Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/73

26 thereof, advances, like all other science, from age to age. The most various theological doctrines exist in connection with religious emotions, helping or hindering man's general development. The highest notion I can form of Religion is this, which I called the Absolute Religion: conscious service of the Infinite God by keeping every law he has enacted into the constitution of the Universe,—service of Him by the normal use, discipline, development, and delight of every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, and so of all the powers we possess.

The other tendency is practical; here the man is employed in acts of obedience to Religion. The result of this tendency is Morality. This alone is not Religion itself, but one part of the life Religion demands. There may be Morality deep and true with little or no purely religious consciousness, for a sharp analysis separates between the religious and moral elements in a man. Morality is the harmony between man's action and the natural law of God. It is a part of Religion which includes it “as the Sea her waves.” In its highest form Morality doubtless implies Religious emotions, but not necessarily the self-consciousness thereof. For though Piety, the love of God, and Benevolence, the love of Man, do logically involve each other, yet experience shows that a man may see and observe the distinction between right and wrong, clearly and disinterestedly, without consciously feeling, as such, reverence, or love of God; that is, he may be truly moral up to a certain point, without being consciously religious, though he cannot be truly religious without at the same time being moral also. But in a harmonious man, the two are practically inseparable as substance and form. The merely moral man, in the actions, thoughts, and feelings which relate to his fellow-mortal, obeys the eternal law of duty, revealed in his nature, as such, and from love of that law,