# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 02/Ten Sermons of Religion/Sermon 01

I.
OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO MANLY LIFE.
There are two things requisite for complete and perfect religion,—the love of God and the love of man ; one I will call Piety, the other Goodness. In their natural development they are not so sharply separated as this language would seem to imply; for piety and goodness run into one another, so that you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. But I will distinguish the two by their centre, where they are most unlike ; not by their circumference, where they meet and mingle.
The part of man which is not body I will call the Spirit; under that term including all the faculties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake, distribute these faculties of the human spirit into four classes: the intellectual,—including the aesthetic,—moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind be the name of the intellectual faculty, — including the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, and understanding; Conscience shall be the short name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and Soul for the religious faculties.
I shall take it for granted that the great work of mankind on earth is to live a manly life, to use, discipline, develope, and enjoy every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, each in its just proportion, all in their proper place, duly coordinating what is merely personal, and for the ​ present time, with what is universal, and for ever. This being so, what place ought piety, the love of God, to hold in a manly life?
It seems to me that piety lies at the basis of all manly excellence. It represents the universal action of man ac- cording to his nature. This universal action, the bent of the whole man in his normal direction, is the logical condition of any special action of man in a right direction, of any particular bent that way. If I have a universal idea of universal causality in my mind, I can then understand a special cause; but without that universal idea of causality in my mind, patent or latent, I could not understand any particular cause whatever. My eye might see the fact of a man cutting down a tree, but my mind would comprehend only the conjunction in time and space, not their connection in causality. If you have not a universal idea of beauty, you do not know that this is a handsome and that a homely dress; you notice only the form and colour, the texture and the fit, but see no relation to an ideal loveliness. If you have not a universal idea of the true, the just, the holy, you do not comprehend the odds betwixt a correct statement and a He, between the deed of the priest and that of the good Samaritan, between the fidelity of Jesus and the falseness of Iscariot. This rule runs through all human nature. The universal is the logical condition of the generic, the special, and the particular. So the love of God, the universal object of the human spirit, is the logical condition of all manly life.
This is clear, if you look at man acting in each of the four modes just spoken of,—intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious.
The Mind contemplates God as manifested in truth ; for truth—in the wide meaning of the word including also a comprehension of the useful and the beautiful — is the universal category of intellectual cognition. To love God with the mind is to love him as manifesting himself in the truth, or to the mind ; it is to love truth, not for its uses, but for itself, because it is true, absolutely beautiful and lovely to the mind. In finite things we read the infinite truth, the absolute object of the mind.
Love of truth is a great intellectual excellence ; but it is plain you must have the universal love of universal truth ​ before you can have any special love for any particular truth whatsoever; for in all intellectual affairs the universal is the logical condition of the special.
Love of truth in general is the intellectual part of piety. We see at once that this lies at the basis of all intellectual excellence,—at love of truth in art, in science, in law, in common life. Without it you may love the convenience of truth in its various forms, useful or beautiful; but that is quite different from loving truth itself. You often find men who love the uses of truth, but not truth; they wish to have truth on their side, but not to be on the side of truth. When it does not serve their special and selfish turn, they are offended, and Peter breaks out with his "I know not the man," and "the wisest, brightest" proves also the "meanest of mankind."
The Conscience contemplates God as manifested in right, in justice; for right or justice is the universal category of moral cognition. To love God with the conscience is to love him as manifested in right and justice; is to love right or justice, not for its convenience, its specific uses, but for itself, because it is absolutely beautiful and lovely to the conscience. In changeable things we read the unchanging and eternal right, which is the absolute object of conscience.
To love right is a great moral excellence; but it is plain you must have a universal love of universal right before you can have any special love of a particular right; for, in all moral affairs, the universal is the logical condition of the special.
The love of right is the moral part of piety. This lies at the basis of all moral excellence whatever. Without this you may love right for its uses; but if only so, it is not right you love, but only the convenience it may bring to you in your selfish schemes. None was so ready to draw the sword for Jesus, or look after the money spent upon him, as the disciple who straightway denied and betrayed him. Many wish right on their side, who take small heed to be on the side of right. You shall find men enough who seem to love right in general, because they clamour for a specific, particular right; but ere long it becomes plain they only love some limited or even personal conve​ nience they hope therefrom. The people of the United States claim to love the unalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the long-continued cry of three million slaves, groaning under the American yoke, shows beyond question or cavil that it is not the universal and unalienable right which they love, but only the selfish advantage it affords them. If you love the right as right, for itself, because it is absolutely just and beautiful to your conscience, then you will no more deprive another of it than submit yourself to be deprived thereof. Even the robber will fight for his own. The man who knows no better rests in the selfish love of the private use of a special right.
