareth has 
 left a much greater impression on the hearts of men, 
 than his doctrines have made on the mind and con- 
 science of Christendom. For this reason, religious
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 117 
 
 pictures preserve scenes which have nothing to do 
 with the truth or the right that the man repre- 
 sented, but are merely personal details, often desti- 
 tute of outward beauty, of no value to the mind, of 
 much to the affections. This explains the popular 
 fondness for stories and pictures of the sufferings of 
 martyrs. A crucifix is nothing to the mind and 
 conscience ; — how much to the heart of Christen- 
 dom ! Hence, too, men love to conceive of God in 
 the person of a man. 
 
 Now and then you find a man of mere intellectual 
 or moral power, who takes almost his whole delight 
 in the exercise of his mind or conscience. Such men 
 are rare and wonderful, but by no means admirable. 
 
 Without the culture of the affections life is poor 
 and unsatisfactory ; truth seems cold, and justice 
 stern. Let a man have the piety of the body, of the 
 mind and conscience, it is not satisfactory without 
 the piety of the heart. Let him have this also, and 
 what a world of delight it opens to him ! 
 
 Take the whole population of Christendom, there 
 are but one or two in a thousand who have much 
 delight in intellectual pursuits, who find a deep and 
 reconciling joy in science, or literature, or any art ; 
 even music, the most popular of all, has a narrow 
 range. But almost every one has a delight in the 
 affections which quite transcends his intellectual joy. 
 When a new book comes into being, if it be brave
 
 118 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 and good, it will quicken the progress of mankind ; 
 men rejoice, and the human race slowly folds to its 
 bosom the works of Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, 
 Milton, and will not willingly let them die. When 
 a new child is born into some noble and half-starved 
 family, it diminishes their " comforts," it multiplies 
 their toil, it divides their loaf, it crowds their bed, and 
 shares the unreplenished fire ; but with what joy is 
 it welcomed there! Men of great genius, who can 
 judge the world by thought, feel less delight at the 
 arrival of some great poet at his mind's estate, than 
 many a poor mother feels at the birth of a new soul 
 into the world ; far less than she feels in the rude 
 affection of her home, naked, comfortless, and cold. 
 I know there is a degradation caused by poverty, 
 when the heart dies out of the man, and " the 
 mother hath sodden her own child." But such de- 
 pravity is against nature, and only takes place when 
 physical suffering has worn off the human qualities, 
 one by one, till only impenetrability is left. 
 
 You find men that are ignorant, rich men too ; 
 and they are not wholly ashamed of it. They say, 
 " Early circumstances hindered my growth of mind, 
 for I was poor. You may pity, but you should not 
 blame me." If you should accuse a man of lacking 
 heart, of having no culture of affection, every one 
 would feel it was a great reproach, and, if true, a 
 fault without excuse. No man ever confesses this, 
 — a sin against human nature.
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 119 
 
 All men need something to poetize and idealize 
 their life a little, something which they value for 
 more than its use, and which is a symbol of their 
 emancipation from the mere materialism and 
 drudgery of daily life. Rich men attempt to do 
 this with beautiful houses, with costly furniture, 
 with sumptuous food, and " wine too good for the 
 tables of pontiffs," thereby often only thickening 
 and gilding the chain which binds the soul to earth. 
 Some men idealize their life a little with books, 
 music, flowers ; with science, poetry, and art ; with 
 thought. But such men are comparatively rare, 
 even in Scotland and New England, — two or three 
 in the hundred, not more. In America the cheap 
 newspaper is the most common instrument used for 
 this purpose, — a thing not without great value. 
 But the majority of men do this idealizing by the 
 affections, which furnish the chief poetry of their 
 life, — the wife and husband delighting in one 
 another, both in their children. Burns did not ex- 
 aggerate in his Cotter's Saturday Night, when he 
 painted the laborer's joy : 
 
 " His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily, 
 
 His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, 
 The lisping infant prattling on his knee. 
 Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile, 
 An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil."
 
 120 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 I have heard a boorish pedant wonder how a 
 woman could spend so many years of her life with 
 little children, and be content ! In her satisfaction 
 he found a proof of her " inferiority," and thought 
 her but the " servant of a wooden cradle," herself 
 almost as wooden. But in that gentle companion- 
 ship 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 im- 
 piety, complained that we are not born men, but 
 babies. He did not see the value of infancy as a 
 delight to the mature, and for the education of the 
 heart. At one period of life we need objects of 
 instinctive passion, at another, of instinctive benev- 
 olence 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 delight- 
 ing, rather than the delight of enjoying. Here 
 is a woman with large intellect, and attainments 
 which match her native powers, but with a genius 
 for love, developed in its domestic, social, patriotic, 
 human form, with a wealth of affection which sur-
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 121 
 
 passes even her affluence of intellect. Her chief 
 delight is to bless the men who need her blessing. 
 Naturalists carry mind into matter, and seek the 
 eternal truth of God in the perishing forms of the 
 fossil plant, or the evanescent tides of the sea ; she 
 carries love into the lanes and kennels of society, to 
 give bread to the needy, eyes to the blind, mind 
 to the ignorant, and a soul to men floating and 
 weltering in this sad pit of society. I do not under- 
 value intellect in any of its nobler forms, but if 
 God gave me my choice to have either the vast 
 intellect of a Newton, an Aristotle, a Shakspeare, a 
 Homer, the ethical insight of the great legislators, 
 the moral sense of Moses, or Menu, the conscience 
 of men who discover justice and organize unalien- 
 able right into human institutions, — or else to take 
 the heroic heart which so loves mankind, and I 
 were to choose what brought its possessor the 
 greatest joy, — I would surely take, not the great 
 head, but the great heart, the power of love before 
 the power of thought. 
 
 I know we often envy the sons of genius, men 
 with tall heads and brain preternaturally delicate 
 and nice, thinking God partial. They are not to> 
 be envied : the top of Mount Washington is very 
 lofty; it far transcends the neighboring hills, and 
 overlooks the mountain tops from the Mississippi 
 to the Atlantic main, and has no fellow from the 
 
 11
 
 122 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Northern Sea down to the Mexique Bay. Men 
 look up and wonder at its tall height ; but it must 
 take the rude blasts of every winter upon its naked, 
 wranite head ; its gides are furrowed with the storm. 
 It is of unequalled loftiness, but freezing cold ; 
 while in the low valleys and on the mountain's 
 southern slopes the snow melts quick away, early 
 the grass comes green, the flowers lift up their 
 modest, lovely face, and shed their fragrance on 
 the sudden spring. Who shall tell me that intel- 
 lectual or moral grandeur is higher in the scale of 
 powers than the heart! It is not so. Mind and 
 conscience are great and noble; truth and justice 
 are exceeding dear, but love is dearer and more 
 precious than both. 
 
 See the array of natural means provided for the 
 development and education of the heart. Spiritual 
 love, joining with the instinctive passion which 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 feeling extended 
 towards us is a mothers love. Even the rude 
 woman in savage Patagonia turns her sunniest 
 aspect to her child; the father does the same. In
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 123 
 
 our earliest years we are almost wholly in the hands 
 of women, in whom the heart emphatically prevails 
 over the head. They attract and win, while man 
 only invades and conquers. The first human force 
 we meet is woman's love. All this tends to waken 
 and unfold the affections, to give them their culture, 
 and hasten their growth. The other children of 
 kindred blood, asking or giving kind offices ; affec- 
 tionate relations and friends, who turn out the fairest 
 side of nature and themselves to the new-born 
 stranger, — all of these are helps in the education of 
 the heart. All men unconsciously put on amiable 
 faces in the presence of children, thinking it is not 
 good to cause these little ones to offend. As the 
 roughest of men will gather flowers for little children, 
 so in their presence he turns out " the silver lining " 
 of his cloudy character to the young immortals, and 
 would not have them know the darker part. The 
 sourest man is not wholly hopeless when he will not 
 blaspheme before his son. 
 
 The child's affection gets developed on the smallest 
 scale at first. The mother's love tempts forth the 
 son's ; he loves the bosom that feeds him, the lips 
 which caress, the person who loves. Soon the circle 
 widens, and includes brothers and sisters, and famil- 
 iar friends ; then gradually enlarges more and more, 
 the affections strengthening as their empire spreads. 
 So love travels from person to person, from the
 
 124 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 mother or nurse to the family at home ; then to the 
 relatives and frequent guests; next to the children 
 at school, to the neighborhood, the town, the State, 
 the nation ; and at last manly love takes in the 
 whole family of mankind, counting nothing alien 
 that is human. 
 
 You often find men lamenting the lack of early 
 education of the intellect ; it is a grievous deficiency ; 
 and it takes the hardest toil in after years to supply 
 the void, if indeed it can ever be done. It is a 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 conceal, and in childhood get a scar which they 
 will carry all their days. What sad faces one always 
 sees in the asylums for orphans ! It is more fatal to 
 neglect the heart than the head. 
 
 In a world like this, not much advanced as yet in 
 any high qualities of spirit, but still advancing, it is
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 125 
 
 beautiful to see the examples of love which we 
 sometimes meet, the exceptional cases that to me 
 are prophecies of that good time which is so long in 
 coming. I will not speak of the love of husband 
 and wife, or of parent and child, for each of these is 
 mainly controlled by a strong generic instinct, which 
 deprives the feeling of its personal and voluntary 
 character. I will speak of spontaneous love not 
 connected with the connubial or parental instincts. 
 You see it in the form of friendship, charity, pat- 
 riotism, 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 bor- 
 derers on the frontiers of civilization, the experience 
 of men in navigation, in all the difficult emer- 
 gencies of life, bring out this heroic affection of the 
 heart. 
 
 What examples do we all know of friendship and 
 of charity! Here is a woman of large intellect, 
 well disciplined, well stored, gifted with mind and 
 
 11*
 
 1*26 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 graced with its specific piety, whose chief delight it 
 is to do kind deeds to those beloved. Her life is 
 poured out, like the fair light of heaven, around the 
 bedside of the sick. She comes like a last sacra- 
 ment to the dying man, bringing back a reminiscence 
 of the best things of mortal life, and giving a fore- 
 tasted prophecy of the joys of heaven, her very 
 presence an alabaster box of ointment, exceeding 
 precious, filling the house with the balm of its thou- 
 sand 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 con- 
 sciousness whence such a life wells out. Not con- 
 tent 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-in- 
 dulgence 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 intel- 
 lect ; I would not look upon the greatest mind that 
 ever spoke to ages yet unborn. 
 
 There is far more of this charity than most men
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 127 
 
 imagine. You find it amid the intense worldliness 
 of this city, where upstart Mammon scoffs at God ; 
 in the hovels of the poor, in the common dwellings 
 of ordinary men, and in the houses of the rich ; 
 drive out nature with a dollar, still she comes 
 back. This love is the feminine saviour of man- 
 kind, and bestows a peace which nothing else can 
 give, which nought can take away. From its na- 
 ture this plant grows in by-places, where it is not 
 seen by ordinary eyes, till wounded you flee thither ; 
 then it heals your smart, or when beheld fills you 
 with wonder at its human loveliness. 
 
 The calling of a clergyman in a great, wicked 
 town brings him acquainted with ghastly forms of 
 human wickedness, — with felons of conscience, and 
 men idiotic in their affections, who seem born with 
 an arithmetic instead of a conscience, and a vulture 
 for a heart: but we also find those angels of 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-
 
 128 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 garest, and so most honored form, — love of country, 
 to the exclusion and hate of other lands. Men tell 
 of Regulus, how he laid down his life for his country, 
 the brave old heathen that he was. But in the 
 wickedest of modern wars, when America plun- 
 dered Mexico of soil and men, many a deluded 
 volunteer laid down his life, I doubt not, with a 
 heroism as pure, and a patriotism as strong, as that 
 of Regulus or Washington. Detesting the unholy 
 war, let us honor the virtue which it brought to 
 light. 
 
 This virtue of patriotism is common with the 
 mass of men in this republic. In aristocratic gov- 
 ernments the rich men and nobles have it in a 
 large degree ; it is, however, somewhat selfish, — a 
 love of their private privileges more than of the 
 general rights of their countrymen. With us in 
 America, especially in the seat of riches and of 
 trade, there seems little patriotism in the wealthy, 
 or more educated class of men ; small fondness for 
 the commonwealth in that quarter. Exclusive love 
 of gain drives that out of their heart. To the dollar, 
 all lands, all governments, are the same. 
 
 But apart from patriotism, charity, friendship, I 
 have seen most noble examples of the same affec- 
 tion on a yet wider scale, — I mean philanthropy, 
 the love of all mankind. You all know men, whose
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 129 
 
 affection, at first beginning at home, and loving 
 only the mother who gave her baby nature's bread, 
 has now transcended family and kin, gone beyond 
 all private friendships with like-minded men, over- 
 leaped the far barriers of our native land, and now, 
 loving family, friend, and country, loves likewise all 
 humankind. This is the largest expanse of affec- 
 tion ; 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 deformity and dwarf- 
 ishness; — but to love the unlovely, to sympathize 
 with the contrary-minded, to give to the uncharita- 
 ble, to forgive such as never pity, to be just to men 
 who make iniquity a law, to pay their sleepless 
 hate with never-ceasing love, — that is the triumph 
 of the affections, the heroic degree of love ; you 
 must be but little lower than the angels to do that. 
 It is one of the noblest attainments of man, and 
 in this he becomes most like God. The intellect 
 acquaints you with truth, the thought of God ; con- 
 science informs you with his justice, the moral will 
 of God ; and the heart fitly exercised gives you a 
 fellowship with his eternal love, the most intimate 
 feeling of the Infinite Father ; having that, you can
 
 130 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 love men spite of the imperfections of their con- 
 duct and character, — can love the idiot, the crimi- 
 nal, hated or popular, — be towardly to the fro- 
 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 
 narrower love between husband and wife, child and 
 parent, has instinct to aid it, and is so common, 
 that, like daily bread and nightly sleep, we forget 
 to be thankful for it, not heeding how much de- 
 pends thereon. 
 
 The joys of affection are the commonest of joys ; 
 sometimes the sole poetic ornament in the hutch of 
 the poor, they are also the best things in the rich 
 man's palace. They are the Shekinah, the presence 
 of God in the dwellings of men. It is through the 
 affections that most men learn religion. I know 
 they often say, " Fear first taught us God." No ! 
 Fear first taught us a devil, — often worshipped as 
 the God, — and with that fear all devils fade away, 
 they and their misanthropic hell. Ghosts cannot
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 131 
 
 stand the light, nor devils love. My affections bind 
 me to God, and as the heart grows strong my ever- 
 deepening consciousness of God grows more and 
 more, till God's love occupies the heart, and the sen- 
 timent 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- 
 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 weekday 
 virtue ; friendship is deemed too romantic for a trad- 
 ing town. Philanthropy is mocked at by statesmen 
 and leading capitalists ; it is the standing butt of the 
 editor, whereat he shoots his shaft, making up in its 
 barb and venom for his arrows' lack of length and 
 point. Metropolitan clergymen rejoice in 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
 
 132 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 was " no philanthropist," and cared nothing for the 
 sin of the powerful, which trod men into a mire of 
 blood ! In what is called the " highest education," 
 only the understanding and the taste get a consider- 
 able culture. The piety of the heart is thought 
 " inelegant " in society, unscholarly with the learned, 
 and a dreadful heresy in the churches. In literature 
 it is not love that wins the palm ; it is power to rule 
 by force, — force of muscles or force of mind : " None 
 but the brave deserve the fair." In popular speech 
 it is the great fighters that men glorify, not the great 
 lovers of mankind. Interest eats out the heart from 
 commerce and politics ; controlling men have no 
 faith in disinterested benevolence ; to them the nation 
 is a monstrous shop, a trading city but a bar-room 
 in a commercial tavern, the church a desk for the 
 accountant, the world a market ; men are buyers and 
 sellers, employers and employed. Governments are 
 mainly without love, often without justice. This 
 seems their function: To protect capital and tax 
 toil. 
 
 Hitherto justice has not been done to the affections 
 in Religion. We have been taught to fear God, not 
 to love Him, to see Him in the earthquake and the 
 storm, in the deluge, or the " ten plagues of Egypt," 
 in the " black death," or the cholera ; not to see God 
 in the morning sun, or in the evening full of radiant
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 133 
 
 gentleness. Love has little to do with the popular 
 religion of our time. God is painted as a dreadful 
 Eye, which bores through the darkness to spy out 
 the faults of men who must sneak and skulk about 
 the world; or as a naked, bony Arm, uplifted to 
 crush his children down with horrid squelch to end- 
 less hell. The long line of scoffers from Lucian, 
 their great hierophant, down to Voltaire and his 
 living coadjutors, have not shamed the priesthood 
 from such revolting images of deity. Sterner men, 
 who saw the loveliness of the dear God and set it 
 forth in holy speech and holy life, — to meet a fate 
 on earth far harder than the scoffer's doom, — they 
 cannot yet teach men that love of God casts every 
 fear away. In the Catholic mythology the Virgin 
 Mary, its most original creation, represents pure 
 love, — she, and she alone. Hence is she, (and de- 
 servedly,) the popular object of worship in all Cath- 
 olic countries. But the sterner Protestant sects 
 have the Roman Godhead after Mary is taken 
 away. 
 
 When this is so in religion, do you wonder at the 
 lack of love in law and custom, in politics and trade? 
 Shall I write satires on mankind? Rather let me 
 make its apology. Man is a baby yet ; the time for 
 the development of conscious love has not arrived. 
 Let us not say, " No man eat fruit of thee hereafter;" 
 
 12
 
 134 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 let us wait ; dig about the human tree and encour- 
 age it ; in time it shall put forth figs. 
 
 Still affection holds this high place in the nature 
 of man. Out of our innermost hearts there comes 
 the prophecy of a time when it shall have a kindred 
 place in history and the affairs of men. In the 
 progress of mankind, love takes continually a higher 
 place ; what was adequate and well-proportioned 
 affection a century ago, is not so now. Long since, 
 prophets rose up to declare the time was coming 
 when all hate should cease, there should be war no 
 more, and the sword should be beaten into the 
 ploughshare. Were they dreamers of idle dreams? 
 It was human nature which spoke through them its 
 lofty prophecy ; and mankind fulfils the highest pre- 
 diction 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 mahifold shouting, are 
 the stones drawn to the spot, the cement of human 
 architecture has been mixed with human blood, but 
 it is a temple of peace which gets builded at the 
 last. 
 
 In every man who lives a true life the affections 
 grow continually. He began with his mother and 
 his nurse, and journeyed ever on, pitching his tent
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 135 
 
 each night a day's march nearer God. His own 
 children helped him love others yet more ; his chil- 
 dren's children carried the old man's heart quite out 
 beyond the bounds of kin and country, and taught 
 him to love mankind. He grows old in learning to 
 love, and now, when age sets the silver diadem upon 
 his brow, not only is his love of truth and justice 
 greater than before, — not only does he love his wife 
 better than in his hour of prime, when manly instinct 
 added passion to his heart, — not only does he love 
 his children more than in their infancy, when the 
 fatherly instinct first began its work, — not only has 
 he more spontaneous love for his grandchildren than 
 he felt for his first new-born babe, — but his mature 
 affection travels beyond his wife, and child, and 
 children's child, to the whole family of men, mourns 
 in their grief, and joys in their delight. All his 
 powers have been greatened in his long, industrious, 
 and normal life, and so his power of love has 
 continually enlarged. The human objects do not 
 wholly satisfy his heart's desire. The ideal of love 
 is nowhere actual in the world of men, no finite per- 
 son fills up the hungry heart, so he turns to the 
 Infinite Object of affection, to the great Mother of 
 mankind ; and in the sentiment of love he and his 
 God are one. God's thought in his mind, God's 
 justice in his conscience, God's love in his heart, — 
 why should not he be blessed ?
 
 136 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 In mankind, as in a faithful man, there has been 
 the same enhancement of the power to love. Al- 
 ready Affection begins to legislate, even to adminis- 
 ter the laws of love. Long ago you see intimation 
 of this in the institutes of Moses and Menu. " The 
 qualitative precedes the quantitative," as twilight 
 precedes day. Slowly vengeance fades out of 
 human institutions, slowly love steals in : — the 
 wounded soldier must be healed, and paid, his 
 widow fed, and children comforted; the slaves must 
 be set free ; the yoke of kings and nobles must be 
 made lighter, be broken, and thrown away ; all men 
 must have their rights made sure ; the poor must be 
 fed, must have his human right to a vote, to justice, 
 truth, and love ; the ignorant must be educated, the 
 State looking to it that no one straggles in the rear 
 and so is lost; the criminals — I mean the little 
 criminals committing petty crimes — must be in- 
 structed, healed, and manlified ; the lunatic must be 
 restored to his intellect; the blind, the deaf and 
 dumb, the idiots, must be taught, and all mankind 
 be blessed. The attempt to banish war out of the 
 world, odium from theology, capital punishment out 
 of the State, the Devil and his hell from the Chris- 
 tian mythology, — the effort to expunge hate from 
 the popular notion of God, and fear from our 
 religious consciousness, — all this shows the growth 
 of love in the spirit of men. A few men see that
 
 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 137 
 
 while ir-religion is fear of a devil, religion is love : 
 one half is piety, — the love of God as truth, justice, 
 love, as Infinite Deity ; the rest is morality, — 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 warrant 
 that what is promised in man's nature shall be ful- 
 filled in his development. Human nature is human 
 destiny ; God's nature, universal Providence. The 
 mind tells us of truth which will prevail ; conscience, 
 of justice sure to conquer ; the heart gives us the 
 prophecy of infinite love certain to triumph. One 
 day there shall be no fear before men, no fear before 
 God, no tyrant in society, no Devil in theology, no 
 hell in the mythology of men ; love and the God of 
 love shall take their place. Hitherto Jesus is an ex- 
 ceptional man, the man of love ; Caesars and Alex- 
 anders are instantial men, men of force and fig-lit. 
 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 ; 
 
 12*
 
 138 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 for our affectional piety, assuming its domestic, 
 social, national, universal form, will bless us with its 
 delight, and then go forth to bless mankind ; and 
 long after you and I shall have gone home to the 
 God we trust, our affectional piety shall be a 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."
 
 V. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 Worship the lord in the beauty of holiness. — Ps. xxix. 2. 
 
 The mind converses with things indirectly, by- 
 means of the senses ; with ideas directly, indepen- 
 dent of the senses, by spiritual intuition, whereto 
 the senses furnish only the occasion, not the power, 
 of knowledge ; so the mind arrives at truth, in 
 various forms or modes, rests contented therein, 
 and has joy in the love thereof. Conscience is 
 busied with rules of right, by direct intuition 
 learns the moral law of the universe as it is writ 
 in human nature, — outward experience furnishing 
 only the occasion, not the power, of knowing 
 right, — arrives at justice, rests contented therein, 
 and has its joy in the love thereof. The affec- 
 tions deal with persons, whom it is their function 
 to love, travel ever on to wider and wider spheres, 
 joying in the men they love, but always seeking
 
 140 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 the perfect object with which they may be con- 
 tented and have the absolute joy of the heart. 
 To think truth, to will justice, to feel love, is the 
 highest act respectively of the intellectual, moral, 
 and affectional powers of man, which seek the 
 absolutely true, just, and lovely, as the object of 
 their natural desire. 
 
 The soul has its own functions. God is the 
 object thereof. As the mind and conscience by 
 their normal activity bring truth and justice to 
 human consciousness, so the soul makes us con- 
 scious of God. 
 
 We see what intellectual, moral, and affectional 
 creations have come from the action of the mind, 
 the conscience, and the heart of man ; we see the 
 human use thereof and joy therein. But the re- 
 ligious faculty has been as creative and yet more 
 powerful, overmastering all the other powers of 
 man. The profoundest study of man's affairs, or 
 the hastiest glance thereat, shows the power of the 
 soul for good and ill. The phenomena of man's 
 religious history are as varied and important as 
 they are striking. The surface of the world is 
 dotted all over with the temples which man has 
 built in his acts of reverence ; religious sentiments 
 and ideas are deeply ploughed into the history of 
 every tribe that has occupied time or peopled 
 space. Consider mankind as one man, immortal
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 141 
 
 and not growing old, universal history as his biog- 
 raphy ; 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 inward experience, — and what a 
 strange, attractive spectacle this panorama of man's 
 religious history presents to the thoughtful man. 
 
 The religious action of a child begins early ; 
 but like all early activity it is unconscious. We ' 
 cannot remember that; we can only recollect what 
 we have known in the form of consciousness, or, 
 at best, can only dimly remember what lay dimly 
 and half conscious in us, though the effects thereof 
 may be as lasting as our mortal life. You see the 
 tendency to the superhuman in quite little chil- 
 dren asking, " But who made God ? " the child's 
 causality heedlessly leaping at the Infinite, he 
 having a dim sentiment of the Maker of all itself 
 unmade. You have seen little babies, early de- 
 prived of their mother, involuntarily and by instinct 
 feeling with their ill-shapen mouths after what 
 nature provided for their nourishment. So in our 
 childhood as involuntarily and instinctively do we
 
 142 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 feel with our soul after the Infinite God, often, 
 alas ! to be beguiled by our nurses with some sop 
 of a deity which fills our mouth for the time and 
 keeps us from perishing. Perhaps a few of you 
 remember a time when you had a sentiment — it 
 was more a feeling than a thought — of a vague, 
 dim, mysterious somewhat, which lay at the bot- 
 tom of all things, was above all, about all, and in 
 all, which you could not comprehend nor yet 
 escape from. You seemed a part of it, or it of 
 you ; you wondered that you could not see with 
 your eyes, nor hear with your ears, nor touch with 
 your hands, what you yet felt and longed after 
 with such perplexity of indistinctness. Some- 
 times you loved it ; sometimes you feared. You 
 dared not name it, or if you did, no one word was 
 name enough for so changeable a thing. Now 
 you felt it in the sunshine, then in the storm ; now 
 it gave life, then it took life away. Yon con- 
 nected it with all that was strange and uncom- 
 mon ; now it was a great loveliness, then an ugli- 
 ness of indefinite deformity. In a new place you 
 missed it at first ; but it soon came back, travelling 
 with the child, a constant companion at length. 
 
 All men do not remember this, I think ; only a 
 few, in whom religious consciousness began early. 
 But we have all of us been through this nebulous 
 period of religious history, when the soul had
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 143 
 
 emotions for which the mind could not frame 
 adequate ideas. 
 
 You see the same phenomena drawn on a 
 large scale in the history of ancient nations, 
 whose monuments still attest these facts of con- 
 sciousness ; 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. Sav- 
 ages are baby nations, feeling after God, and trying 
 to express with their reflective intellect the imme- 
 diate emotions of the soul. When language is a 
 clumsy instrument, men try to carve in stone what 
 they fail to express in speech. Is the soul directly 
 conscious of a superhuman power ? they seek to 
 legitimate the feeling in the mind, and so translate 
 it to a thought ; at least they legitimate it to the 
 senses, and make it a thing. This vague, myste- 
 rious, 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 
 inward feeling ; but while there are so many ele-
 
 144 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 ments of confusion within him, no one embodiment 
 is enough ; he must have many, each one a step 
 beyond the other. His feeling becomes profounder, 
 his thought more clear. At length he finds that 
 man is more mighty than the elements, and seeks 
 to consolidate the Divine in man, and has personifi- 
 cations thereof, instead of his primitive embodi- 
 ments in Nature. Then his feeling of the Divine 
 becomes an idea of Deity; he has his personal 
 gods, with all the accidents of human personality, — 
 the passions, feelings, thoughts, mistakes, and all 
 the frailties of mortal men. 
 
 Age after age this work goes on ; the human 
 idea of God has its metempsychosis, and transmi- 
 grates 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, transfer- 
 ing each excellence of Nature to the Divine, and 
 then each excellence of man. Nature is the rosary 
 of man's prayer. The successive embodiments 
 and personifications of God in matter, animals, 
 or men were in religion what the hypotheses of
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 145 
 
 Thales and Ptolemy, Galileo and Kepler, were in 
 science, — helps to attain a more general form of 
 truth. Every idol-fetish, every embodiment of a 
 conception of God in matter, every personification 
 thereof in man, has been a step forward in relig- 
 ious progress. The grossest fetichism is only the 
 early shoot from the instinctive seed, one day to 
 blossom into the idea of the Infinite God. The 
 confusion of past and present mythologies is not 
 only a witness to the confusion in the religious 
 consciousness of men, but the outward expression 
 helps men to understand the inward fact, and so to 
 bring truth out of error. 
 
 The religious history of mankind could not have 
 been much different from what it has been ; the 
 margin for human caprice is not a very wide one. 
 All mankind had the same process to pass through. 
 The instinct of development in the human race is 
 immensely strong, even irrepressible ; checked here, 
 in another place it puts out a limb. The life of 
 mankind is continual growth. There is a special 
 progress of the intellectual, moral, affectional, and 
 religious faculties ; so a general progress of man ; 
 with that, a progress in the ideas which men form 
 of God. Each step seems to us unavoidable and 
 not to be dispensed with. Once unconscious rev- 
 erence of the Divine was all man had attained 
 to ; next he reached the worship of the Deity in the 
 
 13
 
 146 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 form of material or animal nature then personified in 
 man. Let us not libel the human race : we are 
 babies before we are men. " Live and learn " ap- 
 plies 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 journey more swiftly ; and in twenty or 
 thirty years an ordinary man accomplishes what it 
 took the human race five or six hundred generations 
 to achieve. But hitherto the majority of Christians 
 have not attained unity, or even concord, in their 
 conception of the Deity. There is a God, a Christ, 
 a Holy Ghost, and a Devil, with angels and saints, 
 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 
 exceptional men, and accordingly disowned as here- 
 tics, condemned, 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
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 147 
 
 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 con- 
 science, and the affections. Lightning shows us the 
 power of electricity, shattering that it may reach its 
 end, and shattering what it reaches ; the power of 
 the religious faculty hitherto has been chiefly shown 
 in this violent exhibition. A crusade is only a long 
 thunderstorm of the religious forces. 
 
 In the greater part of the world, men who speak in 
 the name of God are looked on with more reverence 
 than any other. So every tyrant seeks to get the 
 priesthood on his side. Hard Napoleon got the 
 Pope to assist at the imperial coronation ; even the 
 cannons must yield to the Cross. All modern wick- 
 edness must be banked up with Christianity. If the 
 State of the Philistines wishes to sow some emi- 
 nently wicked seed, it ploughs with the heifer of the 
 Church. 
 
 A nation always prepares itself for its great works 
 with consecration and prayer; both the English and 
 American revolutions are examples of this. The 
 religious sentiment lies exceeding deep in the heart 
 of mankind. Even to-day the nations look on men 
 who die for their country as a sacrifice offered to 
 God. No government is so lasting as that based on 
 religious sentiments and ideas ; with the mass of 
 men the State is part of the Church, and politics a
 
 148 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 national sacrament. Nothing so holds a nation to- 
 gether as unity of religious conviction. Men love to 
 think their rulers have a religious sanction. " Kings 
 rule by divine right," says the monarchist; "Civil 
 government is of God," quoth the Puritan. The 
 mass of men love to spread acts of religion along 
 their daily life, having the morning sacrament for 
 birth, the evening sacrament for death, and the 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 represent the religious feeling and thought of the 
 nation, and merely keeps the traditions and ceremo- 
 nies 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 philoso- 
 pher outgrew the priest. You see it in Europe dur-
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 149 
 
 ing the Middle Ages ; what monuments thereof are 
 left, marking all the land from Byzantium to Upsala 
 with convents, basilicas, minster, cathedral, dome, 
 and spire ! At this day the Mormons, on the bor- 
 ders of American civilization, gather together the 
 rudest white men of the land, and revive the ancient 
 priestly power of darker times, a hierarchic despot- 
 ism under a republic. In such communities the 
 ablest men and the most ambitious form a sacred 
 class ; the Church offers the fairest field for activity. 
 There religion is obviously the most powerful form 
 of power. Men who live in a city where the tavern 
 is taller, costlier, more beautiful and permanent, than 
 the temple, and the tavern-keeper thought a more 
 important man than the minister of religion, who is 
 only a temple-keeper now, can hardly understand 
 the period when such works as the Cathedral at 
 Milan or the Duorao at Venice got built : but a 
 Mormon city reveals the same state of things ; Nau- 
 voo 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 hu- 
 man experience, millions bow down before the 
 Grand Lama or the Pope. It is the faith of the 
 Christian world, that a Galilean woman bore the 
 Almighty God in her bosom, and nursed Him at her 
 
 13*
 
 150 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 breast. Augustine and Aquinas stooped their proud 
 intellects and accepted the absurdity. The priests 
 have told the people that three persons are one God, 
 or three Gods one person, — that the world was cre- 
 ated in six days ; the people give up their intellect 
 and try to believe the assertion, Grotius and Leibnitz 
 assenting to the tale. Every thing written in the 
 Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, is thus 
 made to pass current with their respective worship- 
 pers. In the name of religion men sacrifice reason. 
 St. James says, " Is any sick among you ? let him 
 call for the elders of the Church ; and let them pray 
 over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the 
 Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and 
 the Lord shall raise him up." Thousands of men, 
 in the name of religion, believe that this medical ad- 
 vice of a Hebrew fisherman was given by the infalli- 
 ble inspiration of God ; and it is clerically thought 
 wicked and blasphemous to speak of it as I do this 
 day. I only mention these facts to show the natural 
 strength of the religious instinct, working in a per- 
 verted and unnatural form, and against the natural 
 action of the mind. 
 
 In like manner religion is made to silence the 
 moral faculties. The Hebrews will kill the Canaan- 
 ites by thousands; Catholic Spaniards will build 
 the Inquisition for their countrymen; English Prot- 
 estants, under the bloody Elizabeth, will dip their
 
 CONSCIOUS KELIGION AND THE SOUL.' 151 
 
 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 Christen- 
 dom as an act of worship ? This is not done as 
 political economy, but as " Divine service ; " not for 
 the conversion of man, but in the name of God, — 
 one of the few relics of human sacrifice. " Reason 
 is carnal," says one priest, — men accept a palpable 
 absurdity as a "revealed truth;" " Conscience must 
 not be trusted," says another, — and human sacri- 
 fice is readily assented to. Nothing is so unjust, 
 but men, meaning to be pious, will accept and per- 
 form it, if commanded in the name of religion. In 
 such cases even interest is a feeble ally to con- 
 science, 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 
 woman to a mere medium of posterity, or scoffing 
 at nature, and vowing shameful oaths of celibacy. 
 Puritan mothers feared lest they should "love their 
 children too much." How many a man has made 
 his son " pass through the fire unto Moloch ? " The 
 Protestant thinks it was an act of religion in Abra- 
 ham to sacrifice his only son unto Jehovah ; the
 
 152 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 Catholic still justifies the St. Bartholomew mas- 
 sacre. Mankind did not shrink at human sacrifice 
 which was demanded in the name of religion ter- 
 ribly perverted. These facts are enough to show 
 that the religious faculty is the strongest in human 
 nature, and easily snaps all ties which bind us to 
 the finite world, making the lover forswear his bride, 
 and even the mother forget her child. 
 
 See what an array of means is provided for the 
 nurture and development of the religious instinct, — 
 provided by God in the constitution of men and 
 of the universe. All these things about us, things 
 magnificently great, things elegantly little, contin- 
 ually impress mankind. Even to the barbarian 
 Nature reveals a mighty power and a wondrous 
 wisdom, and continually points to God. I do not 
 wonder that men worshipped the several things of 
 the world, at first reverencing the Divine in the 
 emmet or the crocodile. The world of matter is a 
 revelation of fear to the savage in northern climes : 
 he trembles at his deity throned in ice and snow. 
 The lightning, the storm, the earthquake, startle the 
 rude man, and he sees the Divine in the extraor- 
 dinary. 
 
 The grand objects of Nature perpetually con- 
 strain men to think of their Author. The Alps are
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 153 
 
 the great altar of Europe; the nocturnal sky has 
 been to mankind the dome of a temple, starred all 
 over with admonitions to reverence, trust, and love. 
 The Scriptures for the human race are writ in earth 
 and heaven. Even now we say, " An undevout 
 astronomer is mad." What a religious mosaic is 
 the surface of the earth, — 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 im- 
 measurable laugh. To me, the works of men who 
 report the aspects of Nature, like Humboldt, and of 
 such as Newton and Laplace, who melt away the 
 facts, and leave only the laws, the forces of Nature, 
 the ideas and ghosts of things, are like tales of a 
 pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or poetical 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 
 lessons for every day. In cities men tread on an 
 artificial ground of brick or stone, breathe an un- 
 natural air, see the heavens only a handful at a 
 time, think the gas-lights better than the stars, and 
 know little how the stars themselves keep the police 
 of the sky. Ladies and gentlemen in towns see 
 Nature only at second hand. It is hard to deduce
 
 154 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 God from a brick pavement. Yet ever and anon 
 the mould comes out green and natural on the walls, 
 and through the chinks of the sidewalks bursts up 
 the life of the world in many a little plant, which to 
 the microscopic eye of science speaks of the pres- 
 ence of the same Power that slowly elaborates a 
 solar system and a universe. In the country men 
 and women are always in the presence of Nature, 
 and feel its impulse to reverence and trust. Every 
 year the old world puts on new bridal beauty, and 
 celebrates its Whitsunday, — each bush putting its 
 glory on. Spring is our Dominica in Albis. Is not 
 autumn a long All-Saints' day? The harvest is 
 Hallowmass to mankind. How men have marked 
 each annual crisis of the year, — the solstice and the 
 equinox, — and celebrate religious festivals thereon! 
 The material world is the element of communion 
 between man and God. To heedful men God 
 preaches on every mount, utters beatitudes in each 
 little flower of spring. 
 
