Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 11 Critical Writings.djvu/190

 132 PRACTICAL THEISM.

and the march of man will reveal also the same Provi- dence as the world of matter — human consciousnes dis- closing higher characteristics of the Infinite God. Com- munion with Him will be direct, my spirit meeting His, with nothing betwixt me and the Godhead of God. I shall not pray by attorney, but face to face. Inspiration will be a fact now, not merely a history of times gone by. Worship, the subjective service of God, will be not by conventional forms of belief, of speech, or of posture ; not by a sacramental addition of an excrescence where nature suffered no lack, nor by mutilation of the body, or muti- lation of the spirit, the sacramental cutting off where God made nothing redundant: but by conscious noble emo- tions shall I subjectively worship God ; by gratitude for my right to the Father, and in His universe the thanks- giving of an upright heart; by aspiration after a higher ideal of my own daily life; by the sense of Duty to be done, which comes with the sense of Right to be enjoyed; by penitence where I fall short; by resolutions, that in my "proper motion" I may ascend, and not by adverse fall come down; by the calm joy of the soul, its delight in Nature, in Man, and in God; by the hope, the faith, and the love, which the large soul sends out of itself in its religious life; and by the growing beauty of character, which constantly increases in love of wisdom, in love of justice, in love of benevolence — in love of Man, in love of God. That will be the real worship, the internal service of the Father. So much for the subjective part of this form of religion. Of the Objective Part also a word. God, who is thus subjectively served in the natural forms of Piety, must be objectively served or worshipped in the natural forms of Morality ; that is, by keeping all the laws of God. In Nature, the material world, the law of God is the actual constant mode of operation of the forces thereof, — the way it does act. There all is necessitated, and we know of the law by seeing the fact that it is always kept; for the ideal law of matter is the actual fact of matter, learned by observation, not by consciousness. So the material universe and God, in every point of space and time, are continually at one. If law is a constant of God, obedience thereto is a constant of matter. But in man,