Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/195

Rh religion to minister this happiness, which comes of self- denial for the sake of God.

The joy of religion must be proportionate to the purity of the feeling, the completeness of the idea, and the perfection of the act. When all are as they should be, what a joy is there for man! No disappointment will have lasting power over you, no sorrow destroy your peace of soul. Even the remembrance of sins past by will be assuaged by the experience you thereby have, and by the new life which has grown over them. The sorrows of the world will not seem as death-pangs, but the birth-pains of new and holier life. The sins of mankind, the dreadful wars, the tyrannies of the strong over the weak, or of the many over the few, will be seen to be only the stumbling of this last child of God learning to walk, to use his limbs and possess himself of the world which waits to be mastered by man's wisdom, ruled by man's justice, directed by man's love, as part of the great human worship of the Infinite God. The Past, the Present, and the Future will appear working together for you and all mankind,—all made from the perfect motive of God, for a perfect end and as a perfect means. You will know that the providence of the Great Author of us all is so complete and universal, that every wrong that man has suffered which he could not escape, every sorrow he has borne that could not be resisted nor passed by, every duty we have done, had a purpose to serve in the infinite housekeeping of the universe, and is warrant for so much eternal blessedness in the world to come. You look on the base and wicked men who seem as worms in the mire of civilization, often delighting to bite and devour one another, and you remark that these also are children of God; that he loves each of them, and will suffer no ancient Judas, nor modern kidnapper of men, to perish; that there is no child of perdition in all the family of God, but He will lead home his sinner and his saint, and such as are sick with the leprosy of their wickedness, "the murrain of beasts," bowed down and not able to lift themselves up, He will carry in his arms!

The joys of the flesh are finite, and soon run through. Objects of passion are the dolls wherewith we learn to use our higher faculties, and through all our life the joy of