Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/130

114 always won for them by men whom the churches hated. In the last thirty years these "pestilent moral reformers" of New England, I think, have done more to promote love of God, and faith in Him, than all the other preachers of all the churches. Justice is a part of piety; and such is the instinctive love of wholeness in man, that all attempts to promote justice amongst men lead ultimately to the love of God as God.

In every community you will find a man who thus represents some portion of religion,—often, perhaps, thinking that part is the whole, because it is all that he knows; here and there we find such an one in the pulpit. But now and then there comes a man who unites these three functions of piety into one great glory of religion; is eminent in feelings, ideas, and actions not the less. Each of those partial men may help us much, teaching his doctrine, kindling our feelings, giving example of his deed, and laying out religious work for us, spreading his pattern before society. Each of these may help us to a partial improvement. But when a man comes who unites them all, he will give us a new start, an inspiration which no other man can give; not partial, but total.

There are always some such men in the world ; the seed of the prophets never dies out. It comes up in Israel and in Attica; here a prophet teaching truth as divine inspiration, there a philosopher with his human discovery. So the Herb of Grace springs up in corners where once old houses stood, or wherever the winds have borne the seed; and, cropped by the oxen, and trodden with their feet, it grows ever fresh and ever new. When Scribes and Pharisees become idolaters at Jerusalem, and the sheep without a shepherd

the spirit of God comes newly down on some carpenter's son at Nazareth, whose lightning terrifies the non-conducting Scribe; the new encounters the perishable old, and all heaven rings with the thunder of the collision. Now and then such a person comes to stand betwixt the living and the dead. "Bury that," quoth he, "it is hope-