Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/184

168 applause of men, by honestly earning them all, so that you shall be the manlier, and mankind the richer, for all that you do and enjoy. Then the approbation of your own soul and the sense of concord with men and of unity with God, will add a certain wholeness to your delight in the work of your hands.

Do you desire the joys of the intellect working in any or all its manifold forms of action ? The world is all before you where to choose, and Providence your guide. The law of God says, u Of every tree of the field shalt thou eat. Nothing that is natural shall harm thee. Put forth thy hand and try. Be not afraid that Truth or Search shall ever offend God, or harm the soul of man." Does a new truth threaten an old church ? It will build up ten new ones in its stead. No man ever loved truth too much, or had too much of it, or was too diligent in the search therefor. To use the reason for reasonable things is a part of religion itself. Thus consciousness of God well developed in man gives greater joy to the natural delights of the intellect itself, which it helps to tranquillize and render strong.

You need the exercise of the moral faculties. This religion will bid you trust your own conscience, never to fear to ask thereof for the everlasting right, and be faithful thereto. Justice will not hurt you, nor offend God; and if your justice pull down the old kingdom, with its statutes of selfishness and laws of sin and death, it will build up a new and better state in its stead, the Commonwealth of Righteousness, where the eternal laws of God are reenacted into the codes of men, laws of love and life. No man ever loved justice too much,—his own rights, or the rights of men,—or was too faithful to his own conscience. Loyalty to that is fealty to God; and the consciousness of Him enhances the moral delight of moral men, as the intellectual joy of scientific and thoughtful men.

Do you seek the joy of the affections which cling to finite objects of attraction, to wife and child, brother and sister, parent and friend? Religion will tell you it is impossible to love these too much; that it is impossible to be