 Our own nature also reminds us of God. 
 Thoughtful men are conscious of their dependence, 
 their imperfection, their fmiteness, 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 spontane- 
 ously at each great event in the lives of earnest men.
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 155 
 
 When I am sick I become conscious of the Infinite 
 Mother in whose lap I lay my weary head. The 
 lover's eyes see God beyond the maid he loves ; 
 Heaven speaks out of the helpless face which the 
 young mother presses to her bosom ; each new child 
 connects its parents with the eternal duration of 
 human kind. Who can wait on the ebb and flow 
 of mortal life in a friend, and not return to Him who 
 holds that ocean also in the hollow of his hand ! 
 The old man looking for the last time upon the. sun 
 turns his children's face towards the Sun which 
 never sets. Even in cities men do not pause at a 
 funeral or look on a grave without a thought of the 
 eternal life beyond the tomb, and the dependence of 
 rich and poor on the God who is father of body and 
 soul. The hearse obstructs the omnibus of com- 
 merce, and draws the eyes of even the silly and the 
 vain and empty creatures who buzz out their ephem- 
 eral phenomena in wealthy towns, the butterflies of 
 this garden of bricks, and forces them to confront 
 one reality of life, and reverence, though only with 
 a shudder, the Author of all. The undertaker is a 
 priest to preach terror, if no more, to the poor 
 flies of metropolitan frivolity, reminding them at 
 least of the worm. 
 
 The outward material world forms a temple where 
 all invites us to reverence the Soul which inspires 
 it with life ; the spiritual powers within are all in-
 
 156 CONSCIOUS KELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 stinctively astir with feelings infinite. Thus mate- 
 rial nature joins with human nature in natural fel- 
 lowship ; outward occasions and inward means of 
 piety are bountifully given, and man is led to de- 
 velop his religious powers. The soul of man cannot 
 well be still ; religion has always had a powerful 
 activity in the world, and a great influence upon the 
 destiny of mankind. The soul has been as active as 
 the sense, and left its monuments.. 
 
 An element thus powerful, thus well appointed 
 with outward and with inward helps, must have a 
 purpose for the individual and the race commensu- 
 rate with its natural power. The affections tell me 
 it is not good for man to be alone in the body with- 
 out 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.
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 157 
 
 The mind may work without a corresponding ac- 
 tion of the conscience or the heart. You can com- 
 prehend 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 under- 
 stand the value of a man all conscience and will, — 
 nothing but an incarnate moral law, the " categorical 
 Imperative " exhibited in the flesh, with no wisdom 
 and no love. A life domineered over by conscience 
 is unsatisfying, melancholy, and grim. The affec- 
 tions may also have a development without the 
 moral and the mental powers. But what is a man 
 domineered over by his heart ; with no justice, no 
 wisdom, nothing but a lump of good-nature, partial 
 and silly? It is only the rareness of such phe- 
 nomena that makes them bearable. Truth, justice, 
 love, — it is not good for them to be alone ; each 
 loses two thirds of the human power when it expels 
 the sister virtues from it. What God has joined 
 must not be put asunder. 
 
 The religious faculty may be perverted, severed 
 from the rest and made to act alone, with no cor- 
 responding action of the mind, the conscience, and 
 the heart. Attempts are often made to produce this 
 independent development of the soul. It is no new 
 thing to seek to develop piety while you omit its 
 several elements, the intellectual love of truth, the 
 
 14
 
 158 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 moral love of justice, and the affectional love of 
 men. But in such a case what is the value of the 
 "piety" thus produced? The soul acting without 
 the mind goes to superstition and bigotry. It has 
 its conception of God, but of a God that is foolish 
 and silly. Reason will be thought carnal, science 
 dangerous, and a doubt an impiety ; the greatest 
 absurdities will be taught in the name of religion ; 
 the philosophy of some half-civilized, but God-fear- 
 ing people, will be put upon the minds of men as 
 the word of God ; the priest will hate the philoso- 
 pher, and the philosopher the priest; men of able in- 
 tellect will flee off and loathe ecclesiastical piety. 
 If the churches will have a religion without philoso- 
 phy, scholars will have a philosophy without relig- 
 ion. The Roman Church forbid science, burnt Jor- 
 dano Bruno, and reduced Galileo to silence and 
 his knees. So much the worse for the Church. 
 The French philosophy of the last century, its En- 
 cyclopaedia of scoffs at religion, were the unavoid- 
 able counterpart. Voltaire and Diderot took ven- 
 geance for the injustice done to their philosophic 
 forerunners. The fagots of the Middle Ages got 
 repaid by the fiery press of the last generation. 
 
 You may try and develop the soul to the neglect 
 of conscience : — your Antinomian will recognize no 
 moral law : " All things are permissible to the elect ; 
 let them do what they will, they cannot sin, for
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 159 
 
 they are born of God ; the moral law is needless 
 under the Gospel," says he. Religion will be made 
 the pander of wrong, and priests will pimp for 
 respectable iniquity. God is thus represented as 
 unjust, partial, cruel, and full of vengeance. The 
 most unjust things will be demanded in his name ; 
 the laws and practices of a barbarous nation will be 
 ascribed to God, and men told to observe and keep 
 them. Religion will aim to conserve the ritual bar- 
 barities of ruder times. Moral works will be 
 thought hostile to piety, — goodness regarded as of 
 no value, rather as proof that a man is not under 
 the " covenant of grace," but only of works. Con- 
 science will be declared an uncertain guide. No 
 " higher law " will be allowed in religion, — only the 
 interest of the politician and the calculation of the 
 merchant must bear rule in the State. The whim 
 of some priest, a new or an old traditionary whim, 
 must, be the rule in the Church. It will then be 
 taught that religion is for the Sunday and " holy 
 communion ; " business for the week, and daily life. 
 The "most respectable churches" will be such as do 
 nothing to make the world a better place, and men 
 and women fitter to live in it. The catechism will 
 have nothing to do with the conduct, nor prayers 
 with practice. But if the churches will have relig- 
 ion without morals, many a good and conscientious 
 man will go to the opposite extreme, and have
 
 160 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 morals without religion, — will jeer and mock at all 
 complete and conscious piety ; eminently moral men 
 will flee off from the churches, which will be left 
 with their idle mummeries and vain conceits. 
 
 Men sometimes seek to develop the religious ele- 
 ment while they depress the affectiorial. Then they 
 promote fanaticism — hate before God, which so 
 often has got organized in the world. Then God is 
 represented as jealous, partial, loving only a few, 
 and of course Himself unlovely. He sits as a tyrant 
 on the throne of the world, and with his rod of iron 
 rules the nations whom he has created for his glory, 
 to damn for his caprice. He is represented as hav- 
 ing a little, narrow heaven, where he will gather a 
 few of his children, whining and dawdling out a life 
 of eternal indolence ; and a great, wide hell, full of 
 men, demons, and torments lasting for ever and 
 ever. Then, in the name of God, men are bid to 
 have no fellowship with unbelievers, no sympathy 
 with sinners. Nay, you are bidden to hate your 
 brethren of a different mode of religious belief. This 
 fanaticism organizes itself, now into brief and tem- 
 porary activity, to persecute a saint, or to stone a 
 philanthopist ; now into permanent institutions for 
 the defence of heathenism, Judaism, Mohammedan- 
 ism, or Christianity. The fires in which Catholics 
 and Protestants have burnt their brother Christians, 
 the dreadful tortures which savage heathens have in-
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 161 
 
 flicted on the followers of Jesus, have all been 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 senti- 
 ment rioting with ungodly passions of the flesh. 
 The malignant priest looks out of the storm of his 
 hate, and smites men in the name of religion and of 
 God. But then the affectionate man turns off from 
 the God who is "a consuming fire," from the "relig- 
 ion" that scorches and burns up the noblest emo- 
 tions of mankind, and, if others will have a worship 
 without love in the worshippers or the worshipped, 
 he will have love without religion, and philanthropy 
 without God. So, in the desert, the Arab sees the 
 whirlwind coming with its tornado of fiery sand, 
 and hastens from its track, or lies down, he and his 
 camels, till the horrid storm has spent its rage and 
 passed away ; then he rises and resumes his peace- 
 ful pilgrimage with thanks to God. 
 
 How strong is the family instinct ! how beautiful 
 is it when, passion and affection blending together, 
 it joins man and maid into one complete and perfect 
 solidarity of human life, each finding wholeness and 
 
 14*
 
 162 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 enjoyment while seeking only to delight! What 
 beautiful homes are built on marriages like that ! 
 what families of love are born and bred therein ! but 
 take away the affection, the self-denial, the mutual 
 surrender, aggravate the instinctive love to the un- 
 natural selfishness of lust seeking its own enjoyment, 
 heedless of its victim, and how hateful is the beastly 
 conjunction of David, Solomon, Messallina, Moham- 
 med, of Gallic Cassanova, or Moscovian Catharine. 
 Religion bereft of love to men becomes more hateful 
 yet, — a lusting after God. It has reddened with 
 blood many a page of human history, and made the 
 ideal torments of hell a flaming fact in every Chris- 
 tian land. The Catharines of such a religion, the 
 Cassanovas of the soul, are to me more hideous 
 than Bacchanalians of the flesh. Let us turn off 
 our eyes from a sight so foul. 
 
 Piety of mind, the love of truth, is only a frag- 
 ment of piety ; piety of conscience, the love of right, 
 is also fragmentary ; so is love of men, piety of the 
 heart. Each is a beautiful fragment, all three not 
 a whole piety. We want to unite them all with the 
 consciousness of God, into a complete, perfect, and 
 total religion, the piety of mind and conscience, 
 heart and soul, — to love God with all the faculties, 
 — to love Him as truth, as justice, as love, as God, 
 who unites in Himself infinite truth, infinite justice,
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 163 
 
 infinite love, and is the Father of all. We need to 
 do this consciously, to be so wonted to thus loving 
 Him, that it is done spontaneously, without effort, 
 and yet not merely by instinct ; done personally, not 
 against our own consent. Then we want to express 
 this fourfold total piety by our outward morality, in 
 its natural forms and various degrees. 
 
 I mentioned, that in human history the religious 
 faculty had often tyrannized over the other powers 
 of men ; I think it should precede them in its de- 
 velopment, should be the controlling power in every 
 man, the universal force which sways the several 
 parts. In the history of man the soul has done so, 
 but in most perverse forms of action. In the mass 
 of men the religious element is always a little in 
 advance of all the rest. Last Sunday I said that 
 the affections often performed an idealizing and 
 poetizing function in men who found it not in the 
 intellect or the moral sense. In the vast majority of 
 men it is religion that thus idealizes and adorns 
 their life, and gives the rude worshipper an intimate 
 gladness and delight beyond the reach of art. The 
 doctrine of Fate and Foreordination idealizes the 
 life of the Mohammedan ; he feels elevated to the 
 rank of an instrument of God ; he has an inflexible 
 courage, and a patience which bears all that courage 
 cannot overcome. The camel-driver of the Arabian 
 prophet rejoiced in this intimate connection with
 
 164 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 God, a spoke in the wheel of the Unalterable. The 
 thought that Jehovah watched over Israel with spe- 
 cial love, consoled the Hebrews who hung their 
 harps on the willows of Babylon, and sat down and 
 wept ; it brought out of their hearts stories like that 
 of Jonah, Esther, and Daniel, and the sweet Psalms 
 of comfort which the world will not forget to sing. 
 How it has sustained the nation, wandering, exiled 
 and hated, in all the corners of the world! The 
 God of Jacob is their refuge and the Holy One of 
 Israel the joy of their hearts. Faith in God sus- 
 tained and comforted our fathers here in New Eng- 
 land. Their affections went wandering over the 
 waters to many a pleasant home in the dear old 
 island of the sea, and a tear fell on the snow, at the 
 thought that, far over the waters, the first violet was 
 fragrant on a mother's grave ; but the consciousness 
 of God lit a smile in the Puritan's heart which 
 chased the tear from his manly cheek. 
 
 The thought that God sees us, knows us, loves us, 
 idealizes the life of all religious men. How it blunts 
 the edge of pain, takes away the sting of 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 cannot bear? 
 The belief in immortality is so intimately connected 
 with the development of religion, that no nation ever 
 doubted of eternal life. How that idealizes and em-
 
 CONSCIOUS "RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 165 
 
 bellishes all our daily doing and suffering! What a 
 power is there that hangs over me, within a day's 
 march perhaps, nay, within an easy walk of an hour, 
 or a min nte 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 
 everlasting life. There the slave is free from his 
 master ; the weary is at rest ; the needy has no want 
 of bread ; all tears are wiped from every eye ; justice 
 is done ; souls dear to ours are in our arms once 
 more ; the distractions of life are all over ; no injus- 
 tice, no sorrow, no fear. That is the great comfort 
 with the mass of mankind, — the most powerful 
 talisman which enchants them of their weary woe. 
 Men sing Anacreontic odes, amid wine and women, 
 and all the voluptuousness of art, buying a tran- 
 sient jollity of the flesh ; but the Methodist finds poe- 
 try in his mystic hymn to take away the grief of a 
 wound and leave no poison in its place. The rud- 
 est Christian, with a real faith in immortal life, has 
 a means of adorning the world which puts to shame 
 the poor finery of Nicholas and Nebuchadnezzar.
 
 166 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 What are the prizes of wealth, of fame, of genius, 
 nay, of affection, compared with what we all antici- 
 pate erelong ? The worst man that ever lived may 
 find delight overmastering terror here. " I am 
 wicked," he may say ; " God knows how I became 
 so ; his infinite love will one day save me out of my 
 bitterness and my woe!" I once knew a man tor- 
 mented with a partner, cruel and hard-hearted, inge- 
 nious 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 un- 
 sullied by any memory of evil words. 
 
 Religion does not produce its fairest results in 
 persons of small intellectual culture ; yet there it 
 often spreads a charm and a gladness which nothing 
 else can give. I have known men, and still oftener 
 women, nearly all of whose culture had come through 
 their religious activity. Religion had helped their 
 intellect, their conscience, even their affections ; by 
 warming the whole ground of their being, had quick- 
 ened the growth of each specific plant thereof. 
 Young observers are often amazed at this, not 
 knowing then the greener growth and living power 
 of a religious soul. In such persons, spite of lack of 
 early intellectual culture, and continual exclusion 
 from the common means of refinement, you find 
 piety without narrowness, zeal without bigotry, and
 
 CONSCIOUS KELIGION AND THE SOUL. 167 
 
 trust in God with no cant. Their world of observa- 
 tion was not a wide world, not much varied, not 
 rich ; but their religious experience was deep, their 
 consciousness of divine things extended high. They 
 were full of love and trust in God. ,Religion was 
 the joy of their heart, and their portion for ever. 
 They felt that God was about them, immanent in 
 matter, within not less, dwelling in their spirit, a 
 present help in their hour of need, which was their 
 every hour. Piety was their only poetry ; out of 
 ignorance, out of want, out of pain, which lay heavy 
 about them, — a triple darkness that covered the 
 people, — they looked up to heaven, and saw the 
 star of everlasting life, which sent its mild beams 
 into their responsive soul. Dark without, it was 
 all-glorious within. Men with proud intellect go 
 haughtily by these humble souls ; but Mohammeds, 
 Luthers, are born of such a stock, and it is from 
 these little streams that the great ocean of religion is 
 filled full. 
 
 Yet it is not in cases like these that you see the 
 fairest effects of religion. The four prismatic rays 
 of piety must be united into one natural and four- 
 fold beam of light, to shine with all their beauty, 
 all their power; then each is enhanced. I love truth 
 the more for loving justice ; both the more for loving 
 love ; all three the more, when I see them as forms 
 of God ; and in a totality of religion I worship the
 
 168 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 Father, who is truth, justice, and love, who is the 
 Infinite God. 
 
 The affections want a person to cling to; — my 
 soul reveals to me God, without the limitations of 
 human personality ; Him I can love, and not be 
 narrowed by my affections. If I love a limited 
 object, I grow up to the bigness thereof, then stop ; 
 it helps my growth no more. The finiteness of my 
 friend admits no absolute affection. Partial love 
 must not disturb the universal sweep of impersonal 
 truth and justice. The object of the heart must not 
 come between me and the object of mind or con- 
 science, and enfeeble the man. But if you love the 
 Infinite God, it is with all your faculties, which 
 find their complete and perfect object, and you 
 progressively grow up towards him, to be like him. 
 The idea of God becomes continually more, your 
 achievement of the divine becomes more. You 
 love with no divided love ; there is no collision of 
 faculties, the head forbidding what the soul com- 
 mands, the heart working one way and the con- 
 science another. The same Object corresponds to 
 all these faculties, which love Him as truth, as jus- 
 tice, as love, as God who is all in all ; one central 
 sun balances and feeds with fire this system of har- 
 monious orbs. 
 
 Consider the power of religion in a man whose 
 mind and conscience, heart and soul, are all well
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 169 
 
 developed. He has these four forms of piety ; they 
 all unite, each to all, and all to each. His mind 
 gives him knowledge of truth, the necessary con- 
 dition for the highest action of his conscience ; that 
 furnishes him with the idea of justice, which is the 
 necessary condition for the highest action of the 
 affections; they in their development extend to all in 
 their wide love of men ; this affords the necessary 
 condition for the highest action of the soul, which 
 can then love God with absolute love, and, joining 
 with all the other activity of the man, helps the use, 
 development, and enjoyment of every faculty. Then 
 truth has lost its coldness ; justice is not hard and 
 severe ; love is not partial, as when limited to 
 family, tribe, or nation ; but, coextensive with jus- 
 tice, applies to all mankind ; faith is not mystical or 
 merely introversive and quietistic. This fourfold 
 action joins in one unity of worship, in love of God, 
 — love with the highest and conjoint action of all 
 the faculties of man. Then love of the Infinite God 
 is no mystical abstraction, no dreamy sentimental- 
 ism, but the normal action of the entire man, every 
 faculty seeking its finite contentment, and finding 
 also its infinite satisfaction by feeling the life of God 
 in the soul of man. 
 
 In our time, as often before, attempts are making 
 to cultivate the soul, in the narrowest way, without 
 
 15
 
 170 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 developing the other parts of man's spiritual nature. 
 The intellect is called "carnal," conscience "dan- 
 gerous," 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 " ven- 
 erable doctrines" of the Church, — because geolo- 
 gists have swept away the flood, grammarians anni- 
 hilated the tower of Babel, and physiologists brushed 
 off the miracles of the Jews, the Greeks, the Hin- 
 doos, and the Christians, to the same dust-hole of 
 the ages and repository of rubbish. It is complained 
 that " morality is not religious," because it refuses to 
 be comforted with the forms of religious ceremony, 
 and thinks " divine service " is not merely sitting in 
 a church, or listening to even the wisest words. The 
 churches complain also that " philanthropy is not re- 
 ligious," but love of men dissuades us from love of 
 God. The philanthropist looks out on the evils of 
 society, — on the slavery whose symbol is the lash, 
 and the slavery whose symbol is the dollar ; on the 
 avarice, the intemperance, the licentiousness of 
 men ; and calls on mankind in the name of God to 
 put away all this wickedness. The churches say.: 
 "Rather receive our sacraments. Religion has noth- 
 ing to do with such matters." 
 
 This being the case, men of powerful character 
 no longer betake themselves to the Church as their
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 171 
 
 fortress whence to assail the evils of the age, or as 
 their hermitage wherein to find rest to their souls. 
 In" all England there are few men, I think, of 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 Bar- 
 row, and Taylor, and Cudworth, and South ? The 
 great names of English literature at this day, Car- 
 lyle, Hallam, Macaulay, Mill, Grote, and the rest, 
 seem far enough from the Church, or its modes of 
 salvation. The counting-house sends out men to 
 teach political economy, looking always to the 
 kitchen of the nation, and thinking of the stomach 
 of the people. Does the Church send out men of 
 corresponding power to think of the soul of the na- 
 tion, and teach the people political morality ? Was 
 Bishop Butler the last of the great men who essayed 
 to teach Britain from her established pulpit? Even 
 Priestley has few successors in the ranks of religious 
 dissent. The same may be said of Church poets : 
 they are often well-bred ; what one of them is there 
 that was well-born for his high vocation ? 
 
 In the American Church there is the same famine 
 of men. Edwards and Mayhew belonged to a race 
 now extinct, — great men in pulpits. In our litera- 
 ture there are names enough once clerical. The 
 very fairest names on our little hill of the Muses are
 
 172 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 of men once clergymen. Channing is the only one 
 in this country who continued thus to the end of 
 life. A crowd of able men, with a mob of others, 
 press into all departments of trade, into the profes- 
 sion 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 attainments continue in the pulpit. 
 Hence we have strong-minded men in business, in 
 politics, and law, who teach men the measures which 
 seem to suit the evanescent interests of the day, but 
 few in pulpits, to teach men the eternal principles of 
 justice, which really suit the present and also the 
 everlasting interests of mankind. Hence no popular 
 and deadly sin of the nation gets well rebuked by 
 the Church of the Times. The dwarfs of the pulpit 
 hide their diminished heads before the Anakim of 
 politics and trade. The almighty dollar hunts wis- 
 dom, 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 can- 
 not show a single mind which is a guide of the age.
 
 CONSCIOUS KELIGION AND THE SOUL. 173 
 
 The great philosophers 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 re- 
 ligious genius that ever lit the world, and sealed by 
 his martyrdom, is now officially represented by men 
 of vulgar talents, of vulgar aspirations, — to be rich, 
 respectable, and fat, — and of vulgar lives. Hunkers 
 of the Church claim exclusively to represent the mar- 
 tyr 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 charac- 
 ter of Jesus, then there was never so much of it in 
 the world. Spite of the defalcation and opposition 
 of the churches, there is a continual growth in all 
 those four forms of piety. Under the direction of 
 
 15*
 
 174 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 able men, all those fragments of religion are made 
 ready in their several places. In the department of 
 mind, see how much has been done in this last hun- 
 dred years ; man has nearly doubled the intellectual 
 property of the seventeenth century. The early his- 
 tory of mankind is better understood now than by 
 the nations who lived it. What discoveries of 
 science in all that relates to the heavens, to the earth 
 and its inhabitants, mineral, vegetable, animal, hu- 
 man ! In the philosophy of man, how much has 
 been done to understand his nature and his history! 
 In practical affairs, see what wonders have been 
 wrought in a hundred years ; look at England, 
 France, Germany, and America, and see the power 
 of the scientific head over the world of matter, the 
 human power gained by better political organization 
 of the tribes of men. 
 
 In the department of conscience, see what a love 
 of justice develops itself in all Christendom ; see the 
 results of this for the last hundred years ; in the re- 
 form of laws, of constitutions, in the great politi- 
 cal, social, and domestic revolutions of our time. 
 Men have clearer ideas of justice ; they would have 
 a church without a bishop, a State without a king, 
 society without a lord, and a family without a slave. 
 From this troublesome conscience comes the uneasi- 
 ness of the Christian world. A revolution is a na- 
 tion's act of penitence, of resolution, and of prayer,
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 175 
 
 — its agony and bloody sweat. See what a love of 
 freedom there is shaking the institutions of the aged 
 world. Tyrannies totter before the invisible hand of 
 Justice, which, to the terror of the oppressors, writes, 
 " Weighed, and found wanting." So the despot 
 trembles for his guilty throne ; the slave-driver be- 
 gins to fear the God of the man he has kidnapped 
 and enthralled. See the attempts making by the 
 people to break down monopolies, to promote free- 
 dom of intercourse between all nations of the earth. 
 See woman assert her native rights, long held in 
 abeyance by the superior vigor of the manly arm. 
 
 In all that pertains to the affections, there has 
 been a great advance. Love travels beyond the nar- 
 row 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 char- 
 ity that alleviates and the justice that cures ; to heal 
 the drunkard of his fiery thirst ; to reform the crimi- 
 nals 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 be- 
 gin to be taken with the deaf and dumb, the blind, 
 the insane ; even the idiot must be taught. Philan- 
 thropic men, who are freedom to the slave, feet to 
 the lame, eyes to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, 
 would be also understanding to the fool. In what is 
 idly called "an age of faith," the town council of
 
 176 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 Grenoble set archers at the gates, to draw upon 
 strange beggars and shoot them down before the 
 city walls. Look, now, at the New England provi- 
 sion for the destitute, — for the support of their 
 bodies and the culture of their minds. 
 
 No Church leads off in these movements ; eccle- 
 siastical men take small interest therein ; but they 
 come from the three partial forms of piety, the intel- 
 lectual, the moral, and the affectional. We need to 
 have these all united with a conscious love of God. 
 What hinders ? The old ecclesiastical idea of God, 
 as finite, imperfect in wisdom, in justice, and in love, 
 still blocks the way. The God wholly external to 
 the world of matter, acting by fits and starts, is not 
 God enough for science, which requires a uniform, 
 infinite force, with constant modes of action. The 
 capricious Deity, wholly external to the human 
 spirit, — jealous, partial, loving Jacob and hating 
 Esau, revengeful, blasting with endless hell all but a 
 fraction of his family, — this is not God enough for 
 the scientific moralist, and the philanthropist run- 
 ning over with love. They want a God immanent 
 in matter, immanent in spirit, yet infinite, and so 
 transcending both, — the God of infinite perfection, 
 infinite power, wisdom, justice, love, and self-fidelity. 
 This idea is a stranger to the Christian, as to the 
 Hebrew and Mohammedan church ; and so stout 
 men turn off therefrom, or else are driven away with
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 177 
 
 hated names. One day these men will welcome the 
 true idea of God, and have a conscious trust and 
 love of Him to match their science, their justice, and 
 their love of men ; will become the prophets and 
 apostles of the Absolute Religion, finding it wide 
 enough for all truth, all justice, and all love, yea, for 
 an absolute faith in God, in his motives, means, and 
 ends. Then all this science of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, 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 pro- 
 ductive 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 pro- 
 duce on earth, what men bring forth ! Even now 
 the several means are working for this one great 
 end, only not visibly, not with the consciousness of 
 men. 
 
 I do not complain of the " decline of piety." I
 
 178 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 thank God for its increase. I see what has been 
 done, but I look also to what remains to do. I am 
 sure that mankind will do it. God is a master 
 workman ; He made man well, — for an end worthy 
 of God, provided with means quite adequate to that 
 end. No man, not an Isaiah or a Jesus, ever dares 
 prophesy so high but man fulfils the oracle, and 
 then goes dreaming his prophecy anew, and fulfil- 
 ling it as he goes on. If you have a true idea of jus- 
 tice, a true sentiment of philanthropy or of faith in 
 God, which men have not yet welcomed, if you 
 can state your idea in speech, then mankind will 
 stop and realize your idea, — make your abstract 
 thought their concrete thing. Kings are nothing, 
 armies fall before you. The idea sways them in its 
 flight as the wind of summer bows the unripe corn 
 of June. 
 
 This religion will build temples, not of stone only, 
 but temples of living stones, temples of men, fami- 
 lies, communities, nations, and a world. "VVe want 
 no monarchies in the name of God ; we do want a 
 democracy in that name, a democracy which rests 
 on human nature, and, respecting that, reenacts the 
 natural laws of God, the Constitution of the Uni- 
 verse, in the common statutes and written laws of 
 the land. 
 
 We need this religion for its general and its spe- 
 cial purposes ; need it as subjective piety in each of
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 179 
 
 these fragmentary forms, as joined into a totality of 
 religious consciousness ; we need it as morality, 
 keeping the natural laws of God for the body and 
 the spirit, in the individual, domestic, social, na- 
 tional, and general human or cosmic form, the divine 
 sentiment becoming the human act. We need this 
 to heal the vices of modern society, to revolutionize 
 this modern feudalism of gold, and join the rich and 
 poor, the employer and the employed, in one bond 
 of human fellowship ; we need it to break down the 
 wall between class and class, nation and nation, 
 race and race, — to join all classes into one nation, 
 all nations into one great human family. Science 
 alone is not adequate to achieve this ; calculations 
 of interest cannot effect it ; political economy will 
 not check the iron hand of power, nor relax the 
 grasp of the oppressor from his victim's throat. 
 Only religion, deep, wide spread, and true, can 
 achieve this work. 
 
 Already it is going forward, not under the guid- 
 ance of one great man with ideas to direct the 
 march, and mind to plan the structure of the future 
 age, but under many men, who know each his 
 little speciality, all their several parts, while the 
 Infinite Architect foresees and so provides for all. 
 Much has been done in this century, now only 
 half spent; much more is a-doing. But the great- 
 est of its works is one which men do not talk about,
 
 180 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 nor see : it is the silent development of the several 
 parts of a complete piety, one day to be united into 
 a consciousness of the Absolute Religion, and to be 
 the parent of a new church and new State, with 
 communities and families such as the world has 
 hitherto not seen. 
 
 We notice the material works of our time, the 
 industrial activity, the rapid increase of wealth in 
 either England, Old or New. Foolish men deplore 
 this, and would go back to the time when an igno- 
 rant peasantry, clad in sheep-skins, full of blind, in- 
 stinctive 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, squaring into ash- 
 lar, boring, chiselling, mortising, tenoning, all man- 
 ner of beams ; some were rafting it along the coast 
 to Joppa, and yet others teaming it up to Jerusalem. 
 What sweat of horses was there, what lowing of 
 oxen and complaint from the camels! Thousands
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 181 
 
 of men were quarrying stone at Moriah for the foun- 
 dation of the work. Yet only one man compre- 
 hended it all ; the lumberers felling 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 going forward. The girl that weaves 
 muslins at Brussels, 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 philan- 
 thropic maiden who in the dirt of a worldly city 
 lives love which some theologians think is too much 
 for God, — all of these, and thousands more, are get- 
 ting together and preparing the materials for the 
 great temple of man, whose builder and maker is 
 God. You and I shall pass away, but mankind is 
 the true son of God that abideth ever, to whom the 
 Father says continually, " Come up higher." 
 
 I see the silent growth of religion in men. I see 
 that the spiritual elements are a larger fraction of 
 human consciousness than ever before ; that there 
 
 16
 
 182 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 is more of truth, of justice, of love, and faith in God 
 than was ever in the world. As we know and 
 observe the natural laws of man, the constitution of 
 the universe, the more, so will this religion continue 
 to increase, and the results thereof appear in com- 
 mon life, in the individual, domestic, social, national, 
 and universal human form. 
 
 Some men say they cannot love, or even know, 
 God, except in the form of man. God as the In- 
 finite seems to them abstract, and they cannot lay 
 hold on Him until a man fills their corporeal eye 
 and arms, and the affections cling thereto and are 
 blest. So they love Christ, — not the Jesus of his- 
 tory, but the Christ of the Christian mythology, — 
 an imaginary being, an ideal incarnation of God in 
 man. Let them help themselves with this crutch of 
 the fancy, as boys use sticks to leap a ditch or 
 spring a wall ; yet let them remember that the real 
 historical incarnation of God is in mankind, not in 
 one person, but all, and human history is a contin- 
 ual transfiguration. As the Divine seems nearest 
 when human, and men have loved to believe in 
 the union of God and man, so religion is love- 
 liest when it assumes the form of common life, 
 — when daily work is a daily sacrament, and 
 life itself a "psalm of gratitude and prayer of aspi- 
 ration. 
 
 It is Palm Sunday to-day, and men in churches
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 183 
 
 remember what is written of the peasant from 
 Galilee who rode into Jerusalem amid multitudes 
 of earnest men not merely waiting for consolation, 
 but going to meet it half-way, who yet knew not 
 what they did, nor whom they welcomed. As that 
 man went to the capital of a nation which knew 
 him not, so in our time Religion rides her ass-colt 
 into village and town, welcome to many a weary, 
 toiling heart, but ignored and pelted by the succes- 
 sors of such as " took counsel against Jesus, to put 
 him to death." How little do we know! But he 
 that keeps the integrity of his own consciousness, 
 and is faithful to himself day by day, is also faithful 
 to God for eternity, and helps to restore the integ- 
 rity of the world of men. 
 
 The religious actions of old times it is now easy 
 to understand. They left their monuments, their 
 pyramids, and temples which they built, the memory 
 of the wars they fought against their brothers in 
 the dear name of Jesus, or of Allah the Only. But 
 the religious action of this age, not in the old form, 
 — it will take the next generation to understand 
 that. 
 
 My friends, this is a young nation, new as yet ; 
 you and I can do something to mould its destiny. 
 There are millions before us. They will fulfil our 
 prophecy, the truer the fairer. Our sentiment of 
 religion, our ideas thereof, if true, shall bless them
 
 184 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 
 
 in their deepest, dearest life. They will rejoice if 
 we shall break the yokes from off their necks, 
 and rend asunder the old traditionary veil which 
 hides from them their Father's face. All of your 
 piety, partial or total, shall go down to gladden the 
 faces of your children, and to bless their souls for 
 ever and for ever.
 
 VI. 
 
 OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION. — Heb. vi. 1. 
 
 The highest product of a nation is its men ; of 
 you and me is our character, the life which we 
 make out of our time. Our reputation is what we 
 come to be thought of, our character what we come 
 to be. In this character the most important element 
 is the religious, for it is to be the guide and director 
 of all the rest, the foundation-element of human ex- 
 cellence. 
 
 In general our character is the result of three 
 factors, namely, of our Nature, both that which is 
 human, and which we have as men in common 
 with all mankind, and that which is individual, 
 and which we have as Sarah or George, in dis- 
 tinction from all men ; next, of the Educational 
 Forces about us ; and, finally, of our own Will, 
 which we exercise, and so determine the use we 
 
 16*
 
 186 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 make of the two other factors ; for it is for us to 
 determine whether we will lie flat before natural in- 
 stincts and educational forces, or modify their action 
 upon us. 
 
 What is true in general of all culture is true in 
 special of religious education. Religious character 
 is the result of these three factors. 
 
 I suppose every earnest man, who knows what 
 religion is, desires to become a religious man, to 
 do the most of religious duty, have the most of 
 religious rights, and enjoy the most of religious 
 welfare ; to give the most for God, and receive the 
 most from Him. It does not always appear so, 
 yet really is. At the bottom of our hearts we all 
 wish for that. We have been misled by blind 
 guides, who did not always mean to deceive us ; 
 we have often gone astray, led off by our instinc- 
 tive passion in youth, our voluntary calculation in 
 manhood, yet never meaning to deceive ourselves. 
 But there is none of us who does not desire to be 
 a religious man, — at least, I never met one who 
 confessed it, or of whom I thought it true. But of 
 course, they desire it with various degrees of will. 
 
 Writers often divide men into two classes, saints 
 and sinners. I like not the division. The best 
 men are bad enough in their own eyes. I hope 
 God is better pleased with men than we are with
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 187 
 
 ourselves, there are so many things in us all which 
 are there against our consent, — evil tenants whom 
 we cannot get rid of as yet. That smoky chimney 
 of an ill-temper is a torment to poor Mr. Fiery, 
 which he has not had courage or strength to re- 
 move in fifty winters. To " see ourselves as others 
 see us," would often minister to pride and conceit ; 
 how many naughty things, actions and emotions 
 too, I know of myself, which no calumniator ever 
 casts in my teeth. Yet take the worst men whom 
 you can find, — men that rob on the highway with 
 open violence, pirates on the sea, the more danger- 
 ous thieves who devour widows' houses and plunder 
 the unprotected in a manner thoroughly legal, re- 
 spectable, and " Christian," men that steal from the 
 poor; — take the tormentors of the Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion, assassins and murderers from New York and 
 Naples, nay, the family of commissioners who in 
 Boston are willing to kidnap their fellow-citizens for 
 ten dollars a head, and bind them and their posterity 
 for the perennial torture of American slavery ; — 
 even these men would curl and shudder at the 
 thought of being without consciousness of God in 
 the world ; of living without any religion, and dying 
 without any religion. I know some think religion 
 is rather uncomfortable to live by, but the worst of 
 men, as the best, thinks it is a good thing to die 
 with. Men repent of many things on a death-bed ;
 
 188 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 when the storm blows, all the dead bodies are 
 stirred in the bosom of the sea, and no one is then 
 sorry for his efforts to become a religions man. 
 Many a man, who lives in the violation of his per- 
 sonal, domestic, social, national, and general human 
 duties, doubtless contrives to think he is a relig- 
 ious man, and if in the name of Mammon he robs 
 the widow of a pound, he gives a penny to the 
 orphan in the name of God, and thinks he serves 
 each without much offending the other. Thus, 
 kidnappers in these times are "exemplary members" 
 of " Christian churches " where philanthropy gets 
 roundly rated by the minister from week to week, 
 and call themselves " miserable offenders " with the 
 devoutest air. This is not all sham. The men 
 want to keep on good terms with God, and take 
 this as the cheapest, as well as the most respect- 
 able way. Louis the Fifteenth had a private 
 chapel dedicated to the " Blessed Virgin " in the 
 midst of his house of debauchery, where he and 
 his poor victims were said to be " very devout 
 after the Church fashion." Slave-traders and kid- 
 nappers take pains to repel all calumny from their 
 " religions " reputation, and do not practise their 
 craft till " divines " assure them it is patriarchal 
 and even " Christian." I mention these things to 
 show that men who are commonly thought emi- 
 nently atrocious in their conduct and character, yet
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 189 
 
 would not willingly be without religion. I shall 
 take it for granted that all men wish to acquire a 
 religious character. 
 