The Heart contemplates God as manifested in love, for love is the universal category of affectional cognition. To love God with the heart, is to love him as manifested in love; it is to love Love, not for its convenience, but for itself, because it is absolutely beautiful and lovely to the heart.
Here I need not reiterate what has already been twice said, of mind and of conscience.
Love of God as love, then, is the affectional part of piety, and lies at the basis of all affectional excellence. The mind and the conscience are content with ideas, with the true and the right, while the heart demands not ideas, but Beings, Persons; and loves them. It is one thing to desire the love of a person for your own use and convenience, and quite different to have your personal delight in him, and desire him to have his personal delight in you. From the nature of the case, as persons are concrete and finite, man never finds the complete satisfaction of his affectional nature in them, for no person is absolutely lovely, none the absolute object of the affections. But as the mind and conscience use the finite things to help learn infinite truth and infinite right, and ultimately rest in that as their absolute object, so our heart uses the finite persons whom we reciprocally love as golden letters in the book of life, whereby we learn the absolutely lovely, the infinite object of the heart. As the philosopher has the stars of heaven, each lovely in itself, whereby to learn the absolute truth of science,—as the moralist has the events of human ​ history, each of great moment to mankind, whereby to learn the absolute right of ethics, — so the philanthropist has the special persons of his acquaintance, each one a joy to him, as the rounds of his Jacob's ladder whereby he goes journeying up to the absolutely lovely, the infinite object of the affections.
The Soul contemplates God as a being who unites all these various modes of action, as manifested in truth, in right, and in love. It apprehends him, not merely as ab- solute truth, absolute right, and absolute love alone, but as all these unified into one complete and perfect Being, the Infinite God. He is the absolute object of the soul, and corresponds thereto, as truth to the mind, as justice to the conscience, as love to the heart. He is to the soul ab- solutely true, just, and lovely, the altogether beautiful. To him the soul turns instinctively at first ; then also, at length, with conscious and distinctive will.
The love of God in this fourfold way is the totality of piety, which comes from the normal use of all the faculties named before. Hence it appears that piety of this character lies at the basis of all manly excellence whatever, and is necessary to a complete and well-proportioned development of the faculties themselves.
There may be an unconscious piety: the man does not know that he loves universal truth, justice, love; loves God. He only thinks of the special truth, justice, and love, which he prizes. He does not reflect upon it ; does not aim to love God in this way, yet does it, nevertheless. Many a philosopher has seemed without religion even to a careful observer; sometimes has passed for an atheist. Some of them have to themselves seemed without any religion, and have denied that there was any God. But all the while their nature was truer than their will ; their instincts kept their personal wholeness better than they were aware. These men loved absolute truth, not for its uses, but for itself; they laid down their lives for it, rather than violate the integrity of their intellect. They had the intellectual love of God, though they knew it not; though they denied it. No man ever has a complete and perfect ​ intellectual consciousness of all his active nature ; something instinctive germinates in us, and grows underground, as it were, before it bursts the sod and shoots into the light of self-consciousness. Sheathed in unconsciousness lies the bud, ere long to open a bright, consummate flower. These philosophers, with a real love of truth, and yet a scorn of the name of God, understand many things, perhaps, not known to common men, but this portion of their being has yet escaped their eye ; they have not made an exact and exhaustive inventory of the facts of their own nature. Such men have unconsciously much of the intellectual part of piety.
Other men have loved justice, not for the personal convenience it offered to them, but for its own sake, because it married itself to their conscience,—have loved it with a disinterested, even a self-denying love, — who yet scorned religion, denied all consciousness of God, denied his providence, perhaps his existence, and would have resolved God into matter, and no more. Yet all the while in these men, dim and unconscious, there lay the religious element; neglected, unknown, it gave the man the very love of special justice which made him strong. He knew the absolutely just, but did not know it as God.
