Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/165

152 body, with every faculty of the spirit, with every power we possess over matter or over man.

But there is a purely subjective and internal part of religion, which is the heart of the whole of it, and whence its streams of life are sent forth! I mean piety. At first, piety includes directly only man's relation to the world of God, and controls and regulates the duties thereof, the rights therein, and the enjoyment therefrom. But the roots of all other human relations, of all the rest of religion, strike down into this, and are not only steadied and supported, but they are nourished thereby. So all of religion, in its concretest form, comes ultimately out of this internal element which I call piety.

By piety, I mean the normal action of the strictly religious faculty—the soul—considered as purely internal and subjective. It is our consciousness of God, our feeling of the world of God, and of all which belongs thereto.

This piety is a feeling which, at first, seems to be simple, and not capable of being analyzed and decomposed into other elements. But when you look at the matter a moment, you see it must be attended by the idea of God, and, as a condition of complete and perfect piety, that idea must be the true idea—of God considered the Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Justice, Infinite Holiness, and Infinite Love—for if you think, as many do, that God is not perfect, but is an ugly devil, it is plain that your feeling towards God, and your internal experience of God, must be exactly the opposite of what it will be if you consider Him as infinitely perfect in power, wisdom, justice, affection, and holiness. In the state of complete and perfect piety, the spirit of man embraces into one unity of consciousness several elements, namely, first, an idea of God, a conception of Him as Infinite; next, the feeling of perfect love for God, of perfect trust in Him, and of tranquillity and rest with God; and, as a third thing, the complete will to serve God by a way that corresponds to His nature, and to your nature likewise. Then, as a consequent result of these three things, there comes this—a supreme delight and rejoicing in God!

It seems to me that these things make up a complete and I perfect piety, normal and total. So it includes a great thought—the idea of Infinite God ; a great feeling — abso-