Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/172

160 the world without is so sacred as the eternal law of God; of the world within nothing is more venerable than our own conscience, the permanent, everlasting oracle of God. The Urim and Thummim were but Jewish or Egyptian toys on the breastplate of the Hebrew priest; the Delphic oracle was only a subtle cheat; but this is the true Shekinah and presence of God in your heart: as this

If I am consciously and continually false to this, it is of no avail that I seem loyal to all besides; I make the light that is in me darkness, and how great is that darkness! The centre of my manhood is gone, and I am rotten at my heart. Men may respect me, honour me, but I am not respectable, I am a base, dishonourable man, and like a tree, broad-branched, and leafed with green, but all its heart gnawed out by secret worms; at some slight touch one day, my rotten trunk will fall with horrid squelch, bringing my leafy honours to dishonoured dust, and men will wonder that bark could hide such rottenness and ruin.

But if I am true to this legate of God, holding his court within my soul, then my power to discover the just and right will enlarge continually; the axis of my little life will coincide with the life of the infinite God, His conscience and my own be one. Then my character and my work will lie in the plane of his Almighty action; no other will in me. His infinite wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, will flow into me, a ceaseless tide, filling with life divine and new the little creeklets of my humble soul. I shall be one with God, feel His delight in me and mine in Him, and all my mortal life run o'er with life divine and bless mankind. Let men abhor me, yea, scourge and crucify, angels are at hand; yes, the Father is with me!

How we mistake. Men think if they can but get wickedness dignified into a statute, enrolled in the capitol, signed by the magistrates, and popular with the people, that all is secure. Then they rejoice, and at their "Thanksgiving-dinner," say with the short-lived tyrant in the play, after he had slain the rightful heirs of England's throne, and set his murderous hoof on justice at every step to power,—