Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/118

102 or else are driven away with hated names. One day these men will welcome the true idea of God, and have a conscious trust and love of Him to match their science, their justice, and their love of men; will become the prophets and apostles of the Absolute Religion, finding it wide enough for all truth, all justice, and all love, yea, for an absolute faith in God, in his motives, means, and ends. Then all this science of the nineteenth century, all this practical energy, this wide command over Nature, this power to organize the world of matter and yoke it to the will of man, this love of freedom and power to combine vast masses in productive industry ; then all this wide literature of modern times, glittering with many-coloured riches, and spread abroad so swift; then all this morality which clamours for the native right of men, this wide philanthropy, laying down its life to bless mankind,—all this shall join with the natural emotions of the soul, welcoming the Infinite God. It shall all unite into one religion; each part thereof "may call the farthest brother." Then what a work will religion achieve in the affairs of men ! What institutions will it build, what welfare will it produce on earth, what men bring forth ! Even now the several means are working for this one great end, only not visibly, not with the consciousness of men.

I do not complain of the "decline of piety" I thank God for its increase. I see what has been done, but I look also to what remains to do. I am sure that mankind will do it. God is a master workman ; He made man well,—for an end worthy of God, provided with means quite adequate to that end. No man, not an Isaiah or a Jesus, ever dares prophesy so high but man fulfils the oracle, and then goes dreaming his prophecy anew, and fulfilling it as he goes on. If you have a true idea of justice, a true sentiment of philanthropy or of faith in God, which men have not yet welcomed, if you can state your idea in speech, then mankind will stop and realize your idea,—make your abstract thought their concrete thing. Kings are nothing, armies fall before you. The idea sways them in its flight as the wind of summer bows the unripe corn of June.

This religion will build temples, not of stone only, but temples of living stones, temples of men, families, communities, nations, and a world. We want no monarchies