Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/145

132 sects—how much justice and benevolence, and noblest piety, which they cannot bring in, because this popular theology, like a destroying angel armed with a flaming fiery sword, struts evermore before the church's gate, barring men off from beneath the Tree of Life, anxious to hew off the head of lofty men, and gash and frighten all such as be of gentle, holy heart.

So much for the teacher's relation to ideas, the instrument he is to work withal, and waken the religious feelings into life.

II. Of the teacher of religion in his relation to the feelings connected with religion.

With theological ideas of this scientific stamp it is easy to rouse the religious feelings, the great master emotions, and then rear up that whole brood of beautiful affections, whose nest such an idea of God broods over and warms to life. If God be preached to men as endowed with infinite perfection, He at once is felt as the object of desire for every spiritual faculty; to the mind, Infinite Wisdom—the author of all truth and beauty; to the conscience, Infinite Justice—the Creator of all right; to the affections, Infinite Love—the Father and Mother of all things which are; to the soul, Infinite Holiness—absolute fidelity. So here is presented to men the Infinite God—perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, and holy, self-subsistent, self-reliant. Is any one an atheist to such a God? No, not one! Who can fail to love Him? the philosopher, who throughout all the world seeks truth, the science of things? the poet and the artist, who hunt the world of things and thoughts all through for shapes and images of beauty ? the moralist, who asks for ideal justice and rejoices to find it imperative in Nature and in man? the philanthropist, who would fold to his great heart pirates and murderers, and bless the abandoned harlot of the street, yea, have mercy on the "Christian" stealer of men, in Boston? the sentimentalist of piety, who loves devotion for itself, who would only lie low before the Divine as an anemone beneath the sky, and with no dissevering thought, in joyous prayer would mix and lose his personal being in mystic communion with the Infinite consciousness of God?