Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/91

Rh stand the light, nor devils love. My affections bind me to God, and as the heart grows strong my ever- deepening consciousness of God grows more and more, till God's love occupies the heart, and the sentiment of God is mine. Notwithstanding the high place which the affections hold in the natural economy of man, and the abundant opportunities for their culture and development furnished by the very constitution of the family, but little value is placed thereon in what is called the "superior education" of mankind. The class of men that lead the Christian world have but a small development of affection. Patriotism is the only form of voluntary love which it is popular with such men to praise, — that only for its pecuniary value; charity seems thought a weakness, to be praised only on Sundays ; avarice is the better weekday virtue; friendship is deemed too romantic for a trading town. Philanthropy is mocked at by statesmen and leading capitalists ; it is the standing butt of the editor, whereat he shoots his shaft, making up in its barb and venom for his arrows' lack of length and point. Metropolitan clergymen rejoice in calumniating philanthropy; "Even the golden rule hath its exceptions," says one of them just now. It is deemed important to show that Jesus of Nazareth was "no philanthropist," and cared nothing for the sin of the powerful, which trod men into a mire of blood! In what is called the "highest education," only the understanding and the taste get a considerable culture. The piety of the heart is thought "inelegant" in society, unscholarly with the learned, and a dreadful heresy in the churches. In literature it is not love that wins the palm; it is power to rule by force,—force of muscles or force of mind: "None but the brave deserve the fair." In popular speech it is the great fighters that men glorify, not the great lovers of mankind. Interest eats out the heart from commerce and politics ; controlling men have no faith in disinterested benevolence ; to them the nation is a monstrous shop, a trading city but a bar-room in a commercial tavern, the church a desk for the accountant, the world a market; men are buyers and sellers, employers and employed. Governments are mainly without love, often