Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/173

160 your memory what every man experiences,—the joy of affection, of love in all its forms, connubial, parental, filial, related, friendly, and all that. It seems to me that ascetic preachers often undervalue this. And I remember to have heard a man, of a good deal of power too, declare that a man's love for his garden, his house, his ox, his horse, his wife, and his children, was all nonsense, and absurdity; nay, "a sin" in the eyes of God, and just as he loved these things the more, he loved God the less; and if he loved Him supremely, he would care for nothing but God I do not value at a low rate the happiness which comes from the union of the world of matter with the world of man, from our industry, its process and its results. I wish every earnest man knew what satisfaction there is in putting your human nature upon material nature, and making it take your image—now a form of use, then a form of beauty. I do not think we make account enough of this, or set sufficient store by this source of delight. To put human nature upon material nature, in the shape of a grand statue or a grand picture—everybody thinks that if a great delight; but so it is to put Zml nature upon material nature in the form of a shoe, or a shirt, or a carriage, or a house, or a stocking, or a loaf of bread, or a nail, a farm, a garden, or a steam engine, or anything you will; there is the same triumph of mind over matter in the one case as in the other, and when we get a little wiser we shall see what a real joy is in this, and at one end of society there will be no idleness and shirking, and at the other no drudgery and being crushed by excess of toil. God made man to live with matter, and made them both so that there should be good neighbourhood between the two, and man should get delight from the contact. God made men so that they might live with each other, and get deeper, dearer, and truer delight from that intimacy. Do not think, I say, that I undervalue either of these forms of well-being. Let a man have all that he can get of both, and communicate in both kinds through this sacrament, with thankfulness of heart. But I must say that I think the delight which comes from the world of God, the joys of piety as a normal consciousness and experience of God, a great way surpass all these other delights have just named. Yes, compared with the others, this