Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/161

Rh misery burrows with crime, he labours for their bodies and their souls. In our own Boston do I not know feeble- bodied and delicate women, who with their feet write out the gospel of loving-kindness and tender mercy on the mud or the snow of the kennels of this city,—women of wise intellect and nice culture, who, like that great philanthropist, come to seek and to save that which was lost!

Look at the reformers of America at this day;—some of them men of large abilities, of commensurate culture, of easy estate, once respected, flattered, and courted too by their associates, but now despised for their justice and their charity, hated for the eminent affection which makes them look after the welfare of the criminal, the drunkard, the pauper, the outcast, and the slave, and feared for the power with which they assert the rights of man against the wrongs which avarice inflicts. See the total energy which marks these men, whose life is a long profession of religion,—their creed writ all over the land, and their history a slow martyrdom,—and you may see the vigour which comes of religious conviction. These are the nobler forms of energy. The soldier destroys, at best defends, while the philanthropist creates.

Last of all these forms of strength, religion gives the power of self-reliance; reliance on your mind for truth, on your conscience for justice, on your heart for love, on your soul for faith, and through all these reliance on the Infinite God. Then you will keep the integrity of your own nature spite of the mightiest men, spite of a multitude of millions, spite of States and churches and traditions, and a worldly world filled with covetousness and priestcraft. You will say to them all, "Stand by, and let alone; I must be true to myself, and thereby true to my God."

I think nothing but religion can give any man this strength to do and to suffer; that without this, the men of greatest gift and greatest attainment too, do not live out half the glory of their days, nor reach half their stature. Look over the list of the world's great failures, and see why Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon came each to such an untimely and vulgar end! Had they added reli-