Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/193

Rh gion is not everything. But yet the happiness of this inner human world, the delight of loving God and abso- lutely trusting Him, is plainly the dearest of all delights. I love the world of sense, its beauty to the eye and ear; the natural luxury of taste and touch. It is indeed a glorious world,—the stars of earth, that gem the ground with dewy loveliness, the flowers of heaven, whose amaranthine bloom attracts alike the admiring gaze of clown or sage, and draws the lover's eye while the same spirit is blooming also in his and in another's heart. I love the world of science,—the deeper loveliness which the mind beholds in each eternal star, or the rathe violet of this April day. What a more wondrous wonder is the uniform force of Nature, whose constant modes of operation are all exact as mathematical law, and whence the great minds of Kepler, Newton, and Laplace, gather the flowers of nature's art, and bind them up in handfuls for our lesser wits! I rejoice in the world of men, in the all- conquering toil which subordinates matter unto man, making the river, ocean, winds, to serve mankind; which bridles the lightning and rides it through the sky, and sails the stormiest seas unharmed. I rejoice in the statutes which reenact the eternal laws of God, and administer justice betwixt man and man. I delight in human love in all its forms, instinctive or voluntary, in friendship and philanthropy; the mutuality of persons is a dear and sacred joy to me. But the delight in God is yet more,—dearer than each of these; one we like not much to name. Add to it all these several delights, which get each a charm from this consciousness of God, and you taste and see the real happiness of religion.

Religion without joy,—it is no religion. Superstition, the fear of God, might well be sad. The devotees thereof seek their delight in violating the functions of the body and the spirit. In the theological garden the Tree of Life bears fruit indeed, a few fair apples, but out of reach, which no man can gather till death lift us on his shoulders, and then they are not apples for a mortal mouth. You turn off from the literature of this superstition, and look on sunny Nature, on the minnow in the sea, on the robin in the field, on the frog, the snake, the spider, and the toad, and smile at sight of their gladness in the world,