Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/242

Rh and love of man! What an idea of religion here, and of heaven hereafter! My friends, piety is not delirium. It does not expose to the world the innermost sanctuary of man's consciousness, and make common talk out of what is too sacred for any eye but God's, and if it turn a theatre into a house of prayer, it does not turn that prayer into noise and rant, and theatric fun.

The effect on the morality of the people is not less bad. Honest industry, forgiveness, benevolence,—these are virtues not thought of in a revival. I do not hear any prayer for temperance, any prayer for education, any prayer for the emancipation of slaves, for the elevation of women, for honesty, for industry, for brotherly love; any prayers against envy, suspicion, bigotry, superstition, spiritual pride, malice, and all uncharitableness. The newspapers tell us fifty thousand are converted in a week. That is a great story, but it may be true. The revival may spread all over the land. It will make church members—not good husbands, good wives, daughters, uncles, aunts; not good shoemakers, farmers, lawyers, mechanics, merchants, labourers. It will not oppose the rum trade, nor the trade in coolies, nor the trade in African or American slaves. It will not open a school for black people south of Mason and Dixon's line. It will not break a chain, or alter a vote against the best institution in America or the world—not one. Convert the National Administration, the Supreme Court, the Senate House; nay, convert the whole administration and the democratic party to this religion, and they take a south-side view of all political wickedness. They spread slavery into Kansas; they go fillibustering against Mexico, against Cuba; they restore the African slave trade. Suppose you could convert all the merchants, all the mechanics, all the labourers of Boston, and admit them to the churches that are getting up this revival, you do not add one ounce to the virtue of the city, not one cent's worth of charity to the whole town. You weaken its intelligence, its enterprise; you deaden the piety and morality of the people. The churches need a revival. No institution in America is more corrupt than her churches. No thirty thousand men and women are so bigoted and narrow as the thirty thousand ministers. The churches—they are astern of all