Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/328

Rh need ? Am I not a mouth to instruct and warn; to heal, and soothe, and bless ?" There can be Catholics who are mean and selfish in the use of all their faculties; such men may be Protestants just as well—Trinitarians, Unitarians, Methodists, Baptists, nay, Christians after the fashion of the Christian Church; believing all the creed blameless, and hoping "salvation through Christ" from "the wrath of the dreadful God." But such men cannot have the true religion. He who has its ideas and emotions, perforce must have its actions; for every tree bears fruit after its own kind, not another's kind. What joy does this religion add to prosperity! Who, think you, is richest in welfare — the miser, that gripes his four million dollars with lean, tenacious hand, which only opens at the touch of death, to litter his money on the ground, where he goes dust to dust ; or that wise, kind man, who is contented with enough, and with his mercy cheers the cold fireside of some lone woman, where virtue and poverty sit down continual on her hearth? I do not underrate riches. I think I am one of the few New England ministers who duly honour wealth, who preach the natural gospel of industry, of comfort, of enjoyment, of riches also when fairly gained. But I would rather have the Warren-street chapel in my heart, and shining out of my face, than all the hoarded money of the Rothschilds in my hand.

How we misjudge of values ; if some inspired Diogenes, should light his lamp and seek the richest man in Boston, he might find him possessed of a great estate; he might find him with a very little one, so small that the assessors never found it out, nor levied a property-tax upon him. How we misrate things ! The material wealth is outward, am the spiritual is inward. Happy the man who has the spiritual; blessed also, if he have likewise the material, wherewith to lengthen his arm, and spread good thereby!

There are likewise times of sorrow. The world's tide is against us; riches vanish; some commercial crisis sweeps off a competence; we are too old for new hope; the faces of our dear ones have changed, and they are sent away. How handsome was the urn of love that held our jewels! Now it is broken ; the diamonds and rubies are all trodden