Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
But there are other evils yet. These notions and the corresponding
practice tend to make religion external, consisting in obedience to
form, in compliance with custom; while religion is and can be only
piety and goodness, love to God and love to man. To keep the Sunday
idle, to attend church, is not being religious. It is easy to do that;
easy to stop there, and then to look at real, manly saints, who live in
the odor of sanctity, whose sentiment is a prayer, their deeds religion,
and their whole life a perpetual communion with God, and say, "Infidel!
Unbeliever."
Then, as one day is devoted to religion, it is thought that is enough;
that religion has no more business in the world than the world in
religion. So division is made of the territory of mortal life, in which
partition worldliness has six days, while poor religion has only the
Sunday, and content with her own limits, feels no salient wish to absorb
or annex the week! It is painful to see this abuse of an institution so
noble. No commonness of its occurrence renders it less painful. It is
painful to be told that men of the most scrupulous sects on Sunday, are
in the week the least scrupulous of men.
But even in religious matters it is thought all things which pertain
directly to the religious welfare of men are not proper to be discussed
on Sunday. One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery,
against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the
gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on
eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of
mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the
time, the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith
to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education,
temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not
Christian, to do that of a Sunday! Yet wonderful to say, it is not
thought very wicked to hold a political caucus on Sunday for the merest
party purposes; not wicked at all to work all day at the navy-yards in
fitting out vessels, if they are only vessels of war; not at all wicked
to toil all Sunday, if it is only in aiming to kill men in regular
battle. Theological newspapers can expend their cheap censure on a
member of Congress for writing a letter on Sunday, yet have no word of
fault to find with the order which sets hundreds to work on Sunday in
preparing armaments of war; not a word against the war which sets men to
butcher their Christian brothers on the day which Christians celebrate
as the anniversary of Christ's triumph over death! These things show
that we have not yet arrived at the most profitable and Christian mode
of using the Sunday; and when I consider these abuses I wonder not that
the cry of "Infidel" is met by the unchristian taunt, yet more deserved
and biting, "Thou hypocrite!" I wonder not that some men say, "Let us
away with the Sunday altogether; and if we have no place for rest, we
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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