 I take it this is the Idea of a religious character. 
 It is, first, to be faithful to ourselves, to rule body 
 and spirit, each by the natural law thereof ; to use, 
 develop, and enjoy all the faculties, each in its just 
 proportions, all in harmonious action, developed to 
 the greatest degree which is possible under our 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 use- 
 ful 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, wis- 
 dom, justice, goodness, and holiness, and so a per- 
 fect love of God, a perfect trust in Him, a delight in 
 the Infinite Being of God ; to love him intellectually 
 in the love of truth, morally as justice, affectionally 
 as love, and totally as the Infinite God, Father and
 
 190 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 Mother too of all this world ; so to love God that 
 you have no desire to transcend his law or violate 
 your duty to yourself, your brother, or your God ; so 
 to love Him that there shall be no fear of God, none 
 for yourself, none for mankind, but a perfect confi- 
 dence and an absolute love shall take the place of 
 every fear. In short, it is to serve God by the nor- 
 mal use, development, and enjoyment of every fac- 
 ulty 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- 
 
 * See Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, by Theo- 
 dore Parker, Boston, 1852, Vol. I. p. 407 et seq., where these edu- 
 cational forces are dwelt on at length.
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 191 
 
 mation of the character, and so a special influence in 
 the formation of the religious character ; but as they 
 cannot be trusted for the general work of forming 
 the character, no more can they for this special 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 pos- 
 sess. Not only can it not teach a religion higher 
 than its own, but it hinders you in your attempt to 
 learn a new and better mode of religion. 
 
 For several things we may trust these public edu- 
 cational forces in religion. 
 
 They teach you in the general popular fear of 
 God, and a certain outward reverence which comes 
 of that ; the popular sacraments of our time, — to 
 give your bodily presence in a meeting-house, per- 
 haps to join a sectarian church, and profess great 
 reverence for the Bible. 
 
 They will teach you the popular part of your 
 practical duties, — personal, domestic, social, ecclesi- 
 astical, and political. But of course they can teach 
 you only the popular part. 
 
 They may be relied on to teach the majority of 
 men certain great truths, which are the common 
 property of Christendom, such as the existence of a
 
 192 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 God, the immortality of the soul, the certainty of a 
 kind of retribution, and the like. Then each sect 
 has certain truths of its own which it will commonly 
 teach. Thus the Catholics will learn to reverence 
 the Roman Church ; the Protestants to venerate the 
 Bible ; the Calvinists to believe in the Trinity ; and 
 the Unitarians in the Oneness of God. All the 
 sects will teach a certain decorum, the observance of 
 Sunday, — to honor the popular virtues, to shun the 
 unpopular vices. 
 
 The educational forces tend to produce this effect. 
 You send your boys to the public schools of Boston, 
 they learn the disciplines taught there, — to read, 
 write, and calculate. What is not taught they do 
 not learn. In Saxony the children learn German ; 
 Dutch, in Holland. In the same way the majority 
 of men learn the common religion of the community, 
 and profess it practically in their markets, their 
 houses, their halls of legislature, their courts, and their 
 jails. The commercial newspapers, the proceedings 
 of Congress, the speeches of public men, — these are 
 a part of the national profession of faith, and show 
 what is the actual object of worship, and what the 
 practical creed of the nation. 
 
 But for any eminence of religion you must look 
 elsewhere ; for any excellence of the sentiment, any 
 superiority of the idea, any newness in the form of 
 religion. These educational forces will teach you
 
 CULTUKE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 193 
 
 evanescent principles which seem to suit your pres- 
 ent and partial interests, not eternal principles, which 
 really suit your universal and everlasting interests. 
 In Jerusalem these forces might educate a Gamaliel, 
 — never a Jesus. 
 
 Charles River flows two miles an hour ; chips and 
 straws on its surface, therefore, if there be no wind, 
 will float with that velocity. But if a man in a 
 boat wishes to go ten miles an hour, he must row 
 eight miles more than the stream will carry him. 
 So we are all in the dull current of the popular re- 
 ligion, and may trust it to drift us as fast as it flows 
 itself; we may rise with its flood, and be stranded 
 and left dry when it ebbs out before some popular 
 wickedness which blows from off the shore. The 
 religious educational forces of a commercial town, — 
 you see in the newspapers what religion they will 
 teach you, — in the streets what men they would 
 make. 
 
 These educational forces tend to make average 
 Christians, and their influence is of great value to 
 the community, — like the discipline of a camp. 
 But to be eminent religious men, you must depend 
 on very different helps. Let us look at some of 
 them. 
 
 There are religious men who, by the religious 
 genius they were born to, and the religious use they 
 
 17
 
 194 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 have made thereof, have risen far above the average 
 of Christians. Such men are the first help ; and a 
 most important one they are. It is a fortunate 
 thing when such an one stands in a church whither 
 the public current drives in the people, and to the 
 strength of his nature adds the strength of position. 
 But it is not often that such a man stands in a 
 pulpit. The common ecclesiastical training tends to 
 produce dull and ordinary men, with little individual 
 life, little zeal, and only the inspiration of a sect. 
 However, if a man of religious genius, by some 
 human accident, gets into a pulpit, he is in great 
 danger of preaching himself out of it. Still there 
 are such men, a few of them, stationed along the 
 line of the human, march ; cities set on a hill, which 
 no cloud of obloquy can wholly hide from sight. 
 Nay, they are great beacons on the shore of the 
 world, — light-houses on the headlands of the coast, 
 sending their guidance far out to sea, to warn the 
 mariner of his whereabouts, and welcome him to 
 port and peace. Street-lamps there must be for the 
 thoroughfares of the town, shop-lights also for the 
 grocer and the apothecary ; nay, hand-lights which 
 are made to be carried from room to room and set 
 down anywhere, and numerous they will ever be, 
 each having its own function. This arrangement 
 takes place in the ecclesiastical as well as in munici- 
 pal affairs, for each sect has its street-lamps and its
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 195 
 
 shop-lights to guide men to its particular huckstery 
 of salvation, and little hand-lights to take into cor- 
 ners where the salesmen and the showmen are all 
 ready with their wares. But the great Faros of 
 Genoa, and Eddystone light-houses of religion must 
 always be few and far between ; the world is not 
 yet rich enough in spirit to afford many of this sort. 
 
 Yet even in these men you seldom find the whole- 
 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 
 religion, new truths, which he presents to the minds 
 of men. Analytic, he destroys the ancient errors of 
 theological systems ; thrashes the creeds of the 
 churches with the stout flail of philosophy, and sifts 
 them as wheat, winnowing with a rough wind, great 
 clouds of chaff blow off before his mighty vans. 
 Synthetic, he takes the old truth which stood the 
 critical thrashing and is now winnowed clean ; he 
 joins therewith new truth shot down from God, and 
 welcomed into loving arms; and out of his large 
 storehouse this scribe, well instructed unto the king- 
 dom of heaven, brings forth things new and old, to 
 serve as bread for the living, and seed-corn to gen- 
 erations not born as yet. 
 
 A third, with no eminence of feelings commonly 
 called religious, — none of theological ideas, — will
 
 196 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 have yet an eminence of justice, and teach personal 
 and social morality as no other man. He may turn 
 to a single speciality of morals, and demand tem- 
 perance, chastity, the reform of penal law, the recon- 
 struction of society, the elevation of woman, and 
 the education of the whole mass of men ; or he may 
 turn to general philanthropy, the universality of 
 moral excellence, — it all comes from the same root, 
 and with grateful welcome should be received. 
 
 Each of these teachers will do real service to your 
 souls, — quickening the feelings, imparting ideas, 
 and organizing the results of religion in moral acts. 
 I know a great outcry has been made in all the 
 churches against moral reformers, against men who 
 would apply pure religion to common life, in the 
 special or the universal form. You all know what 
 clamor is always raised against a man who would 
 abolish a vice from human society, or establish a 
 new virtue. Every wolf is interested in the wilder- 
 ness, and hates the axe and the plough of the settler, 
 and would devour his child if he dared. So every 
 nuisance in society has its supporters, whose property 
 is invested therein. Paul found it so at Ephesus, 
 Telemachus at Rome, and Garrison in America. I 
 doubt not the men of Ephesus thought religion 
 good in all matters except the making of silver 
 shrines for Diana ; " there it makes men mad." 
 Men cry out against the advance of morality :
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 197 
 
 "Preach us religion; preach us Christianity, Christ 
 and him crucified, and not this infidel matter of 
 ending particular sins, and abounding in special 
 virtues. Preach us the exceeding sinfulness of sin, 
 'original sin' ' which brought death into the world 
 and all our woe ; ' preach the beauty of holiness, and 
 the like of that, and let alone the actual sins of 
 society, of the shop and the church and the State; — 
 be silent about drunkenness and lust, about war, 
 slavery, and the thousand forms of avarice which 
 we rejoice in. Is it not enough, O Preacher, that 
 we give you of our purse and our corporeal presence, 
 that we weekly confess ourselves ' miserable offend- 
 ers,' with ' no health in us,' and fast, perhaps, twice 
 in our lives, but you must convict us of being idola- 
 ters also ; yea, drunkards, gluttons, impure in youth 
 and avaricious in manhood, — once a Voluptuary, 
 and now a Hunker ! Go to now, and preach us the 
 blessedness of the righteous, Christ and him cruci- 
 fied ! " When money speaks, the Church obeys, 
 and the pulpit preaches for doctrine the command- 
 ments of the pews. 
 
 But it is these very moral reformers, who, in our 
 time, have done more than all others to promote the 
 feeling of piety which the churches profess so much 
 to covet. The new ground of religion which the 
 churches occupy is always won for them by men 
 whom the churches hated. In the last thirty years 
 
 17*
 
 198 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 these " pestilent moral reformers " of New England, 
 I think, have done more to promote love of God, 
 and faith in Him, than all the other preachers of all 
 the churches. Justice is a part of piety ; and such 
 is the instinctive love of wholeness in man, that all 
 attempts to promote justice amongst men lead ulti- 
 mately 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 par- 
 tial men may help us much, teaching his doctrine, 
 kindling our feelings, giving example of his deed, 
 and laying out religious work for us, spreading his 
 pattern before society. Each of these may help us 
 to a partial improvement. But when a man comes 
 who unites them all, he will give us a new start, an 
 inspiration which no other man can give ; not par- 
 tial, but total. 
 
 There are always some such men in the world ; 
 the seed of the prophets never dies out. It comes 
 up in Israel and in Attica ; here a prophet teaching 
 truth as divine inspiration, there a philosopher 
 with his human discovery. So the Herb of Grace
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 199 
 
 springs up in corners where once old houses 
 stood, or wherever the winds have borne the seed ; 
 and, cropped by the oxen, and trodden with their 
 feet, it grows ever fresh and ever new. When 
 Scribes and Pharisees become idolaters at Jerusa- 
 lem, 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 
 perishable old, and all heaven rings with the thunder 
 of the collision. Now and then such a person 
 comes to stand betwixt the living and the dead. 
 " Bury that," quoth he, " it is hopelessly dead, past 
 all resurrection. This must be healed, tended, and 
 made whole." He is a physician to churches sick of 
 sin, as well as with it ; burying the dead, he heals 
 also the sick, and quickens the sound into new and 
 healthy life. But the owners of swine that perish 
 must needs cry out at the loss. 
 
 Yet such a man is not understood in his own 
 generation. A man with a single eminent faculty is 
 soon seen through and comprehended. This man is 
 good for nothing but practice ; that, only for thought. 
 One is a sentimentalist; another, a traveller. But
 
 200 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 when a genius comes eminent in many and most 
 heterogeneous faculties, men do not see through nor 
 comprehend him in a short time. If he has in him- 
 self all the excellence of all the men in the metropo- 
 lis, — why, it will take many a great city to compre- 
 hend him. The young maiden in the story, for the 
 first time hearing her clerical lover preach, wondered 
 that those lips could pray as sweetly as they kissed, 
 but could not comprehend the twofold sacrament, 
 the mystery of this double function of a single 
 mouth. Anybody can see that corn grows in this 
 field, and kale in that ; the roughest clown knows 
 this, but it takes a great many wise men to describe 
 the botany of a whole continent. So is it ever. 
 Here is a religious man, — writing on purely inter- 
 nal emotions of piety, of love of God, of faith in 
 Him, of rest for the soul, the foretaste of heaven. 
 He penetrates the deeps of religious joy, its peace 
 enters his soul, his morning prayer is a psalm deeper 
 than David's, with a beauty more various than the 
 poetic wreath which the shepherd-king gathered 
 from the hill-sides of Jordan or the gardens of 
 Mount Zion. Straightway men say : " This man is 
 a sentimentalist ; he is a mystic, all contemplation, 
 all feeling, — poetical, dreamy, — his light is moon- 
 shine." But erelong our sentimentalist writes of 
 philosophy, and his keen eye sees mines of wisdom 
 not quarried heretofore, and he brings a power of
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 201 
 
 unsunned gold to light. Other men say : " O, this 
 man is nothing but a philosopher, a mere thinker, a 
 mighty head, but with no more heart than Chim- 
 borazo 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 
 deceives men. Straightway men call out : " Icono- 
 clast ! 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 moun- 
 tain in an Alpine avalanche. The same soul which 
 thundered its forked lightning on Scribes and Phari- 
 sees, hypocrites, poured out poetic parables from 
 his golden urn, spreading forth the sunshine of the 
 beatitudes upon friend and foe, and, half in heaven, 
 breathed language wholly thence, — " Father, for- 
 give them, for they know not what they do." 
 
 It is a great thing once in our days to meet with a 
 man of religious genius largely developed into lovely 
 life. He stirs the feelings infinite within us, and 
 we go off quite other than we came. He has not 
 put his soul into our bosom ; he has done better, — 
 has waked our soul in our own bosom. Men may
 
 202 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 go leagues long to listen to such a man, and come 
 back well paid. He gives us seeds of future life 
 for our little garden. So the husbandman journeys 
 far to get a new root or a new seed, to fill his 
 ground with beauty or his home with bread. After 
 we have listened to the life of such a man, the 
 world does not seem so low, nor man so mean ; 
 heaven looks nearer, yet higher too ; humanity is 
 more rich ; if wrong appear yet more shameful, the 
 wrongdoer is not so hopeless. After that I can 
 endure trouble ; my constant cross is not so heavy ; 
 the unwonted is less difficult to bear. Tears are not 
 so scalding to an eye which has looked through 
 them into the serene face of a great-souled man. 
 Men seem friendlier, and God is exceeding dear. 
 The magistrates of Jerusalem marvelled at the con- 
 duct of Peter and John, heedful of the higher law of 
 God, spite of bonds and imprisonment and politi- 
 cians ; but they " took knowledge of them, that they 
 had been with Jesus," and the marvel had its ex- 
 planation. What a dull, stupid thing is a candle ! 
 Touch it with fire, and then look ! "We are all of us 
 capable of being lit when some Prometheus comes 
 down with the spark of God in his right hand. The 
 word of Jesus touched the dull fishermen of Galilee, 
 and they flamed into martyrs and apostles. 
 
 It is a great thing to meet such a man once in 
 your lifetime, to be cheered and comforted in your
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 203 
 
 sad wayfaring, and rilled with new vigor and new 
 faith in the Father of all. After that we thank God, 
 and take courage and fare on our happier way. So 
 a company of pilgrims journeying in the wilderness, 
 dry, foot-sore, and hot, the water all spent in their 
 goat-skins, their camels weary and sick, come to a 
 grove of twelve palm-trees, and an unexpected 
 spring of pure water wells up in the desert. 
 Strightway their weariness is all forgot, their limp- 
 ing camels have become whole once more. Staying 
 their thirst, they fill their bottles also with the cool 
 refreshment, rest in the shadow from the noonday's 
 heat, and then with freshened life, the soreness gone 
 from every bone, pursue their noiseless and their 
 happy march. Even so, says the Old Testament 
 story, God sent his angel down in the wilderness to 
 feed Elias with the bread of heaven, and in the 
 strength thereof the prophet went his forty days, 
 nor hungered not. I suppose some of us have had 
 this experience, and in our time of bewilderment, 
 of scorching desolation, and of sorrow, have come 
 upon our well of water and twelve palm-trees in 
 the sand, and so have marched all joyful through 
 the wilderness. Elias left all the angels of God for 
 you and me, — the friendlier for his acquaintance. 
 
 There is a continual need of men of this stamp. 
 We live in the midst of religious machinery. 
 Many mechanics at piety, often only apprentices
 
 204 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 and slow to learn, are turning the various ecclesiasti- 
 cal 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 Chris- 
 tians, sacked up, and stored away for safe-keeping 
 in the appropriate bins of the great ecclesiastical 
 establishment, and labelled with their party names. 
 You look about in what is dryly called " the relig- 
 ious world." What a mass of machinery is there, 
 of dead timber, not green trees! what a jar and 
 discord of iron clattering upon iron ! Action is of 
 machinery, not of life, and it is green new life that 
 you want. So men grow dull in their churches. 
 What a weariness is an ordinary meeting on one 
 of the fifty-two ordinary Sundays of the year! 
 What a dreary thing is an ordinary sermon of an 
 ordinary minister ! He does not wish to preach 
 it; the audience does not wish to hear it. So 
 he makes a feint of preaching, they a feint of hear- 
 ing him preach. But he preaches not; they hear 
 not. He is dull as the cushion he beats, they as the 
 cushions they cover. A body of men met in a 
 church for nothing, and about nothing, and to hear 
 nobody, is to me a ghastly spectacle. Did you ever 
 see cattle in a cold day in the country crowd to- 
 gether in an enclosure, the ground frozen under their 
 feet, and no hay spread upon it, — huddling together
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 205 
 
 for warmth, hungry, but inactive, because penned 
 up, and waiting with the heavy, slumberous patience 
 of oxen till some man should come and shake down 
 to them a truss of clean bright hay, still redolent of 
 clover and honeysuckle? That is a cheerful sight; 
 and when the farmer comes and hews their winter 
 food out of the stack, what life is in these slumber- 
 ous oxen ! their venerable eyes are full of light, 
 because they see their food. Ah me ! how many a 
 herd of men is stall-hungered in the churches, not 
 getting even the hay of religion, only a little chaff 
 swept off from old thrashing-floors whence the corn 
 which great men beat out of its husk was long since 
 gathered up to feed and bless mankind ! Churches 
 are built of stone. I have often thought pulpits 
 should be cushioned with husks. 
 
 Of all melancholy social sights that one sees, few 
 are so sad as a body of men got together to convert 
 mankind to sectarianism by ecclesiastical machinery, 
 — men dead as timber, cut down, dead and dry ! 
 Out of wire, muslin, thread, starch, gum, and sundry 
 chemicals, French milliners make by dozens what 
 they call roses, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, 
 and the like. Scentless and seedless abortions are 
 they, and no more. What a difference between the 
 flower the lover gathers by the brookside for his 
 maiden's breast, and the thing which the milliner 
 makes with her scissors ; between the forget-me-not 
 
 18
 
 206 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 of the meadow and the forget-me-not of the shop! 
 Such an odds is there betwixt religious men and 
 Christians manufactured in a mill. 
 
 In the factories of England you find men busy all 
 their life in making each the twenty-sixth part of a 
 watch. They can do nothing else, and become 
 almost as much machines as the grindstone which 
 sharpens their drill, or the rammage which carries 
 their file. Much of our ecclesiastical machinery 
 tends to make men into mere fixtures in a mill. So 
 there must be a continual accession of new religious 
 life from without into the churches to keep Chris- 
 tians living. Men of religious genius it is who bring 
 it in. Without them " religion " in cities would be- 
 come mere traditional theology, and " life in God " 
 would be sitting in a meeting-house, and the bap- 
 tism in water from an aqueduct taken for the com- 
 munion of the Holy Ghost. Blessed be God that 
 there are such men not smothered in the surplice of 
 the priest, but still alive in God, and God alive in 
 them! 
 
 In old towns all the water that fills the wells is 
 dead water, — dead and dirty too; the rinsings of 
 the streets, the soakings of stables, the slop of mar- 
 kets, the wash and ofTscouring of the town ; even the 
 filterings of the graveyard settle therein, and the 
 child is fed with its grandsire's bones. Men would 
 perish if left alone, dying of their drink. So, far off
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 207 
 
 in the hills, above the level of the town, they seek 
 some mountain lake, and furnish a pathway that its 
 crystal beauty may come to town. There the living 
 water leaps up in public fountains, it washes the 
 streets, it satisfies the blameless cattle, it runs into 
 every house to cleanse and purify and bless, and men 
 are glad as the Hebrews when Moses smote the 
 fabled rock. So comes religious genius unto men : 
 some mountain of a man stands up tall, and all win- 
 ter long takes the snows of heaven on his shoulders, 
 all summer through receives the cold rain into his 
 bosom ; both become springs of living water at his 
 feet. Then the proprietors of fetid wells and subter- 
 ranean 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 Gal- 
 ilee ? " quoth they. " Art thou greater than our 
 father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank there- 
 of 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 relig- 
 ion. All great teaching is the teacher's inspiration ;
 
 208 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 this is truer in religion than in aught besides, for here 
 all is life, and nothing a trick of mechanism. Let 
 us take all the good that we can gain from the rare 
 men of religious genius, but never submit and make 
 even them our lords ; teachers ever, let them never 
 be masters. 
 
 Then there are religious books, such as waken the 
 soul by their direct action, — stirring us to piety, 
 stirring us to morality, — books in which men of 
 great religious growth have garnered up the expe- 
 rience of their life. Some of them are total, — for all 
 religion; some partial, — for the several specialities 
 thereof. These books are sacks of corn carried from 
 land to land, to be sown, and bear manifold their 
 golden fruit. There are not many such in the world. 
 There are few masterpieces of poetry in all 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, hornblende, slate, and coal ; and 
 common minerals by heaps ; reptiles and fishes done 
 in stone; only here and there an emerald; and dia- 
 monds are exceeding rare. So is it with gems of 
 holy thought. Some psalms are there from the 
 Bible, though seldom a whole one that is true to the 
 soul of man, — now and then an oracle from a He-
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 209 
 
 brew prophet, full of faith in God, a warrior of piety, 
 — which keep their place in the cabinet of religion, 
 though two or three thousand years have passed by 
 since their authors ceased to be mortal. But the 
 most quickening of all religious literature is still 
 found in the first three Gospels of the New Testa- 
 ment, — in those dear beatitudes, in occasional flow- 
 ers of religion, — parable and speech. The beati- 
 tudes will outlast the pyramids. Yet the New Tes- 
 tament 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, — mark- 
 ed 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 com- 
 forted 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 collec- 
 tions of hymns. The religious influence of Words- 
 worth'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 
 
 18*
 
 210 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 littleness of men abont him, he had yet an exceed- 
 ing 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 un- 
 faltering piety, adorning a little village of New 
 England with his fragrant life, has sent a great 
 religious influence io many a house in field and 
 town, and youths and maids rejoice in his electric 
 touch. I will leave it to posterity to name his 
 name, — the most original, as well as religious, of 
 American writers. 
 
 But the great vice of what is called "religious 
 literature" is this. It is the work of narrow- 
 minded men, sectarians, and often bigots, who 
 cannot see beyond their own little partisan chapel ; 
 men who know little of any thing, less of man, and 
 least of all of real religion. What criticism do 
 such men make on noble men? The criticism 
 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 
 powerful men hate religion itself; at least hate 
 its name. It bows weak men ' down till they trem-
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 211 
 
 ble and fear all their mortal life. I lack words to 
 express my detestation of this trash, — concocted 
 of sectarian cant and superstitious fear. I trem- 
 ble when I think of the darkness it spreads over 
 human life, of the disease which it inoculates man- 
 kind 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 Cate- 
 chism. They have done more, it seems to me, to 
 retard the religious development of Christendom, 
 than all the ribald w r orks of confessed infidels, from 
 Lucian, the king of scoffers, down to our own days. 
 The American Tract Society, with the best inten- 
 tions in the world, it seems to me is doing more 
 damage to the nation than all the sellers of intoxi- 
 cating drink and all the prostitutes in the land ! 
 
 Some books on religious matters are the work 
 of able men, men well disciplined, but yet con- 
 taminated 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 w 7 ere Baxter and Edwards and many more, 
 — Protestant and Catholic, Christian, Hebrew, 
 Buddhist, and Mahometan. All these books should 
 be read with caution and distrust. Still a wise 
 man, with a religious spirit, in the religious liter- 
 ature of the world, from Confucius to Emerson, 
 may find much to help his growth.
 
 212 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 After the attainment of manlier years in piety, 
 other works, not intentionally religious, will help a 
 man greatly. Books of science, which show the 
 thought of God writ in the world of matter ; books 
 of history, which reveal the same mind in the 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 
 history, leaving only immortal spirit; he studies the 
 law, the mode of action, of these forces, and this 
 spirit, which make up the material and the human 
 world ; and I see not how he can fail to be filled 
 with reverence, with trust, with boundless love of 
 the Infinite God who devised these laws of mat- 
 ter and of mind, and thereby bears up this marvel- 
 lous universe of things and men. Science also 
 has its New Testament. The beatitudes of phi- 
 losophy are profoundly touching ; in the exact 
 laws of matter and of mind the great Author of the 
 world continually says, " Come unto me, all ye that 
 labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." 
 
 The study of Nature is another great help to the
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 213 
 
 cultivation of religion. Familiarity with the grass 
 and the trees teaches us deeper lessons of love and 
 trust than we can glean from the writings of Fene- 
 lon and Augustine. What lessons did Socrates, 
 Jesus, and Luther learn from the great Bible of God, 
 ever open before mankind ! It is only indirectly 
 that He speaks in the sights of a city, — the brick 
 garden with dioecious fops for flowers. But in the 
 country all is full of God, and the eternal flowers of 
 heaven seem to shed sweet influence on the perisha- 
 ble blossoms of the earth. Nature is full of religious 
 lessons to a thoughtful man. The great sermon of 
 Jesus was preached on a mountain, which preached 
 to him as he to the people, and his figures of speech 
 were first natural figures of fact. But the religious 
 use to be made of natural objects would require a 
 sermon of itself. 
 
 The great reliance for religious growth must not 
 be on any thing external ; not on the great and liv- 
 ing souls whom God sends, rarely, to the earth, to 
 water the dry ground with their elocmence, and 
 warm it with their human love ; nor must it be on 
 the choicest gems of religious thought, wherein 
 saints and sages have garnered up their life and left 
 it for us. We cannot rely on the beauty or the 
 power of outward Nature to charm our wandering 
 soul to obedience and trust in God. These things
 
 214 CULTUKE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 may jostle us by the elbow when we read, warn us 
 of wandering, or of sloth, and open the gate, but we 
 must rely on ourselves for entering in. By the aid 
 of others and our own action we must form the ideal 
 of a religious man, of what he ought to be and do, 
 under our peculiar circumsteftices. To form this 
 personal ideal, and fit ourselves thereto, requires an 
 act of great earnestness on our part. It is not a 
 thing to be done in an idle hour. It demands the 
 greatest activity of the mightiest mode of mind. 
 But what a difference there is between men in 
 earnestness of character! Do you understand the 
 " religion " of a frivolous man ? With him it is all 
 a trifle ; the fashion of his religion is of less concern 
 than the fashion of his hat or of the latchet of his 
 shoes. He asks not for truth, for justice, for love, — 
 asks not for God, cares not. The great sacrament 
 of religious life is to him less valuable than a flask 
 of Rhenish wine broke on a jester's head, i'he spe- 
 cific 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 un- 
 certain fit ; and the giving and the taking of what 
 was called a " heart " was like buying a quantity of
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 215 
 
 poison weed to turn to empty smoke. They were 
 " fearfully and wonderfully made for each other." 
 So have I seen a silly man give a bad coin to a beg- 
 gar in the streets. 
 
 I know there are those whose practical religion is 
 only decency. They have no experience of religion, 
 but the hiring of a seat in a church where pew and 
 pulpit both invite to sleep, — whose only sacrifice is 
 their pew-tax ; their single sacrament but bodily 
 presence in a church. There are meeting-houses 
 full of such men, which ecclesiastical upholsterers 
 have furnished with pulpit, and pew, and priest, 
 objects of pity to men with human hearts ! 
 
 "When an earnest young man offers a woman his 
 heart and his life and his love, asking her for her 
 heart and her life and her love, it is no easy hour to 
 man or maid. The thought of it takes the rose 
 out of the young cheek, gives a new lustre to the 
 eye which has a deeper and mysterious look, and a 
 terrible throbbing to the heart. For so much de- 
 pends upon a word that forms or else misshapes so 
 much in life, and soul and sense are clamoring for 
 their right. The past comes up to help create the 
 future, and all creation is new before the lover's eye, 
 and all 
 
 " The floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."
 
 216 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 So is it in some great hour when an earnest man 
 holds communion with himself, seeking to give and 
 take with God, and asks : " What ought I in my 
 life to be and do ? " Depend upon it, only to the 
 vulearest of men is it a common hour. I will not 
 say that every earnest man has his one enamored 
 hour of betrothing himself to religion. Some have 
 this sudden experience, and give themselves to piety 
 as they espouse a bride found when not looked for, 
 and welcomed with a great swelling of the heart 
 and prophetic bloomings of the yearning soul. 
 Others go hand in hand therewith as brother and 
 sister, through all their early days in amiable amity 
 which sin has never broke and seldom jarred ; and 
 so the wedlock of religion is as the acquaintance 
 which began in babyhood, was friendship next at 
 home and school, and slowly under tranquil skies 
 grew up and blossomed out at last to love. This is 
 the common way, — an ascent without a sudden 
 leap. If bred as religious children, you grow up re- 
 ligious men. But under the easiest of discipline, I 
 think, every earnest man has his time of trial and of 
 questioning, when he asks himself, " Shall I serve 
 the soul by a life of piety ; or shall I only serve the 
 flesh, listing in the popular armada of worldliness 
 to do battle in that leprous host ? That, I say, is a 
 time of trial.
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 217 
 
 Let us suppose some earnest man forms the true 
 ideal of religion, — of his duty to himself, his brother, 
 and his God. He is next to observe and attend to 
 himself, making his prayer a practice, and his ideal 
 dream an actual day of life. Here he is to watch 
 and scan himself, to see what causes help, and what 
 hinder him in his religious growth. We have 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 
 peril 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 affec- 
 tion, and his self-respect, of his regard for God, and 
 drives him naked through a dirty world. Let a man 
 know in what guise the tempter comes, and when, 
 and he will not suffer his honor to be broken through. 
 For this purpose, in the earlier period of life, or later 
 when placed in positions of new peril, it is well to 
 ask at the close of every day, " What have I done 
 
 19
 
 218 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 that is wrong, — what have I said, or thought, or 
 felt ? What that is right ? " It is well thus to ori- 
 ent yourself before your Idea and your God, and see 
 if there be any evil thing in you. This is needful 
 until the man has gained complete possession of 
 every limb of his body and of each faculty of his 
 spirit, and can use them each after its own law in 
 his particular position. Then he will do right with 
 as little trouble as he walks about his daily work. 
 His life will sanctify itself. 
 
 Do you know how artists make their great pic- 
 tures ? 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 wan- 
 dering now. New forms of beauty spring into life 
 at the bidding of his imagination, — so flowers at 
 touch of spring. Erelong he has his idea, compos- 
 ite, gathered from many a form of partial beauty, 
 and yet one ; a new creation never seen before. 
 Thus in his seething mind Phidias smelts the several 
 beauty of five hundred Spartan maids into his one 
 Pallas- Athena, born of his head this time, a grand 
 eclecticism of loveliness. So Michael devised his 
 awful form of God creating in the Vatican ; and 
 Raphael his dear Cecilia, sweetest of pictured saints, 
 — so fair, she drew the angels down to see her sing,
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 219 
 
 and ears were turned to eyes. Now the artist has 
 formed his idea. But that is not all. Next, he must 
 make the idea that is in his mind a picture in the 
 eyes of men ; his personal fiction must become a 
 popular fact. So he toils over this new work for 
 many a weary day, and week, and month, and year, 
 with penitential brush oft painting out what once 
 amiss he painted in, — for even art has its error, the 
 painter's sin, and so its remorse ; the artist is made 
 wiser by his own defeat. At last his work stands 
 there complete, — the holy queen of art. Genius is 
 the father, of a heavenly line ; but the mortal mother, 
 that is Industry. 
 
 Now as an artist, like Phidias, Angelo, or Ra- 
 phael, 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 igno- 
 rance ; so the man who would be religious must 
 hold his creative act of prayer, to set the great ex- 
 ample 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
 
 220 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 and the unconquerable will to be the image of a 
 perfect man ; the comparison of your actual day 
 with your ideal dream ; the rising forth, borne up 
 on mighty pens, to fly towards the far heaven of 
 religious joy. Fast as you learn a truth, moral, 
 affectional, or religious, apply the special truth to 
 daily life, and you increase your piety. So the best 
 school for religion is the daily work of common life, 
 with its daily discipline of personal, domestic, and 
 social duties, — the daily work in field or shop, mar- 
 ket 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 ap- 
 pliances 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 indus- 
 try to be also religious men, — what noble images 
 of God it would make us ! ay, what blessed men. 
 Even in the special qualities of fiddler, lawyer, 
 smith, we should be more ; for general manhood is 
 the stuff we make into tradesmen of each special 
 craft, and the gold which was fine in the ingot is 
 fine also in the medal and the coin. 
 
 You have seen a skilful gardener about his work. 
 He saves the slips of his pear-trees, primings from
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 221 
 
 his currant-bush ; he watches for the sunny hours in 
 spring to air his passion-flower and orange-tree. 
 How nicely he shields his dahlias from the wind, 
 his melons from the frost! Patiently he hoards cut- 
 tings 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, mel- 
 lows 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 re- 
 solve. Water the choicest, tender plants; one 
 day the little seedling you have planted with your 
 tears shall be a broad tree, and under its arms you 
 
 19*
 
 222 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 will screen your head from the windy storm and 
 the tempest ; — yes, find for your bones a qviiet 
 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 hun- 
 gered 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 spirit- 
 ual experience is also bought by errors of the soul. 
 Penitence is but the cry of the child hurt in his 
 fall. Shame on us that we affect the pain so oft, 
 and only learn to whine an unnatural contrition ! 
 Sure I am that the grief of a soul, self-wounded, the 
 sting of self-reproach, the torment of remorse for 
 errors of passion, for sins of calculation, may 
 quicken any man in his course to manhood, till he 
 runs and is not weary. The mariner learns wisdom 
 from each miscarriage of his ship, and fronts the 
 seas anew to triumph over wind and wave.
 
 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 223 
 
 Some of you are young men and maidens. You 
 look forward to be husbands and wives, to be fath- 
 ers and mothers, some day. Some of you seek to 
 be rich, some honored. Is it not well to seek to 
 have for yourself a noble, manly character, to be re- 
 ligious men and women, with a liberal development 
 of mind and conscience, heart and soul? You will 
 meet with losses, trials, disappointments, in your 
 business, in your friends and families, and in your- 
 selves ; many a joy will also smile on you. You 
 may use the sunny sky and its falling weather alike 
 to help your religious growth. Your time, young 
 men, what life and manhood you may make of that. 
 
 Some of you are old men, your heads white with 
 manifold experience, and life is writ in storied 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 un- 
 dented, the joys that cannot fade away ? 
 
 For old or young, there is no real and lasting 
 human blessedness without this. It is the sole suf-
 
 224 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 
 
 ficient and assured defence against the sorrows of 
 the world, the disappointments and the griefs of life, 
 the pains of unrequited righteousness and hopes 
 that went astray. It is a never-failing fountain of 
 delight. 
 
 " There are briers besetting every path, 
 That call for patient care ; 
 There is a cross in every lot, 
 
 And an earnest need for prayer; 
 But the lowly heart that trusts in Thee 
 Is happy everywhere."
 
 VII. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF 
 STRENGTH. 
 
