Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/162

158 administered from tho pulpit; that while Catholics and Methodists thrive under such influences, tho Unitarian widows are neglected in the weekly ministration of terror and of threat; that there has not neon so much an excess of lightning in tho form of philosophy or morality, but only a lack of thunder.

This temporary movement among the Unitarians of Boston is natural; in some respects it is what our fathers would have called " judicial." Tho Unitarians have been cold, have looked more at tho outward manifestations of goodness than at tho inward spirit of piety which was to make the manifestations; they have not had an excess of philosophy, or of morality, but a defect of piety. They have been more respectable than pious. They have not always quite rightly appreciated tho enthusiasm of sterner and more austere sects; not always done justice to the inwardness of religion those sects sought to promote. When their churches get a little thin, and their denominational affairs a little disturbed, it is quite natural these Unitarians should look after the cause, and pass over to lamentations at the present state of things; while looking at the community from the new point of view, it is quite natural that they should suppose piety on the decline, and religion dying out. Yes, in general it is plain that, if men have no eyes but conventional eyes, no spirit but that of the ecclesiastical order they serve in, and of the denomination they belong to, it is natural for them to think that because piety does not flow in the old ecclesiastical channel, it does not flow anywhere, and there is none at all to run. Thus it is easy to explain the complaint of the Catholics at the great defection of the most enlightened nations of Europe; the lamentation of the Protestants at the heresy of the most enlightened portion of their sect; and the Unitarian wail over the general decline of piety in the city of Boston. Some men can only judge the present age by the conventional standard of the past, and as the aid. form of piety does not appear, they must conclude there is no piety.

Let us now recur to the other or natural standard, and look at the manifestation of piety in the form of morality. Last Sunday I spoke of our moral condition; and it ap-