There is no decline of piety, but an increase of it; a good deal has been done in two hundred years, in one hundred years, yes, in fifty years. Let us admit, with thankfulness of heart, that piety is in greater proportion to all our 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, aye 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. To-day 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 in a manly life, our faith in works. To give this piety to cheer and bless mankind, you must have it first, be cheered and blessed thereby yourself. Have it, then, in your own way; put it into your own form. Do men tell you, "This is a degenerate age," and "Religion is dying out?" tell them that when those stars have faded out of the sky from very age, when other stars have come up to take their place, and they too have grown dim and hollow-eyed and old, that religion will still live in man's heart, the primal, everlasting light of all our being. Do they tell you that you must put piety into their forms; put it there if it be your place; if not, in your place. Let men see the divinity that is in you by the humanity that comes out from you. If they will not see it, cannot, God can and will. Take courage from the past, not its counsel; fear not now to be a man. You may find a new Eden where you go, a river of God in it, and a tree of life, an angel to guard it; not the warning angel to repel, but the guiding angel to welcome and to bless.
It was four years yesterday since I first came here to speak to you; I came hesitatingly, reluctant, with much diffidence as to my power to do what it seemed to me was demanded. I did not come merely to pull down, but to build up, though it is plain much theological error must be demolished before any great reform of man's condition can be brought about. I came not to contend against any man, or sect, or party, but to speak a word for truth and religion in the name of man and God. I was in bondage to no sect; you in bondage to none. When a boy I learned that there is but one religion though many theologies. I have found it in Christians and in Jews, in Quakers and in Catholics. I hope we are all ready to honor what is good in each sect, and in rejecting its evil not to forget our love and wisdom in our zeal.
When I came I certainly did not expect to become a popular man, or acceptable to many. I had done much which in all countries brings odium on a man, though perhaps less in Boston than in any other part of the world. I had rejected the popular theology of Christendom. I had exposed the low morals of society, had complained of the want of piety in its natural form. I had fatally offended the sect, small in numbers, but respectable for intelligence and goodness, in which I was brought up. I came to look at the signs of the times from an independent point of view, and to speak on the most important of all themes. I thought a house much smaller than this would be much too large for us. I knew there would be fit audience; I thought it would be few, and the few would soon have heard enough and go their ways.
I know I have some advantages above most clergymen: I am responsible to no sect; no sect feels responsible for me; I have rejoiced at good things which I have seen in all sects; the doctrines which I try to teach do not rest on tradition, on miracles, or on any man's authority; only on the nature of man. I seek to preach the natural laws of man. I appeal to history for illustration, not for authority. I have no fear of philosophy. I am willing to look a doubt fairly in the face, and think reason is sacred as conscience, affection, or the religious faculty in man. I see a profound piety in modern science. I have aimed to set forth absolute religion, the ideal religion of human nature, free piety, free goodness, free thought. I call that Christianity, after the greatest man of the world, one who himself taught it; but I know that this was never the Christianity of the churches, in any age. I have endeavored to teach this religion and apply it to the needs of this time. These things certainly give me some advantages over most other ministers. Of the disadvantages which are personal to myself, I need not speak in public, but some which come from my position, ought to be noticed with a word. The walls of this house, the associations connected with it, furnish little help to devotion; we must rely on ourselves wholly for that. Other clergymen, by their occasional exchanges, can present their hearers with an agreeable variety in substance and in form. A single man, often heard, becomes wearisome and unprofitable, for "No man can feed us always." This I feel to be a great disadvantage which I labor under. Your kindness and affectionate indulgence make me feel it all the more. But one man cannot be twenty men.
When I came here I knew I should hurt men's feelings. My theology would prove more offensive and radical than men thought; the freedom of speech which men liked at a distance would not be pleasing when near at hand; my doctrines of morality I knew could not be pleasing to all men; not to all good men. I saw by your looks that in my abstractions I did not go too far for your sympathy, or too fast for your following. I soon found that my highest thought and most pious sentiment were most warmly welcomed as such; but when I came to put abstract thought and mystical piety into concrete goodness, and translate what you had accepted as Christian faith into daily life; when I came to apply piety to trade, politics, life in general, I knew that I should hurt men's feelings. It could not be otherwise. Yet I have had a most patient and faithful hearing. One thing I must do in my preaching: I must be in earnest. I cannot stand here before you and before God, attempting to teach piety and goodness, and not feel the fire and show the fire. The greater the wrong, the more popular, the more must I oppose it, and with the clearer, abler speech. It is not necessary for me to be popular, to be acceptable, even to be loved. It is necessary that I should tell the truth. But let that pass. You come hither week after week, it is now year after year that you come, to listen to one humble man. Do you get poor in your souls? Does your religion become poor and low? Are you getting less in the qualities of a man? If so, then leave me, to empty seats, to cold and voiceless walls; go elsewhere, and feed your souls with a wise passiveness, or an activity wiser yet. Such is your duty; let no affection for me hinder you from performing it. The same theology, the same form suits not all men. But if it is not so, if I do you good, if you grow in mind and conscience, heart and soul, then I ask one thing—Let your piety become natural life, your divinity become humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Synod declared: "That God hath a controversie with his New England people is undeniable." "There are visible manifest evils, which without doubt the Lord is provoked by." 1. "A great and visible decay of the power of Godliness amongst many professors in these churches." 2. "Pride doth abound in New England. Many have offended God by strange apparel." 3. "Church fellowship and other divine institutions are grossly neglected." "Quakers are false worshippers," "and Anabaptists ... do no better than set up an Altar against the Lord's Altar." 4. "The holy and glorious name of God hath been polluted;" "because of swearing the land mourns." "It is a frequent thing for men to sit in prayer-time ... and to give way to their own sloth and sleepiness." "We read of but one man in Scripture that slept at a sermon, and that sin had like to have cost him his life." 5. "There is much Sabbath-breaking; since there are multitudes that do profanely absent themselves from the public worship of God,... walking abroad and travelling ... being a common practice on the Sabbath Day." "Worldly unsuitable discourses are very common upon the Lord's Day." "This brings wrath, fires, and other judgments upon a professing people." 6. "As to what concerns families and Government thereof, there is much amiss." "Children and servants ... are not kept in due subjection." "This is a sin which brings great judgments, as we see in Eli's and David's family." 7. "Inordinate passions, sinful heats and hatreds, and that amongst church members." 8. "There is much intemperance:" "it is a common practice for town-dwellers, yea, and church members, to frequent public houses, and there to misspend precious time." 9. "There is much want of truth amongst men." "The Lord is not wont to suffer such an iniquity to pass unpunished." 10. "Inordinate affection unto the world." "There hath been in many professors an insatiable desire after land and worldly accommodations; yea, so as to forsake churches and ordinances, and to live like heathen, only so that they might have elbow-room in the world. Farms and merchandisings have been preferred before the things of God." "Such iniquity causeth war to be in the gate, and cities to be burned up." "When Lot did forsake the land of Canaan and the church which was in Abraham's family, that so he might have better worldly accommodations in Sodom, God fired him out of all." "There are some traders that sell their goods at excessive rates; day-laborers and mechanics are unreasonable in their demands." 11. "There hath been opposition to the work of reformation." 12. "A public spirit is greatly wanting in the most of men." 13. "There are sins against the gospel, whereby the Lord has been provoked." "Christ is not prized and embraced in all his offices and ordinances as ought to be."