I have known philanthropists who undervalued piety; they liked it not,—they said it was moonlight, not broad day; it gave flashes of lightning, all of which would not make light. They professed no love of God, no knowledge thereof, while they had the strongest love of love; loved persons, not with a selfish, but self-denying affection, ready to sacrifice themselves for the completeness of another man's delight. Yet underneath this philanthropy there lay the absolute and disinterested love of other men. They knew only the special form, not the universal substance thereof,—the particular love of Thomas or of Jane, not the universal love of the Infinite. They had the affectional form of piety, though they knew it not.
I have known a man full of admiration and of love for the universe, yet lacking consciousness of its Author. He loved the truth and beauty of the world, reverenced the justice of the universe, and was himself delighted at the love he saw pervading all and blessing all; yet he recognized no God, saw only a cosmic force, which was a power ​ of truth and beauty to his mind, a power of justice to his conscience, and a power of love to his heart. He had not a philosophic consciousness of the deeper, nobler action which went on within him, building greater than he knew. But in him also there were the several parts of piety, only not joined into one total and integral act, and not distinctly known.
This unconsciousness of piety is natural with a child. In early life it is unavoidable ; only now and then some rare and precious boy or girl opens from out its husk of unconsciousness his childish bud of faith, and blossoms right early with the consciousness of God, a "strong and flame-like flower." This instinctiveness of piety is the beauty of childhood, the morning-red widely and gorgeously diffused before the rising of the sun. But as a man becomes mature, adds reflection to instinct, transmutes sentiments into ideas, he should also become conscious of his religious action, of his love of God in this fourfold form ; when he loves truth, justice, love, he should know that it is God he loves underneath these special forms, and should unite them all into one great act of total piety. As the state of self-consciousness is a more advanced state than unconsciousness; as the reflective reason of the man is above the unreflective instinct of the child ; so the man's conscious piety belongs to a higher stage of development, and is above the mere instinctive and unconscious piety of the girl. Accordingly, the philosopher who loved truth for its own sake, and with his mind denied in words the God of truth, was less a philosopher for not knowing that he loved God. He had less intellectual power because he was in an abnormal state of intellectual religious growth. The man who loved justice for its own sake, and would not for an empire do a conscious wrong, whom the popular hell could not scare, nor the popular heaven allure from right,—he had less power of justice for not knowing that in loving right he loved the God of right. That philanthropist who has such love of love, that he would lay down his life for men, is less a philanthropist, and has less affectional power, because he knows not that in his brave benevolence he loves the God of love. The man full of profound love of the universe, of reverence for its order, its beauty, its justice, and the love which fills the lily's ​ cup with fragrant loveliness, who wonders at the mighty cosmic force he sees in these fractions of power,—he is less a man because he does not know it is God's world that he admires, reverences, and worships; ay, far less a man because he does not know he loves and worships God. When he becomes conscious of his own spiritual action, conscious of God, of loving God with mind and conscience, heart and soul, his special love will increase, he will see the defects there are in his piety ; if it be disproportionate, through redundance here or failure there, he can correct the deformity and make his entire inner life harmonious, a well-proportioned whole. Then he feels that he goes in and out, continually, in the midst of the vast forces of the universe, which are only the forces of God; that in his studies, when he attains a truth, he confronts the thought of God; when he learns the right, he learns the will of God laid down as a rule of conduct for the universe ; and when he feels disinterested love, he knows that he partakes the feeling of the infinite God. Then, when he reverences the mighty cosmic force, it is not a blind Fate in an atheistic or a pantheistic world, it is the Infinite God that he confronts, and feels, and knows. He is then mindful of the mind of God, conscious of God's conscience, sensible of God's sentiment, and his own existence is in the Infinite Being of God. Thus he joins into a whole integr state of piety the various parts developed by the several faculties; there is a new growth of each, a new development of all.
If these things be so, then it is plain what relation piety sustains to manly life;—it is the basis of all the higher excellence of man, and when the man is mature, what was instinctive at first becomes a state of conscious love of God.
