Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/207

Rh The general Christian belief, that Jesus was the Son of God, is now no spiritual sacrament; the specific belief of the Catholic or Protestant at this day is worth no more. Nay, all these stand in the way of the human race, and hinder our march. So the outward Christian sacraments —baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, penance, and the rest—seem to me only stones of stumbling in the way of mankind; they are as far from the real ordinances of religion as dandling a doll is from the mother's holy duty.

The natural and real ordinance of religion is in general a manly life, all the man's faculties of body and spirit developed or developing in their natural and harmonious way, the body ruled by the spirit, its instincts all in their places, the mind active, the conscience, the affections, the soul, all at work in their natural way. Religion is the sacrament of religion; itself its ordinance. Piety and goodness are its substance, and all normal life its form. The love of God and the love of man, with all that belongs thereto, worship with every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, every power we possess over matter or men,—that is the sacramental substance of religion; a life obedient to the love of God and of man,—that is the sacramental form of religion. All else is means, provisional; this the end, a finality. Thus my business, my daily work with the hand, if an honest and manly work, is the ordinance of religion to my body; seeking and expressing truth and beauty is the ordinance of religion to my mind; doing justice to all about me is the moral ordinance of religion; loving men is the natural sacrament of the affections; holiness is the natural ordinance of the soul. Putting all together,—my internal consciousness of piety and goodness, my outward life which represents that, is the great natural sacrament, the one compendious and universal ordinance. Then my religion is not one thing, and my life another; the two are one. Thus religion is the sacrament of religion, morality the test of piety. If you believe God limited to one spot, then that is counted specifically holy ; and your religion draws or drives you thither. If you believe that religion demands only certain particular things, they will be thought sacramental, and the doing thereof the proof of religion. But