Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/194

178 and wish to share it yourself. You turn to the literature which makes a mock at all religion. You find enough of it in Greece and Rome at the decay of paganism, enough still in brilliant France at the dissolution of Christian mythology, in the last century and in this. There also is an attempt at joy, but the attempt is vain, and the little life of men is full of wine and uproar and scarlet women, is poor, unsatisfactory, and short, rounded with bitterness at the last. The chief tree in that garden blossoms bright enough, but it bears only apples of Sodom for a body without a soul, a here with no hereafter, in a world without a God. In such a place the brilliance of genius is only lightning, not light. In such company you almost long for the iron age of theology and the hard literature of the "divines," lean and old and sour, but yet teaching us of a Will above the poor caprice of men, of a Mind beyond this perishing intellect, of an Arm which made men tremble indeed, but also upheld the world. At least there is Duty in that grim creation, and self-denial for the sake of God. Things should not be so. Sensuality is not adequate delight for men who look to immortality. Religion is not at enmity with joy. No: it is irreligion,—atheistic now and now superstitious. There is no tyranny in God. Man is not a worm, the world a vale of tears. Tears enough there are, and long will be, — the morning mist of the human day. We can wipe off some of them, can rend a little the cloud of ignorance, and want, and crime, and let in the gladdening light of life. Nay, grief and sorrow are the world's medicine, salutary as such, and not excessive for the ill they come to cure. But if we are to make them our daily food, and call that angels' bread, surely it is a mistake which the world of matter cries out upon, and human nature itself forbids. The development of religion in man is the condition of the highest happiness. Temperance, the piety of the body, prepares that for the corporeal joys, the humble in their place, the highest also in their own ; wisdom, the piety of mind, justice, the piety of conscience, and love, the piety of the affections,—the love of God with all our varied faculties,—these furnish us the complete spiritual joy which is the birthright of each man. It is the function of