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
I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its day and night. Its
flowers and its fruits are dear to me. I would not wilfully lose sight
of a departing cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star; or in a
purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws too of matter seem more
wonderful the more I study them, in the whirling eddies of the dust, in
the curious shells of former life buried by thousands in a grain of
chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light above my head. Even the ugly
becomes beautiful when truly seen. I see the jewel in the bunchy toad.
The more I live, the more I love this lovely world; feel more its Author
in each little thing; in all that is great. But yet I feel my
immortality the more. In childhood the consciousness of immortal life
buds forth feeble, though full of promise. In the man it unfolds its
fragrant petals, his most celestial flower, to mature its seed
throughout eternity. The prospect of that everlasting life, the perfect
justice yet to come, the infinite progress before us, cheer and comfort
the heart. Sad and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not be
so forever. The light of heaven breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow,
sin; the sombre clouds which overhung the east, grown purple now, tell
us the dawn of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by that, smile
in the new-born glow; we are beguiled of our sadness before we are
aware. The certainty of this provokes us to patience, it forbids us to
be slothfully sorrowful. It calls us to be up and doing. The thought
that all will at last be right with the slave, the poor, the weak, and
the wicked, inspires us with zeal to work for them here, and make it all
right for them even now.
There is small merit in being willing to die; it seems almost sinful in
a good man to wish it when the world needs him here so much. It is weak
and unmanly to be always looking and sighing voluptuously for that. But
it is of great comfort to have in your soul a sure trust in
immortality; of great value here and now to anticipate time and live
to-day the eternal life. That we may all do. The joys of heaven will
begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven and do its duties.
That may begin to-day. It is everlasting life to know God, to have His
Spirit dwelling in you, yourself at one with Him. Try that and prove its
worth. Justice, usefulness, wisdom, religion, love, are the best things
we hope for in Heaven. Try them on--they will fit you here not less
becomingly. They are the best things of earth. Think no outlay of
goodness and piety too great. You will find your reward begin here. As
much goodness and piety, so much Heaven. Men will not pay you--God will;
pay you now; pay you hereafter and for ever.
IV.
THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.--AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE
ONONDAGA TEACHERS' INSTITUTE, AT SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 4, 1849.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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