Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/112

96 tellectual culture, and continual exclusion from the common means of refinement, you find piety without narrowness, zeal without bigotry, and trust in God with no cant. Their world of observation 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 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 conscience, 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