Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/190

174 reason, understanding, imagination, with all the treasures of culture and the graceful dignity of eloquence, to serve some noble cause, despised as yet, and sacrifices not money alone, but reputation, and takes shame as outward recompense for truth and justice and love,—think you that he has less delight than the worldly man well gifted, cultivated well, whose mind lies a prostitute to the opinion of the mob, and is tricked off with the ornaments of shame, and in office shines "the first of bartered jades?" Look about you in Boston, and answer, ye that know! Go to the men who sacrifice their intellect, their conscience, their affections, for place and a name, ask them what they have got in exchange for their soul ? and then go to such as have left all for God and his law, and ask them of their reward.

Now religion enlarges this capacity for both friendship and philanthropy, and so the quantity of joy which comes thereof, the happiness of the affections.

This religion has delights peculiar to the religious faculty, the happiness of the Soul. I love the Infinite God as the ideal of all perfection,—beauty to the imagination, truth to the reason, justice to the conscience, the perfect person to the affections, the Infinite and Self-faithful God to the soul. With this there vanishes away all fear of God, all fear of ultimate evil for anything that is. If this escape from fear of God were all, that alone were a great thing. How men hate fear! From the dreadful God of the popular theology, and its odious immortality, they flee to annihilation; and atheism itself seems a relief. But this religion which grows out of the idea of the Infinite God casts out all fear and the torment thereof. I am content to be afraid of some men, stronger and wickeder than I; I know they can hurt me; I know they wish it; I know they will. To them my truth is "error of the carnal reason;" my justice is "violation of the law" of men; my love, philanthropic or friendly, is "levying war;" my religion is "infidelity,"— "sin against the Holy Ghost." I fear these men ; they turn their swine into my garden to root up and tread down every little herb of grace, or plant that flowers for present or for future joy. These men may hang me, or assassinate me in the street. I will try to keep out of their wicked way. If they will hurt me, I must bear it as