Now, when this universal fourfold force is once developed and brought to consciousness, and the man has achieved something in this way, his piety may be left to take its natural form of expression, or it may be constrained to take a form not natural. Mankind has made many experiments upon piety ; books of history are full of them. Most of these, as of all the experiments of man in progress, are failures. We aim many times before we hit the mark. The history of religion is not exceptional or peculiar in ​ this respect. See how widely men experiment in agriculture, navigation, government, before they learn the one right way. The history of science is the history of mistakes. The history of religion and the history of astronomy are equally marked by error. It is not surprising that mistakes have been made in respect to the forms of piety after it is procured.
For there are various helps which are needful, and perhaps indispensable, in childhood, to the development of the love of God, but which are not needed after the religious character is somewhat mature. Then the man needs not those former outward helps ; he has other aids suited to his greater strength. This is true of the individual, repeating no more the hymns of his nursery, — true also. of mankind, that outgrows the sacrifices and the mythologies of the childhood of the world. Yet it is easy for human indolence to linger near these helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the unadventurous nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his flock in the same close-cropped circle where they first learned to browse, while the progressive man roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures new." See how parents help to develope the body of the child. The little boy is put into a standing- stool, or baby-jumper, till he learns to walk. By and by he has his hoop, his top, his ball; each in turn is laid aside. He has helps to develope his mind not less,—little puzzles, tempting him to contrive,—prints set off with staring colours; he has his alphabet of wooden letters, in due time his primer, his nursery rhymes, and books full of most wonderful impossibilities. He has his early reader, his first lessons in arithmetic, and so goes on with new helps proportionate to his strength. It is a long slope from counting the fingers up to calculating the orbit of a planet not yet seen. But the fingers and the solar system are alike helps to mathematic thought. When the boy is grown up to man's estate, his body vigorous and mature, he tries his strength in the natural work of society, is a merchant, a sailor, a mechanic, a farmer; he hews stones, or lifts up an axe upon the thick timber. For a long time his body grows stronger by his work, and he gets more skill. His body pays for itself, and refunds to mankind the cost of its training up. When his mind is mature, he applies that also to the various works of society, ​ to transact private busines, or manage the affairs of the public; for a long time his mind grows stronger, gaining new knowledge and increase of power. Thus his mind pays for its past culture, and earns its tuition as it goes along.
In this case the physical or mental power of the man assumes its natural form, and does its natural work. He has outgrown the things which pleased his childhood and informed his youth. Nobody thinks it necessary or beautiful for the accomplished scholar to go back to his alphabet, and repeat it over, to return to his early arithmetic and paradigms of grammar, when he knows them all; for this is not needful to keep an active mind in a normal condition, and perform the mental work of a mature man. Nobody sends a lumberer from the woods back to his nursery, or tells him he cannot keep his strength without daily or weekly sleeping in his little cradle, or exercising with the hoop, or top, or ball, which helped his babyhood. Because these little trifles sufficed once, they cannot help him now. Man, reaching forward, forgets the things that are behind.
Now the mischief is, that, in matters of religion, men demand that he who has a mature and well-proportioned piety should always go back to the rude helps of his boy- hood, to the A B C of religion and the nursery books of piety. He is not bid to take his power of piety and apply it to the common walks of life. The Newton of piety is sent back to the dame-school of religion, and told to keep counting his fingers, otherwise there is no health in him, and all piety is wiped out of his consciousness, and he hates God and God hates him. He must study the anicular lines on the school-dame's slate, not the diagrams of God writ on the heavens in points of fire. We are told that what once thus helped to mould a religious character must be continually resorted to, and become the permanent form thereof.
This notion is exceedingly pernicious. It wastes the practical power of piety by directing it from its natural work; it keeps the steam-engine always fanning and blowing itself, perpetually firing itself up, while it turns no wheels but its own, and does no work but feed and fire itself. This constant firing up of one's self is looked on as ​ the natural work and only form of piety. Ask any popular minister, in one of the predominant sects, for the man most marked for piety, and he will not show you the men with the power of business who do the work of life, — the upright mechanic, merchant, or farmer ; not the men with the power of thought, of justice, or of love ; not him whose whole life is one great act of fourfold piety. No, he will show you some men who are always a dawdling over their souls, going back to the baby -jumpers and nursery rhymes of their early days, and everlastingly coming to the church to fire themselves up, calling themselves " miserable offenders," and saying, " save us, good Lord." If a man thinks himself a miserable offender, let him away with the offence, and be done with the complaint at once and for ever. It is dangerous to reiterate so sad a cry.
