Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/53

Rh not be contented with repetitions of the remembered feast. There are new truths to come,—truths in science, morals, politics, religion; some have arrived not long ago upon this planet, — many a new thing underneath the sun. At first men gave them doubtful welcome. But if you know that they are truths, fear not ; be sure that they will stay, adding new treasures to the consciousness of men, new outward welfare to the blessedness of earth. No king nor conqueror does men so great a good as he who adds to human kind a great and universal truth ; he that aids its march, and makes the thought a thing, works in the same line with Moses, has intellectual sympathy with God, and is a fellow-labourer with Him. The best gift we can bestow upon man is manhood. Undervalue not material things; but remember that the generation which, finding Rome brick, left it marble and full of statues and temples too, as its best achievement bequeathed to us a few words from a young Carpenter of Galilee, and the remembrance of his manly life.

in the world there is a natural law, that is a constant mode of action, which seems to belong to the nature of things, to the constitution of the universe: this fact is universal. In different departments we call this mode of action by different names, as the law of Matter, the law of Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean thereby a certain mode of action which belongs to the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in which commonly they are seen to act, and in which it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of matter we only know from the fact that they are always obeyed; to us the actual obedience is the only witness of the ideal rule, for