 THE LORD IS THE STRENGTH OF MY LIFE. Ps. XXVli. 1. 
 
 There are original differences of spiritual strength. 
 I mean of intellectual, moral, affectional, and relig- 
 ious power ; these depend on what may be called 
 the natural spiritual constitution of the individual. 
 One man is born with a strong spiritual constitu- 
 tion, another with a weak one ! So one will be 
 great, and the other, little. It is no shame in this 
 case, no merit in that. Surely it is no more merit 
 to be born to genius than to gold, to mental more 
 than to material strength ; no more merit to be born 
 to moral, affectional, and religious strength than to 
 mere intellectual genius. But it is a great conve- 
 nience to be born to this large estate of spiritual 
 wealth, a very great advantage to possess the high-
 
 226 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 est form of human power, — eminence of intellect, 
 of conscience, of the affections, of the soul. 
 
 There is a primitive intellectual difference amongst 
 men which is ineffaceable from the man's mortal 
 being, as the primary qualities are ineffaceable from 
 the atoms of matter. It will appear in all the life of 
 the man. Even great wickedness will not wholly 
 destroy this primeval loftiness of mind. Few men 
 were ever better born in respect to intellect than 
 Francis Bacon and Thomas Wentworth, — " the 
 great Lord Verulam " and " the great Earl of Straf- 
 ford : " few men ever gave larger proof of superior 
 intellect, even in its highest forms of development, 
 of general force and manly vigor of mind ; few ever 
 used great natural ability, great personal attain- 
 ments, and great political place, for purposes so self- 
 ish, mean, and base. Few ever fell more com- 
 pletely. *Yet, spite of that misdirection and abuse, 
 the marks of greatness and strength appear in them 
 both to the very last. Bacon was still " the wisest, 
 brightest," if also " the meanest of mankind." I 
 know a great man may ruin himself; stumbling is 
 as easy for a mammoth as a mouse, and much more 
 conspicuous ; but even in his fall his greatness will 
 be visible. The ruin of a colossus is gigantic, — its 
 fragments are on a grand scale. You read the size 
 of the ship in the timbers of the wreck, fastened 
 with mighty bolts. The Tuscan bard is true to na-
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 227 
 
 ture as to poetry in painting his odious potentates 
 magnificently mighty even in hell. Satan fallen 
 seems still " not less than archangel ruined" ! 
 
 I do not deny this natural and ineffaceable 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 training will make the shrub-oak a tree-oak ; no 
 agriculture swell a cape to a continent. But I do 
 mean to say, that religion, conscious piety, will 
 increase the actual strength of the great and of the 
 little ; that through want of religious culture the 
 possibility of strength is diminished in both the little 
 and the great. 
 
 Not only does religion greaten the quantity of 
 power, it betters its quality at the same time. So 
 it both enlarges a man's general power for himself 
 or his brother, and enhances the mode of that power, 
 thus giving him a greater power of usefulness and a 
 greater power of welfare, more force to delight, more 
 force to enjoy. This is true of religion taken in its 
 wide sense, — a life in harmony with myself, in 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
 
 228 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 faculty of the spirit, every limb of the body, and 
 every portion of material or social power. 
 
 Without this conscious religious development, it 
 seems to me that no strength or greatness is 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 ham- 
 mer which smites it, because there is the same solid- 
 ity in the nether anvil which bears up, as in the 
 upper hammer which bears down. It takes as much 
 solidity to bear the blow as to give it ; only one is 
 solidity active, the other merely passive. 
 
 Religion increases the general strength and 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
 
 SOUKCE OF STRENGTH. 229 
 
 nature. So it is action according to my nature, not 
 against it ; it is the agreement of my finite will with 
 the Infinite WiLl which controls the universe and 
 provides for each portion thereof. 
 
 Now, to use a thing against its nature, to abuse it, 
 is ultimately to fail of the natural end thereof, and 
 waste the natural means provided for the attain- 
 ment of the end. A boat is useful to journey with 
 by sea, a chaise to journey with by land ; use each 
 for its purpose, you enjoy the means and achieve 
 the end. But put off to sea in your chaise, or put 
 on to land in your boat, you miss the end, — you 
 lose also the means. This is true of the natural, as 
 of the artificial instruments of man ; of his limbs, 
 as of his land-carriages or sea-carriages. Hands are 
 to work with, feet to walk on ; the feet would make 
 a poor figure in working, the hands an ill figure in 
 essaying to walk. The same rule holds good in 
 respect to spiritual faculties as in bodily organs. 
 Passion is not designed to rule conscience, but to 
 serve ; conscience not to serve passion, but to rule. 
 If passion rule and conscience serve, the end is not 
 reached, you are in a state of general discord with 
 yourself, your brother, and your God ; the means 
 also fail and perish ; conscience becomes weak, the 
 passion itself dies from the plethora of its indul- 
 gence ; the whole man grows less and less, till he 
 becomes the smallest thing he is capable of dwind- 
 
 20
 
 230 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 ling into. But if conscience rule and passion serve, 
 all goes well ; you reach the end, — welfare in gen- 
 eral, harmony with yourself, concord with your 
 brother, and unity with your God; you keep the 
 means, — conscience and passion are each in posi- 
 tion, and at their proper function ; the faculties 
 enlarge until they reach their entire measure of pos- 
 sible growth, and the whole man becomes the great- 
 est 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 
 torments that are used to put down new forms of 
 religion, or extinguish the old. While men believe in 
 the divinity of matter, they try suspected persons 
 by exposure to the elements, — walking over redhot 
 ploughshares, holding fire in the naked hand, or 
 plunging into water. All new forms of religion 
 must pass through the same ordeal, and run the 
 gauntlet betwixt bishops, priests, inquisitors; be- 
 tween scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites. See 
 how faithfully the trial has been borne. Men nat- 
 urally shrink from pain ; the stout man dreads the 
 toothache, he curls at the mention of the rheuma- 
 tism, and shivers at the idea of an ague ; how sud-
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 231 
 
 denly he drops a piece of burning paper which 
 would tease his hand for a minute! But let a 
 man have religion wakened in his heart, and be 
 convinced that it is of God, let others attempt to 
 drive it out of him, and how ready is he to bear all 
 that malice can devise or tyranny inflict! The 
 thumb-screws and the racks, the whip, the gallows, 
 and the stake, — the religious man has strength to 
 bear all these; and Cranmer holds his right arm, 
 erring now no more, in the flame, till the hand drops 
 off in the scalding heat. You know the persecu- 
 tions of Peter and Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen, 
 the trials of early Christians, — Ignatius, Polycarp, 
 Justin, Irenseus, and the rest. They all went out to 
 preach the form of religion themselves had practised, 
 and enjoyed in their own souls. What could they 
 offer men as an inducement to conversion ? The 
 common argument at this day, — respectability, a 
 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 con- 
 siderably different. They could offer their converts 
 hunger, and nakedness, and peril, and prison, and
 
 232 
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 the sword ; ay, and the scorn of relatives and the 
 contemporaneous jeer of a cruel world. But " the 
 word of God grew and prevailed." The nice vo- 
 luptuary, the dainty woman, too delicate to set 
 foot upon the ground, became converted, and then 
 they could defy the axe of the headsman and the 
 tormentor's rack. Unabashed they stood before 
 wild beasts; ay, they looked in the face of the 
 marshals and commissioners and district judges of 
 those times, — men who perverted law and spit on 
 justice with blasphemous expectoration, — and yet 
 the religious soul did not fear ! 
 
 In the Catholic Church this is Saint Victorian's 
 Day. Here is the short of his story. He was an 
 African nobleman of Adrumetum, governor of Car- 
 thage with the Roman title of Proconsul, the wealth- 
 iest man in the province of Africa. He was a 
 Catholic ; but Huneric, the king of the Vandals in 
 Africa, was an Arian, and in the year four hundred 
 and eighty began to persecute the Catholics. He 
 commanded Victorian to continue the persecution, 
 offering him great wealth and the highest honors. 
 It was his legal obligation to obey the king. 
 " Tell the king that I trust in Christ," said the 
 Catholic proconsul; u the king may condemn me 
 to the flames, to wild beasts, to any tortures, I shall 
 never renounce the Church." He was put to the 
 most tormenting tortures, and bore them like a
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 233 
 
 man. Others met a similar death with the same 
 steadiness of soul. Even the executioners felt the 
 effect of such heroism of endurance. " Nobody," 
 said they, " embraces our religion now ; everybody 
 follows the example of the martyrs." 
 
 The Catholic Church tried the same weapons 
 against heretics that had been first found wanting 
 when turned against the early ' Christians. The 
 tyrant, with the instinct of Pharaoh, seeks to de- 
 stroy the male children, the masculine intellect, con- 
 science, affections, soul. Then a new race of Pauls 
 and Justins springs up ; a new Ignatius, Polycarp, 
 and Victorian, start into life. The Church may 
 burn Arnaldo da Brescia, Savonarola, Huss ; — what 
 profits it ? The religion which the tyrant persecutes 
 makes the victim stronger than the victor ; then it 
 steals into the heart of the people, and as the wind 
 scatters the martyr's ashes far and wide, so the spec- 
 tacle 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, 
 commonly called Lord Claverhouse. He lived 
 about two hundred years ago in England and Scot- 
 land, one of that brood of monsters which still dis- 
 
 20*
 
 234 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 grace mankind, and, as vipers and rattlesnakes, 
 seem born to centralize and incarnate the poison 
 of the world. An original tormentor, if there had 
 never been any cruelty he would have invented it, 
 of his own head. Had he lived in New England 
 in this time, he would doubtless have been a United 
 States commissioner under the Fugitive Slave 
 Bill, perhaps a judge or a marshal; at any rate, a 
 slave-hunter, a kidnapper in some form ; and of 
 course he would now be as much honored in this 
 city as he then was in Edinburgh and London, 
 and perhaps as well paid. Well, Lord Claver- 
 house had a commission to root out the Covenant- 
 ers 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 eigh- 
 teen ; — she was comely to look upon. Her name 
 was Margaret. Graham ordered her to be tied 
 to a stake in the sea at low-water, and left to drown 
 slowly at the advance of the tide. It was done : 
 and his creatures — there were enough of them in 
 Scotland, as of their descendants here, — his com- 
 missioners, his marshals, and his attorneys — sat 
 down on the shore to watch the end of poor Mar- 
 garet. It was an end not to be forgotten. In a 
 clear, sweet voice she sung hymns to God till the 
 waves of the sea broke over her head and floated
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 235 
 
 her pious soul to her God and his heaven. Had 
 Scotland been a Catholic country there would have 
 been another Saint Margaret, known as the 
 
 " Genius of the shore 
 In her large recompense, who would be good 
 To all that wander in that perilous flood." 
 
 You all know what strength of endurance relig- 
 ion gave to Bunyan and Fox, and their compeers 
 the Quakers, in Boston as well as England ; to 
 the Mormons in Missouri, and in all quarters of 
 Christendom. Religion made these men formi- 
 dably strong. The axe of the tormentor was as 
 idle to stay them as the gallows to stop a sun- 
 beam. This power of endurance is general, of all 
 forms of religion. It does not depend on what is 
 Jewish in Judaism, or Christian in Christianity, but 
 on what is religious in religion, what is human in 
 man. 
 
 But that is only a spasmodic form of heroism, — 
 the reaction of human nature against unnatural evil. 
 You see religion producing the same strength to 
 endure sufferings which are not arbitrarily imposed 
 by cruel men. The stories of martyrdom only bring 
 out in unusual forms the silent heroism which works 
 unheeded in society every day. The strength is 
 always there ; oppression, which makes wise men 
 mad, in making religious men martyrs, only finds 
 and reveals the heroism ; it does not make it, more
 
 236 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 than the stone-cutter makes the marble which he 
 hews into the form his thought requires. The he- 
 roism is always there. So there is always enough 
 electricity in the air above this town to blast it to 
 atoms and burn it to cinders. Not a babe could be 
 born without it ; not a snow-drop bloom ; yet no 
 one heeds the silent force. Let two different 
 streams of air, one warm, the other cold, meet here, 
 the lightning tells of the reserved power which 
 hung all day above our heads. 
 
 I love now and then to look on the strength of 
 endurance which religion gives the most heroic 
 martyrs. Even in these times the example is 
 needed. Though the fagot is only ashes now, 
 and the axe's edge is blunt, there are other forms 
 of martyrdom, bloodless yet not less cruel in motive 
 and effect. But I love best to see this same strength 
 in lovelier forms, enduring the common ills of life, — 
 poverty, sickness, disappointment, the loss of friends, 
 the withering of the fondest hopes of mortal men. 
 One is occasional lightning, thundering and grand, 
 but transient ; the other is daily sunshine which 
 makes no noisy stir on any day, but throughout the 
 year is constant, creative, and exceeding beautiful. 
 
 Did you never see a young woman with the 
 finest faculties, every hope of mortal success crushed 
 in her heart; see her endure it all, the slow torture 
 which eats away the mortal from the immortal, with
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 237 
 
 a spirit still unruffled, — with a calm cheerfulness 
 and a strong trust in God ? We all have seen such 
 things, — the loveliest forms of martyrdom. 
 
 Did you never see a young man with large 
 faculties, fitting him to shine among the loftiest 
 stars of this our human heaven, in the name of 
 duty forego his own intellectual culture for the 
 sake of a mother, a sister, or a father dependent 
 upon his toil, and be a drudge when he might else 
 have been a shining light ; and by the grace of 
 religion do it so that in all of what he counted 
 drudgery he was kinglier than a king? Did you 
 never see the wife, the daughter, or the son of a 
 drunkard sustained by their religion to bear sor- 
 rows to which Nebuchadnezzar's sevenfold-heat- 
 ed furnace were a rose-garden, — bear it and 
 not complain, — grow sweeter in that bitterness ? 
 There are many such examples all about us, and 
 holy souls go through that misery of torture clean 
 as sunlight through the pestilential air of a town 
 stricken with plague. So the pagan poets tell a 
 story of the fountain Arethusa, which, for many a 
 league, ran through the salt and bitter sea, all the 
 way from Peloponnesus to Trinacria, and then 
 came up pure, sweet, and sparkling water, far off 
 in Ortygia, spreading greenness and growth in the 
 valley where the anemone and asphodel paid
 
 238 
 
 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 back their beauty to the stream which gave them 
 life. 
 
 Such are daily examples of the fortitude and 
 strength to suffer which religion gives. When we 
 look carelessly on men in their work or their play, 
 busy in the streets or thoughtful in a church, we 
 think little of the amount of religion there is in 
 these human hearts ; but when you need it in times 
 of great trial, then it comes up in the broad streets 
 and little lanes of life. Disappointment is a bitter 
 root, and sorrow is a bitter flower, and suffering is 
 a bitter fruit, but the religious soul makes medi- 
 cine thereof, and is strengthened even by the poi- 
 sons of life. So out of a brewer's drears 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 ac- 
 cording to their natural law, they act harmoniously, 
 and all grow strong. Besides this, the religious 
 man has a confidence in his God ; he knows there 
 is the Infinite One, who has foreseen all and pro-
 
 SOURCE OP STRENGTH. 239 
 
 vided for all, — provided a recompense for all the 
 unavoidable suffering of his children here. If you 
 know that it is a part of the purpose of the Infinite 
 Father that you must suffer to accomplish your 
 own development, or the development of mankind, 
 yet understand that the suffering must needs be 
 a good for you, — then you will not fear. "The 
 flesh may quiver as the pincers tear," but you 
 quiver not ; the will is firm, and firm is the un- 
 conquerable trust. "Be still, O flesh, and burn!" 
 says the martyr to the molecules of dust that form 
 his chariot of time, and the three holy children of 
 the Hebrew tale sing psalms in their fiery furnace, 
 a Fourth with them ; and Stephen in his stoning 
 thinks that he sees his God, and to Paul in his 
 prison there comes a great, cheering light; — yes, 
 to Bunyan, and Fox, and Latimer, and John Rog- 
 ers, in their torments ; to the poor maiden stifled 
 by the slowly strangling sea ; to her whose crystal 
 urn of love is shattered at her feet ; to the young 
 man who sees the college of his dream fade off 
 into a barn ; and the mother, wife, or child who 
 sees the father of the family bloat, deform, and 
 uglify himself into the drunkard, and, falling into 
 the grave, crush underneath his lumbering weight 
 all of their mortal hopes. Religion gives them all 
 a strength to surfer, and be blessed by the trials they 
 endure. There are times when nothing outward
 
 240 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 is left but suffering. Then it is a great thing to 
 have the stomach for it, the faith in God which 
 disenchants the soul of pain. Did not Jesus, in 
 the Gospel, have his agony and his bloody sweat, 
 the last act of that great tragedy? did not re- 
 ligion come, an angel, to strengthen him, and all 
 alone, deserted, forsaken, he could say, " I am not 
 alone, for the Father is with me ? " 
 
 " The darts of anguish fix not where the seat 
 Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified 
 By acquiescence in the Will supreme, 
 For time and for eternity, by Faith, 
 Faith absolute in God, including Hope, 
 And the defence that lies in boundless love 
 Of His perfection ; with habitual dread 
 Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 
 Impatiently, ill done or left undone, 
 To the dishonor of His holy Name. 
 Soul of our souls and safeguard of the world ! 
 Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart. 
 Restore their languid spirits, and recall 
 Their lost affections unto Thee and Thine. 
 
 " Come labor, when the worn-out frame requires 
 Perpetual sabbath ; come disease and want, 
 And sad exclusion through decay of sense ; 
 But leave me unabated trust in Thee ; — 
 And let Thy favor to the end of life 
 Sustain me with ability to seek 
 Repose and hope among eternal things, 
 Father of earth and heaven ! and I am rich, 
 And will possess my portion in content."
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 241 
 
 See this same strength in another form, — the 
 power to do. Religion not only gives the femi- 
 nine capacity to suffer, but the masculine capabil- 
 ity to do. The religious man can do more than 
 another without religion, who is his equal in other 
 respects ; because he masters and concentrates his 
 faculties, making them work in harmony with each 
 other, in concord with mankind, in unity with 
 God; and because he knows there is a God who 
 works with him, and so arranges the forces of the 
 universe, that every wrong shall be righted, and 
 the ultimate well-being of each be made sure of 
 for ever. Besides, he has a higher inspiration and 
 loftier motive, which strengthen, refine, and enno- 
 ble him. Adam Clarke tells us how much more of 
 mere intellectual labor he could perform after his 
 conversion than before. Ignatius Loyola makes 
 the same confession. They each attribute it to 
 the technical peculiarity of their sectarianism, to 
 Methodism or Catholicism, to Christianity; but 
 the fact is universal, and applies to religion under 
 all forms. It is easily explained by the greater 
 harmony of the faculties, and by the higher motive 
 which animates the man, the more certain trust 
 which inspires him. An earnest youth in love 
 with an earnest maid, — his love returned, — gets 
 more power of character from the ardor of her 
 affection and the strength of his passion; and 
 
 21
 
 242 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 when the soul of man rises up in its great act of 
 love to become one with God, you need not marvel 
 if the man is strong. " I can do all things," says 
 Paul, "through Christ who strengtheneth me." 
 Buddhists and Hebrews and Mohammedans say 
 the same of their religion. 
 
 Then religion helps a man to two positive things, 
 — first, to a desire of the right ; next, to a progres- 
 sive knowledge and practice of the right. Jus- 
 tice is always power ; whoso has that commands 
 the world. A fool in the right way, says the prov- 
 erb, can beat a wise man in the wrong. The 
 civilized man has an advantage over the savage, in 
 his knowledge of Nature. He can make the forces 
 of the universe toil for him : the wind drives his 
 ship ; the water turns his mill, spins, and weaves 
 for him ; lightning runs his errands ; steam carries 
 the new lord of Nature over land or ocean without 
 rest. He that knows justice, and does it, has the 
 same advantage over all that do it not. He sets 
 his mill on the rock, and the river of God for ever 
 turns his wheels. 
 
 The practice of the right in the common affairs 
 of life is called Honesty. An honest man is one 
 who knows, loves, and does right because it is 
 right. Is there any thing but this total integrity 
 which I call religion, that can be trusted to keep a
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 243 
 
 man honest in small things and great things, in 
 things private and things public ? I know nothing 
 else with this power. True it is said, " Honesty 
 is the best policy ; " and as all men love the best 
 policy, they will be honest for that reason. But to 
 follow the best policy is a very different thing from 
 being honest; the love of justice and the love of 
 personal profit or pleasure are quite different. But 
 is honesty the best policy ? Policy is means to 
 achieve a special end. If the end you seek be the 
 common object of desire, — if it be material pleas- 
 ure 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 approba- 
 tion, — 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 reputa- 
 tion. 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
 
 244 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 his pay in money and ecclesiastical reputation. 
 The honesty of Jesus brought him to the bar of 
 Herod and Pilate ; their best policy nailed him to 
 the cross. Was it good policy in Paul to turn 
 Christian ? His honesty brought him to weariness 
 and painf ulness, to cold and nakedness, to stripes 
 and imprisonment, to a hateful reputation on the 
 earth. Honesty the best policy for personal selfish- 
 ness ! Ask the " Holy Alliance." Honesty is the 
 means to self-respect, to growth in manly qualities, 
 to high human welfare, — a means to the kingdom 
 of heaven. When men claim that honesty is the 
 best policy, is it this which they mean ? 
 
 I will not say a man cannot be honest without 
 a distinct consciousness of his relation to God ; but 
 I must say, that consciousness of God is a great 
 help to honesty in the business of a shop, or the 
 business of a nation ; and without religion, uncon- 
 scious if no more, it seems to me honesty is not 
 possible. 
 
 By reminding me of my relation to the universe, 
 religion helps counteract the tendency to selfishness. 
 Self-love is natural and indispensable ; it keeps the 
 man whole, — is the centripetal power, representing 
 the natural cohesion of all the faculties. Without 
 that, the man would drop to pieces, as it were, and 
 be dissolved in the mass of men, as a lump of clay 
 in the ocean. Selfishness is the abnormal excess of
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 245 
 
 this self-love. It takes various forms. In the period 
 of passion, it commonly shows itself as intemperate 
 love of sensual pleasure ; in the period of ambition, 
 as intemperate love of money, of power, rank, or 
 renown. There are as many modes of selfishness 
 as there are propensities which may go to excess. 
 Self-love belongs to the natural harmony of the 
 faculties, and is a means of strength. Selfishness 
 comes from the tyranny of some one appetite, which 
 subordinates the other faculties of man, and is a 
 cause of weakness, a disqualification for my duties 
 to myself, to my brother, and my God. Now the 
 effort to become religious, working in you a love of 
 man and of God, a desire of harmony with yourself, 
 of concord with man and unity with Him, dimin- 
 ishes selfishness, develops your instinctive self-love 
 into conscious self-respect, into faithfulness to your- 
 self, and so enlarges continually the little ring of 
 your character, and makes you strong to bear the 
 crosses and do the duties of daily life. 
 
 Much of a man's ability consists in his power to 
 concentrate his energies for a purpose ; in power to 
 deny some private selfish lust — of material pleasure 
 or profit — for the sake of public love. I know of 
 naught but religion that can be trusted to promote 
 this power of self-denial, which is indispensable to 
 a manly man. There can be no great general 
 power without this ; no strong character that lies 
 
 21*
 
 246 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 deep in the sea, and holds on its way through sun- 
 shine and through storm, and unabashed by tem- 
 pests, 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 mushroom 
 and the toadstool to the oak, under whose shade the 
 fungus springs up in a rainy night to blacken and 
 perish in a day. Self-denial is indispensable to a 
 strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes 
 only of a religious stock, — from consciousness of ob- 
 ligation and dependence upon God. 
 
 In youth the seductions of passion lead us easily 
 astray ; in manhood there are the more dangerous 
 seductions of ambition, when lust of pleasure gives 
 way to lust of profit ; and in old age the man is 
 often the victim of the propensities he delicately 
 nursed in earlier life, and dwindles down into the 
 dotage of a hunker or a libertine. It is easy to yield 
 now to this, and then to that, but both mislead us 
 to our partial and general loss, to weakness of power 
 and poverty of achievement, to shipwreck of this 
 .great argosy of mortal life. How many do you see 
 slain by lust of pleasure ! How many more by lust 
 of power, — pecuniary, social, or political power ! 
 Religious self-denial would have kept them strong 
 and beautiful and safe.
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 247 
 
 Religion gives a man courage. I do not mean 
 the courage which comes of tough muscles and rigid 
 nerves, — of a stomach which never surrenders. 
 That also is a good thing, the hardihood of the 
 flesh; let me do it no injustice. But I mean the 
 higher, moral courage, which can look danger and 
 death in the face unawed and undismayed ; the 
 courage that can encounter loss of ease, of wealth, 
 of friends, of your own good name ; the courage 
 that can face a world full of howling and of scorn, 
 — ay, of loathing and of hate ; can see all this with 
 a smile, and, suffering it all, can still toil on, con- 
 scious of the result, yet fearless still. I do not mean 
 the courage that hates, that smites, that kills, but 
 the calm courage that loves and heals and blesses 
 such as smite and hate and kill ; the courage that 
 dares resist evil, popular, powerful, anointed evil, 
 yet does it with good, and knows it shall thereby 
 overcome. That is not a common quality. I think 
 it never comes without religion. It belongs to all 
 great forms of religious excellence ; it is not specifi- 
 cally Hebrew or Christian, but generically human 
 and of religion under all forms. 
 
 Without this courage a man looks little and 
 mean, especially a man otherwise great, — with 
 great intellect, and great culture, and occupying a 
 great place. You see all about you how little such 
 men are worth ; too cowardly to brave a temporary
 
 248 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 defeat, they are swiftly brought to permanent ruin. 
 Look over the long array of brilliant names in 
 American, English, universal history, and see what 
 lofty men, born to a large estate of intellect, and 
 disciplined to manifold and brilliant mental power, 
 for lack of courage to be true amid the false, and 
 upright amid the grovelling, have laid their proud 
 foreheads in the dust, and mean men have tri- 
 umphed over the mighty ! 
 
 Did you never read here in your Old Testament, 
 here in your New Testament, here in your Apocry- 
 pha, 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 
 corporal courage grew more firmly knit, as men 
 learned by bitter blows who crossed swords with 
 them on the battle field ; but their moral courage 
 grew giant high. You know how they dwelt here,
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 249 
 
 amid what suffering, yet with what patience ; how 
 they toiled to build up these houses, these churches, 
 and the institutions of the State. 
 
 With this honesty, this self-denial, there comes 
 a total energy of character which nothing else can 
 give. You see what strength religion gives ; what 
 energy and continual persistence in their cause it 
 gave to men like the Apostles, like the martyrs and 
 great saints of the Christian Church, of the Hebrew, 
 the Mohammedan, and the Pagan Church. You 
 may see this energy in a rough form in the soldiers 
 of the English revolution, in the " Ironsides " of 
 Cromwell ; in the stern and unflinching endurance 
 of the Puritans of either England, the Old or the 
 New, who both did and suffered what is possible to 
 mortal flesh only when it is sustained by a religious 
 faith. But you see it in forms far more beautiful, 
 as represented by the missionaries who carry the 
 glad tidings of their faith to other lands, and endure 
 the sorrows of persecution with the longsuffering 
 and loving-kindness we worship in the good God. 
 This is not peculiar to Christianity. The Buddhists 
 had their missionaries hundreds of years before 
 Jesus of Nazareth first saw the light. They seem 
 to have been the first that ever went abroad, not to 
 conquer, but convert ; not to get power, or wealth, 
 or even wisdom, but to carry the power of the mind,
 
 250 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 the riches of conscience and the affections, and the 
 wisdom of the soul ; and in them you find the total 
 energy which religious conviction gives to manly 
 character in its hour of peril. But why go abroad 
 to look for this ? Our own streets exhibit the same 
 thing in the form of the philanthropist. The Sister 
 of Charity treads the miserable alleys of Naples and 
 of Rome ; the Catholic Visitor of the Poor winds 
 alonsr in the slousrhs and slums of St. Giles's Parish 
 in Protestant London, despised and hated by the 
 well-endowed clergy, whose church aisles are never 
 trodden save by wealthy feet ; and in the mire of the 
 street, in the reeking squalidness of the cellars, 
 where misery burrows with crime, he labors for their 
 bodies and their souls. In our own Boston do 
 I not know feeble-bodied and delicate women, 
 who with their feet write out the gospel of 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 commen- 
 surate culture, of easy estate, once respected, flat- 
 tered, and courted too by their associates, but now 
 despised for their justice and their charity, hated 
 for the eminent affection which makes them look
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 251 
 
 after the welfare of the criminal, the drunkard, the 
 pauper, the outcast, and the slave, and feared for the 
 power with which they assert the rights of man 
 against the wrongs which avarice inflicts. See the 
 total energy which marks these men, whose life is a 
 long profession of religion, — their creed writ all 
 over the land, and their history a slow martyrdom, 
 — and you may see the vigor which comes of relig- 
 ious 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 crfurches and traditions, and a 
 worldly world filled with covetousness and priest- 
 craft. You will say to them all, " Stand by, and 
 let alone ; I must be true to myself, and thereby 
 true to my God." 
 
 I think nothing but religion can give any man this 
 strength to do and to suffer ; that without this, the
 
 252 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 men of greatest gift and greatest attainment too, 
 do not live out half the glory of their days, nor 
 reach half their stature. Look over the list of the 
 world's great failures, and see why Alexander, 
 Caesar, and Napoleon came each to such an un- 
 timely and vulgar end ! Had they added religion 
 to their attainments and their conquests, what em- 
 pires of welfare would they not hold in fee, and give 
 us to enjoy! Without it, the greatest man is a 
 failure. With it, the smallest is a triumph. He 
 adds to his character; he enjoys his strength; he 
 delights while he rejoices, growing to more vigorous 
 manliness ; and when the fragrant petals of the spirit 
 burst asunder and crowd off this outer husk of the 
 body, and bloom into glorious humanity, what a 
 strong and flamelike flower shall blossom there for 
 everlasting life. 
 
 There are various forms of strength. Wealth is 
 power ; office is power ; beauty is power ; knowl- 
 edge is power. Religion tob is power. This is the 
 power of powers, for it concentrates, moves, and 
 directs aright the force of money, of office, of beauty, 
 and of knowledge. Do men understand this ? 
 They often act and live as if they knew it not. 
 Look at our "strong men," not only mighty by 
 position in office or on money, but mighty by na- 
 ture. In what are they strong ? In a knowledge of 
 the passions and prejudices of men ; of the interests
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 253 
 
 and expedients and honors of the day ; in a knowl- 
 edge of men's selfishness and their willingness to 
 sin ; in experienced skill to use the means for cer- 
 tain selfish, low, and ignoble ends, organizing a con- 
 trivance against mankind ; in power of speech and 
 act to make the better seem the worse, and wrong 
 assume the guise of right. It is in this that our 
 " great men " are chiefly great. They are weak in 
 a knowledge of what in man is noble, even when he 
 errs ; they know nothing of justice ; they care little 
 for love. They know the animal that is in us, not 
 the human, far less the godlike. Mighty in cunning, 
 they are weak in knowledge of the true, the just, the 
 good, the holy, and the ever-beautiful. They look 
 up at the mountains and mock at God. So they 
 are impotent to know the expedient of eternity, 
 what profits now and profits for ever and ever. 
 Blame them not too much ; the educational forces 
 of society breed up such men, as college lads all 
 learn to cipher and to scan. 
 
 In the long run of the ages see how the religious 
 man distances the unreligious. The memory of him 
 who seeks to inaugurate cunning into the state 
 for his own behoof, is erelong gibbeted before the 
 world, and his lie is cast out with scorn and hate ; 
 and the treason of the traitor to mankind is remem- 
 bered only with a curse ; while the wisdom of the 
 
 •22
 
 254 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 wise, the justice of the upright, the love of the affec- 
 tionate, and the piety of holy-hearted men, incar- 
 nated in the institutions of the State, live and will 
 for ever live, long after Rome and America have 
 gone to the ground. Tyrants have a short breath, 
 their fame a sudden ending; and the power of the un- 
 godly, like the lamp of the wicked, shall soon be put 
 out ; their counsel is earned, but it is carried head- 
 long. He that seeks only the praise of men gets 
 that but for a day ; while the religious man, who 
 seeks only to be faithful to himself and his God, and 
 represent on earth the absolute true and just, all 
 heedless of the applause of men, lives, and will for 
 ever live, in the admiration of mankind, and in " the 
 pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove." 
 Champollion painfully deciphers the names of the 
 Egyptian kings who built the pyramids and swayed 
 millions of men. For three thousand years that 
 lettered Muse, the sculptured stone, in silence kept 
 the secret of their name. But the fugitive slave, a 
 bondsman of that king, with religion in his heart, 
 has writ his power on all the continents, and dotted 
 the name of Moses on every green or snow-clad 
 isle of either sea. That name shall still endure 
 when the last stones of the last pyramid become gas 
 and exhale to heaven. The peasant of Galilee has 
 embosomed his own name in the religion of man-
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 255 
 
 kind, and the world will keep it for ever. Foolish 
 men ! building your temple of fame on the expedi- 
 ents of to-day, and of selfishness and cunning and 
 eloquent falsehood! That shall stand, — will it? 
 On the frozen bosom of a northern lake go, build 
 your palace of ice. Colonnade and capital, how 
 they glitter in the light when the northern dawn is 
 red about the pole, or the colder moon looks on 
 your house of frost ! " This will endure. Why 
 carve out the granite, and painfully build upon the 
 rock ? " Ah me ! at the touch of March, the 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. Re- 
 ligion is a good thing in itself ; it is the betrothed 
 bride of the spirit of man, to be loved for her own 
 sweet sake ; not a servant, to be taken for use
 
 256 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 alone. But it is the means to this end, — to 
 strength of character, enlarging the little and great- 
 ening the great. 
 
 You and I shall have enough to suffer, most of 
 us ; enough to do. We shall have our travail, our 
 temptation, perhaps our agony, but our triumph too. 
 
 O smooth-faced youths and maids ! your cheek 
 and brow yet innocent of stain, do you believe you 
 shall pass through life and suffer naught ? Trial 
 will come on you; — you shall have your agony 
 and bloody sweat. Seek in the beginning for the 
 strength which religion brings you, and you shall 
 indeed be strong, powerful to suffer, and mighty also 
 to do. I will not say your efforts will keep you 
 from every error, every sin. When a boy, I might 
 have thought so ; as a man, I know better, by ob- 
 servation and my own experience too. Sin is an 
 experiment that fails ; a stumble, not upright walk- 
 ing. Expect such mishaps, errors of the mind, 
 errors of the conscience, errors of the affections, 
 errors of the soul. What pine-tree never lost a 
 limb? The best mathematician now and then 
 misses a figure, must rub out his work and start 
 anew. The greatest poet must often mend a line, 
 and will write faulty verses in the heat of song. 
 Milton has many a scraggy line, and even good 
 Homer sometimes nods. What defects are there in
 
 SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 257 
 
 the proud works of Raphael and Angelo ! Is there 
 no failure in Mozart ? In such a mighty work as 
 this of life, such a complication of forces within, of 
 circumstances without, such imperfect guidance as 
 the world can furnish in this work, I should expect 
 to miss the way sometimes, and with painful feet, 
 and heart stung by self-reproach, or grief, or shame, 
 retread the way shamefaced and sad. The field 
 that is ploughed all over by Remorse, driving his 
 team that breathe fire, yields not a faint harvest 
 to the great Reaper's hand. Trust in God will do 
 two things. It will keep you from many an error ; 
 nobody knows how great a gain this is, till he has 
 tried. Then it will help you after you have wan- 
 dered from the way. Fallen, you will not despair, 
 but rise the wiser and the stronger for the fall. Do 
 you look for strength to your brave young hearts, 
 and streams of life to issue thence ? Here you 
 shall find it, and with freshened life pass on your 
 way. Religion is the Moses to smite the rock in 
 the wilderness. 
 
 O bearded men, and women that have kept and 
 hoarded much in your experienced hearts ! you also 
 seek for power to bear your crosses and to do your 
 work. Religion will be the strength of your life, — 
 you may do all things through this. When the last 
 act of the mortal drama draws towards a close, you 
 
 22*
 
 258 CONSCIOUS RELIGION. 
 
 will look joyfully to the end, not with fear, but with 
 a triumphant joy. 
 
 There are two great things which make up the 
 obvious part of life, — to do, to suffer. Behind both 
 as cause, and before each as result, is one thins: 
 greater, — to be. Religion is true Being, normal 
 life in yourself, in Nature, in men, and in God.
 
 VIII. 
 
 OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF JOY, 
 
 I WILL GO UNTO GOD, MY EXCEEDING JOY. — Ps. xliii. 4. 
 
