Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/241

Rh Neither the individual nor the race acquires a consciousness of these moral laws all at once. It is done progressively by you and me; progressively by the human race, learning here a little, and there a little. The natural moral ideal is not all at once transferred from God^s mind to man's. We learn the laws of our moral nature like the laws of matter, slowly,—little by little. A good man is constantly making progress in the knowledge of God's natural moral laws; mankind does the same. The race to-day knows more of the natural moral laws of our constitution than the human race ever knew before. A thousand years hence, no doubt, mankind will know a great deal more of this natural moral ideal than we know to-day. Accordingly, speaking after the events of history, the moral ideal of mankind is continually rising. It may not be always rising in the same man, who goes on for a while, then becomes idle, or old, or wicked, and goes down: nor always be rising in the same nation; that also advances for a while, then sins against God sometimes, and goes down to ruin. But, take the human race as a whole, the moral ideal of mankind is constantly rising higher and higher.

The next thing is to obey these laws, consciously, knowing we obey them; voluntarily, willing to obey, and make the moral ideal the actual of life for the individual and the race. This also is done progressively; not all at once, but by slow degrees. The moral actual of the human race is constantly rising higher and higher. Just in proportion as the ideal shoots up the actual follows after it, though on slow and laborious wings. If you look microscopically at the condition of mankind at intervals of only a hundred years, you will see that there is a moral progress from century to century; but separate your points of observation by a thousand years instead of a century, the moral progress of the race is so obvious that no unprejudiced man can fail to see it when he opens his natural eyes and looks. I will not say it is so with every special nation, for a nation may go back as well as forward; but it is so with the human race as a whole, so with mankind.

Religion,—which begins in feeling, proceeds to thought, and thence to action,—in its highest form is the keeping of all the laws which God writ in the constitution of man: in other words, it is the service of God by the normal use,