Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/138

122 the king of scoffers, down to our own days. The American Tract Society, with the best intentions in the world, it seems to me is doing more damage to the nation than all the sellers of intoxicating drink and all the prostitutes in the land! Some books on religious matters are the work of able men, men well disciplined, but yet contaminated with false views of God, of man, and of the relation between the two; with false views of life, of death, and of the next, eternal world. Such men were Baxter and Edwards and many more,—Protestant and Catholic, Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, and Mahometan. All these books should be read with caution and distrust. Still a wise man, with a religious spirit, in the religious literature of the world, from Confucius to Emerson, may find much to help his growth.

After the attainment of manlier years in piety, other works, not intentionally religious, will help a man greatly. Books of science, which show the thought of God writ in the world of matter; books of history, which reveal the same mind in the development of the human race, slow, but as constant and as normal as the growth of a cedar or the disclosing of an egg ; Newton and Laplace, Descartes and Kant, indirectly, through their science, stir devout souls to deeper devotion. A thoughtful man dissolves the matter of the universe, leaving only its forces; dissolves away the phenomena of human history, leaving only immortal spirit; he studies the law, the mode of action, of these forces, and this spirit, which make up the material and the human world; and I see not how he can fail to be filled with reverence, with trust, with boundless love of the Infinite God who devised these laws of matter and of mind, and thereby bears up this marvellous universe of things and men. Science also has its New Testament. The beatitudes of philosophy are profoundly touching; in the exact laws of matter and of mind the great Author of the world continually says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

The study of Nature is another great help to the cultivation of religion. Familiarity with the grass and the trees teaches us deeper lessons of love and trust than we can glean from the writings of Fenelon and Augustine. What