Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/32

16 clogs the wheels of mankind in every quarter of the world. Yet real piety, in manly quantity and in a manly form, is an uncommon thing. It is marvellous what other wants the want of this brings in: look over the long list of brilliant names that glitter in English history for the past three hundred years, study their aims, their outward and their inner life; explore the causes of their manifold defeat, and you will see the primal curse of all these men was lack of piety. They did not love truth, justice, or love ; they did not love God with all their mind and conscience, heart and soul. Hence came the failure of many a mighty-minded man. Look at the brilliant array of distinguished talent in France for the last five generations; what intellectual gifts, what understanding, what imagination, what reason, but with it all what corruption, what waste of faculty, what lack of strong and calm and holy life, in these great famous men! Their literature seems marvellously like the thin, cold dazzle of Northern Lights upon the wintry ice. In our own country it is still the same; the high intellectual gift or culture is ashamed of religion, and flouts at God ; and hence the faults we see.

But real piety is what we need; we need much of it,—need it in the natural form thereof. Ours is an age of great activity. The peaceful hand was never so busy as to-day; the productive head never created so fast before. See how the forces of nature yield themselves up to man: the river stops for him, content to be his servant, and weave and spin; the ocean is his vassal, his toilsome bondsman; the lightning stoops out of heaven, and bears thoughtful burdens on its electric track from town to town. All this comes from the rapid activity of the lower intellect of man. Is there a conscious piety to correspond with this,—a conscious love of truth and right and love,—a love of God? Ask the State, ask the church, ask society, and ask our homes.

The age requires a piety most eminent. What was religion enough for the time of the Patriarchs, or the Prophets, or the Apostles, or the Reformers, or the Puritans, is not enough for the heightened consciousness of mankind to-day. When the world thinks in lightning, it is not proportionate to pray in lead. The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, will not suffice us