Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/119

Rh in the name of God; we do want a democracy in that name, a democracy which rests on human nature, and, respecting that, re-enacts the natural laws of God, the Constitution of the Universe, in the common statutes and written laws of the land.

We need this religion for its general and its special purposes; need it as subjective piety in each of these fragmentary forms, as joined into a totality of religious consciousness; we need it as morality, keeping the natural laws of God for the body and the spirit, in the individual, domestic, social, national, and general human or cosmic form, the divine sentiment becoming the human act. We need this to heal the vices of modern society, to revolutionize this modern feudalism of gold, and join the rich and poor, the employer and the employed, in one bond of human fellowship; we need it to break down the wall between class and class, nation and nation, race and race,—to join all classes into one nation, all nations into one great human family. Science alone is not adequate to achieve this; calculations of interest cannot effect it; political economy will not check the iron hand of power, nor relax the grasp of the oppressor from his victim's throat. Only religion, deep, wide spread, and true, can achieve this work. Already it is going forward, not under the guidance of one great man with ideas to direct the march, and mind to plan the structure of the future age, but under many men, who know each his little speciality, all their several parts, while the Infinite Architect foresees and so provides for all. Much has been done in this century, now only half spent; much more is a-doing. But the greatest of its works is one which men do not talk about, nor see: it is the silent development of the several parts of a complete piety, one day to be united into a consciousness of the Absolute Religion, and to be the parent of a new church and new State, with communities and families such as the world has hitherto not seen.

We notice the material works of our time, the industrial activity, the rapid increase of wealth in either England, Old or New. Foolish men deplore this, and would go back to the time when an ignorant peasantry, clad in sheep-skins, full of blind, instinctive faith in God, and fol-