Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/245

232 my part. Are there pleasures of affection? I have tasted from that golden cup, and by those I love can drink vicariously at many a spring my lips directly never touch. But dear and blessed as are all these things, I count them cheap compared with my delight in God. These I could renounce and still be blessed, at least resigned; but not to know the Father and Mother of the world, to feel shut out from that causal and providential love, which creates all from itself, I should go mad and die at once, or live a maimed, brutal life, and perish like a fool. But of this deep joy, I cannot speak save in the most general terms. ’Tis profane to talk of such things even to most intimate friends. The handsome shapes of our innermost life are I chastely veiled from all the world; there I am my own high priest, and into that holy of holies none but myself and Thou, God! can ever come.

Does not mankind also rate its religious consciousness thus high? Whom does it honour most? Always its heroes of the soul. Men with genius for religion. Such men as Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, they are above all human names. None else have such millions bowing thereto; none others are worshipped so as gods. How thankful we are to whoever brings religious truths ! Mankind is loyal, and when it sees its king, takes him to its heart and honours him for ever. Thankful to those who helped us, with what sympathy do we look on persons trying to attain religious excellence I No romance is so attractive to us all as the story of a man longing after God and seeking rest for the soul. How do you and I, seeing such, wish to go to this child crying in the darkness, wet and numb with cold, and like a great Saint Christopher to take him on our shoulders and thus ferry him across the stream, warming his limbs while we bear him wrapped in our mantle, and then put a candle in his lantern and bread in his pouch and bid him " God speed you, my brother! You will find day by and by."

When a great truth stirs the feelings infinite within us, how do we love to show the cause thereof to other men, and set slips from the tree of life in their gardens to make a new paradise! Worldly ambition is singular—for itself alone; the passion of love is dual—for him and her; but the affection of religion is universal-plural, embracing God