You see this mistake, on a large scale, in the zeal with which nations or sects cling to their religious institutions long after they are obsolete. Thus the Hebrew cleaves to his ancient ritual and ancient creed, refusing to share the religious science which mankind has brought to light since Moses and Samuel went home to their God. The two great sects of Christendom exhibit the same thing in their adherence to ceremonies and opinions which once were the greatest helps and the highest expression of piety to mankind, but which have long since lost all virtue except as relics. The same error is repeated on a small scale all about us, men trying to believe what science proves ridiculous, and only succeeding by the destruction of reason. It was easy to make the mistake, but when made it need not be made perpetual.
Then this causes another evil: not only do men waste the practical power of piety, but they cease to get more. To feed on baby's food, to be dandled in mother's arms,— to play with boys' playthings, to learn boys' lessons, and be amused with boys' stories,—this helps the boy, but it hinders the man. Long ago we got from these helps all that was in them. To stay longer is waste of time. Look at the men who have been doing this for ten years ; they are where they were ten years ago. They have done well if they have not fallen back. If we keep the baby's shoes for ever on the child, what will become of the feet ? What if you kept the boy over his nursery rhymes for ever, or ​ tried to make the man grown believe that they contained the finest poetry in the world, that the giant stories and the fairy tales therein were all true ; what effect would it have on his mind? Suppose you told him that the proof of his manhood consisted in his fondness for little boys' playthings, and the little story-books and the little games of little children, and kept him securely fastened to the apron-strings of the school-dame; suppose you could make him believe so! You must make him a fool first. What would work so bad in intellectual affairs works quite as ill in the matter of piety. The story of the flood has strangled a world of souls. The miracles of the New Testament no longer heal, but hurt mankind.
Then this method of procedure disgusts well-educated and powerful men with piety itself, and with all that bears the name of religion. "Go your ways," say they, "and cant your canting as much as you like, only come not near us with your grimace." Many a man sees this misdirection of piety, and the bigotry which environs it, and turns off from religion itself, and will have nothing to do with it. Philosophers have always had a bad name in religious matters; many of them have turned away in disgust from the folly which is taught in its name. Of all the great philosophers of this day, I think no one takes any interest in the popular forms of religion. Do we ever hear religion referred to in politics? It is mentioned officially in proclamations and messages ; but in the parliamentary debates of Europe and America, in the State papers of the nations, you find hardly a trace of the name or the fact. Honest men and manly men are ashamed to refer to this, because it has been so connected with unmanly dawdling and niggardly turning back, — they dislike to mention the word. So religion has ceased to be one of the recognized forces of the State. I do not remember a good law passed in my time from an alleged religious motive. Capital punishment, and the laws forbidding work or play on Sunday, are the only things left on the statute-book for which a strictly "religious motive" is assigned! The annual thanksgivings and fast- days are mementos of the political power of the popular religious opinions in other times. Men of great influence in America are commonly men of little apparent respect for religion; it seems to have no ​ influence on their public conduct, and, in many cases, none on their private character; the class most eminent for intellectual culture throughout all Christendom, is heedless of religion. The class of rich men has small esteem for it; yet in all the great towns of America the most reputable churches have fallen under their control, with such results as we see. The life of the nation in its great flood passes by, and does not touch the churches,—"the institutions of religion." Such fatal errors come from this mistake.
But there is a natural form of piety. The natural use of the strength of a strong man, or the wisdom of a wise one, is to the work of a strong man or a wise one. What is the natural work of piety? Obviously it is practical life; the use of all the faculties in their proper spheres, and for their natural function. Love of God, as truth, justice, love, must appear in a life marked by these qualities; that is the only effectual "ordinance of religion." A profession of the man's convictions, joining a society, assisting at a ceremony,—all these are of the same value in science as in religion; as good forms of chemistry as of piety. The natural form of piety is goodness, morality, living a true, just, affectionate, self-faithful life, from the motive of a pious man. Real piety, love of God, if left to itself, assumes the form of real morality, loyal obedience to God's law. Thus the power of religion does the work of religion, and is not merely to feed itself.
