Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/179

Rh the joys of religion. The same is true of Massillon, of Bourdaloue, and Bossuet. The popular ecclesiastical notion of religion is not to be represented as a wife and mother, cheerful, contented, and happy in her work, but as a reluctant nun, abstracted, idle, tearful, and with a profound melancholy; not the melancholy which comes from seeing actual evils we know not how to cure,—the sadness of one strong to wish and will, but feeble to achieve;—no, the more incurable sadness which comes from a distrust of Nature and of God, and from the habit of worrying about the soul,—the melancholy of fear; not the melancholy which looks sadly on misery and crime, which wept out its "Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" but the sadness which whines in a corner, and chews its own lips from sheer distrust.

The writers who dwell on the joys of religion too often have very inadequate ideas thereof. For they all, from Augustine to Chalmers, start with the idea that God is imperfect, and not wholly to be trusted. Accordingly they seek and obtain but a very one-sided development of their nature, thinking they must sacrifice so much of it; and hence have not that strength of religious character, nor that wholeness thereof, which is necessary to complete manly joy in religion.

Such being the case, fear of God predominates over love of Him; trust of God is only special under such and such circumstances, not universal under all circumstances; and religious joy is thin, and poor, and cold.

You find mention of religious joy in some of the great Christian writers, especially among the mystics, in Tauler and Kempis, Scougal, Fenelon, William Law, and Jacob Behme, not to mention others. Even Bunyan has his delectable mountains, and though in the other world, the light therefrom shines serene and joyous along the paths of mortal life. But in most, if not in all, of these writers, religious joy is deemed an artificial privilege, reserved by God's decree for only a few, purchased by unnatural modes of life, and miraculously bestowed. Even in great-hearted Martin Luther, one of the most joyous of men, it is not a right which belongs to human nature, and comes naturally from the normal action of the faculties of man; it is the result of "divine grace," not of human nature.