Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/94

78 same enhancement of the power to love. Already Affection begins to legislate, even to administer the laws of love. Long ago you see intimation of this in the institutes of Moses and Menu. "The qualitative precedes the quantitative," as twilight precedes day. Slowly vengeance fades out of human institutions, slowly love steals in:—the wounded soldier must be healed, and paid, his widow fed, and children comforted; the slaves must be set free; the yoke of kings and nobles must be made lighter, be broken, and thrown away; all men must have their rights made sure; the poor must be fed, must have his human right to a vote, to justice, truth, and love ; the ignorant must be educated, the State looking to it that no one straggles in the rear and so is lost; the criminals—I mean the little criminals committing petty crimes—must be instructed, healed, and manlified ; the lunatic must be restored to his intellect; the blind, the deaf and dumb, the idiots, must be taught, and all mankind be blessed. The attempt to banish war out of the world, odium from theology, capital punishment out of the State, the Devil and his hell from the Christian mythology,—the effort to expunge hate from the popular notion of God, and fear from our religious consciousness,—all this shows the growth of love in the spirit of men. A few men see that while ir-religion is fear of a devil, religion is love: one half is piety,—the love of God as truth, justice, love, as Infinite Deity ; the rest is morality,—self-love, and the love of man, a service of God by the normal use, development, and enjoyment of every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, every particle of power we possess over matter or over man. A few men see that God is love, and makes the world of love as substance, from love as motive, and for love as end.

Human nature demands the triumph of pure, disinterested love at last; the nature of God is warrant that what is promised in man's nature shall be fulfilled in his development. Human nature is human destiny; God's nature, universal Providence. The mind tells us of truth which will prevail; conscience, of justice sure to conquer; the heart gives us the prophecy of infinite love certain to triumph. One day there shall be no fear before men, no fear before God, no tyrant in society, no Devil in theology, no hell in the mythology of men; love and the God of