Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/316

Rh all from love—the highest possible motive, for infinite welfare—the highest possible purpose, and in the material and the human world furnishing the adequate means to go between his motive and his purpose and so secure the end. 2. The feeling may be the natural one which springs up at the thought of such a God and the consciousness of such a nature in us, and the certainty of such a relation of the Infinite Father and Mother to all mankind. It may be a feeling of reverence, of that perfect love which casts out every fear, of confidence in God's motive, purpose, means—all passing into a perfect and absolute trust in God, in his world here and all his worlds hereafter.

3. The action may be the normal use of every limb of the body and every faculty of the spirit, obedience to the natural laws which God writes on the body and in the soul, a life of manly toil and thought and the natural enjoyment of all reasonable things — works of industry, of wisdom, justice, affection, philanthropy, all growing like a flower from this seed of piety within the soul.

All these conflicting and hostile ideas, feelings, and actions have prevailed as religion. What a difference between the two! What I named first, I will call false religion, for it comes from a mistaken and perverted action of the human powers. The other, let me call true religion, for it comes from the normal and healthy action of the same powers. The odds between the two is the difference between lust and love—between the ghastliest sickness and the fairest and handsomest health.

Each form of religion is thought of infinite value by its devotee—the false and unnatural, not less than the fit and true. The Spanish Inquisitors, as an act of faith, tearing I a woman to pieces with their rack, the half-frantic Christians in a prayer-meeting asking God to confound 'some humble minister, put a hook in his jaws, or else removem’ him from the world; all of these are as earnest and devoted! as those noble women who show their love to God by justice and charity to needy men, and with blessed feet write out the gospel of love, in the hovels of the poor, in the pestilence of a camp, in the cell of the maniac and the criminal, or stooping down, on the ground write freedom