Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/117

Rh of intercourse between all nations of the earth. See woman assert her native rights, long held in abeyance by the superior vigour of the manly arm.

In all that pertains to the affections there has been a great advance. Love travels beyond the narrow bounds of England and of Christendom. See the efforts making to free the slave; to elevate the poor, — removing the causes of poverty by the charity that alleviates and the justice that cures; to heal the drunkard of his fiery thirst; to reform the criminals whom once we only hung. The gallows must come down, the dungeon be a school for piety, not the den of vengeance and of rage. Great pains begin to be taken with the deaf and dumb, the blind, the insane; even the idiot must be taught. Philanthropic men, who are freedom to the slave, feet to the lame, eyes to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, would be also understanding to the fool. In what is idly called "an age of faith," the town council of Grenoble set archers at the gates, to draw upon strange beggars and shoot them down before the city walls. Look, now, at the New England provision for the destitute,—for the support of their bodies and the culture of their minds.

No Church leads off in these movements; ecclesiastical men take small interest therein ; but they come from the three partial forms of piety, the intellectual, the moral, and the affectional. We need to have these all united with a conscious love of God. What hinders ? The old ecclesiastical idea of God, as finite, imperfect in wisdom, in justice, and in love, still blocks the way. The God wholly external to the world of matter, acting by fits and starts, is not God enough for science, which requires a uniform, infinite force, with constant modes of action. The capricious Deity, wholly external to the human spirit,—jealous, partial, loving Jacob and hating Esau, revengeful, blasting with endless hell all but a fraction of his family,—this is not God enough for the scientific moralist, and the philanthropist running over with love. They want a God immanent in matter, immanent in spirit, yet infinite, and so transcending both,—the God of infinite perfection, infinite power, wisdom, justice, love, and self-fidelity. This idea is a stranger to the Christian, as to the Hebrew and Mohammedan church ; and so stout men turn off therefrom,