There are various degrees of piety, the quality ever the same, the quantity variable, and of course various degrees of goodness as the result thereof. Where there is but little piety the work of goodness is done as a duty, under coercion as it were, with only the voluntary, not the spontaneous will; it is not done from a love of the duty, only in obedience to a law of God felt within the conscience or the soul, a law which bids the deed. The man's desires' and duty are in opposition, not conjunction; but duty rules. That is the goodness of a boy in religion, the common goodness of the world.
At length the rising man shoots above this rudimentary state, has an increase of love of God, and therefore of love of man; his goodness is spontaneous, not merely enforced by volition. He does the good thing which comes in his ​ way, and because it comes in his way ; is true to his mind, his conscience, heart, and soul, and feels small temptation to do to others what he would not receive from them; he will deny himself for the sake of his brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the line of his duty, both in conjunction now. Not in vain does the poor, the oppressed, the hunted fugitive look up to him. This is the goodness of men well grown in piety. You find such men in all Christian sects, Protestant and Catholic ; in all the great religious parties of the civilized world, among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. They are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable in their business, beautiful in their daily lives. You see the man's piety in his work, and in his play. It appears in all the forms of his activity, individual, domestic, social, ecclesiastic, or political.
But the man goes on in his growth of piety, loving truth, justice, love, loving God the more. What is piety within must be morality without. The quality and quantity of the outward must increase as the quality and quantity of the inward. So his eminent piety must become eminent morality, which is philanthropy. He loves not only his kindred and his country, but all mankind ; not only the good, but also the evil. He has more goodness than the channels of his daily life will hold. So it runs over the banks, to water and to feed a thousand thirsty plants. Not content with the duty that lies along his track, he goes out to seek it; not only willing, he has a salient longing to do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his love, his piety, over all the world. His daily life is a profession of his conscious piety to God, published in perpetual good-will to men.
This is the natural form of piety ; one which it assumes if left to itself. Not more naturally does the beaver build, or the blackbird sing her own wild gushing melody, than the man of real piety lives it in this beautiful outward life. So from the perennial spring wells forth the stream to quicken the meadow with new access of green, and perfect beauty bursting into bloom.
Thus piety does the work it was meant to do : the man does not sigh and weep, and make grimaces, for ever in a fuss about his soul; he lives right on. Is his life marked with errors, sins,—he ploughs over the barren spot with ​ liis remorse, sows with new seed, and the old desert blossoms like a rose. He is free in his spiritual life, not confined to set forms of thought, of action, or of feeling. He accepts what his mind regards as true, what his con- science decides is right, what his heart deems lovely, and what is holy to his soul ; all else he puts far from him. Though the ancient and the honourable of the earth bid him bow down to them, his stubborn knees bend only at the bidding of his manly soul. His piety is his freedom before God, not his bondage unto men. The toys and child's stories of religion are to him toys and child's stories, but no more. No baby-shoes deform his manly feet.
This piety, thus left to obey its natural law, keeps in sound health, and grows continually more and more. Doing his task, the man makes no more ado about his soul than about his sense. Yet it grows like the oak-tree. He gets continually more love of truth and right and justice, more love of God, and so more love of man. Every faculty becomes continually more. His mind acts after the universal law of the intellect, his conscience according to the universal moral law, his affections and his soul after the universal law thereof, and so he is strong with the strength of God, in this fourfold way communicating with him. With this strengthening of the moral faculties there comes a tranquillity, a calmness and repose, which nothing else can give, and also a beauty of character which you vainly seek elsewhere. When a man has the intellectual, the moral, the affectional part of piety, when he unites them all with conscious love of God, and puts that manifold piety into morality, his eminent piety into philanthropy, he attains the highest form of loveliness which belongs to mortal man. His is the palmy loftiness of man,—such strength, such calmness, and such transcendent loveliness of soul.
I know some men mock at the name of piety; I do not wonder at their scoff; for it has been made to stand as the symbol of littleness, meanness, envy, bigotry, and hypocritical superstition; for qualities I hate to name. Of what is popularly called piety there is no lack; it is abundant everywhere, common as weeds in the ditch, and ​ clogs the wheels of mankind in every quarter of the world. Yet real piety, in manly quantity and in a manly form, is an uncommon thing. It is marvellous what other wants the want of this brings in: look over the long list of brilliant names that glitter in English history for the past three hundred years, study their aims, their outward and their inner life; explore the causes of their manifold defeat, and you will see the primal curse of all these men was lack of piety. They did not love truth, justice, or love ; they did not love God with all their mind and conscience, heart and soul. Hence came the failure of many a mighty-minded man. Look at the brilliant array of distinguished talent in France for the last five generations; what intellectual gifts, what understanding, what imagination, what reason, but with it all what corruption, what waste of faculty, what lack of strong and calm and holy life, in these great famous men! Their literature seems marvellously like the thin, cold dazzle of Northern Lights upon the wintry ice. In our own country it is still the same; the high intellectual gift or culture is ashamed of religion, and flouts at God ; and hence the faults we see.
