Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/88

72 charity! Here is a woman of large intellect, well disciplined, well stored, gifted with mind and graced with its specific piety, whose chief delight it is to do kind deeds to those beloved. Her life is poured out, like the fair light of heaven, around the bedside of the sick. She comes like a last sacrament to the dying man, bringing back a reminiscence of the best things of mortal life, and giving a foretasted prophecy of the joys of heaven, her very presence an alabaster box of ointment, exceeding precious, filling the house with the balm of its thousand flowers. Her love adorns the paths wherein she teaches youthful feet to tread, and blooms in amaranthine loveliness above the head laid low in earth. She would feel insulted by gratitude; God can give no greater joy to mortal men than the consciousness whence such a life wells out. Not content with blessing the few whom friendship joins to her, her love enlarges and runs over the side of the private cup, and fills the bowl of many a needy and forsaken one. Self-denial is spontaneous,—self-indulgence of the noble heart to her. In the presence of such affection as this, the intellect of a Plato would be abashed, and the moral sense of a saint would shrink and say to itself: "Stand back, my soul, for here is somewhat far holier than thou! In sight of such excellence I am ashamed of intellect!" I would not look upon the greatest mind that ever spoke to ages yet unborn.

There is far more of this charity than most men imagine. You find it amid the intense worldliness of this city, where upstart Mammon scoffs at God ; in the hovels of the poor, in the common dwellings of ordinary men, and in the houses of the rich; drive out nature with a dollar, still she comes back. This love is the feminine saviour of mankind, and bestows a peace which nothing else can give, which nought can take away. From its nature this plant grows in by- places, where it is not seen by ordinary eyes, till wounded you flee thither; then it heals your smart, or when beheld fills you with wonder at its human loveliness. The calling of a clergyman in a great, wicked town brings him acquainted with ghastly forms of human wickedness,—with felons of conscience, and men idiotic in their affections, who seem born with an arithmetic instead of a conscience, and a vulture for a heart: but we also find