Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/225

Rh Fenelon and Swedenborg, in John Tauler, in St Bernard and St Victor, in Taylor and Herbert. But there it appears not in its fairest form. I love to see piety at its work better than in its play or its repose; in philanthropists better than in monks and nuns, who gave their lives to contemplation and to wordy prayer, and their bodies to be burned. I love piety embodied in a Gothic or Roman cathedral, an artistic prayer in stone, but better in a nation well fed, well housed, well clad, instructed well, a natural prayer in man or woman. I love the water touched by electric fire, and stealing upwards to the sky, lovely in the light of the uprising or slowly sinking sun. I love it not the less descending down as dew and rain, to still the dust in all the country roads, to cool the pavement in the heated town, to wash the city's dirtiest lane, and in the fields giving grass to the cattle, and bread to men. What is so fair as sentiment, is lovelier as life.

All the triumphs of ancient piety are for you and me; the lofty sentiment, the high resolve, the vision filled with justice, beauty, truth, and love. The great, ascending prayer, the manly consciousness of God, his income to your soul as justice, beauty, truth, and faith, and love,—all these wait there for you,—happiness now and here; hereafter the certain blessedness which cannot pass away.

Piety is beautiful in all; to a great man it comes as age comes to the Parthenon or the Pyramids, making what was vast and high majestic, venerable, sublime, and to their beauty giving a solemn awe they never knew before. To men not great, to the commonest men, it also comes, bringing refinement and a loveliness of substance and of shape; so that in a vulgar ecclesiastical crowd they seem like sculptured gems of beryl and of emerald among the common pebbles of the sea.

Piety is beautiful in all relations of life. When your wooing, winsome soul shall wed the won to be your other and superior self, a conscious piety hallows and beautifies the matrimonial vow,—deepens and sanctifies connubial love. When a new soul is added to your household,—a new rose-bud to your bosom,—a bright, particular star dropped from the upper sphere and dazzling in your diadem,—your conscious love of God will give the heavenly visitant the truest, the most prophetic and most blessed