Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/314

 is New-year's Sunday to-day—when men become thoughtful, as they look back on the irretrievable past, or forward to the uncertain future. Let us use, therefore, the occasion of the day, and so this morning I ask your attention to some thoughts on.

In religion there are always three things which make up that complex of consciousness. First, there are feelings, the emotional part; second, ideas, the intellectual part; and third, there are actions, the practical part. These three, I take it, are the essentials of all conscious religion, and you actually find them in all the different forms there-of which prevail, either amongst us or the rest of mankind.

But see what difference there may be in what is called religion,—in respect to these various elements of this complex consciousness. 1. The may be that man is a miserable wretch, totally depraved, no good thing in his body, his mind incapable of learning truth by its own power, his conscience good for nothing, and his affections "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." It may be that God is a snake, a crocodile, a bull, a white elephant, a consuming fire—Moloch, Zeus, Jupiter, Woden, Thor, Jehovah, a