 Joy is not often mentioned in religious books. 
 It is sometimes thought to have no place in relig- 
 ion ; at least none here and now. The joy of the 
 religious man is thought to be chiefly in the future. 
 Keligion 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 emi- 
 nently 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 intoler- 
 able burden to the children. Look at the pictures
 
 260 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 of those men, so bony and gaunt and grim ; of the 
 women, so austere and unloving in their look. The 
 unjoyous characteristics of Puritanism still cleave to 
 us, and color our mode of religion at this day, and, 
 spite of ourselves, taint our general philosophy and 
 view of life. 
 
 The Catholic Church is less serious, less in ear- 
 nest with religion, than the Church of the Puritans, 
 — less moral and reliant on God than the Protestant 
 Church in general, — so it seems to me; but even 
 there little room is left for joy. Their richest music 
 is a Miserere, not an Exidtemus or a Te Deum. 
 The joyous chanting of Christmas, of Easter, and 
 of Pentecost is inferior to the sad wail of Palm-Sun- 
 day and Good- Friday. The Stabat Mater and the 
 Dies Irce are the most characteristic hymns of the 
 Catholic Church. The paintings and statues are 
 chiefly monuments of woe, — saints in their tor- 
 ments, Jesus in his passion ; his stations are stations 
 of affliction, and the via sacra of his life is painted 
 as a long via dolorosa ; God is represented as a 
 Thunderer, distinguished chiefly by self-esteem and 
 destructiveness. 
 
 Take the Christian Church as a whole, from its 
 first day to this, study all expressions of the religious 
 feeling and thought of Christendom, in literature, 
 painting, and music, it is strangely deficient in joy. 
 Religion is unnatural self-denial ; morality is sym-
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 261 
 
 bolized by a celibate monk, eating parched pease 
 and a water-cress ; piety, by a joyless nun. The 
 saints of the Christian Church, Catholic and Prot- 
 estant, are either stern, heroic men, who went first 
 and foremost on a field of battle, to peril their lives, 
 men whose heroism was of iron, — and they have 
 never been extolled above their merit, — or else 
 weeping men, sentimental, sickly, sad, sorrowful, 
 and afraid. Most preachers would rather send away 
 their audience weeping, than with a resolute, a 
 cheerful, and a joyous heart. Yet nothing is easier 
 to start from a multitude than a tear. Cotton 
 Mather, in his life of his kinsman, Nathaniel, a 
 pious clergyman who died young, mentions as his 
 crowning merit the fulness of his fastings, the abun- 
 dant mortifications he needlessly imposed upon him- 
 self, his tear-stained face. Smiles are strange phe- 
 nomena in a church ; sadness and tears are therein 
 at home. 
 
 Even the less earnest sects of America, calling 
 themselves " Liberal Christians," whose ship of 
 souls does not lie very deep in the sea of life, seem 
 to think joy is not very nearly related to religion. 
 The piety of a round-faced and joyous man is 
 always a little suspected. The Cross is still the 
 popular symbol of Christianity, and the type of the 
 saint is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, 
 having no form or comeliness. Sermons of joy you
 
 262 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 seldom hear ; the voice of the pulpit is mainly a 
 whine ; its flowers are nightshade, and its psalms a 
 Miserere. 
 
 Everybody knows what joy is, — a certain sense 
 of gladness and of pleasure, a contentment and a 
 satisfaction, sometimes noisily breaking into tran- 
 sient surges of rapture, sometimes rolling with the 
 tranquil swell of calm delight. It is a state which 
 comes upon any particular faculty, when that finds 
 its natural gratification. So there may be a partial 
 joy of any one faculty, or a total joy of the whole 
 man, all the faculties normally developed and nor- 
 mally 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 un- 
 der favorable circumstances will achieve, a complete 
 and total joy for all men. 
 
 There is no man wholly destitute of some par- 
 tial and transient joy; for if all the conditions need- 
 ful to the welfare of each faculty of mind, or to each 
 appetite, were wanting, then, part by part, the man 
 would perish and disappear. On the other hand, no 
 man, I think, has ever had a complete, total, and 
 permanent enjoyment of every part of his nature. 
 That is the ideal to which we tend, but one not
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 263 
 
 capable of complete attainment in a progressive 
 being. For if the ideal of yesterday has become 
 the actual of to-day, to-morrow we are seized with 
 manly disquiet and unrest, and soar up towards 
 another ideal. 
 
 We have all more or less of joy, the quantity and* 
 quality differing amazingly amongst men. There 
 are as many forms of joy as there are propensities 
 which hunger and thirst after their satisfaction. 
 What a difference in the source whence men derive 
 their customary delight. 
 
 Here is a man whose whole joy seems to come 
 from his body ; not from its nobler senses, offering 
 him the pleasures of the ear and the eye, but from 
 the lower parts of the flesh, imbruted now to pas- 
 sions 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 eat- 
 ing and drinking, or of any other merely animal 
 satisfaction. Such joys cannot raise man far. If 
 one had his chief delight in fine robes, the taste 
 would rather degrade him. Yet these two appetites, 
 for finery in food and finery in dress, have doubtless 
 done their part to civilize mankind. It is surely 
 better for the race to rejoice in all the sumptuous 
 delicacies of art, than to feed precariously on wild 
 acorns which the wind shakes down. The foolish 
 fondness for gay apparel has served a purpose.
 
 264 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 Nay, so marvellous is the economy of God in his 
 engineering of the world, that no drop of waste 
 water runs over the dam of the universe ; and as 
 the atom which now sparkles in the rainbow, the 
 next minute shall feed a fainting rose, so even these 
 sensual desires have helped to uplift mankind from 
 mere subordination to the material world. 
 
 There is another man whose chief joy is not 
 merely bodily, but yet resides in his selfish appe- 
 tites, in his lust of money, or lust of power. I pass 
 by the joy of the miser, of the ambitious politician, 
 of the pirate and the kidnapper. They are so well 
 known amongst us that you can easily estimate 
 their worth. 
 
 Now and then we find men whose happiness 
 comes almost wholly from pure and lofty springs, 
 from the high senses of the body or the high facul- 
 ties of the spirit, — joys of the mind, of the con- 
 science, 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 little ones ; sheep and oxen intent upon 
 their grassy bread; reapers under a hedge enjoying 
 their mid-day meal, reposing on sheaves of corn 
 new cut. All this is nature ; the element of neces-
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 265 
 
 sity consecrates the meal. Artistic pictures of such 
 scenes are always attractive. But pictures or de- 
 scriptions of feasts — where the design is not to 
 satisfy a natural want, but where eating and drink- 
 ing 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 marvel- 
 lous 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, every- 
 day duties of life, in works of benevolence or justice, 
 in the delight of love, in contemplation, or in prayer, 
 — this can touch us all. We like the quality of 
 such delight, and love to look on men in such a 
 mood of joy. I need only refer to the most admired 
 paintings of the great masters, Dutch or Italian, and 
 to the poetry which chronicles the mortal modes of 
 high delight. The spiritual element must subordi- 
 nate the material, in order to make the sensual joy 
 welcome to a nice eye. In the Saint Cecilia of Ra- 
 phael, 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." 
 
 23
 
 266 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 The joy of a New England miser, gloating over 
 extortions which even the law would cough at, the 
 delight of a tyrant clutching at power, of a Boston 
 kidnapper griping some trembling slave, or counting 
 out the price of blood which a wicked government 
 bribes him withal, — that would hardly be accept- 
 able even here and to-day,* though painted with the 
 most angelic power and skill. It would be a painted 
 satire, not a pictured praise ; the portrait of a devil's 
 joy can be no man's delight. 
 
 Everybody knows the joy of the senses. The 
 higher faculties have a corresponding joy. As there 
 is a scale of faculties ascending from the sense of 
 touch and taste, the first developed and most widely 
 spread in the world of living things, up to affection, 
 rejoicing to delight, and to the religious emotions 
 which consciously connect us with the Infinite God ; 
 so there is a corresponding scale of joys, delight 
 rising above delight, from the baby fed by his 
 mother's breast to the most experienced man, en- 
 larged 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 transcen- 
 dent is its joy. 
 
 * This sermon was preached April G, 1851, presently after the 
 kidnapping of Mr. Sims, in Boston, and before his " trial " was 
 completed.
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 267 
 
 The partial and transient joy of any faculty 
 comes from the fractional and brief fulfilment of 
 the conditions of its nature ; the complete and per- 
 manent joy of the whole man comes from a total 
 and continuous supply of the conditions of the 
 entire nature of man. 
 
 Now, for this complete and lasting joy, these con- 
 ditions must be thus fulfilled for me as an individ- 
 ual, for my family, for my neighborhood, for the 
 nation, and for the world, else my joy is not com- 
 plete ; for though I can in thought for a moment 
 abstract myself from the family, society, nation, and 
 from all mankind, it is but for a moment. Practi- 
 cally I am bound up with all the world ; an integer 
 indeed, but a fraction of mankind. I cannot enjoy 
 my daily bread because of the hunger of the men I 
 fain would feed. I am not wholly and long de- 
 lighted with a book relating some new wonder of 
 science, or offering me some jewelled diadem of 
 literary art, because, I think straightway of the 
 thousand brother men in this town to whom even 
 the old wonders of science and the ancient diadems 
 of literary art are all unknown. The morsel that I 
 eat alone is not sweet, because the fatherless has 
 not eaten it with me. Yet we all desire this com- 
 plete joy ; we are not content without it ; I feel 
 it belongs to me, to all men, as individuals and as 
 fractions of society. When mankind comes of age,
 
 268 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 he must enter on this estate. The very desire 
 thereof shows it is a part of the Divine plan of 
 the world, for each natural desire has the means to 
 satisfy it put somewhere in the universe, and there 
 is a mutual attraction between the two, which at 
 last must meet. Natural desire is the prophecy of 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Look over the bountiful distribution of joy in the 
 world. It abounds in the lower walks of creation. 
 The young fish, you shall even now find on the 
 shallow beaches of some sheltered Atlantic bay, how 
 happy they are ! Voiceless, dwelling in the cold 
 unsocial element of water, moving with the flapping 
 of the sea, and never still amid the ocean waves' im- 
 measurable laugh, — how delighted are these little 
 children of God ! Their life seems one continuous 
 holiday, the shoal waters a play-ground. Their food 
 is plenteous as the water itself. Society is abun- 
 dant, and of the most unimpeachable respectability. 
 They have their little child's games which last all 
 day. No one is hungry, ill-mannered, ill-dressed, 
 dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy. They fear no 
 hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and bloodless little 
 atomies seem ever full of joy as they can hold ; wise 
 without study, learned enough with no book or 
 school, and well cared for amid their own neglect. 
 They recollect no past, they provide for no future,
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 269 
 
 the great God of the ocean their only memory or 
 forethought. These little, short-lived minnows are 
 to me a sermon eloquent ; they are a psalm to God, 
 above the loftiest hymnings of Theban Pindar, or of 
 the Hebrew king. 
 
 On the land, see the joy of the insects just now 
 coming into life. The new-born butterfly, who 
 begins his summer life to-day, how joyous he is in 
 his claret-colored robe, so daintily set off with a sil- 
 ver edge ! No Pharisee, enlarging the borders of 
 his garments, getting greetings in the markets and 
 the uppermost seat at feasts, and called of men 
 " Rabbi," is ever so brimful of glee as our little 
 silver-bordered fly. He has a low seat in the uni- 
 verse, for he is only a butterfly ; but to him it is 
 good as the uppermost ; and in the sunny, sheltered 
 spots in the woods, with brown leaves about him, 
 and the promise of violets and five-fingers by and 
 by, the great sun gently greets him, and the dear 
 God continually says to this son of a worm, " Come 
 up higher ! " 
 
 The adventurous birds that have just come to 
 visit us, how delighted they are, and of a bright 
 morning how they tell their joy ! each robin and 
 blackbird waking, not with a dry mouth and a 
 parched tongue, but with a bosom full of morning 
 psalms to gladden the day with " their sweet jargon- 
 ing." What a cheap luxury they pick up in the
 
 270 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 fields ; and in a clear sunrise and a warm sky find a 
 delight which makes the pomp of Nebuchadnezzar 
 seem ridiculous ! 
 
 Even the reptiles, the cold snake, the bunchy and 
 calumniated toad, the frog, now newly wakened 
 from his hybernating sleep, have a joy in their ex- 
 istence which is complete and seems perfect. How 
 that long symbol of " the old enemy " basks de- 
 lighted in the sun ! In the idle days which in child- 
 hood I once had, I have seen, as I thought, the gos- 
 pel of God's love written in the life of this reptile, 
 for whom Christians have such a mythological 
 hatred, but whom the good God blesses with a new, 
 shining skin every year, — written more clearly than 
 even Nazarene Jesus could tell the tale. No won- 
 der ! it was the dear God who wrote His gospel in 
 that scroll. How joyously the frogs welcome in the 
 spring, which knocks at the icy door of their dwell- 
 ing, 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 com- 
 munion in his great church, where He that taketh 
 thought for oxen suffers no sparrow to fall to the
 
 SOUKCE OF JOY. 271 
 
 ground without his fatherly love. A new lamb, or 
 calf, or colt, just opening its eyes on the old world, 
 is happy as fabled Adam in his Eden. With what 
 sportings, and friskings, and frolickings do all young 
 animals celebrate their Advent and Epiphany in the 
 world of time! As they grow older, they have a 
 wider and a wiser joy, — the delight of the passions 
 and the affections, to apply the language of men to 
 the consciousness of the cattle. It takes the form, 
 not of rude leapings, but of quiet cheerfulness. The 
 matronly cow, ruminating beside her playful and 
 hornless little one, is a type of quiet joy and entire 
 satisfaction, — all her nature clothed in well-befit- 
 ting happiness. 
 
 Even animals that we think austere and sad, — 
 the lonely hawk, the solitary jay, who loves New 
 England winters, and the innumerable shellfish, — 
 have their personal and domestic joy, well known to 
 their intimate acquaintances. The toad whom we 
 vilify as ugly, and even call venomous, malicious, 
 and spiteful, is a kind neighbor, and seems as con- 
 tented as the day is long. So is it with the spider, 
 who is not the malignant kidnapper that he is 
 thought, but has a little, harmless world of joy. A 
 stream of welfare flows from end to end of their 
 little life, — not very broad, not very deep, but wide 
 and deep enough to bathe their every limb, and 
 bring contentment and satisfaction to each want.
 
 272 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 Did not the same God who pours out the light from 
 yonder golden sun, and holds all the stars in his 
 leash of love, make and watch over the smallest of 
 these creatures ? Nay, He who leaves not forsaken 
 Jesus alone never deserts the spider and the toad. 
 
 Wait a few weeks and go into the fields, of a 
 warm day, at morning, noon, or night, and all crea- 
 tion 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, medusas and the like, with few senses, few 
 faculties ; but they all swim in a tide of joy, and it 
 seems as if the world was made for them alone ; for 
 them the tide ebbs and flows, for them the winter 
 goes, the summer comes, and the universe subsists 
 for them alone. 
 
 Some men tell us that, at the other extreme of 
 the scale, those vast bodies, the suns and satellites, 
 have also a consciousness and a delight ; that " in 
 reason's ear they all rejoice." But that is poetry. 
 Not in reason's, but fancy's ear do they rejoice. 
 The rest is fact, plain prose. 
 
 All animate creatures in their natural condition 
 have, it is true, their woes ; but they are brief in 
 time, little in quantity, and soon forgot. When you 
 look microscopically and telescopically at the natu-
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 273 
 
 ral suffering in the world of animals, you find it is 
 just enough to tie the girdle, and hold the little crea- 
 ture together, and keep him from violating his own 
 individual being ; or else to unite the tribe and keep 
 them from violating their social being. So it seems 
 only the girdle of the individual of the flock, and no 
 more an evil, when thus looked at, than the bruises 
 we get in our essays to walk. Suffering marks the 
 outer limit of the narrow margin of oscillation left 
 for the caprice of the individual animal or man, — 
 the pain a warning to mark the bound. 
 
 A similar joy appears in young children well born 
 and well nurtured. But the human power of error, 
 though still not greater in proportion to our greater 
 nature, is so much more, and man so little subordi- 
 nate to his instincts, that we have wandered far 
 from the true road of material happiness. So the 
 new-born child comes trailing the errors of his 
 ancestry behind him at his birth. Still, the healthy 
 child, wisely cared for, though tethered with such a 
 brittle chain of being, is no exception to the general 
 rule of joy. He 
 
 " Is a dew-drop -which the morn brings forth, 
 Not formed to undergo unkindly shocks, 
 Or to be trailed along the soiling earth ; — 
 A gem that glitters while it lives, 
 And no forewarning gives, 
 But at the touch of wrong, without a strife, 
 Slips in a moment out of life."
 
 274 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 In the world of adult men there is much less of 
 this joy ; it is not a great river that with mighty 
 stream runs round and round the world of human 
 consciousness, all ignorant of ebb. Our faces are 
 care-stricken, not many joyous ; most of them look 
 as if they had met and felt the peltings of the storm, 
 and only hoped for the rainbow. The songs of the 
 people are mostly sad ; only the savage in tropic 
 climes — subordinate to nature, there a gentle mis- 
 tress — 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 mate- 
 rial conditions thereof. The individual has not kept 
 the natural law, and hence has some schism in the 
 flesh from his intemperance or want; some schism in 
 the spirit from lack of harmony within ; or there is 
 some schism between him and the world of matter, 
 he not in unison with things around ; he has a mis- 
 erable body, that goes stooping and feeble, must be 
 waited for and waited on, and, like the rulers of the 
 Gentiles, exercises authority over him ; or he lacks 
 development of spiritual powers ; or else is poor, and 
 needs material supplies. 
 
 Or if the special individual is right in all these
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 275 
 
 things, and so might have his personal joy, the mass 
 of men in your neighborhood, your nation, or the 
 world, are deficient in all these, in body, mind, 
 and estate, and with your individual joy there comes 
 a social grief, and so the worm in the bud robs your 
 blossom of half its fragrant bloom, and hinders all 
 its fruit. Man is social not less than personal ; 
 sympathy is national, even human, reaching out to 
 the ends of the earth ; and if the hungry cry of those 
 who have reaped down the world's harvest smite 
 your ear, why, your bread turns sour, and is bread 
 of affliction. The rich scholar, with abundant time, 
 in his well-stored library, has the less joy in his own 
 books while he remembers there are nobler souls 
 that starve for the crumbs which fall from his table, 
 or drudge at some ungrateful toil not meant for 
 them. The healthy doctor, well fed and nicely clad, 
 cannot so steel his heart against the ignorance and 
 want and pain he daily sees, that his health and 
 table and science, and rosy girls, shall give him the 
 same delight which would come thereof in a world 
 free from such society of suffering. 
 
 " The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
 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
 
 276 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 special individual, or of the race, is all legitimate 
 and merciful ; I would not have it less. There is 
 never too much suffering of this sort in the world, 
 only enough to teach mankind to live in harmony 
 with Nature, in concord with each other, in unity 
 with God. Here, as in the animals, this pain is but 
 the girdle round the loins of you or me to keep 
 the individual whole ; or about the waist of man- 
 kind, to keep us all united in one brotherhood. 
 Here, as there, suffering marks the limit of our mar- 
 gin 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 com- 
 mon heart by which we live cries to God for satis- 
 faction 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 expe- 
 rience of the world shows this, — that man must 
 find his joy, not in subordinating himself to mat- 
 ter, or to the instincts of the flesh, as the beasts find 
 theirs, or of the weak to the strong, but in subordi- 
 nating matter to mind, instinct to conscious reason, 
 and then coordinating all men into one family of 
 religious love. 
 
 II. Here is the other cause. Much of this lack
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 277 
 
 of joy comes from false notions of religion, — false 
 ideas of God, of man, and of the relation between 
 the two. We are bid to think it wicked to be joy- 
 ous. In the common opinion of churches, a relig- 
 ious 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 de- 
 light. Some men are sad at sight of the want, the 
 pain, and the misdirection of men. It was unavoid- 
 able that Jesus of Nazareth should ofttimes be 
 " exceeding sorrowful." He must indeed weep over 
 Jerusalem. The Apostles, hunted from city to city, 
 might be excused for sadness. For centuries the 
 Christian Church had reason to be a sad Church. 
 Persecution made our New England fathers stern 
 and sour men, and their form of religion caught a 
 stain from their history. I see why this is so, and 
 blame no man for it. It was once unavoidable. 
 But now it is a great mistake to renounce the nat- 
 ural joy of life ; above all, to renounce it in the 
 name of God. No doubt it takes the whole human 
 race to represent in history the whole of Human 
 Nature ; but if the " Church," that is theological 
 men, make a mock at joy, then the " world " will go 
 to excess in the opposite extreme. Men in whom the 
 religious and moral powers are not developed in pro- 
 portion with the intellectual, the aesthetic, or the 
 
 24
 
 278 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 physical appetites, will try to possess this joy, and 
 without religion. But nothing is long fruitful of de- 
 light when divorced from the consciousness of God ; 
 nothing thrives that is at enmity with God. Such 
 joy is poor, heartless, and unsatisfying. Men in 
 churches set up a Magdalen, a nun, a monk, a her- 
 mit, or a priest, as a representative of religion. Men 
 out of churches want joy ; they will flee off where 
 they can find it, and leave religion behind them. 
 Yet joy without religion is but a poor, wandering 
 Hagar, her little water spent, her bread all gone, and 
 no angel to marshal the way to the well where she 
 shall drink and feed her fainting child, and say, 
 Thou, God, seest me ! 
 
 There is little joy in the ecclesiastical conscious- 
 ness of religion. Writers and preachers of Chris- 
 tianity commonly dwell on the dark side of human 
 nature. They tell us of our weakness, not of our 
 ability to be and to do. They mourn and scold 
 over human folly, human sin, human depravity, 
 often leaving untold the noble deeds of man and 
 his nobler powers. " Man is a worm," say they. 
 
 They do the same with God. They paint him as 
 a king, not as a father; and as a king who rules 
 by low and selfish means, for low and selfish ends, 
 from low and selfish motives, and with a most 
 melancholy result of his ruling. According to the
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 279 
 
 common opinion of the Christian churches, God's 
 is the most unsuccessful despotism that has ever 
 been set agoing, leading to the eternal ruin of the 
 immense majority of his subjects, as the result of 
 the absolute selfishness of the theological deity. In 
 the theology called Christian the most conspicuous 
 characteristics of God are great force, great 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. Christian divines tell us of a God that 
 will not kill, but torment in hell the greater portion 
 of his children, and will feed fat his " glory " with 
 the damnation of mankind, the everlasting sacri- 
 fice 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 stin- 
 giest fist. Or else God is painted as a grim and 
 awful judge, man a poor, trembling culprit, shiver-
 
 280 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 ing before his own conscience, and slinking down 
 for fear of the vengeance of the awful judge, hell 
 gaping underneath his feet. Does any one doubt 
 this ? Let him read the Book of Revelation, or the 
 writings of John Calvin, of Baxter, or Edwards 
 or even of Jeremy Taylor. The theological God is 
 mainly a great devil, and as the theological devil 
 hates "believers," whom he seeks to devour, so 
 the theological God hates " unbelievers," and seeks 
 successfully to devour them, gnawed upon eternally 
 in hell. In general, theological books represent 
 God as terrible. They make religion a melancholy 
 sort of thing, unnatural to man, which he would 
 escape from if he dared, or if he could. It is sel- 
 dom spoken of as a thing good in itself, but valu- 
 able to promote order on the earth, and help men 
 to get " saved " and obtain a share of eternal happi- 
 ness. 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 major- 
 ity 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 tor- 
 ment on earth, and of no value at all in the next 
 life ! What is the use of religion to men in eter- 
 nal torment ? So, by the showing of the most
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 281 
 
 respectable theologians, religion can bring no joy, 
 save to the " elect," who are but a poor fraction of 
 mankind, and commonly exhibit little of it here. 
 
 The general tone of writings called religious is 
 sad and melancholy. Religion adorns her brow 
 with yellow leaves smitten by the frost, not with 
 rosebuds and violets. The leading men in the 
 more serious churches are earnest persons, self- 
 denying, but grim, unlovely, and joyless men. 
 Look through the ecclesiastial literature of the 
 Christian world, — it is chiefly of this sad com- 
 plexion. 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 perse- 
 cuted and trodden down, should weep and wail in 
 their literature. In the first three centuries they 
 do so ; — in every period of persecution. The dark 
 shades of the New England forest lowered over 
 New England theology, and Want and War knit 
 their ugly brows in the meeting-houses of the day. 
 But the same thing continued, and it lasts still. 
 Now it is the habit of Christendom, though some- 
 times it seems only a trick. 
 
 In what is called Christian literature nothing 
 surprises you more than the absence of joy. There 
 is much of the terror of religion, little of its de- 
 lights. Look over the list of sermons of South, 
 
 24*
 
 282 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 Edwards, Chalmers, Hopkins, Emmons, even of 
 Jeremy Taylor, and you find few sermons on 
 the joys of religion. The same is true of Mas- 
 sillon, of Bourdaloue, and Bossuet. The popular 
 ecclesiastical notion of religion is not to be repre T 
 sented as a wife and mother, cheerful, contented, 
 and happy in her work, but as a reluctant nun, 
 abstracted, idle, tearful, and with a profound mel- 
 ancholy; 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 sad- 
 ness which comes from a distrust of Nature and of 
 vGod, and from the habit of worrying about the 
 soul, — the melancholy of fear ; not the melancholy 
 which looks sadly on misery and crime, which 
 wept out its " O Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! " but the 
 sadness which whines in a corner, and chews its 
 own lips from sheer distrust. 
 
 The writers who dwell on the joys of religion 
 too often have very inadequate ideas thereof. For 
 they all, from Augustine to Chalmers, start with 
 the idea that God is imperfect, and not wholly to be 
 trusted. Accordingly they seek and obtain but a 
 very one-sided development of their nature, thinking 
 they must sacrifice so much of it ; and hence have 
 not that strength of religious character, nor that 
 wholeness thereof, which is necessary to complete 
 manly joy in religion.
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 283 
 
 Such being the case, fear of God predominates 
 
 over love of Him ; trust of God is only special under 
 
 such and such circumstances, not universal under all 
 
 circumstances ; and religious joy is thin, and poor, 
 
 .and cold. 
 
 You find mention of religious joy in some of the 
 great. Christian writers, especially among the mys- 
 tics, in Tauler and Kempis, Scougal, Fenelon, 
 William Law, and Jacob Behme, not to mention 
 others. Even Bunyan has his delectable moun- 
 tains, and though in the other world, the light there- 
 from shines serene and joyous along the paths of 
 mortal life. But in most, if not in all, of these writ- 
 ers, religious joy is deemed an artificial privilege, 
 reserved by God's decree for only a few, purchased 
 by unnatural modes of life, and miraculously be- 
 stowed. Even in greathearted Martin Luther, one 
 of the most joyous of men, it is not a right which 
 belongs to human nature, and comes naturally from 
 the normal action of the faculties of man ; it is the 
 result of " divine grace," not of human nature. 
 Thus this religious joy of the churches is often 
 hampered and restricted, and the man must be 
 belittled before he is capable thereof. In the ecclesi- 
 astical saint there is always something sneaking; 
 some manly quality is left out, or driven out, some 
 unmanly quality forced in. I believe this has been 
 so in all ages of Christianity, and in all Christian
 
 284 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 sects at this day. Study the character and history of 
 the saints of the Catholic and Protestant churches. 
 Look at their mode of life, their sources and forms 
 of joy. You see it is so. They must turn Human 
 Nature out of doors before the Divine Nature can 
 come in. So the heavenly bridegroom, adorned for 
 his wife, comes to a house swept and garnished in- 
 deed, but cheerless, empty, and cold, only theologi- 
 cal furniture left in, the bride herself swept out. 
 Look at the marbles of antiquity, — at the face of 
 pagan Plato, of Aristotle, " the master of such as 
 know," — or at the faces of modern philosophers, 
 and compare them with the actual or ideal counte- 
 nance of Christian saints, — with Saint Francis, 
 with Saint Thomas, with Ignatius Loyola, with the 
 ideal Magdalens and Madonnas of art, or with the 
 dark, sad, and woe-stained faces of the leading 
 clergy of the predominant sects, — and you see at 
 once the absence of natural delight. 
 
 Religion is often separated from common life. 
 So a sharp distinction is made between the " flesh " 
 and the " spirit." The flesh is all sinful, all that 
 belongs to it thought poor, and mean, and low ; to 
 taste the joys of piety, the senses must be fettered 
 and put in jail, and then, where theology has made 
 a solitude, it proclaims peace. On the one side is 
 the " world," on the other " religion ; " and there is 
 a great gulf fixed between the two, which neither
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 285 
 
 Dives, nor Lazarus, nor yet Abraham, can pass 
 over. Here all the delight is in " things temporal ; " 
 there the delight is only in " things eternal." 
 Worldly men have their delight in the things of 
 this world, and no more ; heavenly men, only in the 
 joys of the next life ; and they who have the worst 
 time here shall have the best hereafter. Religion is 
 thought out of place at a ball, at a theatre, at any 
 amusement ; dancing is thought more than half a 
 sin. Religion loves funerals, is seldom at a wedding, 
 — only to sadden the scene, — for woman is bid to 
 be ashamed of natural human love, and man of be- 
 ing loved. " We are conceived in sin," quoth the- 
 ology ; " the ' God-man ' was born with no human 
 father." 
 
 It seems commonly thought that the joys of relig- 
 ion are inconsistent with active daily life. Men 
 who have written thereof are ehiefly ascetic and 
 romantic persons of retired lives, of shy habits ; they 
 prefer thought to work, passive contemplation to 
 active meditation, and dreamy sentimentalism to all 
 other and manlier joys. The natural result of this 
 ecstasy, not the normal activity of the whole man, 
 but irregular, extravagant, and insane action of a 
 few noble powers. Hence those writings are not 
 wholesome ; the air they exhale is close and un- 
 healthy, for such pietism is the sickness of the soul, 
 not its soundness and its health.
 
 286 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 I believe what I say will apply to almost the 
 whole class of writers on sentimental religion, — to 
 the mystical writers of the Brahminic, Buddhistic, 
 Christian, and Mahometan sects. He must be a 
 whole man who writes a sound book on a theme so 
 deep as the religious joys of man, — his delight in 
 Nature, in man, and in God. But the false ideas 
 of the popular theory corrupt the faculties of noble 
 and great men. So, in the writings of Law and 
 Fenelon, of Taylor and Henry More, you find this 
 unhealthiness pervading what they do and say. 
 There is much you sympathize in, but much also 
 which offends a nice taste, and revolts the reason, 
 the affections, and all the high faculties of a sound 
 man. You may see the excess of this unhealthiness 
 in the works of St. Bridget or of St. Theresa, in 
 Molinos and Swedenborg, even in Taylor, in Fene- 
 lon, and Augustine ; in the dreams and fancied reve- 
 lations of monks and nuns, when nature clamored 
 for her rights, or in the sermons and prayers of ascet- 
 ic clergymen, whom a false idea of God and relig- 
 ion has driven to depravity of body and sickness of 
 the soul. 
 
 We may see the effects of this false idea on the 
 conduct and character of active men in a Methodist 
 camp-meeting ; or in a form yet more painful, in the 
 pinched faces, and narrow, unnatural foreheads of
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 287 
 
 men and women early caught and imprisoned in 
 some of the popular forms of fear of God. I have 
 sometimes shuddered to hear such men talk of their 
 joy of religion, — a joy unnatural and shameful, 
 which delighted in the contemplation of torment as 
 the portion of mankind. 
 
 Read the life of St. Hugh, an Archbishop of Ly- 
 ons. See in what his joys of religion consisted. If 
 any one spoke of news in his presence, he checked 
 them, saying, " This life is all given us for w.eeping 
 and penance, not for idle discourses." It was his 
 " constant prayer that God would extinguish in his 
 heart all attachment to creatures, that His pure love 
 might reign in all his affections." " His love of 
 heavenly things made all temporal affairs seem 
 burdensome and tedious." " Women he would 
 never look in the face, so that he knew not the 
 features of his own mother." He continually re- 
 cited the Psalter and the Lord's Prayer ; the latter 
 on one occasion " three hundred times in a single 
 night ! " 
 
 In saying all this, I do not wish to blame men. 
 I would rather write an apology for the religious 
 errors of Pagans or Christians, than a satire there- 
 on. I only mention the fact. It is not a strange 
 one, for we find analogous errors in the history of 
 every department of human affairs. What dreams 
 of astrologers and alchemists came before the cool,
 
 288 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 sober thought of chemists and astronomers ! The 
 mistakes in religion are not greater in proportion to 
 the strength of the religious faculty and the great- 
 ness of the interest at stake, than the mistakes in 
 agriculture or politics. The theology of Boston is 
 not much worse than its " law and order " just now ; 
 and they who in pulpits, administer the popular 
 theology, are not much more mistaken than they 
 who, in courts and jails, administer the public law. 
 But in t religion these mistaken notions have been so 
 common, that the very name of religious joy is asso- 
 ciated with superstition, bigotry, extravagance, mad- 
 ness. You attend a meeting " for conference and 
 prayer," and you come away a little disgusted, with 
 more pity than sympathy for the earnest men who 
 have so mistaken the nature of God, of man, and of 
 the relation between the two ; who have so erred as 
 to the beginning of religion, its processes and its 
 result. You pass thence to a meeting of philo- 
 sophical 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, un- 
 natural, restricted, and presided over by fear ; in 
 the other all is cool, all is free, and there is no fear. 
 
 In consequence of this abuse, men often slight 
 the sentiment of religion, and deny the real and 
 sober joy which it naturally affords. This is a great
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 289 
 
 loss, for, setting aside the extravagance, the claim 
 to miraculous communion with God, putting aside 
 all ecstasy, as only the insanity of religious action, 
 it is true that, in its widest sense and in its high- 
 est form, religion is a source of the deepest and 
 noblest joys of man. Let us put away the child- 
 ish things and look at the real joys of manly relig- 
 ion itself. 
 
 A true form of religion does not interfere with 
 any natural delight of man. True religion is nor- 
 mal life, not of one faculty alone, but of alt in due 
 coordination. The human consciousness of the In- 
 finite God will show itself, not merely in belief, or 
 prayer and thanksgiving, but by the legitimate ac- 
 tion 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 nat- 
 ural and legitimate way r 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 writ- 
 ten on every fibre of human flesh, are not less au- 
 thoritative than the Ten which Jehovah is said to 
 have written on stone at Sinai, 
 
 25
 
 290 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 Do you seek the active business of life ? This 
 religion will bid you pursue your calling, hand-craft 
 or head-craft, and buy and sell and get gain, the 
 Golden Rule your standard measure, and all your 
 daily work a sacrament whereby you communicate 
 with man and God. Do you want riches, honor, 
 fame, the applause of men ? This religion tells you 
 to subordinate the low aim to the high ; to keep 
 self-love in its natural channel ; to preserve the 
 integrity of your own spirit ; and then, if you will 
 and can, to get riches, power, honor, fame, and the 
 applause of men, by honestly earning them all, so 
 that you shall be the manlier, and mankind the 
 richer, for all that you do and enjoy. Then the ap- 
 probation of your own soul and the sense of con- 
 cord with men and of unity with God, will add 
 a certain wholeness to your delight in the work of 
 your hands. 
 
 Do you desire the joys of the intellect working 
 in any or all its manifqld forms of action ? The 
 world is all before you where to choose, and Prov- 
 idence your guide. The law of God says, " Of 
 every tree of the field shalt thou eat. Nothing that 
 is natural shall harm thee. Put forth thy hand 
 and try. Be not afraid that Truth or Search shall 
 ever offend God, or harm the soul of man." Does 
 a new truth threaten an old church ? It will build 
 up ten new ones in its stead. No man ever loved
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 291 
 
 truth too much, or had too much of it, or was too 
 diligent in the search therefor. To use the reason 
 for reasonable things is a part of religion itself. 
 Thus consciousness of God well developed in man 
 gives greater joy to the natural delights of the in- 
 tellect 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 con- 
 science, never to fear to ask thereof for the ever- 
 lasting 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 Com- 
 monwealth of Righteousness, where the eternal 
 laws of God are reenacted into the codes of men, 
 laws of love and life. No man ever loved justice 
 too much, — his own rights, or the rights of men, 
 — or was too faithful to his own conscience. Loy- 
 alty to that is fealty to God ; and the conscious- 
 ness of Him enhances the moral delight of moral 
 men, as the intellectual joy of scientific and thought- 
 ful men. 
 
 Do you seek the joy of the affections which 
 cling to finite objects of attraction, to wife and
 
 292 CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 
 
 child, brother and sister, parent and friend ? Re- 
 ligion will tell you it is impossible to love these 
 too much ; that it is impossible to be too affection- 
 ate, 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 de- 
 light of mortal affections, and will greaten and beau- 
 tify every form of love, — connubial, parental, and 
 filial, friendly and philanthropic love. 
 
