Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/59

Rh right to the justice of God is unalienable in men, the universal human claim, the never-ending gift for them. Can God ever depart from his own justice, deprive any creature of a right, or balk it of a natural claim ? Philosophically speaking, it is impossible, — a contradiction to our idea of God; religiously speaking, it is impious, — a contradiction to our feeling of God. Both the philosophic and the religious consciousness declare it impossible that God should be unjust. The nature of finite men claims justice of God; His infinite nature adjusts the claim. Every man in the world is morally related to each and all the rest. Justice is the common human bond. It joins us also to the infinite God. Justice is his constant mode of action in the moral world.

So much for justice, viewed as objective ; as a law of the universe, the mode of action of the universal moral force.

Man naturally loves justice for its own sake, as the na- tural object of his conscience. As the mind loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the right ; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties. Conscience rests injustice as an end, as the mind in truth. As truth is the side of God turned towards the intellect, so is justice the side of Him which conscience looks upon. Love of justice is the moral part of piety.

When I am a baby, in my undeveloped moral state, I do not love justice, nor conform to it ; when I am sick, and have not complete control over this republic of nerves and muscles, I fail of justice, and heed it not ; when I am stung with beastly rage blinded by passion, or over- attracted from my proper sphere of affection, another man briefly possessing me, I may not love the absolute and eternal right, private capillary attraction conflicting with the universal gravitation. But in my maturity, in my cool and personal hours, when I am most myself, and the accidents of my bodily temperament and local surroundings are controlled by the substance of my manhood, then I love justice with a firm, unwavering love. That is the natural fealty of my conscience to its liege-lord. Then I love justice not for its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for the moral truth and loveliness thereof. Then if justice crown me I am glad, not merely with my personal feeling, be-