Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/325

312 the stream of life falls on its wheels and the great forces of the universe come and grind for you all day, all night, year out, year in. If you want to heap up more money than you can ever earn, or either wisely spend, or manfully can keep, I would advise you to renounce true religion; give it all up, and go into business with your whole soul—nay, with your whole body and mind. Aaron's calf of gold will serve your turn better than Moses' God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, immensely better than the universe's God of Infinite Perfection. If you wish to be very popular with very popular men, or with cold, hard, cruel persons, who often control society for their special use, I would advise you to make yourself into a practical atheist, ringing with loud professions of ecclesiastical religion, noisy as brass, but like brass destitute of all love for the Infinite God of the world, and all charity towards men; that is the card for such a game. But if you wish to be a man, or a woman, and enjoy all your human rights, welfares, hopes, joys, and those dear, heartfelt delights, which are to happiness what well-earned daily bread, and nightly sleep, are to health; why, I would advise you, before all things, to heed that "still, small voice," which spoke once, at least, in the heart of the worst of us, and still comes to mankind, gently pleading, "Friend, come up higher; come up higher, friend!" I would advise you to seek that religion whose ideas are of the Infinite Perfection of God, whose feelings are reverence, and trust, and love, and whose actions are the natural morality of this body and this soul.

There are times of temptation. They come to us all, the passionate earlier, the ambitious later; sometimes both together. Alas me! which way shall I turn? Here is an internal guide which God has given to watch over me, and keep me, and bear me up in his hands, lest at any time I dash my foot against this twofold stone of stumbling and rock of offence. Has not every man felt the temptation? Who has not sometimes likewise yielded when desire from within leagued with occasion from without, and both were too much for us? And, while plucking the forbidden fruit, have we not all been stung by that bee of remorse which mercifully lurks therein?