 Nay, all these — the love of truth and beauty, 
 of justice and right, of men — are but parts of the 
 great integral piety, the love of God, the Author 
 of Truth, of Justice, and of Love. The normal 
 delight in God's world, the animal joy in material 
 things, the intellectual in truth and beauty, the 
 moral in justice and right, the affectional delight 
 in the persons of men, the satisfactions of labor of 
 hand or head or heart, — all these are a part of 
 our large delight in God, for religion is not one 
 thing and life another, but the two are one. The 
 normal and conscious worship of the Infinite God 
 will enlarge every faculty, enhancing its quantity 
 and quality of delight. 
 
 Let me dwell yet longer on this affectional de- 
 light. Last Sunday I spoke of the Increase of 
 Power which comes of the religious use of the fac-
 
 SOUKCE OF JOY. 293 
 
 ulties. One form thereof I purposely passed by 
 and left for this hour, — the ability to love other 
 men. Religion, by producing harmony with your- 
 self, concord with men, and unity with God, pre- 
 vents the excess of self-love, enlarges the power of 
 unselfish affection, increases the quantity of love, 
 and so the man has a greater delight in the welfare 
 of other men. 
 
 I will not say that this religion increases the 
 powers of instinctive affection, except indirectly 
 and in general, as it enlarges the man's whole 
 quantity of being, and refines its quality. Yet 
 much of the power of affection is not instinctive, 
 but the result of conscious and voluntary action. 
 It is not mere instinct which drives me uncon- 
 sciously and bound to love a friend ; I do it con- 
 sciously, freely, because it suits the whole of me, 
 not merely one impulsive part. The conscious- 
 ness of my connection with God, of my obligation 
 to God, of his Providence watching over all, — 
 this, and the effort to keep every law He has written 
 in my constitution, enlarges my capability to love 
 men. 
 
 I pass by connubial love, wherein affection and 
 passion blend each its several bloom, and there are 
 still two other forms of conscious love. One is 
 friendship, the other philanthropy. 
 
 In friendship I love a man for his good and 
 
 25*
 
 294 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 mine too. There is action on both sides ; I take 
 •delight in him, but only on condition that he takes 
 delight in me. I ask much of my friend, not only 
 gratitude and justice, but forbearance and patience 
 towards me; — yes, sacrifice of himself. I do this 
 not selfishly, not wilfully. I love my friend for 
 his character and his conduct, for what he is to 
 me and I am to him. My friendship is limited, 
 and does not reach out so far as justice, which has 
 the range of the world. Who can claim friend- 
 ship of any one ? The New England kidnapper 
 has a right to the philanthropy even of his victim ; 
 but he seems to have a right to the friendship 
 only of pirates and men that would assassinate 
 the liberty of mankind. But no man is wholly 
 wicked and self-abandoned, and so has forfeited all 
 claim to the friendship of the noblest; and such is 
 the blessed wealth of the human heart, that it con- 
 tinually 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 de- 
 light in me. I ask nothing of him, not even grati- 
 tude, nor justice ; perhaps expect neither. I love 
 him because he is a man, and without regard to his 
 character and conduct ; and would feed and clothe 
 and warm and bless the murderer, or even the Bos-
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 295 
 
 ton kidnapper. Philanthropy makes its sun rise on 
 the evil and on the good, and sends its rain on the 
 just and on the unjust. Its circle is measured by its 
 power, not its will. It is not personal, limited in its 
 application to Robert or Marion, but universal as 
 justice, reaching to all, it joins the wayfaring Samar- 
 itan 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 mo- 
 ment 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 be- 
 comes conscious, and the seed you planted for the 
 bread of another becomes a perfect flower for your 
 own eye and bosom ; but you receive from another 
 self. This is one of the dearest joys ; it is the mu- 
 tuality of affection, your delight in another's person, 
 and his delight in you ; it is a reciprocity of per- 
 sons. There are those we love not with instinctive 
 passion, as man and wife ; nor with instinctive affec- 
 tion, as parent and child ; nor with the love of phi- 
 lanthropy ; but with emotions of another class, with 
 friendly love. It is delightful to do kind deeds for 
 such, and receive kind deeds from them. Not that 
 you need or they need the gift ; but both the giv-
 
 296 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 ing. You need to give to them, they to give to 
 you. Their very presence is a still and silent joy. 
 After long intimacy of this sort, you scarce need 
 speech to communicate sympathy ; the fellow-feel- 
 ing has a language and tells its own tale. In lov- 
 ing 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 soli- 
 darity of affection between us, and his material de- 
 lights 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 skil- 
 ful thought, so he enlarges his means of happiness 
 by each friend his affection joins to him. A man 
 with a forty-friend power would be a millionaire at 
 the treasury of love. 
 
 The joy of philanthropy is a high delight, worth 
 all the exaltations of St. Hugh, and the ecstasies of 
 St. Bridget and St. Theresa. Compare it with the 
 rapture which Jonathan Edwards anticipates for the 
 " elect " in heaven, looking down upon the damned, 
 and seeing their misery, and making " heaven ring 
 with the praises of God's justice towards the wicked, 
 and his grace towards the saints!" Such is the
 
 SOUKCE OF JOY. 297 
 
 odds betwixt the religion of nature and the theology 
 of the Christian Church. 
 
 There is a great satisfaction in doing good to 
 others, — to men that you never saw, nor will see, 
 — who will never hear of you, but not the less be 
 blessed by your bounty, — even in doing good to 
 the unthankful and the unmerciful. You have 
 helped a poor woman in Boston out of the want 
 and wretchedness her drunken husband has brought 
 on her, and rilled her house withal ; you have deliv- 
 ered a slave out of the claw of the kidnapper, the 
 " barbarous and heathen kidnapper in Benguela," or 
 the " Christian and honorable kidnapper in Boston," 
 commissioned, and paid for the function ; you have 
 taken some child out of the peril of the streets, 
 found him a home, and helped him grow up to be 
 a self-respectful and useful man ; — suppose the 
 poor woman shall never know the name of her 
 benefactor, nor the slave of his deliverer, nor the 
 child of his saviour, — that you get no gratitude 
 from the persons, no justice from the public ; you 
 are thought a fool for your charity, and a culprit for 
 your justice, the government seeking to hang you ; 
 still the philanthropy has filled your bosom with 
 violets and lilies, and you run over with the de- 
 light thereof. You would be ashamed to receive 
 gratitude, or ask justice. " Father, forgive them ! " 
 was the appropriate benediction of one of the great
 
 298 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 masters of philanthropy. Do you look for reciprocal 
 
 affection ? 
 
 " I have heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning ; 
 Alas ! the gratitude of men 
 Hath oftener left me mourning." 
 
 The good Samaritan, leaving his "neighbor" who 
 had fallen among thieves well cared for at the inn, 
 jogs home on his mule with a heart that kings 
 might envy ; but when he comes again, if the man, 
 healed by his nursing, offers thanks, — " Nay," says 
 the Samaritan, " nay, now, be still and say nothing 
 about it. It is all nothing; only human nature. I 
 could not help it. You would do the same ! " 
 Such a man feeds his affection by such deeds of 
 love, till he has the heart of God in his bosom, and 
 a whole paradise of delight. Meantime the Priest 
 and the Levite have hastened to the temple, and 
 offered their sacrifice, tithed their mint, their anise, 
 and their cumin, made broad their phylacteries and 
 enlarged the borders of their garments, and dropped 
 with brassy ring - their shekels in the temple chest, 
 shoving aside the poor widow with her two mites, 
 which make a farthing ; now they stand before the 
 seven golden candlesticks and pray, " Father, I 
 thank Thee that I am not like other men, who trust 
 in good works and the light of nature; I give tithes 
 of all that I possess. I thank Thee that I am one
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 299 
 
 of Thine Elect, and shall have glory when this 
 Samaritan goeth down to the pit." 
 
 I once knew a little boy in the country, whose 
 father gave him a half-dime to help the sufferers 
 at a fire in New Brunswick ; the young lad dropped 
 his mite into the box at church, — it was his earli- 
 est alms, — with a deep delight which sweetened 
 his consciousness for weeks to come with the 
 thought of the good that his five cents would do. 
 What were all sweetmeats and dainties to this ? 
 Our little boy's mother had told him that the good 
 God loved actions such as these, Himself dropping 
 the sun and moon into the alms-box of the world ; 
 and the grave, sober father, who had earned the 
 silver with serious sweat, his broadaxe ringing in 
 the tough oak of New England, brushed a tear 
 out of his eye at seeing the son's delight in helping 
 men whom none of the family had ever seen. 
 
 Philanthropy begins small, and helps itself along, 
 sometimes by love of sheep and oxen, and dogs 
 and swine. Did not the great Jesus ride into the 
 holy city "on the foal of an ass"? By and by 
 our philanthropist goes out to widest circles, makes 
 great sacrifice of comfort, of money, of reputation ; 
 his philanthropic power continually grows, and an 
 inundation of delight fills up his mighty soul. 
 The shillings which a poor girl pays for mission- 
 aries to Burmah and Guinea are shillings which
 
 300 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 bring more delight than all the gewgaws they could 
 buy. 
 
 I have seen a man buy baskets of cherries in a 
 foreign town, and throw them by handfuls to the 
 little boys and girls in the streets wholly unknown 
 to him. He doubtless got more joy from that, 
 than if he had had the appetite of a miser, and 
 stomach enough to eat up all the cherries in the 
 valley of the Rhine. Men of wealth, who use 
 money for philanthropy, to feed the poor, to build 
 hospitals and asylums, schools and colleges, get 
 more joy from this use thereof, than if they had 
 the pecuniary swallow and stomach of a gigantic 
 miser, and themselves eat up the schools and col- 
 leges, the hospitals and asylums, which others built. 
 They who build widows' houses, not they who 
 devour them, have the most joy thereof. 
 
 The man who devotes the larger wealth of the 
 mind, reason, understanding, imagination, with all 
 the treasures of culture and the graceful dignity 
 of eloquence, to serve some noble cause, despised 
 as yet, and sacrifices not money alone, but reputa- 
 tion? and takes shame as outward recompense for 
 truth and justice and love, — think you that he has 
 less delight than the worldly man well gifted, cul- 
 tivated well, whose mind lies a prostitute to the 
 opinion of the mob, and is tricked off with the 
 ornaments of shame, and in office shines " the first
 
 SOURCE OP JOY. 301 
 
 of bartered jades " ? Look about you in Boston,, 
 and answer, ye that know! Go to the men who. 
 sacrifice their intellect, their conscience, their affec- 
 tions, for place and a name, ask them what they 
 have got in exchange for their soul? and then go 
 to such as have left all for God and his law, and 
 ask them of their reward. 
 
 Now religion enlarges this capacity for both 
 friendship and philanthropy, and so the quantity of 
 joy which comes thereof, the happiness of the affec- 
 tions. 
 
 This religion has delights peculiar to the relig- 
 ious faculty, the happiness of the Soul. I love 
 the Infinite God as the ideal of all perfection, — 
 beauty to the imagination, truth to the reason, 
 justice to the conscience, the perfect person to the 
 affections, the Infinite and Self-faithful God to the 
 soul. With this there vanishes away all fear of 
 God, all fear of ultimate evil for any thing that is. 
 If this escape from fear of God were all, that alone 
 were a great thing. How men hate fear! From 
 the dreadful God of the popular theology, and its 
 odious immortality, they flee to annihilation ; and 
 atheism itself seems a relief. But this religion 
 which grows out of the idea of the Infinite God 
 casts out all fear and the torment thereof. I am: 
 
 26
 
 302 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 content to be afraid of some men, stronger and 
 wickeder than I ; I know they can hurt me ; I 
 know they wish it ; I know they will. To them 
 my truth is " error of the carnal reason ; " my justice 
 is " violation of the law " of men ; my love, philan- 
 thropic or friendly, is "levying war"; my religion 
 is " infidelity," — " sin against the Holy Ghost." 
 I fear these men ; they turn their swine into my 
 garden to root up and tread down every little herb 
 of grace, or plant that flowers for present or for 
 future joy. These men may hang me, or assassi- 
 nate 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, per- 
 haps calling it Chance or Fate ; in superstition, the 
 form of affirmation, 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,
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 303 
 
 as in the temple of Fear called by a Hebrew or a 
 Christian name. 
 
 With a knowledge of the Infinite God, and with 
 a fair development of the religious faculties, you 
 cease to fear, you love. As nocturnal darkness, or 
 the gray mist of morn, is chased away before the 
 rising sun, so dread and horror flee off before the 
 footsteps of love. Instead of fear, a sense of com- 
 plete and absolute trust in God comes in, gives you 
 repose and peace, filling you with tranquillity and 
 dear delight in God. Then I know not what a day 
 shall bring forth ; some knave may strip me of my 
 house and home, an accident — my own or another's 
 fault — deprive me of the respect of men, and death 
 leave me destitute of every finite friend, the objects 
 of instinctive or of voluntary love all scattered from 
 before my eyes ; some hireling of the government, for 
 ten pieces of silver, may send me off a slave for all 
 my mortal life ; decay of sense may perplex me, 
 wisdom shut out an eye and ear ; and disease may 
 rack my frame. Still I am not afraid. I know 
 what eternity will be. I appeal from man to God. 
 Forsaken, I am not alone, uncomforted, not com- 
 fortless. I fold my arms and smile at the ruin 
 which time has made, the peace of God all radiant 
 in my soul. 
 
 Let me look full in the face the evil which I meet 
 in the personal tragedies of private life, in the social
 
 304 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 evils which darkly variegate this and all other great 
 towns ; let me see monstrous political sin, dooming 
 one man to a throne because he has trod thousands 
 down to wretchedness and dirt; nay, let me see 
 such things as happen now in Boston. I know no 
 sadder sight on all this globe of lands : for to-day a 
 brother-man is held in a dungeon by the avarice of 
 this city, which seeks to make him a slave, and he 
 out of his jail sends round a petition to the clergy- 
 men of Boston, asking their prayers for his unalien- 
 able 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 dis- 
 mayed. I know, I feel, I am sure of this, that the 
 Infinite God has known it all, provided for it all ; 
 that as He is all-powerful, all-wise, all-just, all-loving, 
 and all-holy too, no absolute evil shall ever come to 
 any child of his, erring or sinned against. I will do 
 all for the right : then, if I fail, the result abides 
 with God ; it is His to care for and not mine. Thus 
 am I powerful to bear, as powerful to do. I know 
 of no calamity, irresistible, sudden, seemingly total, 
 but religion can abundantly defend the head and 
 heart against its harm. So I can be calm. De- 
 
 * The prophecy was only too true, but here and there remem- 
 bered his God.
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 305 
 
 feated, and unable to rise, I will " lie low in the 
 hand of the Father," smiling with the delight of 
 most triumphant trust. 
 
 " These surface troubles come and go 
 Like rufflings of the sea ; 
 The deeper depth is out of reach 
 To all, my God, but Thee." 
 
 With this tranquillity of trust there comes a still, 
 a peculiar and silent joy in God. You feel your 
 delight in Him, and His in you. The man is not 
 beside himself, he is self-possessed and cool. There 
 is no ecstasy, no fancied " being swallowed up in 
 God ; " but there is a lasting inward sweetness and 
 abiding joy. It will not come out in raptures ; it 
 will not pray all night, making much ado for noth- 
 ing done ; but it will fill the whole man with beati- 
 tudes, 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 every thing. But 
 yet the happiness of this inner human world, the 
 
 26*
 
 306 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 delight of loving God and absolutely trusting Him, 
 is plainly the dearest of all delights. I love the 
 world of sense, its beauty to the eye and ear ; the 
 natural luxury of taste and touch. It is indeed a 
 glorious world, — the stars of earth, that gem the 
 ground with dewy loveliness, the flowers of heaven, 
 whose amaranthine bloom attracts alike the admir- 
 ing 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 uni- 
 form force of Nature, whose constant modes of oper- 
 ation are all exact as mathematic law, and whence 
 the great minds of Kepler, Newton, and Laplace 
 gather the flowers of nature's art, and bind them up 
 in handfuls for our lesser wits ! I rejoice in the 
 world of men, in the all-conquering toil which sub- 
 ordinates matter unto man, making the river, ocean, 
 winds, to serve mankind ; which bridles the light- 
 ning 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 admin- 
 ister justice betwixt man and man. I delight in 
 human love in all its forms, instinctive or voluntary, 
 in friendship and philanthropy ; the mutuality of 
 persons is a dear and sacred joy to me. But the
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 307 
 
 delight in God is yet more, — dearer than each of 
 these ; one we like not much to name. Add to it 
 all these several delights, which get each a charm 
 from this consciousness of God, and you taste and 
 see the real happiness of religion. 
 
 Religion without joy, — it is no religion. Super- 
 stition, the fear of God, might well be sad. The 
 devotees thereof seek their delight in violating 
 the functions of the body and the spirit. In the 
 theological garden the Tree of Life bears fruit 
 indeed, a few fair apples, but out of reach, which 
 no man can gather till death lift us on his shoulders, 
 and then they are not apples for a mortal mouth. 
 You turn off from the literature of this superstition, 
 and look on sunny Nature, on the minnow in the 
 sea, on the robin in the field, on the frog, the snake, 
 the spider, and the toad, and smile at sight of their 
 gladness in the world, and wish to share it yourself. 
 You turn to the literature which makes a mock at 
 all religion. You find enough of it in Greece and 
 Rome at the decay of paganism, enough still in 
 brilliant France at the dissolution of Christian my- 
 thology, in the last century and in this. There also 
 is an attempt at joy, but the attempt is vain, and 
 the little life of men is full of wine and uproar and 
 scarlet women, is poor, unsatisfactory, and short, 
 rounded with bitterness at the last. The chief 
 tree in that garden blossoms bright enough, but it
 
 308 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 bears only apples of Sodom for a body without a 
 soul, a here with no hereafter, in a world without 
 a God. In such a place the brilliance of genius is 
 only lightning, not light. In such company you 
 almost long for the iron age of theology and the 
 hard literature of the " divines," lean and old and 
 sour, but yet teaching us of a Will above the poor 
 caprice of men, of a Mind beyond this perishing 
 intellect, of an Arm which made men tremble in- 
 deed, but also upheld the world. At least there 
 is Duty in that grim creation, and self-denial for the 
 sake of God. 
 
 Things should not be so. Sensuality is not 
 adequate delight for men who look to immortal- 
 ity. Religion is not at enmity with joy. No: it 
 is irreligion, — atheistic now and now supersti- 
 tious. There is no tyranny in God. Man is not 
 a worm, the world a vale of tears. Tears enough 
 there are, and long will be, — the morning mist of 
 the human day. We can wipe off some of them, can 
 rend a little the cloud of ignorance and want and 
 crime, and let in the gladdening light of life. Nay, 
 grief and sorrow are the world's medicine, salutary 
 as such, and not excessive for the ill they come to 
 cure. But if we are to make them our daily food, 
 and call that angels' bread, surely it is a mistake 
 which the world of matter cries out upon, and 
 human nature itself forbids.
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 309 
 
 The development of religion in man is the con- 
 dition of the highest happiness. Temperance, the 
 piety of the body, prepares that for the corporeal 
 joys, the humble in their place, the highest also in 
 their own ; wisdom, the piety of mind, justice, 
 the piety of conscience, and love, the piety of the 
 affections, — the love of God with all our varied 
 faculties, — these furnish us the complete spiritual 
 joy which is the birthright of each man. It is the 
 function of religion to minister this happiness, which 
 comes of self-denial for the sake of God. 
 
 The joy of religion must be proportionate to the 
 purity of the feeling, the completeness of the idea, 
 and the perfection of the act. When all are as 
 they should be, what a joy is there for man ! No 
 disappointment will have lasting power over you, 
 no sorrow destroy your peace of soul. Even the 
 remembrance of sins past by will be assuaged by 
 the experience you thereby have, and by the new 
 life which has grown over them. The sorrows of 
 the world will not seem as death-pangs, but the 
 birth-pains of new and holier life. The sins of 
 mankind, the dreadful wars, the tyrannies of the 
 strong over the weak, or of the many over the 
 few, will be seen to be only the stumbling of this 
 last child of God learning to walk, to use his limbs 
 and possess himself of the world which waits to be 
 mastered by man's wisdom, ruled by man's justice,
 
 310 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 
 
 directed by man's love, as part of the great human 
 worship of the Infinite God. The Past, the Pres- 
 ent, and the Future will appear working together 
 for you and all mankind, — all made from the 
 perfect motive of God, for a perfect end and as a 
 perfect means. You will know that the provi- 
 dence of the Great Author of us all is so complete 
 and universal, that every wrong that man has suf- 
 fered which he could not escape, every sorrow he 
 has borne that could not be resisted nor passed by, 
 every duty we have done, had a purpose to serve 
 in the infinite housekeeping of the universe, and 
 is warrant for so much eternal blessedness in the 
 world to come. You look on the base and wicked 
 men who seem as worms in the mire of civilization, 
 often delighting to bite and devour one another, and 
 you remark that these also are children of God ; 
 that He loves each of them, and will suffer no 
 ancient Judas, nor modern kidnapper of men, to 
 perish ; that there is no child of perdition in all the 
 family of God, but He will lead home his sinner 
 and his saint, and such as are sick with the leprosy 
 of their wickedness, " the murrain of beasts," bowed 
 down and not able to lift themselves up, He will 
 carry in his arms ! 
 
 The joys of the flesh are finite, and soon run 
 through. Objects of passion are the dolls wherewith 
 we learn to use our higher faculties, and through all
 
 SOURCE OF JOY. 311 
 
 our life the joy of religion, the delight in God, be- 
 comes 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'erwhelrn me, no terrors appall ; 
 The wiles and the snares of this world will but render 
 
 More lively my hope in my God and my All. 
 And when Thou demandest the life Thou hast given, 
 
 With joy will I answer Thy merciful call ; 
 And quit Thee on earth, but to find Thee in heaven, 
 
 My Portion for ever, my God, and my All."
 
 IX. 
 
 OF CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE. — Matt. ix. 13. 
 
 Nothing in human experience is so lovely as the 
 consciousness of God ; nothing so tranquillizing, ele- 
 vating, beautifying. See it on a merely personal 
 scale in a man, imagine it on a national scale in a 
 great people, — the natural development of religion 
 into its various forms is one of the most beautiful 
 phenomena of the world. But, alas ! men too often 
 love to meddle a little with nature ; not simply to 
 develop, complete, and perfect what begun sponta- 
 neously, but to alter after individual caprice, so that 
 the universal, eternal, and unchangeable force is 
 made to take the form of their personal, temporary, 
 and shifting caprice. 
 
 Thus in old gardens you may see pines, yew-trees, 
 and oaks clipped into fantastic and unnatural forms, 
 looking like any thing but trees, not works of nature,
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 313 
 
 but tricks of skill. A fan, a pyramid, or a peacock 
 is taken for the model of a tree, and the poor oak or 
 yew is teased into some approach to that alien type. 
 But the tree is always stinted, ugly, and short-lived 
 under such treatment. Pliant nature assumes the 
 form thrust on her, and then dies. So the savage, 
 who has not yet learned to clothe his -body, colors it 
 with gall-nuts or ochre, tattooes his fancy upon his 
 skin, mutilates the members, and hangs " barbaric 
 pearl and gold " where nature left no need nor room 
 for ornament. Civilized nations cut off the manly 
 beard, and scrimp and screw the female form, warp- 
 ing, twisting, distorting, and wasting the dear handi- 
 work of God. So we see men, as those trees, walk- 
 ing" in a vain show far astray from the guidance of 
 nature, looking as if " nature's journeymen had 
 made them, and not made them well, they imitate 
 humanity so abominably." 
 
 But man is not content to meddle with his body. 
 He must try his hand on the soul, warping and 
 twisting, tattooing and mutilating that also, coloring 
 it with ochre and gall-nuts of more astringent bite, 
 and hanging barbaric pendants thereon. Attempts 
 are made to interfere with the religious faculty, and 
 give it a conventional direction ; to make it take on 
 certain forms of human caprice, not human nature. 
 Some monstrous fancy is adopted for the model 
 
 27
 
 314 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 man, and then common men are clipped, and pruned, 
 and headed down, or bent in, and twisted into a 
 resemblance to that type. Nay, men are thought 
 to be religious, just as they conform to the unnat- 
 ural 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, twist- 
 ing, distorting, and tattooing of the invisible spirit, 
 what a sight it would be, — these dwarfs and crip- 
 ples, 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 Australia far behind! What 
 strange jewels are the fashionable theological opin- 
 ions of Christendom! Surely such liveries were 
 never invented before ! In that picture men would 
 look as striped as the Pope's guard. And if some 
 Adamitic men and women were also represented, 
 walking about in this varicolored paradise of theol- 
 ogy, arrayed in the natural costume of religion, 
 " when unadorned, adorned the most," how different 
 they w r ould seem ! Truly that gibbeting of theologi- 
 cal folly in a picture would be a more instructive
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 315 
 
 " Last Judgment " than even the great Michael ever 
 thought of painting. 
 
 In all forms of religion hitherto there has been 
 noticed, not merely the natural difference between 
 right and wrong, good and evil, but also an artificial 
 and conventional difference between things sacred 
 and things profane. Some things are deemed com- 
 mon and laical ; others are called holy and clerical. 
 This conventional distinction begins early, extends 
 wide, and will outlast you and me a great many 
 years. Thus, what is now-a-days said under oath 
 is officially thought a holy and clerical sort of truth ; 
 while what is said without oath, though equally 
 correspondent with facts, is officially considered only 
 a common and laical sort of truth. Some persons, 
 as atheists and such as deny the immortality of 
 the soul, are thought incapable of this clerical truth, 
 and so not allowed to swear, or otherwise testify, in 
 court. 
 
 In earlier ages of the world, and even now, this 
 conventional distinction between laical and clerical, 
 sacred and profane, applies to places, as groves, hill- 
 tops, temples, and the like ; to times, as new moons 
 with one, full moons with another, Friday with the 
 Turks, Saturday with the Jews, Sunday with the 
 Christians ; to things, as statues of saints and dei- 
 ties, the tools of public worship ; to persons, and
 
 316 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 some are set apart from mankind as "the Lord's 
 lot," and deemed holy ; to actions, some of which 
 are reckoned pleasing to God, not because they are 
 naturally right, good, beautiful, or useful, but only 
 as conventionally sacred ; and to opinions, which for 
 the same reason were pronounced revealed, and so 
 holy and clerical. 
 
 The laws of the land, for a long time, observed 
 this artificial distinction. Thus a blow struck in a 
 church or temple brought a severer punishment on 
 the offender than if given elsewhere. Even now 
 in Boston it is lawful to " gamble," except on Satur- 
 day night and Sunday ; and all common work on 
 that day is penal. Formerly it was legally thought 
 worse to steal church property than any other. To 
 rob a beggar was a small thing ; it was a great sin 
 to steal from a meeting-house. To take a whole 
 loaf from a baker's basket was a trifle, but to steal 
 the consecrated wafer from the church-box brought 
 the offender to the stake. Says Charlemagne, 
 " Less mercy is to be shown to men who rob and 
 steal from the church, than to common thieves." In 
 New England, until lately, for striking a clergyman 
 a man was punished twice as much as for striking a 
 layman ; not because a bishop is to be blameless, 
 " no striker," and so less likely, and less able, to 
 retaliate, but because he is a holy person. Not long 
 ago there was no penalty in this State for disturbing
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 317 
 
 a moral meeting, but a severe one for disturbing a 
 religious meeting. Opinions connected with relig- 
 ion 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 sci- 
 ence, and the law let him alone. It seems that 
 these artificial and foreign " sacred things " cannot 
 take care of themselves so well as the indigenous 
 "things of this world." Religion was thought to 
 extend to certain places, times, things, persons, ac- 
 tions, and opinions, and the law gave them a pecu- 
 liar protection ; but religion was not thought to 
 extend much further. So the law stopped there. 
 About three hundred years ago, an Italian sculptor 
 was burned alive, in Spain, for breaking a statue 
 he had himself made, being angry because the cus- 
 tomer 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 
 
 27*
 
 318 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS- 
 
 things which they claim as divine. Religion is to 
 have eminent domain over them, while over other 
 things it has a joint jurisdiction with " the world." 
 It was well that their idea of religion went as far as 
 it did. In the Middle Ages, if a fugitive slave fled 
 to the Catholic Church and got to the altar, his mas- 
 ters had no legal right to touch him but by permis- 
 sion of the priest. The bishop interfered, made 
 terms with the masters, and then delivered him up 
 or not as they promised well or ilL The spirit of 
 religion was supposed to rule in the church, and to 
 protect the outcast. Men counselled wiser than 
 they knew. It was a good thing that religion, such 
 a rude notion as men had of it, prevailed in that 
 narrow spot. When the tyrant would not respect 
 God in all space, it was well that he should tremble 
 before the sanctuary of a stone altar in a meeting- 
 house. He would not respect a man, let him learn 
 by beginning with a priest. If a murderer or a trai- 
 tor took refuge in the heathen temples, nobody could 
 drive him away or disturb him, for only God had 
 jurisdiction in the holy place. So was it with the 
 Hebrew cities of refuge : without, the atrocity of 
 the world prevailed; within was the humanity of 
 •religion. The great begins small. 
 
 I believe there is no nation acquainted with fire 
 but makes this artificial distinction. It is the first 
 feeble attempt of the religious faculty to assume
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 319 
 
 power iii the outward world ; in due time it will 
 extend its jurisdiction over all time and space, over 
 all things, all thoughts, all men, all deeds. 
 
 It is curious to see how this faculty goes on en- 
 larging its territory : one day religion watches over 
 the beginning of human life; then over its end; 
 next over its most eminent events, such as marriage, 
 or the entrance upon an office, making a will, or 
 giving testimony, all of which are connected with 
 some act of religion. You see what it all points 
 towards, — a coordination of all human faculties with 
 the religious. Here is the great forest of human life, 
 — a tangled brushwood, full of wild appetites and 
 prowling calculations, — to be cleared up. Religion 
 hews down a few trees, burns over a little spot, puts 
 in a few choice seeds, and scares off therefrom the 
 wild beasts of appetite, the cunning beasts of calcu- 
 lation. This is only the beginning of clearing up 
 the whole forest. What pains the savage in New 
 England took with his little patch of artichokes, 
 beans, pumpkins, and corn ! With his rude tools, 
 how poorly he dug and watered it, and for what a 
 stingy harvest ! He often chose the worst spot, he 
 knew no better, and got but small return, not know- 
 ing how to make bread out of the ground. His 
 garden was a very little patch in the woods, and 
 looked ridiculous beside the square leagues of wild 
 woodland, a howling wilderness, that reached from
 
 320 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 the Kennebec to the Mississippi. But it was the 
 first step towards cultivating the whole continent. 
 So is it with the sacred things of the Hottentot 
 and the Hebrew, the Caffre and the Christian. Let 
 us not despise the rude commencement of great 
 things. 
 
 To simplify the matter, let us consider only the 
 Actions pronounced religious. Certain deeds are 
 selected and declared sacred, not on account of their 
 natural usefulness or beauty, but by some caprice. 
 These are declared the " ordinances of religion," the 
 " sacraments " thereof, — things which represent and 
 express religion, — which it is pronounced religious 
 to do, and irreligious not to do. If there is a na- 
 tional 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 individ- 
 ual man. Accordingly, these conventional actions 
 come to be thought the exclusive expression of relig- 
 ion, and therefore pleasing to God ; they are not 
 thought educational, means of growth, but final, the 
 essential substance of religion. Some man is ap- 
 pointed to look after the performance of these actions, 
 and it is thought desirable to get the greatest possi-
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 321 
 
 ble number of persons to participate in them ; and 
 he that turns many to these conventional sacraments 
 is thought a great servant of God. 
 
 Look at some of these artificial sacraments. The 
 Indians of New England left tobacco or the fat of 
 the deer on the rocks, an offering to the Great Spirit. 
 "With them it was an " ordinance of religion," and 
 stood for an act of piety and morality both. The 
 clerical Bowwows recommended the action to the 
 people. What a time they had of it, those red sav- 
 ages 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 sacra- 
 ment of the people. It was wholly artificial, neither 
 useful nor beautiful. The statue was an idol of
 
 322 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 wood ; the cows who drew it were no better than 
 other cows. There was nothing holy in the image, 
 the grove, or the ceremony ; the drowning of the 
 priests was a cruel butchery. 
 
 As a sacrament, the New-Hollander cuts off the 
 last joint of the little finger of his son's left hand ; 
 it is an offering to God, who has made the finger a 
 joint too long for piety. 
 
 The Hebrews had their outward ordinances of 
 religion, — two personal sacraments of universal ob- 
 ligation, binding on each man, — circumcision, and 
 rest on the Sabbath. There were two more national 
 sacraments, binding on the nation, — the formal 
 worship of Jehovah, in Jerusalem, at stated times, 
 and by a prescribed ritual ; and the celebration of 
 the three national festivals. These were the sacra- 
 ments of religion. To eat the paschal lamb was a 
 " virtue," to taste swine's flesh a " sin." It was a 
 capital crime to heal a sick man on Saturday. All 
 these were artificial. Circumcision was a bad thing 
 in itself, and gets its appropriate hit in the New 
 Testament. Rest on the seventh day was no better 
 than on the first ; no better than work on the second ; 
 and worship in Jerusalem, at that time, and by that 
 form, no better than worship at Jericho, by another 
 form, and at a different time. The three feasts were 
 no better than the festivals of Easter and of Yule. 
 Yet those things were made the tests of piety and of
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 323 
 
 morality. Not to attend to them was deemed im- 
 piety against God. The Hebrew priest took great 
 pains to interest the people in all this matter, to 
 have the sacrifices offered, circumcision performed, 
 the Sabbath and the feasts kept. He who hobbled 
 the most in this lame way, and on these artificial 
 crutches, was thought the greatest priest. What a 
 reputation did puritanical Nehemiah get by his zeal 
 in these trifles! But when Jesus of Nazareth came, 
 his heart full of natural religion, he made way with 
 most of these ordinances. 
 
 Amongst Christians in general there is one spe- 
 cific sacramental opinion, — that Jesus of Naza- 
 reth is the only Son of God. The opinion itself 
 is of no value. You may admit all the excellence 
 of Jesus, and copy it all, and yet never have the 
 opinion. I do not find that the historical person, 
 Jesus, had any such opinion at all. Nay, the 
 opinion is an evil, for it leads men to take this 
 noble man and prostrate their mind and conscience 
 before his words ; just as much as Jesus is elevated 
 above the human is man sunk below it. But for 
 ages, in the Church, this has been thought the one 
 thing needful to make a man a Christian, to make 
 him " pious " and acceptable to God, — the great 
 internal ordinance and subjective sacrament of re- 
 ligion. 
 
 In the Catholic Church there is another sacra-
 
 324 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 mental opinion distinctive of that Christian sect, 
 — the belief that the Roman Church is divine and 
 infallible. The Protestants have also their distinc- 
 tive, sacramental opinion, — that the Scriptures are 
 divine and infallible. 
 
 The consistent Catholic tells you there is no 
 salvation without the belief of his sacramental doc- 
 trine ; consistent Protestants claim the same value 
 for their Shibboleth. So a man is to be " saved," 
 and " reconciled with God " by faith ; a general 
 faith, — the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the 
 only Son of God ; a particular faith, — the belief in 
 the divine and infallible Church, or the divine and 
 infallible Scriptures. 
 
 Then the Catholics have certain additional out- 
 ward sacraments, which are subsidiary, and called 
 the " ordinances of religion," — such as baptism, 
 confirmation, penance, extreme unction, and the 
 like. The Protestants have likewise their addi- 
 tional 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 sacra- 
 ment of the Protestants ; baptism for a few ; com- 
 munion for a selecter few ; and belief in all the 
 doctrines of the special sect, — an internal sacra- 
 ment which is actually enjoyed by only the smallest 
 portion of the selectest few.
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 325 
 
 Now all of these are purely artificial sacra- 
 ments. They are not good in themselves. Each 
 of them has once had an educational value for 
 mankind ; some of them still have, to a portion of 
 mankind. But they are not valued for their ten- 
 dency to promote natural piety and natural moral- 
 ity, only as things good in themselves ; not as 
 means to the grace and helps to the glory of relig- 
 ion, but as religion itself. Ecclesiastically it is 
 thought just as meritorious a thing to attend the 
 preaching of a dull, ignorant, stupid fellow, who 
 has nothing to teach and teaches it, as to listen to 
 the eloquent piety of a Fenelon, Taylor, or Buck- 
 minster, or to the beautiful philanthropy of St. 
 Roch, Oberlin, or Charming. Bodily presence in 
 the church being the sacrament, it is of small con- 
 sequence what bulk of dulness presses the pulpit 
 while the sacrament goes on. There is a "real 
 presence," if naught else be real. An indifferent 
 man baptized with water is thought a much better 
 " Christian " than a man full of piety and morality 
 but without the elemental sprinkling. 
 
