Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/180

176 all out activity now than ever before; but then compare ourselves with the ideal of human nature, our piety with the ideal piety, and we must confess that we are little and very low, Boston is the most active city in the world, the most enterprising. In no place is it so easy to obtain men's ears and their purses for any good word and work. But think of the evils we know of and tolerate; think of an ideal Christian city, then think of Boston; of a Christian man,—ay, of Christ himself,—and then think of you and me, and we are filled with shame. If there were a true, manly piety in this town, in due proportion to our numbers, wealth, and enterprise, how long would the vices of this city last? How long would men complain of a dead body of divinity and a dead church, and a ministry that was dead? How long would intemperance continue, and pauperism, in Boston; how long Slavery in this land? Last Sunday, in the name of the poor, I asked you for your charity. Today I ask for dearer alms; I ask you to contribute your piety. It will help the town more than the little money all of us can give. Your money will soon be spent; it feeds one man once; we cannot give it twice, though the blessing thereof may linger long in the hand which gave. Few of us can give much money to the poor; some of us none at all. This we can all give: the inspiration of a man with a man's piety in his heart, living it out in a man's life. Your money may be ill-spent, your charity misapplied, but your piety never. After all, there is nothing you can give which men will so readily take and so long remember as this. Mothers can give it to their daughters and their sons; men, after spending thereof profusely at home, can coin their inexhausted store into industry, patience, integrity, temperance, justice, humanity, a practical love of man. A thousand years ago, it was easy to excuse men if they chiefly showed religion in the conventional pattern of the church. Forms then were helps, and the nun has been mother to much of the charity of our times. It is easy to excuse our fathers for their superstitious reverence for rites and forms. But now, in an age which has its eyes a little open, a practical and a handy age, we are without excuse if our piety appears not