Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/263

250 house, the senate-house, the shop, the ship, the field, the forest, the mine, shall be a temple where the psalm and prayer of religion goes up from daily, normal, blessed work.

Manly, natural religion—it is not joining a church; it is not to believe a creed—Hebrew, Christian, Catholic, Protestant, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nothingarian. It is not to keep Sunday idle; to attend meeting; to be wet with water; to read the Bible; to offer prayers in words; to take bread and wine in the meeting-house. I know men who do all these things, and yet give scarce more evidence of piety and morality than the benches where they sit,—wood resting on wood. Other men I know who do none of these things, and are yet amongst the most religious of God's children. Such things may help you,—then use them, in God's name, if you find it so. They may hinder,—then, in God's name, cast them off. Jesus of Nazareth was no Christian, in the ecclesiastical sense of that abused word; and could he come to Boston to-day, and bear the same relation to America in the nineteenth century that he did to Palestine in the first, he might not be crucified, or stoned dead in the streets, because the laws forbid such outrage now; but in the "conference-meeting of business men," the prayer-meetings of the grimmer sects, the revivalists, men and women too, I would beseech God to convert him from the wicked belief that his own religion would save his own soul, that our Father in heaven was effectually to be served by justice and love to his children; and if God could not do that they would pray—"Remove him out of the way, and let his influence die with him" I say those things are not religion; helps or hindrances they may be. Religion itself is something far more inward and living. It is loving God with all your understanding and your heart and soul. It is service of God with every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, every power he has given you, every day of your life. That religion, it is a terror to evil-doers, yet offers them encouragement to repent ; it is an inspiration to whoso would love man and love God. Suppose I am converted to such a religion ; the sunlight of this idea falls on me for the first time, kindling emotions which spring up as the green grass after April rains. What a