Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/168

152 thirst after their satisfaction. What a difference in the source whence men derive their customary delight.

Here is a man whose whole joy seems to come from his body; not from its nobler senses, offering him the pleasures of the ear and the eye, but from the lower parts of the flesh, imbruted now to passions which seem base when made to minister the chief delight to man. We could not think highly of one who knew no joy above the pleasure of eating and drinking, or of any other merely animal satisfaction. Such joys cannot raise man far. If one had his chief delight in fine robes, the taste would rather degrade him. Yet these two appetites, for finery in food and finery in dress, have doubtless done their part to civilize mankind. It is surely better for the race to rejoice in all the sumptuous delicacies of art, than to feed precariously on wild acorns which the wind shakes down. The foolish fondness for gay apparel has served a purpose. Nay, so marvellous is the economy of God in his engineering of the world, that no drop of waste water runs over the dam of the universe; and as the atom which now sparkles in the rainbow, the next minute shall feed a fainting rose, so even these sensual desires have helped to uplift mankind from mere subordination to the material world.

There is another man whose chief joy is not merely bodily, but yet resides in his selfish appetites, in his lust of money, or lust of power. I pass by the joy of the miser, of the ambitious politician, of the pirate and the kidnapper. They are so well known amongst us that you can easily estimate their worth.

Now and then we find men whose happiness comes almost wholly from pure and lofty springs, from the high senses of the body or the high faculties of the spirit,—joys of the mind, of the conscience, of the affections, of the soul. Difference of quality is more important than difference in mere bulk; an hour of love is worth an age of lust. We all look with some reverence on such as seek the higher quality of joy.

You are pleased to see birds feeding their wide-mouthed little ones; sheep and oxen intent upon their grassy bread; reapers under a hedge enjoying their mid-day meal, reposing on sheaves of corn new cut. All this is nature; the element of necessity consecrates the meal.