 If you ask a New England Powwow for proof 
 of the religious character of a red man, he would 
 have cited the offering of tobacco to the Great 
 Spirit ; a Teutonic priest would refer to the rever- 
 ence of his countrymen for the ceremony just 
 spoken of; a New- Hollander would dwell on the 
 
 28
 
 326 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 devotion of his neighbors, and show the little 
 fingers cut off; a Hebrew would expatiate on the 
 sacrament of circumcision, of Sabbath-keeping, of 
 attendance upon the formal sacrifice at Jerusalem, 
 the observance of the three feasts, and abstinence 
 from swine's flesh ; the Christian dwells on his dis- 
 tinctive sacramental opinion, that Jesus is the Son 
 of Jehovah. Ask the Catholic priests for proof 
 that Joseph is a Christian, they will tell you, " He 
 believes in the divine and infallible Roman Church, 
 and receives its sacraments;" ask the Protestant 
 priests for a proof of their brother's piety, they will 
 refer to his belief in the divine and infallible Scrip- 
 tures, to his attendance at church, his baptism with 
 water, his communion in wine and bread; and, if 
 he is an eminent " saint," to his belief in all the 
 technical opinions of his sect. True, they may all 
 add other things which belong to real religion, but 
 you will find that these artificial sacraments are 
 the things relied on as proofs of religion, of Chris- 
 tianity, the signs of acceptableness with God, and 
 of eternal bliss. The others are only " of works," — 
 these " of faith ; " one of " natural religion," the 
 next of " revealed religion ; " morality is provisional, 
 and the sacraments a finality. 
 
 Accordingly, great pains are taken to bring men 
 to these results. If a minister does this to large 
 numbers, he is called " an eminent servant of the
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 327 
 
 Lord," — that is, a great circumciser, a great 
 sprinkler or plunger. Francis Xavier "converted" 
 thousands of men to what he called Christianity ; 
 they took the sacrament of belief, and of baptism, 
 — in due time the others ; and Francis was made a 
 saint. But it does not appear that he made them 
 any better men, better sons, brothers, husbands, fa- 
 thers, better neighbors and friends. He only brought 
 them to the artificial sacrament. It is often the 
 ambition of a Protestant minister to extend the 
 jurisdiction of his artificial sacraments, to bring 
 men to baptism and communion, not to industry, 
 temperance, and bodily well-being ; not to wisdom, 
 justice, friendship, and philanthropy; not to an 
 absolute love of God, a joyous, absolute faith in 
 the Dear Mother of us all. 
 
 Let us do no injustice to those poor, leaky ves- 
 sels of worship which we have borrowed from the 
 Egyptians to whom we were once in bondage. 
 They all have had their use. Man sets up his 
 mythologies and his sacraments to suit his condi- 
 tion of soul at the time. You cannot name a cere- 
 mony connected with religion, howsoever absurd or 
 wicked it may appear, but once it came out of the 
 soul of some man who needed it ; and it helped him 
 at the time. The tobacco offered to Hobomock at 
 Narragansett, the procession of Hertha in Pannonia,
 
 328 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 the ritual mutilation in New Holland, in Judea, 
 or, still worse, in Phrygia and Crete, all once had 
 their meaning. Nay, human sacrifice was once the 
 highest act of worship which some dark-minded 
 savage could comprehend, and in good faith the 
 victim was made ready at Mexico or at Moriah. 
 But the best of them are only educational, not final ; 
 and the sooner we can outgrow those childish 
 things, the better. 
 
 Men often mock at such things. What mouths 
 Arnobius and Augustine made at the heathen super- 
 stitions, taking their cue from pagan Lucian of 
 Samosata, the prince of scoffers ; they have given 
 the face of Christendom an anti-Pagan twist which 
 it keeps to this day. How Voltaire and his accom- 
 plished coadjutors repeated the mock, at the cost of 
 the followers of Augustine and Arnobius ! This is 
 hardly wise, and not reverent. Those things are to 
 be regarded as the work of children, who have their 
 snow-houses in winter, their earth-houses in sum- 
 mer, their games and plays, — trifles to us, but seri- 
 ous things to the little folk ; of great service in the 
 education of the eye and hand, — nay, of the under- 
 standing itself. How the little boy cries because 
 he cannot spin his top like the older brothers ! He 
 learns to spin it, and is delighted with its snoring 
 hum ; learning skill by that, he by and by goes on 
 to higher acts of boyish life. So is it with these
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 329 
 
 artificial sacraments. Xavier brought a new top to 
 the men of India ; Charlemagne slew the Saxons 
 who would not accept his, — as rude boys force the 
 little ones from old to new sports. 
 
 It is no evil to have some things of the sort ; no 
 more than it is for a boy to ride a stick before he 
 can mount a horse ; or for a little girl to fill her arms 
 with a Nuremberg baby before she can manage hu- 
 man children. Only the evil is, that these things 
 are thought the real and natural sacrament of relig- 
 ion ; 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 wo- 
 man now, still hugged her doll from Nuremberg, 
 making believe it was a child, — loved it better than 
 sons and daughters, and left her own baby to dandle 
 a lump of wood, counting a child only provisional, 
 and the doll a finality, — then we should see the 
 same error that was committed by Xavier and 
 others, and repeated by clergymen and whole troops 
 of Christians. I have seen assemblies of Christian 
 divines, excellent and self-denying men, in earnest 
 session and grave debate, who seemed to me only 
 
 28*
 
 330 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 venerable boys riding cockhorse on their grandam's 
 crutch. 
 
 The general Christian belief, that Jesus was the 
 Son of God, is now no spiritual sacrament ; the 
 specific belief of the Catholic or Protestant at this 
 day is worth no more. Nay, all these stand in the 
 way of the human race, and hinder our march. So 
 the outward Christian sacraments — baptism, confir- 
 mation, communion, confession, penance, and the 
 rest — seem to me only stones of stumbling in the 
 way of mankind ; they are as far from the real ordi- 
 nances of religion as dandling a doll is from the 
 mother's holy duty. 
 
 The natural and real ordinance of religion is in 
 general a manly life, all the man's faculties of body 
 and spirit developed or developing in their natural 
 and harmonious way, the body ruled by the spirit, 
 its instincts all in their places, the mind active, the 
 conscience, the affections, the soul, all at work in 
 their natural way. Religion is the sacrament of 
 religion ; itself its ordinance. Piety and goodness 
 are its substance, and all normal life its form. The 
 love of God and the love of man, with all that 
 belongs thereto, worship with every limb of the 
 body, every faculty of the spirit, every power we 
 possess over matter or men, — that is the sacra-
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 331 
 
 mental substance of religion ; a life obedient to the 
 love of God and of man, — that is the sacramental 
 form of religion. All else is means, provisional ; 
 this the end, a finality. Thus my business, my 
 daily work with the hand, if an honest and manly 
 work, is the ordinance of religion to my body ; seek- 
 ing and expressing truth and beauty is the ordinance 
 of religion to my mind ; doing justice to all about 
 me is the moral ordinance of religion ; loving men 
 is the natural sacrament of the affections ; holiness 
 is the natural ordinance of the soul. Putting all 
 together, — my internal consciousness of piety and 
 goodness, my outward life which represents that, is 
 the great natural sacrament, the one compendious 
 and universal ordinance. Then my religion is not 
 one thing, and my life another ; the two are one. 
 Thus religion is the sacrament of religion, morality 
 the test of piety. 
 
 If you believe God limited to one spot, then 
 that is counted specifically holy ; and your religion 
 draws or drives you thither. If you believe that 
 religion demands only certain particular things, 
 they will be thought sacramental, and the doing 
 thereof the proof of religion. But when you know 
 that God is infinite, is everywhere, then all space 
 is holy ground ; all days are holy time ; all truth is 
 God's word ; all persons are subjects of religious 
 duty, invested with unalienable religious rights,
 
 332 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 and claiming respect and love as fellow-children 
 of the same dear God. Then, too, all work be- 
 comes sacred and venerable ; common life, your 
 highest or your humblest toil, is your element of 
 daily communion with men, as your act of prayer is 
 your communion with the Infinite God. 
 
 This is the history of all artificial sacraments. 
 A man rises with more than the ordinary amount of 
 religion ; by the accident of his personal character, 
 or by some circumstance or event in his history, he 
 does some particular thing as an act of religion. 
 To him it is such, and represents his feeling of peni- 
 tence, or resolution, or gratitude, or faith in God. 
 Other men wish to be as religious as he, and do 
 the same thing, hoping to get thereby the same 
 amount of religion. By and by the deed itself is 
 mistaken for religion, repeated again and again. 
 The feeling which first prompted it is all gone, 
 the act becomes merely mechanical, and thus of no 
 value. 
 
 Thousands of years ago some man of wicked 
 ways resolved to break from them and start anew, 
 converted by some saint. He calls the neighbors 
 together at the side of the Euphrates, the Jordan, 
 or the Nile, — elements which he deems divine, 
 — and plunges in : " Thus I will wipe off all an- 
 cient sin," says he ; " by this act I pledge my-
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 333 
 
 self to a new life, — this holy element is witness 
 to my vow ; let the saints bear record ! " The 
 penitence is real, the resolution is real, the act of 
 self-baptism means something. By and by other 
 penitent men do the same, from the same motive, 
 struck by his example. Crowds look on from 
 curiosity; a few idly imitate the form; then many 
 from fashion. Soon it is all ceremony, and means 
 nothing. It is the property of the priest ; it is 
 cherished still, and stands in place of religion. 
 The single, momentary dispensation of water is 
 thought of more religious importance than the 
 daily dispensation of righteousness. Men go 
 leagues long on pilgrimage, — to dip them in the 
 sacred stream, and return washed, but not clean ; 
 baptized, but neither beautiful nor blameless. At 
 length it is thought that baptism, the poor, out- 
 ward act, atones for a life of conscious sin. Imperial 
 Constantine, hypocritical and murderous, mourn- 
 ing that the Church will not twice baptize, is con- 
 verted, but cunningly postpones his plunge till old 
 age, that he may sin his fill, then dip and die clean 
 and new. 
 
 So is it with all artificial forms. When they 
 become antiquated, the attempt to revive them, to 
 put new life therein, is always useless and unnat- 
 ural ; it is only a show, too often a cheat. At 
 this day the routine of form is valued most by
 
 334 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 those who care only for the form, and tread the 
 substance underneath their feet. Put the wijr of 
 dead men's hair on your bald head, it is only a 
 barber's cap, not nature's graceful covering, and 
 underneath, the hypocritic head lies bald and bare. 
 Put it on your head if you will, but do not insist 
 that little children and fair-haired maids shall shear 
 off the the locks of nature, and hide their heads 
 beneath your deceitful handiwork. The boy is 
 grown up to manhood, he rides real horses; nay, 
 owns, tames, and rears them for himself. How 
 idle to ask him to mount again his hobby, or 
 to ride cockhorse on his grandam's crutch once 
 more ! You may galvanize the corpse into mo- 
 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-
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 335 
 
 hold your evil deeds ! " cries Jesus in their ears. 
 " Dear Lord," say they, " speak not of that ; we 
 were all baptized, in manhood or in infancy, gave 
 bodily presence at a church, enrolled our names 
 among the priest's elect, believed the whole creed, 
 and took the sacrament in every form. What 
 wouldst thou more, dear Christ? Dost thou ask 
 provisional morality of us ? Are not these things 
 ultimate, the finality of salvation ? " 
 
 I always look with pain on any effort to put the 
 piety of our times into the artificial sacraments of 
 another and a ruder age. It is often attempted, 
 sometimes with pure and holy feelings, with great 
 self-denial ; but it is always worthless. The new 
 wine of religion must be put into new bottles. See 
 what improvements are yearly made in science, in 
 agriculture, weaving, ship-building, in medicine, in 
 every art. Shall there be none in religion, none in 
 the application of its great sentiments to daily life ? 
 Shall we improve only in our ploughs, not also in 
 the forms of piety ? 
 
 At this day great pains are taken to put religion 
 into artificial sacraments, which, alas ! have no con- 
 nection 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 moral- 
 ity. I know of hundreds who take continual pains 
 to promote those artificial sacraments, — earnest,
 
 336 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 devout, and self-denying men. Why is this so ? It 
 is because they think the ceremony is religion ; not 
 religion's accidental furniture, but religion itself. It 
 is painful to see such an amount of manly and 
 earnest effort, of toil and self-denial and prayer, de- 
 voted to an end so little worth. The result is very 
 painful, more so than the process itself. 
 
 We call ourselves a Christian people, a religious 
 nation. Why ? Are we a religious people because 
 the heart of the nation is turned towards God and 
 his holy law ? The most prominent churches just 
 now have practically told us, that there is no law of 
 God above the statute politicians write on parch- 
 ment in the Capitol ; that Congress is higher than 
 the Almighty, the President a finality; and that 
 God must hide his head behind the Compromise! 
 Is it because the highest talent of the nation, its 
 ablest zeal, its stoutest heroism, is religious in its 
 motive, religious in its aim, religious in its means, 
 religious in its end ? Nobody pretends that. A 
 respectable man would be thought crazy, and called 
 a " fanatic," who should care much for religion in 
 any of its higher forms. Self-denial for popularity 
 and for money or office, — that is common; it 
 abounds in every street. Self-denial for religion, — 
 is that so common? Are we called Christians be- 
 cause we value the character of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and wish to be like him ? Is it the ambition of cal-
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 337 
 
 culating fathers, that their sons be closely like the 
 friend of publicans and sinners ? Nay, is it the am- 
 bition 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 affec- 
 tion, — 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 holi- 
 ness, and love ; a faith in God as Cause and Provi- 
 dence, 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 
 ritual; dogmatical, — compliance with the creed. It 
 is not shown that the rite has a universal, natural 
 connection with piety ; only that it was once histor- 
 ically connected with a pious man. Nobody thinks 
 that circumcision, baptism, or taking the Lord's sup^ 
 per, has a natural and indispensable connection with 
 piety ; only it is maintained that these things have 
 been practised by pious men, and so are imposed on 
 others by their authority. It is not shown that the 
 
 29
 
 338 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 creed has its foundation in the nature of man, still 
 less in the nature of God ; only that it rested once 
 in the consciousness of some pious man, and has 
 also been imposed on us by authority. So, it is not 
 shown that these tests have any natural connection 
 with religion ; only that they once had an histori- 
 cal connection ; and that, of course, was either tem- 
 porary, naturally ending with the stage of civiliza- 
 tion which it belonged to, or even personal, peculiar 
 to the man it begun with. 
 
 Yet it is remarkable how much those temporary 
 •or mere personal expedients are set up as indispen- 
 sable conditions and exclusive tests of piety. The 
 Catholic Church, on the whole, is an excellent insti- 
 tution ; Christendom could no more do without it, 
 than Europe dispense with monarchies ; but the 
 steadfast Catholic must say, " Out of the Church 
 there is no piety, no religion beyond the Church's 
 ritual and creed." The Protestant churches are, on 
 the whole, an excellent institution ; Christendom 
 could no more dispense with them, than New Eng- 
 land with her almshouses and jails ; but the steadfast 
 Protestant will say, " There can be no piety without 
 accepting the Bible as the word of God, no saving 
 religion without faith in the letter of Scripture." 
 Not only has the Catholic his Shibboleth, and the 
 Protestant his, but each sect its own. The Calvinist 
 says, " There is no piety without a belief in the Trin-
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 339 
 
 ity." The Unitarians say, " There is no piety with- 
 out a belief in the miracles of the New Testament." 
 The Jews require a knowledge of Moses ; Mahome- 
 tans, a reverence for their prophet; and Christians, 
 in general, agree there is no " saving piety " without 
 submissive reverence to Christ. The late Dr. Ar- 
 nold, a most enlightened and religious man, declared 
 that he had no knowledge of God except as mani- 
 fested through Jesus Christ. Yet all the wide world 
 over, everywhere, men know of God and worship 
 Him, — the savage fearing, while the enlightened 
 learns to love. 
 
 Since compliance with the ritual and the creed is 
 made the sole and exclusive test of piety, religious 
 teachers aim to produce this compliance in both 
 kinds, and succeeding therein, are satisfied that 
 piety dwells in their disciples' heart. But the ritual 
 compliance may be purely artificial ; not something 
 which grows out of the man, but sticks on. The 
 compliance with the doctrine may be apparent, and 
 not real at all. The word belief is taken in a good 
 many senses. It does not always mean a total ex- 
 perience of the doctrine, a realizing sense thereof ; 
 not always an intellectual conviction. They often 
 are the best believers of the creed who have the 
 least experience in the love of God, but little intel- 
 lect, and have made no investigation of the matter 
 credited. Belief often means only that the believer
 
 340 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 does not openly reject the doctrine he is said to 
 hold. So the thing thus believed is not always a 
 new branch growing out of the old bole ; nor is it a 
 foreign scion grafted in, and living out of the old 
 stock, as much at home as if a native there, and 
 bearing fruit after its better kind ; it is merely stuck 
 into the bark of the old tree, — nay, often not even 
 that, but only lodged in the branches, — fruitless, 
 leafless, lifeless, and dry as a stick, — a deformity, 
 and without use. 
 
 In this way it comes to pass that compliance with 
 the rite, and belief in a doctrine, which in some 
 men were the result of a long life of piety and hard 
 struggle, actually mean nothing at all. So that the 
 ritual and the creed have no more effect in pro- 
 moting the " convert's " piety and morality, than 
 would belief in the multiplication-table and the 
 habit of saying it over. You are surprised that the 
 doctrines of Christ do not affect the Christian, and 
 ceremonies which once revolutionized the heart they 
 were born in, now leave the worshipper as cold as 
 the stone beneath his knee. Be not astonished at 
 the result. The marble does not feel the com- 
 mandments which are graven there ; the commun- 
 ion chalice never tastes the consecrated wine. 
 The marble and metal are only mechanical in their 
 action ; it was not meant that they should taste or 
 feel.
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 341 
 
 Then piety, as a sentiment, is taken as the whole 
 of religion ; its end is in itself. The tests, liturgical 
 or dogmatic, show that piety is in the man; all he 
 has next to do is to increase the quantity. The 
 proof of that increase is a greatening of love for the 
 form and for the doctrine ; the habit of dawdling 
 about the one and talking about the other. The 
 sentiment of religion is allowed to continue a sen- 
 timent, and nothing more ; soon it becomes less, a 
 sentimentalism, a sickly sentiment which will never 
 beget a deed. 
 
 It is a good thing to get up pious feeling ; there 
 is no danger we shall have too much of that. But 
 the feeling should lead to a thought, the thought to 
 a deed, else it is of small value ; at any rate, it does 
 not do all of its work for the individual, and noth- 
 ing for any one beside. This religious sentimen- 
 tality is called Mysticism or Pietism, in the bad 
 sense of those two words. In most of the churches 
 which have a serious purpose, and are not content 
 with the mere routine of office, it is a part of the 
 pastor's aim to produce piety, the love of God. 
 That is right, for piety, in its wide sense, is the 
 foundation of all manly excellence. But in general 
 they seem to know only these liturgical and dog- 
 matic tests of piety ; hence they aim to have piety 
 put in that conventional form, and reject with scorn 
 
 29*
 
 342 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 all other and natural modes of expressing love to 
 iGod. 
 
 It is a good thing to aim to produce piety, a 
 great good : an evil, to limit in this way ; a great 
 evil, not to leave it free to take its natural form ; a 
 very great evil, to keep it indoors so long, that it 
 .becomes sick and good for nothing, not daring to go 
 out at all. 
 
 It is remarkable how often ecclesiastical men 
 make this mistake. They judge a man to be relig- 
 ious or otherwise, solely by this test. You hear 
 strict ministers speak of a layman as an " amiable 
 man," but " not pious." They do not know that 
 amiableness is one form of natural piety, and that 
 the more piety a man gets, the more amiable he 
 becomes. The piety which they know Jias no con- 
 nection 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 commen- 
 dation in most of the many sermons preached in 
 memory of the man. What was the proof or sign 
 of that piety ? Scarcely any one found it in his 
 integrity, which had not failed for many a year ; or 
 .his faithful attendance on his political duty ; or his 
 unflinching love of liberty, and the noble war the 
 aged champion fought for the unalienable rights
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 343 
 
 of man. No ! They found the test in the fact that 
 he was a member of a church ; that he went to 
 meeting, and was more decorous than most men 
 while there ; that he daily read the Bible, and re- 
 peated each night a simple and beautiful little 
 prayer, which mothers teach their babes of grace. 
 No " regular minister," I think, found the proof of 
 his piety in his zeal for man's welfare, in the clean- 
 ness of his life, and hands which never took a bribe. 
 One, I remember, found a sign of that piety in the 
 fact, that he never covered his reverend head till 
 fairly out of church ! 
 
 You remember the Orthodox judgment on Dr. 
 Charming. Soon after his death, it was declared in 
 a leading Trinitarian journal of America, that with- 
 out doubt he had gone to the place of torment, to 
 expiate the sin of denying the Deity of Christ. All 
 the noble life of that great and good and loving man 
 was not thought equal to the formal belief, that the 
 Jesus of the Gospels is the Jehovah of the Psalms. 
 
 After ecclesiastical men produce their piety, they 
 do not aim to set it to do the natural work of 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 suffi- 
 cient head of piety, and then, instead of setting it 
 to turn the useful mill of life, or even drawing it off 
 to water the world's dry grounds, they let the waters
 
 344 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 run over the dam, promoting nothing but sectarian 
 froth and noise; or, if it be allowed to turn the 
 wheels, it must not grind sound corn for human 
 bread, but chiefly rattle the clapper of the theologic 
 mill. 
 
 The most serious sects in America now and then 
 have a revival. The aim is to produce pietism ; 
 but commonly you do not find the subjects of a re- 
 vival more disposed to morality after that than 
 before ; it is but seldom they are better sons or more 
 loving lovers, partners or parents more faithful than 
 before. It is only the ritual and the creed which 
 they love the better. Intelligent men of the serious 
 sects will tell you, such revivals do more harm than 
 good, because the feelings are excited unnaturally, 
 and then not directed to their appropriate, useful 
 work. 
 
 The most important actual business of the clergy 
 is, first, to keep up the present amount of morality. 
 All sects agree in that work, and do a service by the 
 attempt. For there are always sluggish men, slum- 
 berers, who need to be awaked, loiterers, who must 
 be called out to, and hurried forward. Next, it is to 
 produce piety, try it by these tests, and put it into 
 these forms. All sects likewise agree in that, and 
 therein they do good, and a great good. But after 
 the piety is produced, it is not wholly natural piety,
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 345 
 
 nor do they aim to apply it to the natural work 
 thereof. 
 
 Such is the most important business of the pulpit, 
 — almost its only business. Hence unpopular vices, 
 vices below the average virtue of society, get abun- 
 dantly preached at. And popular virtues, virtues up 
 to the average of society, get abundantly praised. 
 But popular vices go unvvhipped, and unpopular 
 virtues all unhonored pass the pulpit by. The great 
 Dagon of the popular idolatry stands there in the 
 market-place, to receive the servile and corrupting 
 homage of the crowd, dashing the little ones to ruin 
 at his feet ; the popular priest is busy with his Phil- 
 istine 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 wis- 
 dom, justice, philanthropy, or faith in God, and reso- 
 lutely bent on promoting piety and morality in all 
 their forms, is thought out of place in a sectarian 
 pulpit; and is just as much out of place there, as a 
 Unitarian would be in a Trinitarian pulpit, or a Cal- 
 vinist in a Unitarian, — as much so as a weaver of 
 broadcloth would be in a mill for making ribbons or 
 gauze. 
 
 Hence, too, it comes to pass, that it is not thought 
 fit to attack popular errors in the pulpit, nor speak of 
 wide spread public sins ; not even to expose the fault
 
 346 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 of your own denomination to itself. The sins of 
 Unitarians may be aimed at only from Trinitarian 
 pulpits. It is not lawful for a sect to be instructed 
 by a friend. The sins of commerce must not be re- 
 buked in a trading town. In time of war we must 
 not plead for peace. The sins of politics the minis- 
 ter must never touch. Why not ? Because they are 
 " actual sins of the times," and his kingdom " is not 
 of this world." Decorous ministers are ordained and 
 appointed to apologize for respectable iniquity, and 
 to eulogize every wicked but popular, great man. 
 So long as the public sepulchres may not be cleansed, 
 there must be priestly Pharisees to wash their out- 
 side white. The Northern priest is paid to conse- 
 crate the tyranny of capital, as the Southern to con- 
 secrate 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 feel- 
 ings ; and they must not be disquieted from their 
 decorous, their solemn, their accustomed sleep. 
 " You must preach the Gospel, young fanatic," 
 quoth the world. And that means preaching the 
 common doctrines so as to convict no man's con- 
 science of any actual sin; then press out a little 
 pietism, and decant it off into the old leathern bot- 
 tles of the Church. 
 
 The late Mr. Polk affords a melancholy example 
 of the effect of this mode of proceeding. On his
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 347 
 
 death-bed, when a man ought to have nothing to do 
 but to die, the poor man remembers that he has 
 " not been baptized," wishes to know if there is any 
 " hope " for him, receives the dispensation of water 
 in the usual form, and is thought to die " a Chris- 
 tian ! " What a sad sign of the state of religion 
 amongst us ! To him or to his advisers it did not 
 seem to occur, that, if we live right, it is of small 
 consequence how we die ; that a life full of duties is 
 the real baptism in the name of man and God, and 
 the sign of the Holy Spirit. The churches never 
 taught him so. But snivelling at the end is not a 
 Christian and a manly death. 
 
 The effect of getting up the feeling of piety, and 
 stopping with that, is like the effect of reading nov- 
 els and nothing else. Thereby the feelings of be- 
 nevolence, of piety, of hope, of joy, are excited, but 
 lead to no acts ; the character becomes enervated, 
 the mind feeble, the conscience inert, the will im- 
 potent ; the heart, long wont to weep at the novel- 
 ist's unreal woes, at sorrows in silk and fine linen, is 
 harder than Pharaoh's when a dirty Irish girl asks 
 for a loaf in the name of God, or when a sable 
 mother begs money wherewith to save her daughter 
 from the seraglios of New Orleans. Self-denial for 
 the sake of noble enterprise is quite impossible to 
 such. All the great feelings naturally lead to com-
 
 348 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 mensurate deeds ; to excite the feeling and leave un- 
 done the deed, is baneful in the extreme. 
 
 I do not say novels are not good reading and 
 profitable ; they are, just so far as they stimulate the 
 intellect, the conscience, the affections, the soul, to 
 healthful action, and set the man to work ; but just 
 so far as they make you content with mere feeling, 
 and constrain the feeling to be nothing but feeling, 
 they are pernicious. Such reading is mental dissi- 
 pation. To excite the devotional feelings, to pro- 
 duce a great love of God, and not allow that to 
 become work, is likewise dissipation, all the more 
 pernicious, — dissipation of the conscience, of the 
 soul. . I do not say it comes in the name of self-in- 
 dulgence, 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 stand- 
 ing on his guard and watching " unto fraud. I am
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 349 
 
 sorry to hear of a woman given up to self-indul- 
 gence, 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, 
 banning men in the name of God ; when I hear 
 that this luxurious woman delights in mystic devo- 
 tion, and has a wantonness of prayer, — it makes 
 me far more sad; and there is then no hope! The 
 kidnapper at his court is a loathly thing ; but the 
 same kidnapper at his " communion ! " — great God ! 
 and has thy Church become so low ! Let us turn 
 off our eyes and look away. 
 
 Hence it comes to pass, that much of all this 
 ecclesiastic pains to produce piety is abortive ; it 
 ends in sickness and routine. Men who have the 
 reputation of piety in a vulgar sense are the last 
 men you would look to for any great good work. 
 They will not oppose slavery and war and lust of 
 land, — national sins that are popular ; nor intem- 
 perance and excessive love of gold, — popular, per- 
 sonal, and social sins. They would not promote 
 the public education of the people, and care not to 
 raise woman to her natural equality with man. " It 
 
 30
 
 350 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 is no part of piety to do such things," say they ; 
 " we are not under the covenant of works, but of 
 grace only. What care we for painful personal 
 righteousness, which profiteth little, when only the 
 imputed can save us, and that so swiftly ! " 
 
 Nay, they hinder all these great works. The bit- 
 terest opposition to the elevation of all men is made 
 in the name of devotion ; so is the defence of 
 slavery and war, and the flat degradation of wo- 
 man. Here is a church, which at a public meeting 
 solemnly instructs its minister elect not to preach 
 on politics, or on the subjects of reform. They 
 want him to " preach piety," " nothing but piety," 
 "evangelical piety;" not a weekday piety but a 
 Sabbath piety, which is up and at church once in 
 seven days, — keeps her pew of a Sunday, but her 
 bed all the week, — ghastly, lean, dyspeptic, cough- 
 ing, bowed together, and in nowise able to lift up 
 herself. 
 
 Hence "piety" gets a bad reputation amongst 
 philanthropists, as it serves to hinder the develop- 
 ment of humanity. Even amongst men of business 
 a reputation for " piety " would make a new comer 
 distrusted ; the money-lender would look more care- 
 fully to his collateral security. 
 
 At Blenheim and at Windsor you will find 
 clipped yew-trees, cut into the shape of hearts and 
 diamonds, nay, of lions and eagles, looking like any
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 351 
 
 thing but trees. So in Boston, in all New Eng- 
 land, everywhere in Christendom, you find clipped 
 men, their piety cut into various artificial forms, 
 looking like any thing but men. The saints of the 
 popular theology, what are they good for ? For 
 belief and routine, — for all of religion save only 
 real piety and morality. 
 
 Persons of this stamp continually disappoint 
 us. You expect manly work, and cannot get it 
 done. Did you ever see little children play " Mon- 
 ey ? " They clasp their hands together and strike 
 them gently on their knee ; the elastic air com- 
 pressed by this motion sounds like the jingling of 
 small silver coin. You open the hand : there is 
 nothing in it, — not small money enough to buy a 
 last year's walnut or a blueberry. It was only 
 the jingle of the money, — all of money but the 
 money's worth. So is this unnatural form of 
 piety; it has the jingle of godliness, and seems just 
 as good as real piety, until you come to spend it; 
 then it is good for nothing, — it will not pass any- 
 where amongst active men. A handful of it comes 
 to nothing. Alas me ! the children play at " Money," 
 and call it sport; men grown play with a similar 
 delusion, and call it the worship of God. 
 
 Now there is much of this false piety in the 
 world, produced by this false notion, that there are 
 only these two tests of piety. It leads to a great
 
 352 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 deal of mischief. Men are deceived who look to 
 you for work ; you yourself are deceived in hoping 
 for peace, beauty, comfort, and gladness, from such 
 a deception. 
 
 " So, floating down a languid stream, 
 The lily-leaves oft lilies seem, 
 Reflecting back the whitened beam 
 
 Of morning's slanting sun ; — 
 But as I near and nearer came, 
 I missed the lily's fragrant flame, — 
 
 The gay deceit was done. 
 No snow-white lily blossomed fair, 
 There came no perfume on the air ; 
 Only an idle leaf lay there, 
 
 And wantoned in the sun." 
 
 Under these circumstances, piety dies away till 
 there is nothing left but the name and the form. 
 There is the ritual, the belief, such as it is, but 
 nothing else. It is the symbol of narrowness and 
 bigotry, often of self-conceit, sometimes of envy 
 and malice and all uncharitableness. It leads to 
 no outward work, it produces no inward satisfac- 
 tion, no harmony with yourself, no concord with 
 your brother, no unity with God. It leads to no 
 real and natural tranquillity, no income of the 
 Holy Spirit, no access of new being, no rest in 
 God. There is the form of godliness, and nothing 
 of its power. Some earnest-minded men see this,
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 353 
 
 and are disgusted with all that bears the name of 
 religion. Do you wonder at this ? Remove the 
 cause, as well as blame the consequence. 
 
 If pains be taken to cultivate piety, and, as it 
 grows up, if it be left to its own natural develop- 
 ment, 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 Infi- 
 nite Object, it will be directed also towards men, 
 and become a deed. As you love God the more, 
 you must also love men the more, and so must 
 serve them better. Your prayer will not content 
 you, though beautiful as David's loftiest Psalm ; 
 you must put it into a practice more lovely yet. 
 Then your prayer will help you, your piety be a 
 real motive, a perpetual blessing. It will increase 
 continually, rising as prayer to come down again 
 as practice, — will first raise " a mortal to the skies," 
 then draw that angel down. So the water which 
 rises in electric ecstasy to heaven, and gleams in 
 the rising or descending sun, comes down as 
 simple dew and rain, to quiet the dust in the com- 
 mon 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. 
 
 30*
 
 354 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 At the beginning of your growth in piety, there 
 is, doubtless, need of forms, of special time and 
 place. There need not be another's form, or there 
 may be, just as you like. The girl learning to 
 write imitates carefully each mark on the copy, 
 thinking of the rules for holding the pen. But as 
 you grow, you think less of the form, of the sub- 
 stance more. So the pen becomes not a mere in- 
 strument, but almost a limb ; the letters are formed 
 even without a thought. Without the form, you 
 have the effect thereof. 
 
 If there be piety in the heart, and it be allowed 
 to live and grow and attain its manly form, it will 
 quicken every noble faculty in man. Morality will 
 not be dry, and charity will not be cold ; the reason 
 will not grovel with mere ideas, nor the understand- 
 ing with calculations ; the shaft of wit will lose its 
 poison, merriment its levity, common life its tedium. 
 Disappointment, sorrow, suffering, will not break the 
 heart, which will find soothing and comfort in its 
 saddest woe. The consciousness of error, that 
 vexes oft the noble soul, will find some compen- 
 sation for its grief. Remorse, which wounds men 
 so sadly and so sore, will leave us the sweetest 
 honey, gleaned up from the flowers we trod upon 
 when we should have gathered their richness, and 
 happily will sting us out of our offence.
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 355 
 
 The common test of Christianity is not the 
 natural sacrament ; it is only this poor conventional 
 thins. Look at this. The land is full of Bibles. I 
 am glad of it. I am no worshipper of the Bible, yet 
 I reverence its wisdom, I honor its beauty of holi- 
 ness, and love exceedingly the tranquil trust in God 
 which its great authors had. Some of the best 
 things that I have ever learned from man this book 
 has taught me. Think of the great souls in this 
 Hebrew Old Testament ; of the two great men in 
 the New, — Jesus, who made the great religious 
 motion in the world's parliament, and Paul, who 
 supported it ! I am glad the Bible goes every- 
 where. 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 bet- 
 ter spirit of Moses, of Esaias, of the Holy Psalms, 
 so old and yet so young, so everlasting in their 
 beauteous faith in God, — the sublime spirit of one 
 greater than the temple, and lord of the Sabbath, 
 who scorned to put the new wine of God into the 
 old and rotten bags of men — that is not in 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
 
 356 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 us worship Thee. Catholicism is worship of a 
 church, instead of God ; Protestantism is worship 
 of a book. Both could not generate a Jesus or a 
 Moses. 
 
 For proof of religion men appeal to our churches, 
 built by the self-denial of hard-working men. They 
 prove nothing, — nay, nothing at all. The 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 moral- 
 ity is needed to make up a popular " Christian ! " 
 Alas ! we have set up an artificial sacrament ; we 
 comply with that, then call ourselves religious, — 
 yea, Christians. We try ecclesiastic metal by its 
 brassy look and brassy ring, then stamp it with 
 the popular image of our idolatry, and it passes cur- 
 rent 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 Samari- 
 tan, with his way-side benevolence to him that fell 
 among the thieves, — might shame forth from the 
 Christian Church each Pharisee who drops his 
 minted and his jingling piety, with brassy noise,
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 357 
 
 into the public chest. Render unto Caesar the 
 things that be Caesar's. 
 
 The real test of religion is its natural sacrament, 
 — is life. To know whom you worship, let me see 
 you in your shop, let me overhear you in your trade ; 
 let me know how you rent your houses, how you 
 get your money, how you keep it, or how it is spent. 
 It is easy to pass the Sunday idle, idly lounging in 
 the twilight of idle words, or basking in the sun- 
 shine of some strong man's most earnest speech. It 
 is easy to repeat the words of David, or of Jesus, 
 and to call it prayer. But the sacramental test of 
 your religion is not your Sunday idly spent, not the 
 words of David or of Jesus that you repeat; it is 
 your weekday life, your works, and not your words. 
 Tried by this natural test, the Americans are a hea- 
 then people, not religious ; far, far from that. Com- 
 pare us with the Chinese by the artificial standard 
 of the missionary, we are immensely above them ; 
 by the natural sacrament of obedience to the law of 
 God, how much is the Christian before the heathen 
 man ? 
 
 The national test of religion is the nation's jus- 
 tice, — justice to other states abroad, the strong, the 
 weak, and justice to all sorts of men at home. The 
 law-book is the nation's creed ; the newspapers 
 chant the actual liturgy and service of the day. 
 What avails it that the priest calls us " Christian,"
 
 358 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 while the newspapers and the Congress prove us 
 infidel ? The social sacrament of religion is justice 
 to all about you in society, — is honesty in trade 
 and work, is friendship and philanthropy ; the relig- 
 ious strong must help the weak. The ecclesiastical 
 sacrament of a church must be its effort to promote 
 piety and goodness in its own members first, and 
 then to spread it round the world. Care for the 
 bodies and souls of men, that is the real sacrament 
 and ordinance of religion for society, the Church 
 and State. 
 
