Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/34

18 it is not to be won without difficulty, manly effort, self-denial of the low for the sake of the highest in us. Of you, young man, young maid, it will demand both prayer and toil. Not without great efforts are great heights won. In your period of passion you must subordinate instinctive desire to your reason, your conscience, your heart and soul; the lust of the body to the spirit's love. In the period of ambition you must coordinate all that is personal or selfish with what is absolutely true, just, holy, and good. Surely this will demand self-denial, now of instinctive desire, now of selfish ambition. Much you must sacrifice. But you will gain the possession, the use, the development, and the joy of your own mind and conscience, heart and soul. You will never sacrifice truth, justice, holiness, or love. All these you will gain ; gain for to-day, gain for ever. What inward blessedness will you acquire! what strength, what tranquillity, what loveliness, what joy in God! You will have your delight in Him ; He his in you. Is it not worth while to live so that you know you are in unison with God; in unison, too, with men; in quantity growing more, in quality superior? Make the trial for manly excellence, and the result is yours, for time and for eternity.

is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body. It is the harmony of all the members thereof; the true symmetry and right proportion of part with part, of each with all, and so the worship of God with every limb of the body. Wisdom is to the mind what temperance, in this sense, is to the body; it is intellectual piety; the presence of divine order in the mind;