Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/152

148 in other men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard measure.

Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal unlike; each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and standard measure. Let me say a word of each. I. Some contend for what I call tho conventional standard; that is, tho manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these forms there are three modes or degrees, namely: first, the form of bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without proof, but because they are taught with authority; and, third, a passive acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance thereof.

II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes of action.

It is plain that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear very different when tested, by one or the other of these standards. It may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is but fair to try it by both standards.

Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in any one State, would vary with the health of the