 For the individual man, for you and me, there are 
 two great natural sacraments. One is inward and 
 not directly seen, save by the eye of God and by 
 your own, — the continual effort, the great life-long 
 act of prayer to be a man, with a man's body 
 and a man's spirit, doing a man's duties, having a 
 man's rights, and thereby enjoying the welfare of a 
 man. That is one, — the internal ordinance of relig- 
 ion. The other is like it, — the earnest attempt to 
 embody this in outward life, to make the manly act 
 of prayer a manly act of practice too. These are 
 the only sacraments for the only worship of the only 
 God. Let me undervalue no means of growth, no 
 hope of glory ; these are the ends of growth, the 
 glory which men hope. 
 
 Is not all this true ? You and I, — we all know 
 it. There is but one religion, natural and revealed
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 359 
 
 by nature, — by outward nature poorly and 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, per- 
 sons, by this sacramental test, and what a spectacle 
 we are ! For the religion of the State, study the 
 ends and actions of the State ; study the religion of 
 the Church by the doctrines and the practice of the 
 Church; the religion of society, — read it in the 
 great cities of the land. " Thy kingdom come, Thy 
 will be done," prays the minister. Listen to the 
 " Amen " of the courts and the market, responding 
 all the week! The actual religion of mankind is 
 always summed up in the most conspicuous men. 
 Is that religion Christian ? Spirit of the Crucified ! 
 how we take thy honored name in vain ! Yet we 
 did not mean to be led astray : the nations did not 
 mean it ; the cities meant it not; the churches prayed 
 for better things ; the chief men stumbled and fell. 
 We have altogether mistaken the ordinance of relig- 
 ion, and must mend that. 
 
 The New England Indian insisted upon his poor, 
 hungry sacrament ; so did the barbarian German ; 
 so the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant; and each 
 sectarian has his Shibboleth of ritual and creed. 
 How poor and puerile are all these things ! How 
 puerile and poor the idea of God asking such trifles
 
 360 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 of mortal man ! We shall never mend matters till 
 we take the real religious sacrament, scorning to 
 be deluded longer by such idle shows. 
 
 Now it has come to such a pass, that men wish to 
 limit all religion to their artificial sacraments. The 
 natural ordinance of human piety must not be even 
 commended in the church. You must not apply 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 ; 
 religion is religion. Business has the week for his 
 time, the world for his market-place; religion has 
 her Sunday and her meeting-house ; let each pursue 
 his own affairs. So the minister must not expose 
 the sins of trade nor the sins of politics. Then, too, 
 public opinion must be equally free from the incur- 
 sions 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, the market and all men, to serve the Devil, and 
 be lost." " Very well," says the priest, " I accept the 
 condition. Come and take our blessed religion ! " 
 
 I began by saying how beautiful is real piety ; so 
 let me end. I love to study this in the forms of the 
 past, in the mystic forms of Thomas a Kempis and 
 William Law, in Fenelon and Swedenborg, in John
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 361 
 
 Tauler, in St. Bernard and St. Victor, in Taylor and 
 Herbert. But there it appears not in its fairest form. 
 I love to see piety at its work better than in its play 
 or its repose ; in philanthropists better than in monks 
 and nuns, who gave their lives to contemplation and 
 to wordy prayer, and their bodies to be burned. I 
 love piety embodied in a Gothic or Roman cathe- 
 dral, 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 sink- 
 ing 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 cer- 
 tain blessedness which cannot pass away. 
 
 Piety is beautiful in all ; to a great man it comes 
 as age comes to the Parthenon or the Pyramids, 
 
 31
 
 362 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 
 
 making what was vast and high majestic, venerable, 
 sublime, and to their beauty giving a solemn awe 
 they never knew before. To men not great, to the 
 commonest men, it also comes, bringing refinement 
 and a loveliness of substance and of shape ; so that 
 in a vulgar ecclesiastic crowd they seem like sculp- 
 tured gems or beryl and of emerald among the com- 
 mon 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 visit- 
 ant the truest, the most prophetic and most blessed 
 baptismal welcome here. And when, out of the 
 circle that twines you round with loving hearts be- 
 loved, some one is taken, born out of your family, 
 not into it, a conscious piety will seem to send celes- 
 tial baptism to the heaven-born soul. And when 
 the mists of age gather about your eye, when the 
 silver cord of life is loosed and the golden bowl 
 at the fountain begins to break, with what a blessed 
 triumph shall you close your mortal sense to this 
 romantic moon and this majestic sun, to the stars of
 
 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 363 
 
 earth that bloom below, the starry flowers that burn 
 above, to open your soul on glory which the eye 
 has not seen, nor yet the heart of man been compe- 
 tent to dream ! 
 
 " Thy sweetness hath b.etrayed Thee, Lord ! 
 Dear Spirit ! it is Thou ; 
 Deeper and deeper in my heart 
 I feel Thee nestling now ! 
 
 " Dear Comforter ! Eternal Love ! 
 Yes, Thou wilt stay with me, 
 If manly thoughts and loving ways 
 Build but a nest for Thee ! "
 
 X. 
 
 OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 
 
 TIIE COMMUNION OF THE HOLY GHOST BE WITH TOU ALL. — 
 
 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 
 
 Simeon the Stylite lived on the top of the pillar 
 at Antioch for seven-and-thirty-years, for the sake of 
 being nearer to God and holding communion with 
 Him. Some men shut themselves up in convents 
 and nunneries under vows of perpetual asceticism, 
 thinking that God will come into the soul the easier 
 if the flesh be worn thin, the body looped and win- 
 dowed with bad usage and unnatural hard fare. 
 All the monasteries are designed to produce com- 
 munion 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 Chris- 
 tendom are built to promote access to Him in vari- 
 ous forms. " This is the gate of heaven," says the 
 priest, of his church. All the ritual services are for 
 this end, — to draw God down to men, or draw men
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 365 
 
 up to God ; or to appease His " wrath." So also 
 are the mosques of the Mahometans, the synagogues 
 of the Jews, and all the temples of the world. The 
 Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon at Athens, St. 
 Peter's at Rome, the Mormon temple at Nauvoo, — 
 all are but the arms of man artificially lengthened 
 and reached out to grasp the Holy Ghost, enfold 
 it to the human heart, and commune with it, soul 
 to soul. The little hymn which a mother teaches 
 her child, cradled on her knee, the solemn litany 
 which England pays her thousand priests to chant 
 each day in every cathedral of the land, — all are 
 for the same end, to promote communion with God. 
 For this the Quaker sits silent in his unadorned 
 meeting-house waiting for the Spirit, lying low in 
 the hand of God to receive His inspiration. For 
 this you and I lift up our hearts in silent or un- 
 spoken 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, Ma- 
 hometan, — from all who have any considerable 
 growth of soul. 
 
 I love to look at common life, business and poli- 
 tics, from the stand-point of religion, and hence am 
 thought to be hard upon the sins of the State and 
 the sins of business, trying all things by the higher 
 
 31*
 
 366 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 law of God. But if religion is good for any thing, 
 it is as a rule of conduct for daily life, in the busi- 
 ness of the individual and the business of the na- 
 tion. It is poor policy and bad business that can- 
 not 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 
 intellect is good for any thing, it is good to try the 
 foundations of religion with. The mind is the eye 
 of consciousness. It is a poor doctrine that cannot 
 .bear to be looked at in the dry light of reason. Let 
 us look hard and dry at this notion of communion 
 with God, and by reason severely ascertain if there 
 be such a thing ; what it is ; how it is to be had ; 
 and what comes thereof. 
 
 There must be such a thing as communion be- 
 tween God and man. I mean, defining that provis-
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 367 
 
 ionally, there must be a giving on God's part, and 
 a taking on man's part. To state the matter thus is 
 to make it evident, — since it follows from the 
 nature of God ; for from the necessity of his na- 
 ture the Infinite Being must create and preserve the 
 finite, and to the finite must, in its forms, give and 
 communicate of his own kind. It is according to 
 the infinite nature of God to do so ; as according to 
 the finite nature of light to shine, of fire to burn, of 
 water to wet. It follows as well from the nature of 
 man as finite and derivative. From the necessity of 
 his nature, he must receive existence and the means 
 of continuance. He must get all his primitive 
 power, which he starts with, and all his materials 
 for secondary and automatic growth, from the Primi- 
 tive and Infinite Source. The mode of man's finite 
 being is of necessity a receiving ; of God's infinite 
 being, of necessity a giving. You cannot conceive 
 of any finite thing existing without God, the Infi- 
 nite basis and ground thereof ; nor of God exist- 
 ing without something. God is the necessary logi- 
 cal condition of a world, its necessitating cause ; 
 a world, the necessary logical condition of God, 
 his necessitated consequence. Communion between 
 the two is a mutual necessity of nature, on God's 
 part and on man's part. I mean it is according 
 to the infinite perfection of God's nature to create, 
 and so objectify Himself, and then preserve and
 
 368 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 bless whatever He creates. So by His nature He 
 creates, preserves, and gives. And it is according to 
 the finite nature of man to take. So by his nature, 
 soon as created, he depends and receives, and is 
 preserved only by receiving from the Infinite 
 Source. 
 
 That is the conclusion of modern metaphysical 
 science. The stream of philosophy runs down from 
 Aristotle to Hegel and Hickok, and breaks off' with 
 this conclusion ; and I see not how it can be gain- 
 said. 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- 
 consciousness ; amongst them you find the idea of 
 God. Carefully examined by the scrutinizing intel- 
 lect, it is the idea of God as Infinite, — perfectly 
 powerful, wise, just, loving, holy, — absolute being, 
 with no limitation. It is this which made you,
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 369 
 
 made all ; sustains you, sustains all ; made your 
 body, not by a single act, but by a series of acts 
 extending over millions of years, — for man's body 
 is the resultant of all created things ; made your 
 spirit, — your mind, your conscience, your affections, 
 your soul, your will ; appointed for each its natural 
 mode of action ; set each at its several aim. 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 ontologi- 
 cal fact. 
 
 God must be omnipresent in space. There can 
 be no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no spot on 
 an insect's wing, no little cell of life which the mi- 
 croscope 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 in- 
 sect's wing, in that cell of life the microscope dis- 
 covers in the seed-sporule of a moss. 
 
 God must be also omnipresent in time. There is 
 no second of time elapsing now, there has been 
 none millions of years ago, before the oldest stars 
 began to burn, but God was in that second of 
 time.
 
 370 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 Follow the eye of the great space-penetrating 
 telescope at Cambridge into the vast halls of crea- 
 tion, to the furthest nebulous spot seen in Orion's 
 belt, — a spot whose bigness no natural mind can 
 adequately conceive, — and God is there. Follow 
 the eye of the great sharply defining microscope at 
 Berlin into some corner of creation, to that little 
 dot, one of many millions that people an inch of 
 stone, once animate with swarming life, a spot too 
 small for mortal mind adequately to conceive, — 
 and God is there. 
 
 Get you a metaphysic microscope of time to 
 divide a second into its billionth part ; God is in 
 that. Get you a metaphysic telescope of time, to 
 go back in millenniums as the glass in miles, and 
 multiply the duration of a solar system by itself to 
 get an immensity of time, — still God is there, in 
 each elapsing second of that millennial stream of 
 centuries ; His Here conterminous with the all of 
 space, his Now coeval with the all of time. 
 
 Through all this space, in all this time, His 
 Being extends, " spreads undivided, operates un- 
 spent ; " God in all his infinity, — perfectly power- 
 ful, perfectly wise, perfectly just, perfectly loving 
 and holy. His being is an infinite activity, a cre- 
 ating, and so a giving of Himself to the world. 
 The world's being is a becoming, a being created 
 and continued. This is so in the nebula of Orion's
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 371 
 
 belt, and in the seed-sporule of the smallest moss. 
 It is so now, and was the same millions of millen- 
 niums 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 exist- 
 ence a show of His. Some good books picture to 
 us the shows of things, and report in print the whis- 
 per of God which men have heard in the material 
 world. They say that God is a good optician, — 
 for the eye is a telescope and a microscope, the two 
 in one ; that He is a good chemist also, ordering all 
 things " by measure and number and weight ; " that 
 he is a good mechanic, — for the machinery of the 
 world, old as it is, is yet " constructed after the 
 most approved principles of modern science." All 
 that is true, but the finite mechanic is not in his 
 work ; he wakes it and then withdraws. God is in 
 His work, — 
 
 " As full, as perfect in a hair as Least ; " 
 " Acts not by partial, but by general laws." 
 
 All nature works from within; the force that ani- 
 mates it is in every part. It was objected to Sir 
 Isaac Newton's philosophy, that it makes the world
 
 372 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 all mechanism, which goes without external help, 
 and so is a universe without a God ; men thinking 
 that He could not work at all in the world-machine, 
 unless they saw the Great Hand on the crank 
 now and then, or felt the jar of miraculous inter- 
 position when some comet swept along the sky. 
 The objection was not just, for the manifold action 
 of the universe is only the Infinite God's mode of 
 operation. Newton merely showed the mode of 
 operation, — that it was constant and wonderful, 
 not changing and miraculous ; and so described a 
 higher mode of operation than those men could 
 fathom, or even reverence. 
 
 These things being so, all material things that are 
 must needs be in communion with God ; their 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 communion with God ; the pencil I write 
 with ; the gray field-fly reposing in the sunshine at 
 my foot. Let God withdraw from the space oc- 
 cupied by the stone, the pencil, and fly, they cease 
 to be. Let Him withdraw any quality of his na- 
 ture therefrom, and they must cease to be. All 
 must partake of Him, immanent in each and yet 
 transcending all. 
 
 In this communion, these and all things receive
 
 .COMMUNION WITH GOD. 373 
 
 after their kind, according to their degree of being 
 and the mode thereof. The mineral, the vegetable, 
 and the animal represent three modes of being, three 
 degrees of existence ; and hence so many modes 
 and degrees of dependence on God and of commu- 
 nion 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 com- 
 munion. In that threefold form of being there is 
 no consciousness of God ; they know nothing of 
 their dependence and their communion. The wa- 
 ter-fowl, in the long pilgrimage of many a thou- 
 sand miles, knows naught of Him who teaches its 
 way 
 
 " Along that pathless coast, 
 The desert and illimitable air, 
 
 Lone wandering, but not lost." 
 
 To the dog, man stands for God or devil. The 
 " half-reasoning elephant " knows nobody and is 
 conscious of nothing higher than his keeper, who 
 rides upon his neck, pulling his ears with curved 
 hook. All these are ignorant of God. 
 
 We come to man. Here he is, a body and a 
 spirit. The vegetable is matter, and something 
 more ; the animal is vegetable also, and something 
 more ; man is animal likewise, and something more. 
 So far as I am matter, a vegetable, an animal, — 
 and I am each in part, — I have the appropriate 
 
 32
 
 374 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 communion of the vegetable, the mineral, the ani- 
 mal world. My body, this hand, for example, is 
 subject to statical, dynamical, and vital laws. God 
 is in this hand ; without his infinite existence, its 
 finite existence could not be. It is a hand only by 
 its unconscious communion with Him. It wills 
 nothing ; it knows nothing ; yet all day long, and 
 all the night, each monad thereof retains all the 
 primary statical and dynamical qualities of matter; 
 continually the blood runs through its arteries and 
 veins, mysteriously forming this complicated and 
 amazing work. Should God withdraw, it were a 
 hand no more ; the blood would cease to fiow^ 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 com- 
 municants 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 them- 
 selves ; this marvellous hand knows naught ; and 
 the fly never says, reasoning with itself, " Lo, here 
 am I, an individual and a conscious thing sucking 
 the bosom of the world." It never separates the 
 Not-me and the Me. But I am conscious ; I know 
 myself, and through myself know God. I am a mind
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 375 
 
 to think, a conscience to perceive the just and right ; 
 I am a heart to love, a soul to know of God. 
 For communion with my God I have other facul- 
 ties 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 
 Himself or any of His qualities from my mind, I 
 could not think ; from conscience, I should know 
 nothing of the right ; from the heart, there could be 
 no love ; from the soul, then there could be no holi- 
 ness, no faith in Him that made it. Thus the very 
 existence of the spirit is a dependence on God, and 
 so far a communion with Him. 
 
 I cannot wholly separate my spirit from this com- 
 munion ; for that would be destruction of the spirit, 
 annihilation, which is in no man's power. Only 
 the Infinite can create or annihilate an atom of mat- 
 ter or a monad of spirit. There is a certain amount 
 of communion of the spirit with God, which is not 
 conscious ; that lies quite beyond my control. I 
 " break into the bloody house of life," and my
 
 376 COMMUNIOX WITH GOD. 
 
 spirit rushes out of the body, and while the static 
 and dynamic laws of nature reassume their sway 
 over my material husk, rechanging it to dust, still 
 I am, I depend, and so involuntarily commune 
 with God. Even the popular theology admits this 
 truth, for it teaches that the living wicked still com- 
 mune with God through pain and wandering and 
 many a loss ; and that the wicked dead commune 
 with Him through hell against their will, as with 
 their wall the heavenly saints through heavenly joy. 
 
 I cannot end this communion with my 'God ; but 
 I can increase it, greaten it largely, if I will. The 
 more I live my higher normal life, the more do I 
 commune with God. If I live only as mere body, 
 I have only corporeal and unconscious communion, 
 as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal, no more. As 
 children, we all begin as low as this. The child 
 unborn or newly born has no self-consciousness, 
 knows nothing of its dependence, its spontaneous 
 communion with its God, whereon by laws it de- 
 pends for being and continuance. As w^e outgrow 
 our babyhood we are conscious of ourselves, distin- 
 guish 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- 
 conscious, I feel that dependence, and know of this 
 communion, whereby I receive from Him.
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 377 
 
 The quantity of my receipt is largely under my 
 control. As I will, I can have less or more. I 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, increas- 
 ing my moral sense ; each atom of justice that I 
 get is another point common with the Deity. So 
 I cultivate and enlarge my affections ; each grain 
 of love — philanthropic or but friendly — is a new 
 point common to me and God. Then, too, I cul- 
 tivate 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 communi- 
 cates the more. Thus I have a fourfold voluntary 
 consciousness of God through my mind and con- 
 science, heart and soul ; know Him as the abso- 
 lutely true and just and amiable and holy ; and 
 thereby have a fourfold voluntary communion with 
 my God. He gives of his infinite kind ; I receive 
 in my finite mode, taking according to my capacity 
 to receive. 
 
 I may diminish the quantity of this voluntary 
 communion.. For it is as possible to stint the spirit 
 of its God, as to starve the body of its food ; only 
 not to the final degree, — to destruction of the spirit. 
 
 32*
 
 378 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 This fact is well known. You would not say that 
 Judas had so much and so complete communion 
 with God as Jesus had. And if Jesus had yielded 
 to the temptation in the story, all would declare that 
 for the time he must diminish the ineome of God 
 upon his soul. For unfaithfulness in any part les- 
 sens the quantity and mars the quality of our com- 
 munion with the Infinite. 
 
 In most various ways men may enlarge the 
 power to communicate with God ; complete and 
 normal life is the universal instrument thereof. 
 Here is a geologist chipping the stones, or study- 
 ing the earthquake-waves ; here a metaphysian chip- 
 ping the human mind, studying its curious laws, — 
 psychology, logic, ontology ; here is a merchant, a 
 mechanic, a poet, each diligently using his intellec- 
 tual gift ; and as they acquire the power to think, 
 by so much more do they hold intellectual commu- 
 nion with the thought of God, their finite mind 
 communing with the Infinite. My active power of 
 understanding, imagination, reason, is the measure 
 of my intellectual communion with Him. 
 
 A man strives to know the everlasting right, to 
 keep a conscience void of all offence ; his inward 
 •eye is pure and single; all is true to the Eternal 
 Right. His moral powers continually expand, and 
 by so much more does he hold communion with his
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 379 
 
 God- As far as it can see, his finite conscience 
 reads in the book the Eternal Right of God. A 
 man's power of conscience is the measure of his 
 moral communion with the Infinite. 
 
 I repress my animal self-love, I learn to be 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, keep- 
 ing my soul as active as my sense ; I quicken my 
 consciousness of the dear God ; I learn to rever- 
 ence and trust and love, seeking to keep his every 
 rule of conduct for my sense' and soul ; I make my 
 soul some ten times larger than it was, and just 
 as I enhance its quantity and quality, so much the 
 more do I religiously commune with God. The 
 power of my religious sense is the measure of my 
 communion with my Father. I feed on this, and 
 all the more I take, the more I grow, and still the 
 more I need. 
 
 In all this there is nothing miraculous, nothing 
 mysterious, nothing strange. From his mother's 
 breast it is the largest child that takes the most.
 
 380 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 At first a man's spiritual communion is very little, 
 is most exceeding small ; but in normal life it be- 
 comes 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 intellec- 
 tual, moral, and religious life continually became 
 greater and greater ; when you needed much, you 
 had no lack, when little, there seemed nothing over ; 
 demand and supply are still commensurate. Noth- 
 ing 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 w T e receive from 
 Heaven, spite of the disappointments and sorrows of 
 life ; nay, by means thereof. 
 
 " Thy home is with the humble, Lord ! 
 The simple are Thy rest ; 
 Thv 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
 
 COMMUNION "WITH GOD. 381 
 
 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 temptation too strong for him. He is pen- 
 itent for the sin that was voluntary, or for the heed- 
 lessness whereby he went astray, — sorrowful at his 
 defeat. But he remembers the manly part of him, 
 and with new resolutions braces himself for new 
 trials. He thinks of the powers that lie unused in 
 his own nature. He looks out at the examples of 
 lofty men, his soul is stirred to its deeper depths. 
 A new image of beauty rises, living from that troub- 
 led sea, and the Ideal of human loveliness is folded 
 in his arms. " This fair Ideal," says he, " shall be 
 mine. I also will be as whole and beautiful. Ah, 
 me ! how can I ever get such lovely life ? " Then 
 he thinks of the Eternal Wisdom, the Eternal Jus- 
 tice, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Holiness, which 
 surrounds him, and now fills up his consciousness, 
 waiting to bless. He reaches out his arms towards 
 that Infinite Motherliness which created him at first 
 and preserved him ever since ; which surpassed 
 when he fell short, furnishing the great plan of his 
 life and the world's life, and is of all things perfect 
 Cause and Providence. Then, deeply roused in 
 every part, he communicates with the Infinite Mind 
 and Conscience, Heart and Soul. He is made
 
 382 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 calmer by the thought of the immense tranquillity 
 which enfolds the nervous world in its all-embrac- 
 ing, silent arms. He is comforted by the motherly 
 aspect of that Infinite Eye, which never slumbers 
 in its watch over the suffering of each great and 
 every little thing, converting it all to good. He is 
 elevated to confidence in himself, when he feels so 
 strong in the never-ending love which makes, sus- 
 tains, and guides the world of matter, beasts, and 
 men ; makes from perfect motives, sustains with 
 perfect providence, and guides by perfect love to 
 never-ending bliss. Yea, the tranquillity, pity, love, 
 of the Infinite 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 
 pliant human block. 
 
 That is a prayer. I paint the process out in 
 words, — they are not my prayer itself, only the 
 cradle of my blessed heavenly babe. I paint it not 
 in words, — it is still my prayer, not less the aspira- 
 tion of my upward-flying soul. I carry my child 
 cradled only in my arms.' 
 
 I have this experience in my common and daily 
 life, with no unusual grief to stir, or joy to quicken, 
 or penitence to sting me into deep emotion : then 
 my prayer is only a border round my daily life, to
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 383 
 
 keep the web from ravelling away through constant 
 use and wear ; or else a fringe of heaven, where- 
 by 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 genera- 
 tion into my arms ; another heart sheds its life into 
 my own ; some great sorrow sends me in upon 
 myself and God ; out of the flower of self-indul- 
 gence the bee of remorse stings me into agony. 
 And then I rise from out my common conscious- 
 ness, 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 univer- 
 sally giving. So in winter it is clear and cold, the 
 winds are silent, clouds gather over the city's face, 
 and all is still. How cold it is ! In a few hours the 
 warmth steals out from the central fire, — the earth's 
 domestic, household hearth ; the clouds confine it 
 in, those airy walls, that it flee not off, nor spread to
 
 384 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 boundless space ; the frost becomes the less intense, 
 and men are gladdened with the milder day. So, 
 when magnetic bars in time have lost their force, 
 men hang them up in the line of the meridian, and 
 the great loadstone, the earth, from her own breast, 
 restores their faded magnetism. Thus is it that 
 human souls communicate with the great central 
 Fire and Light of all the world, the loadstone of 
 the universe, and thus recruit, grow young again, 
 and so are blessed and strong. 
 
 There may be a daily, conscious communion 
 with God, marked by reverence, gratitude, aspira- 
 tion, trust, and love ; it will not be the highest 
 prayer. 
 
 " 'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep 
 Heights that the soul is competent to gain." 
 
 And the highest prayer is no common event in a 
 man's life. Ecstasy, rapture, great delight in prayer, 
 or great increase thereby, — they are the rarest 
 things in the life of any man. They should be 
 rare. The tree blossoms but once a year ; blooms 
 for a week, and then fulfils and matures its fruit in 
 the long months of summer and of harvest-time, — 
 fruit for a season, and seed for many an age. The 
 sun is but a moment at meridian. Jesus had his 
 temptation but once, but once his agony, — the two 
 foci round which his life's beauteous ellipse was 
 drawn. The intensest consciousness of friendship
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 385 
 
 does not last long. They say men have but once 
 the ecstasy of love ; human nature could not bear 
 such a continual strain. So all the blossomings 
 of rapture must needs be short. The youthful 
 ecstasy of love leads man and maid by moonlight 
 up the steep, sheer cliffs of life, " while all below, 
 the world in mist lies lost ; " then, in the daylight 
 of marriage they walk serenely on, along the high 
 table-land of mortal life, and though continually 
 greatening their connubial love and joy, it is with- 
 out 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 relig- 
 ion dwindles into ritual service, and no more ; their 
 act of prayer is only kneeling with the knees and 
 talking talk with windy tongues. A Methodist, in 
 great ecstasy of penitence or fear, becomes a mem- 
 ber of a church. He all at once is filled with raptur- 
 ous delight ; religious joy blossoms in his face, and 
 glitters in his eye. How glad is the converted man I 
 
 " Then when he kneels to meditate, 
 Sweet thoughts come o'er his soul, 
 Countless, and bright, and beautiful,. 
 Beyond his own control." 
 
 33
 
 386 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 But by and by his rapture dies away, and he is 
 astonished that he has no such ecstasy as before. 
 He thinks that he has "fallen from grace," has 
 " grieved away " the Holy Ghost, and tries by 
 artificial excitement to bring back what will not 
 come without a new occasion. Certain religious 
 convictions once made my heart spring in my 
 bosom. Now it is not so. The fresh leaping of 
 the heart will only come from a fresh conquest of 
 new truth. The old man loves his wife a thou- 
 sand times better than when, for the first time, he 
 kissed her gracious mouth ; but his heart burns no 
 longer as when he first saw his paradise in her 
 reciprocating eye. The tree of religious conscious- 
 ness is not in perpetual blossom, — but now in leaf, 
 now flower, now fruit. 
 
 It is a common error to take no heed of this vol- 
 untary communion with God, to live intent on busi- 
 ness or on pleasure, careful, troubled about many 
 things, and seldom heed the one thing needed most ; 
 to take that as it comes. If all this mortal life 
 turned out just as we wished it, this error would 
 be still more common ; only a few faculties would 
 get their appropriate discipline. Men walking only 
 on a smooth and level road use the same muscles 
 always, and march like mere machines. But disap- 
 pointment comes on us. Sorrow checks our course,
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 387 
 
 and we are forced to think and feel, — must march 
 now up hill, and then down, shifting the strain from 
 part to part. In mere prosperity most men are con- 
 tented to enlarge their estate, their social rank, their 
 daily joy, and lift their children's faces to the vulgar 
 level of the vulgar flood whereon their fathers float. 
 There comes some new adventure to change and 
 mend all this. Now it is a great joy, success not 
 looked for, — some kindred soul is made one with 
 us, and on the pinions of instinctive connubial love 
 we fly upwards and enlarge our intercourse with 
 God, — the object of passion a communion angel 
 to lead the human soul to a higher seat in the uni- 
 verse and a more intimate acquaintance with the 
 Soul of all. Sometimes the birth of a new immor- 
 tal 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 wel- 
 come them to heaven. 
 
 Sometimes it is none of these, but sorrow, grief, 
 and disappointment that do this. I set my heart 
 upon a special thing ; — it is not mine, or if I get 
 the honor, the money, the social rank I sought, it 
 was one thing in my eye and another in my grasp. 
 The one bird which I saw in the bush was worth 
 ten like that I hold in my hand. The things I 
 loved are gone, — the maid, the lover, husband,
 
 388 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 wife, or child ; the mortal is taken from longing 
 arms. The heart looks up for what can never die. 
 Then there is a marriage and a birth, not into your 
 arms, but out of them and into heaven ; and the sor- 
 row and the loss stir you to woo and win that Ob- 
 ject of the soul which cannot pass away. Your 
 sorrow takes you on her wings, and you go up 
 higher than before ; higher than your success, higher 
 than friendship's daily wing ascends ; higher than 
 your early love for married mate had ever borne you 
 up ; higher than the delight in your first-born child 
 or latest born. You have a new communion with 
 your Father, and get a great amount of inspiration 
 from Him. 
 
 This is the obvious use of such vicissitudes, and 
 seems a portion of their final cause. In the artifi- 
 cial, ecclesiastical life of monasteries, men aim to 
 reproduce this part of nature's discipline, and so 
 have times of watching, fasting, bodily torture. But 
 in common life such discipline asks not our consent 
 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 
 sorrows you would be more sorrowful. For all the 
 sorrows that man has faithfully contended with, he
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 389 
 
 shall sail into port deeper fraught with manliness. 
 The wife and mother at thirty years of age im- 
 prisoned 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 sw T eeter 
 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 re- 
 mind us of man ; even the city horse is a machine. 
 But in the country it is God's ground beneath our 
 feet ; God's hills on every side ; his heaven, broad, 
 blue, and boundless, overhead ; and every bush and 
 every tree, the morning song of earliest birds, the 
 chirp of insects at mid-day, the solemn stillness of 
 the night, and the mysterious hosts of stars that all 
 night long climb up the sky, or silently go down, 
 — these continually affect the soul, and cause us all 
 to feel the Infinite Presence, and draw near to that ; 
 and earth seems less to rest in space than in the 
 love of God. So, in cities, men build a great 
 church, — at London, Paris, Venice, or at Rome, — 
 seeking to compensate for lack of the natural ad- 
 monitions of the woods and sky ; and, to replace 
 the music of the fields and nature's art, enlist the 
 
 33*
 
 390 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 painter's plastic band and the musician's sweetest 
 skill. 
 
 All that seek religion are in search for commu- 
 nion with God. What is there between Him and 
 thee ? Nothing but thyself. Each can have what 
 inspiration each will take. God is continually giv- 
 ing ; He will not withhold from you or me. As 
 much ability as He has given, as much as you have 
 enlarged your talent by manly use, so much will He 
 fill with inspiration. I hold up my little cup. He 
 fills it full. If yours is greater, rejoice in that, and 
 bring it faithfully to the same urn. He who fills 
 the violet with beauty, and the sun with light, — 
 who gave to Homer his gift of song, such reason 
 to Aristotle, and to Jesus the manly gifts of justice 
 and the womanly grace of love and faith in Him, — 
 will not fail to inspire also you and me. "Were your 
 little cup to become as large as the Pacific sea, He 
 still would fill it full. 
 
 There is such a thing as having a godly heart, a 
 desire to conform to the ideal of man in all things, 
 and to be true to Him that is " of all Creator and 
 Defence." He who has that is sure of conscious 
 spiritual communion with the Father ; sure to find 
 his character enlarging in every manly part ; sure
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 391 
 
 to be supplied with unexpected growth, and to hold 
 more of the Divine ; sure of the voluntary inspiration 
 which is proper to the self-conscious man. 
 
 There are continual means of help even for men 
 who dwell hedged up in towns. There are always 
 living voices which can speak to us. A good book 
 helps one ; this feeds his soul for a time on the fair 
 words of David, Paul, or John, Taylor, A Kempis, 
 Wordsworth, Emerson ; that, on the life of him who 
 gives a name to Christendom. He who has more 
 than I, will help me ; him that has less, I shall help. 
 Some men love certain solemn forms, as aids to 
 their devotion ; I hope that they are helped thereby, 
 — that baptism helps the sprinkler or the wet ; that 
 circumcision aids the Jew, and sacrifice the heathen 
 who offers it. But these are not the communion, 
 only at most its vehicle. Communion is the meet- 
 ing 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 com- 
 mon 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
 
 392 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 inspire the vast soul of Moses, — the tender hearts 
 of lowly saints in every clime and every age ? He 
 waits to come down on you and me, a continual 
 Pentecost of inspiration. Here in the crowded vul- 
 gar town, everywhere, is a Patmos, a Sinai, a Geth- 
 semane ; the Infinite Mother spreads wide her arms 
 to fold us to that universal breast, ready to inspire 
 your soul. God's world of truth is ready for your 
 intellect ; His ocean of justice waits to flow in upon 
 your conscience ; and all His heaven of love broods 
 continually by night and day over each heart and 
 every soul. From that dear bounty shall we be fed. 
 The Motherly Love invites all, — as much commu- 
 nion as we will, as much inspiration as our gifts and 
 faithfulness enable us to take. He is not far from 
 any one of us. Shall we not all go home, — the 
 prodigal rejoice with him that never went astray? 
 Even the consciousness of sin brings some into 
 nearness with the Father, tired of their draff and 
 husks ; and then it is a blessed sin. Sorrow also 
 brings some, and then it is a blessed grief ; joy 
 yet others, and then it is blessed thrice. In 
 this place is one greater than the temple, greater 
 than all temples ; for the human nature of the low- 
 liest child transcends all human history. And we 
 may live so that all our daily life shall be a con- 
 tinual approach and mounting up towards God. 
 What is the noblest life ? Not that born in the
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 393 
 
 most famous place, acquiring wealth and fame and 
 rank and power over matter and over men ; but that 
 which, faithful to itself continually, holds commu- 
 nion with the Infinite, and, thence receiving of God's 
 kind, in mortal life displays the truth, the justice, 
 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." 
 
 END.
 
 The following works of Mr. Parker may be had of Messrs. 
 Little, Broicn &," Co.: — 
 
 A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion. 3d Ed. 
 1847. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25. 
 
 An Introduction to the Old Testament, from the Ger- 
 man of De Wette. 2d Ed. 1850. 2 vols. 8vo. S3. 75. 
 
 Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. 1843. 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 si. 25. 
 
 Addresses and Occasional Sermons. 1852. 2 vols. 12mo. 
 $2.50. 
 
 Ten Sermons of Religion. 1852. 1 vol. 12mo. $1. 
 
 Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and the Popular The- 
 ology. 1853. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25. 
 
 Additional Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Ser- 
 mons. 1855. 2 vols. 12mo. $2.50. 
 
 Pamphlets. — Sermons on the follotmng Subjects: — 
 
 Of Old Age. 1854. 15 cents. 
 
 Of the New Crime against Humanity. 1854. 20 cents. 
 
 Of the Laws of God and the Statutes of Men. 1854. 
 15 cents. 
 
 Of the Dangers avhich threaten the Rights of Man 
 in America. 1854. 20 cents. 
 
 Of the Moral Dangers incident to Prosperity. 1855. 
 15 cents. 
 
 Of the Consequences of an Immoral Principle. 1855. 
 15 cents.
 
 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion. 
 1 vol. 12mo 
 
 An Introduction to the Old Testament. From the 
 German of De Wette. 2d ed. 2 vols. 8vo. . 
 
 Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. 1 vol. 12mo 
 
 Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1848-50. 3 vols 
 8vo. In Numbers. 
 
 Occasional Sermons and Speeches. 2 vols. 12mo. 
 
 Ten Sermons of Religion. 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and the Popular The 
 ology. 1 vol. 12mo 
 
 Additional Sermons and Speeches. 2 vols. 12mo. 
 
 The Trial of Theodore Parker for the "Misde- 
 meanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against 
 Kidnapping, with the Defence. 1855. 1 vol. 8vo. 
 
 $1.25 
 
 3.75 
 
 1.25 
 
 4.50 
 2.50 
 1.00 
 
 1.25 
 2.50 
 
 1.00 
 
 PAMPHLETS. 
 
 A Sermon of Old Age. (1854.) 15 
 
 The Dangers which Threaten the Rights of Man 
 
 in America. (1854.) 20 
 
 The Moral Dangers Incident to Prosperity. (1855.) 15 
 
 Consequences of an Immoral Principle. (1855.) . 15 
 
 Function of a Minister. (1855.) 20
 
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