Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/72

Rh ous, as in little children who have known no contradiction between duty and desire; and perhaps involuntary in the perfect saint, to whom all duties are desirable, who has ended the contradiction by willing himself God's will, and thus becoming one with God. It may be conscious, as with many men whose strife is not yet over. It seems the highest and completest mode of Religion must be self-conscious,—free goodness, free piety, and free, self-conscious trust in God.

Now there are two tendencies connected with Religion; one is speculative: here the man is intellectually employed in matters pertaining to Religion, to God, to Man's religious nature, and his relation and connection with God. The result of this tendency is Theology. This is not Religion itself. It is men's Thought about Religion; the Philosophy of divine things; the Science of Religion. Its sphere is the mind of men. Religion and Theology are no more to be confounded than the stars with astronomy.

While the religious element, like the intellectual or the moral, or human nature itself, remains ever the same, the Religious Consciousness of mankind is continually progressive; and so Theology, which is the intellectual expression