Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/247

234 there, lie felt rebuked and took the heavenly Hint, and: ever after fashioned his Madonnas complete women, of nobler and more actual shape—not monsters, virgins of the sky, but women, sisters, wives, mothers, for the world of time, the mortal earthly beauty kept and made more fair and human by its wholeness and its complete and perfect trust in the dear God who fashioned woman's body and inspired her soul. And as the sign that such dear divinity yet touched the common ground, he put the emblematic lilies in the statue's folded hand.

So when I see a man, else grand and beautiful, with transcendent mind and conscience and affections too, but lacking this ultimate finish of religion, I long to plant therein the soul of piety, which shall complete the whole and so make perfect every part—mastering the world of time, but not disdaining it.

I have heard of many conversions,—here is the story of a real one. A man was a drunkard, noisy, violent; he beat his wife and children, nay, his mother. Crossing yonder bridge one dark night, all at once his own conscience spoke in him—"Stop there, Richard! Drink no more!" Not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, he stopped, and swore to drink no more. He became a new man. There was a revival of religion in him,—at least a part of it ; ever after he had temperance, the piety of the flesh. Some of you understand that conversion. To speak Ias ministers — Jacob wrestles with the devil all night, flings him, and goes off conqueror, the devil down, and the man up for all time. Honour to conversions of this stamp! What a joy it would be if there could come to pass a real revival of religion, of piety and morality, in the church of America—I mean among the thirty thousand Protestant ministers and the thirty hundred thousand Protestant church members;—a revival of religion which should be qualitatively nice and quantitatively large,—a great, new growth of the soul; such a healthy bloom of piety as would make a White-Sunday all over the land, prophetic of whole Messianic harvests of piety and morality, which were to come! Why, if such a thing were to take place, and I were Governor of Massachusetts or President of the United States, though it were seed-time, or harvest-time, war-time even, I would issue my pro-