Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/113

100 mercy in the neighbouring street; it is the kind man, whose wise heart goes out as medicine to the sick, the old, the feeble, the poor,—these are his heroes. The heroism of hate he has trod under-foot; the heroism of love—he looks up and thanks God for that.

His religion is deeper, more inward than before. It is not doctrine alone, nor mere form. There is little rapture; he is still, and knows that God is Father and Mother of the world. His religion is love of God ; faith and trust in Him; rest, tranquillity, peace for his soul. From the wide field of time, deeply laboured for eighty years, he reaps a great harvest of life, and now his sheaves are with him; the eternal riches of heaven are poured into his lap. He fears nothing; he loves. His hope for this world is something small; for his immortal future he knows no bounds. The farmer tills his ground for the annual harvest, but his good tillage fertilizes the soil; and without his thinking of it, his farm grows richer and his estate larger. And just so it is with the true, good man : as the years go by him, his estate of religion greatens, and becomes more and more. The little flowers of humanity — a warm spring day calls them out, where there is no deepness of earth: but to raise the great oak-trees of human righteousness, you want a deep, rich soil, and threescore, fourscore, fivescore summers and winters, for the tree to grow in, broadly buttressed below, broad-branched above, to wrestle with the winds, and take the sunshine of God's heaven on its top. And that is the value of long life—it is an opportunity to grow great and ripen through. It is out of Time and Nature that man makes life; long time is needed, as well as noble nature, for a great life.

Alas for the man who has lived meanly! his old age is a sad and wintry day, whereunto the spring offers no promise. He sowed the wind: it is the storm he reaps.

Here is an old sensualist. In his youth he threw the reins on the neck of every lust which wars against the soul, and so went through the period of instinctive Passion. In his graver years, his Calculation was only for the appetites of the flesh, ambition for sensual delight. Now he is old, his desire has become habit; but the in-