Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/318

Rh and come to a bloody end from Christian hands. But do you ever find a philosopher who speaks against the other form of religion,—against Infinite Perfection in God,—against emotions which are trust, and love, and charity,—against actions which are honour, wisdom, justice, mercy, loving-kindness towards men? Yes, I know you do find, here and there, such as speak against all this, but it is those who have been first corrupted by that false religion, which consists' in the opposite of those good things. What natural man ever prefers sickness* to health, sickness, and its miserable weakness, to strong and handsome health? We send a sectarian form of religion to heathens, and they laugh it to scorn. Half a million Bibles have been published in Siam, and scattered amongst the heathens there, and there are not three dozen Christians in all Siam! They took the Bibles, — they rejected the doctrines which the missionaries taught. But did you ever hear of a nation of heathen men rejecting justice, integrity, charity, and saying, "We will have no such things amongst us I kill every just man! let us burn with slow fire every man who loves his kind I "No, you never heard that; savage human nature does no such thing.

Now see what the true religious emotions and ideas can do for men.

I. In our early life we find developing in us certain great strong, instinctive appetites, those which tend to support the individual frame, — both those which ally us with others, and those wrathful passions whose function it is to defend us from other men. All these are good in themselves, each indispensable to human welfare, for the life of the individual, and the life of the race. But we see how easily they all run to excess ; before we know our danger we are often thereby driven down to our ruin.

Every man must fight a battle between the reflective personal will and the instinctive animal appetites. Most men bear the scars of this conflict all their days, and grim recollections of the struggles which in their hearts went on unseen. What a story many an honest man and woman I now look upon, might tell of this conflict! Here and there the animal appetite conquers, and the man