Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/22

6 intellectual consciousness of all his active nature ; something instinctive germinates in us, and grows underground, as it were, before it bursts the sod and shoots into the light of self-consciousness. Sheathed in unconsciousness lies the bud, ere long to open a bright, consummate flower. These philosophers, with a real love of truth, and yet a scorn of the name of God, understand many things, perhaps, not known to common men, but this portion of their being has yet escaped their eye ; they have not made an exact and exhaustive inventory of the facts of their own nature. Such men have unconsciously much of the intellectual part of piety.

Other men have loved justice, not for the personal convenience it offered to them, but for its own sake, because it married itself to their conscience,—have loved it with a disinterested, even a self-denying love, — who yet scorned religion, denied all consciousness of God, denied his providence, perhaps his existence, and would have resolved God into matter, and no more. Yet all the while in these men, dim and unconscious, there lay the religious element; neglected, unknown, it gave the man the very love of special justice which made him strong. He knew the absolutely just, but did not know it as God.

I have known philanthropists who undervalued piety; they liked it not,—they said it was moonlight, not broad day; it gave flashes of lightning, all of which would not make light. They professed no love of God, no knowledge thereof, while they had the strongest love of love; loved persons, not with a selfish, but self-denying affection, ready to sacrifice themselves for the completeness of another man's delight. Yet underneath this philanthropy there lay the absolute and disinterested love of other men. They knew only the special form, not the universal substance thereof,—the particular love of Thomas or of Jane, not the universal love of the Infinite. They had the affectional form of piety, though they knew it not.

I have known a man full of admiration and of love for the universe, yet lacking consciousness of its Author. He loved the truth and beauty of the world, reverenced the justice of the universe, and was himself delighted at the love he saw pervading all and blessing all; yet he recognized no God, saw only a cosmic force, which was a power