Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/322

Rh a false religion has slowly changed Dr Banbaby into a practical atheist, all the theological funeral bells are tolling the knell over his humanity, while they mean to ring a joyous peal for his accession of divinity.

Miss Seemly had a lithe, trim figure, white teeth and rosy cheeks, eyes that if seldom brilliant were always sharp; a slender fortune and a stain on her family. At marriage she became Mrs Seemly-Worldly; wedlock only added to her name; it did not change her character, which, in joy and sorrow, she has fiercely developed ever since. With a temper which, if not sweet, was at least a pleasant sour, in youth she committed no sin of instinctive passion, neither of attractive love nor of repulsive wrath; she was too decorous, nay, perhaps too conscientious, for either. The marriage was a bargain,—the Worldlys were a "great family," distant relations of the Seemlys too. Mrs Seemly- Worldly, for still she keeps her maiden name, thought wealth was worth far more than love. She was devoted to her husband ; for the lowlier purposes of life she was a convenient mate. She chose her religion, as her marriage bonnet, for its conventional fitness to the hour,—neither held an unfashionable feather; it was the religion of worldliness. Now, she aims at two chief things, to make a fashionable and ecclesiastic show, so demure at prayers, so jaunty at a ball; and to transplant her daughters into soft, rich soil. Oh, Mary Magdalen, and all ye other scriptural Marys, is there a patron saint for the abandoned woman only of the street, is the only prostitution theirs? The Seemly- Worldlys are older than Jerusalem, and in the midst of such it were no wonder, if to a woman taken in adultery, clear-sighted Jesus really said, " Neither do I condemn thee. But go thou and sin no more." And to the Seemly- Worldlys of his time, how bravely did he say, "the publicans and the harlots enter into the kingdom of heaven before you!"

An old story tells that Actaeon, a famous hunter, kept many hounds, and they ended by eating him up. Actseon is an old name ; it is Greek besides. How many Actseons do you and I know — men eat up by their own dogs! I know men who damage their body by their business; so do you. The other Sunday I spoke of them — a sermon meant likewise partly for myself; I hope we shall all heed