Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/111

Rh 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 republican, 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 injustice, no sorrow, no fear. That is the great comfort with the mass of mankind,—the most powerful talisman which enchants them of their weary woe. Men sing Anacreontic odes, amid wine and women, and all the voluptuousness of art, buying a transient jollity of the flesh; but the Methodist finds poetry in his mystic hymn to take away the grief of a wound, and leave no poison in its place. The rudest Christian, with a real faith in immortal life, has a means of adorning the world which puts to shame the poor finery of Nicholas and Nebuchadnezzar. What are the prizes of wealth, of fame, of genius, nay, of affection, compared with what we all anticipate ere long? The worst man that ever lived may find delight overmastering terror here. "I am wicked," he may say; "God knows how I became so; his infinite love will one day save me out of my bitterness and my woe!" I once knew a man tormented with a partner, cruel and hard-hearted, ingenious only to afflict. In the midst of her torment he delighted to think of the goodness of God, and of the delights of heaven, and in the pauses of her tongue dropped to a heaven of lovely dreams unsullied by any memory of evil words.

Religion does not produce its fairest results in 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 quickened 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 in-