But real piety is what we need; we need much of it,—need it in the natural form thereof. Ours is an age of great activity. The peaceful hand was never so busy as to-day; the productive head never created so fast before. See how the forces of nature yield themselves up to man: the river stops for him, content to be his servant, and weave and spin; the ocean is his vassal, his toilsome bondsman; the lightning stoops out of heaven, and bears thoughtful burdens on its electric track from town to town. All this comes from the rapid activity of the lower intellect of man. Is there a conscious piety to correspond with this,—a conscious love of truth and right and love,—a love of God? Ask the State, ask the church, ask society, and ask our homes.
The age requires a piety most eminent. What was religion enough for the time of the Patriarchs, or the Prophets, or the Apostles, or the Reformers, or the Puritans, is not enough for the heightened consciousness of mankind to-day. When the world thinks in lightning, it is not proportionate to pray in lead. The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, will not suffice us ​ now. We want a religion of the intellect, of the con- science, of the affections, of the soul,—the natural religion of all the faculties of man. The form also must be natural and new.
We want this natural piety in the form of normal human life,—morality, philanthropy. Piety is not to forsake, but possess the world; not to become incarnate in a nun and a monk, but in women and in men. Here are the duties of life to be done. You are to do them, do them religiously, consciously obedient to the law of God, not atheistically, loving only your selfish gain. Here are the sins of trade to be corrected. You are to show that a good merchant, mechanic, farmer, doctor, lawyer, is a real saint, a saint at work. Here are the errors of philosophy, theology, politics, to be made way with. It is the function of piety to abolish these and supply their place with new truths all radiant with God. Here are the great evils of church and State, of social and domestic life, wrongs to be righted, evils to be outgrown: it is the business of piety to mend all this. Ours is no age when Religion can forsake the broad way of life. In the public street must she journey on, open her shop in the crowded square, and teach men by deeds, her life more eloquent than any lips. Hers is not now the voice that is to cry in the wilderness, but in the public haunts of men must she call them to make straight their ways.
We must possess all parts of this piety,—the intellectual, moral, affectional,—yea, total piety. This is not an age when men in religion's name can safely sneer at philosophy, call reason "carnal," make mouths at immutable justice, and blast with their damnation the faces of mankind. Priests have had their day, and in dull corners still aim to protract their favourite and most ancient night; but the sun has risen with healing in his wings. Piety without goodness, without justice, without truth or love, is seen to be the pretence of the hypocrite. Can philosophy satisfy us without religion? Even the head feels a coldness from the want of piety. The greatest intellect is ruled by the same integral laws with the least, and needs this fourfold love of God; and the great intellects that scorn religion are largest sufferers from their scorn.
Any man may attain this piety ; it lies level to all. Yet ​it is not to be won without difficulty, manly effort, self-denial of the low for the sake of the highest in us. Of you, young man, young maid, it will demand both prayer and toil. Not without great efforts are great heights won. In your period of passion you must subordinate instinctive desire to your reason, your conscience, your heart and soul; the lust of the body to the spirit's love. In the period of ambition you must coordinate all that is personal or selfish with what is absolutely true, just, holy, and good. Surely this will demand self-denial, now of instinctive desire, now of selfish ambition. Much you must sacrifice. But you will gain the possession, the use, the development, and the joy of your own mind and conscience, heart and soul. You will never sacrifice truth, justice, holiness, or love. All these you will gain ; gain for to-day, gain for ever. What inward blessedness will you acquire! what strength, what tranquillity, what loveliness, what joy in God! You will have your delight in Him ; He his in you. Is it not worth while to live so that you know you are in unison with God; in unison, too, with men; in quantity growing more, in quality superior? Make the trial for manly excellence, and the result is yours, for time and for eternity.