Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/145

Rh with a liberal development of mind and conscience, heart and soul? You will meet with losses, trials, disappointments, in your business, in your friends and families, and in yourselves ; many a joy will also smile on you. You may use the sunny sky and its falling weather alike to help your religious growth. Your time, young men, what life and manhood you may make of that.

Some of you are old men, your heads white with manifold experience, and life is writ in storied hieroglyphics on cheek and brow. Venerable faces! I hope I learn from you. I hardly dare essay to teach men before whom time has unrolled his lengthened scroll, men far before me in experience of life. But let me ask you, if, while you have been doing your work,—have been gathering riches, and tasting the joys of time,—been son, husband, father, friend,—you have also greatened, deepened, heightened your manly character, and gained the greatest riches,—the wealth of a religious soul, incorruptible and undefiled, the joys that cannot fade away?

For old or young there is no real and lasting human blessedness without this. It is the sole sufficient and assured defence against the sorrows of the world, the disappointments and the griefs of life, the pains of unrequited righteousness and hopes that went astray. It is a never-failing fountain of delight.