The Portland daily press., 1879-12-04
Varieties of PIetY.
[From a Sermon by James Freeman Clari
ton Sunday Gazette.1

| [From Sermon by James Freeman Clarke, in Bos
ton Sunday Gazette.l
The first kind of piety is emotional piety, or
piety of the feelings. There are two varieties
of this, the saeramental and the sympathc.
Sacramental piety is born of faith in the grace
of God given through sacraments. 1t is found
most often in the great sacremental churches.
There is a devout pleasure derived from taking
part in the ceremonies and ritual, the great
festivals, the liturgies and anthems made meni-
orablc by the worship of thousand years.
There is a sincere comfort and peace felt in
leaving the world of noise and traffic, and en-
tering into the solitudas of prayer and praise.
into the house Of God which seems the gate OF
heaven. How many great and good souls,
saints and martyrs, have been fed by these
ceremonies. aud lifted above the earth by their
solemn influenced The imagination is touched
by the grand religious architecture, the impos-
ing ceremonies, The divine music, and the vast
multitude of adoring worshipers. He who can
not feel this is deficient in some of the human
sentiments. Another form OF this kind OF piety
is the sympathetic emotion caught from
crowds This Is awakened in revivals, camp
meetings and social religious gatherings, where
those who came to scofI often remain to pray
As God is felt to be near in the solemn rites
and awful forms OF the sacramental churches,
so he is also felt to be present in the contagi-
GUS fire which runs through a meeting of warm
hearted worshipers. In both places many feel
for the first time that God is not far from us,
that we are his children, and are made to real
ize q fathers love. They learn to love God
with all their heart.
Then there is a second kind of piety, the
grace of God which brings salvation from sin;
which comes from sense OF pardoned SIN;
which has had great power, and accomplished
vast results. 1t has always existed side by side
with sacramental and emotional piety, but it
became most conspicuous as the great motive
power of the Protestant reformation. While
the sacramental and emotional churehes-the
Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and Method-
ists-fnd the presence and love OF God revealed
to them in their public and social worship, the
Calvinistic denominations struggle and agonlZe
and pray alone, and receive sense OF COOS
pardOning love given to their own soul Tor tnelf
personal salvation Through Shis s.Igsgie
each one goes by himself; ne is alone with MS
conscience and his God. lie seeks and finds
salvation for himself and loves God with an
intense gratitude for having ransomed ana re-
deemed him from sin and evil. He loves God
with all his soul, for that IS What Goa mas
saved from despair and death.
There is a third kind of picty-one in which
men love God with all their mind, seeing ms
boundless goodness in all the mysteries OF Gre
alton; feeling that from him and through him
and to him are all things. This is the plety
which inspires the sublime song OF Milton, the
universal prayer of Pope, the solemn lltanles
of Wordsworth and the tender strains oil hit
tier. These poets see God IN the malessy maze l ol
nature, in the changing year. in the vast laws
of the universe, which are from everlasting 10
everlasting. They say
'.These, as they change, Almighty Father, these,
Are but the varied God The rolling year
Is full of thee.
Swedenborg was one who loved God with all
his mind, who lived in the thought OF Gods
presence in all things, to whom all nature, all
life, was manifestation OF God. so, TOO, was
Spinoza the "God-intoxicated man., as
Schleiermacher called him, living IN loneliness
poverty and obscurity, but thinking of God all
day long. So, too, among the Greeks was fla-
to, whose vast religious influence has been felt
among religious thinkers down to our times;
All these loved God with all their MIND, ana
the grace of God came to them through their
thoughts. Science, too, in our day IS growing
deeply religious. 1t occupies itself with the
methods of divine creation, with questions OF
universal law. 1t leaves the details OF mere
observation, which was the method of the last
century, and loses itself in vast speculatlons as
to the whence and how.
/ believe there is still another way In Which
Gods love can come to man. l believe that
work also can De u Ny thO
divine grace may be mediated; that love may
descend into the soul by means OF labor; that
duty may be the step upward into piety; that
we may be full of God while engaged IN our
daily work and that what is often called mere
morality may be the natural way to an inward
spiritual life. Thus may the grace OF Goa
which brings salvation come to those VINO are
seeking to serve their fellow-man. we can
come TO God through work. Work may lead
us INTO prayer. We may learn to pray, not as
duty, not as q sentiment not from sympathy,
not for our own salvation, not by an intellectual
piety, but because we need the help of God to
do what we want to do for man. There is
work which can be done, perhaps, without
God, mechanical work, routine work, which is
only done with the hands. But whenever an
occasion occurs in which we work to help 9TH
ers but do not know how; in which we ought
to do something for them, but are unable to do
il Alright: then we may throw ourselves on the
help Of God. We may then say TO God, my
Father. am here, ready to do anything can;
show me how to do it, And then, by some
sure but mysterious law, the way is opened,
the help comes. We see then that as faith
leads to work. SO also work may lead to faith.
This is the new form of piety which is to be;
the new Christ who is to come. 1t is the plety
coming from work as a sacrament the religious
form Of duty. And think it will be in some
respects higher and stronger, deeper and more
thorough than the sentimental piety OF the
church, the emotional piety OF the revival
meeting, the salvation piety of the Calvlnist,
or the intellectual piety of the religious think
er. 1t will be loving Godwith all our strength