In their example I see proofs of the final triumph of good over evil. Angels are they, who keep the tree of life, not with flaming sword, repelling men, but, with friendly hand, plucking therefrom, and giving unto all the leaves, the flower, and the fruit of life, for the healing of the nations. A single good man, kindling his early flame, wakens the neighbors with his words of cheer; they, at his lamp, shall light their torch and household fire, anticipating the beamy warmth of day. Soon it will be morning, warm and light; we shall be up and a-doing, and the lighted lamp, which seemed at first too much for eyes to bear, will look ridiculous, and cast no shadow in the noonday sun. A hundred years hence, men will stand here as I do now, and speak of the evils of these times as things past and gone, and wonder that able men could ever be appalled by our difficulties, and think them not to be surpassed. Still, all depends on the faithfulness of men your faithfulness and mine. The last election has shown us what resolute men can do on a trifling occasion, if they will. You know the efforts of the three parties what meetings they held, what money they raised, what talent was employed, what speeches made, what ideas set forth: not a town was left unattempted; scarce a man who had wit to throw a vote, but his vote was solicited. You see the revolution which was wrought by that vigorous style of work. When such men set about reforming the evils of society, with such a determined soul, what evil can stand against mankind? We can leave nothing to the next generation worth so much as ideas of truth, justice, and religion, organized into fitting institutions; such we can leave, and, if true men, such we shall. XI. PREACHED AT A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. MATTHEW VIII. 20. BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM. LAST Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all manly excellence, and was the condition of all noble, manly development; that love of truth, love of justice, love of love, were respectively the condition of intellectual, moral, and affectional development, and that they were also respectively the intellectual, moral, and affectional forms of piety; that the love of God as the Infinite Father, the totality of truth, justice, and love was the general condition of the total development of man's spiritual powers. But I showed, that sometimes this piety, intellectual, moral, affectional or total, did not arrive at self-consciousness; the man only unconsciously loving the Infinite in one or all these modes, and in such cases the man was a loser by frustrating his piety, and allowing it to stop in the truncated form of unconsciousness. Now what is in you will appear out of you; if piety be there in any of these forms, in either mode, it will come out; if not there, its fruits cannot appear. You may reason forward or backward: if you know piety exists, you may foretell its appearance; if you find fruits thereof, you may reason back and be sure of its existence. Piety is love of God as God, and as we only love what we are like, and in that degree, so it is also a likeness to God. Now it is a general doctrine in Christendom that divinity must manifest itself; and, in assuming the highest form of manifestation known to us, divinity becomes humanity. However, that doctrine is commonly taught in the specific and not generic form, and is enforced by an historical and concrete example, but not by way of a universal thesis. It appears thus: The Christ was God; as such He must manifest himself; the form of manifestation was that of a complete and perfect man. I reject the concrete example, but accept the universal doctrine on which the special dogma of the Trinity is erected. From that I deduce this as a general rule: If you follow the law of your nature, and are simple and true to that, as much of godhood as there is in you, so much of manhood will come out of you, and, as much of manhood comes out of you, so much of godhood was there within you; as much subjective divinity, so much objective humanity. Such being the case, the demands you can make on a man for manliness must depend for their answer on the amount of piety on deposit in his character; so it becomes important to know the condition of this town in respect of piety, for if this be not right in the above sense, nothing else is right; or, to speak more clerically, "Unless the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain," and unless piety be developed or a-developing in men, it is vain for the minister to sit up late of a Saturday night to concoct his sermon, and to rise up early of a Sunday morning to preach the same; he fights but as one that beateth the air, and spends his strength for that which is nought. They are in the right, therefore, who first of all things demand piety: so let us see what signs or proof we have, and of what amount of piety in Boston. To determine this, we must have some test by which to judge of the quality, distinguishing piety from impiety, and some standard whereby to measure the quantity thereof; for though you may know what piety is in you, I what is in me, and God what is in both and in all the rest of us, it is plain that we can only judge of the existence of piety in other men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard measure. Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal unlike: each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and standard measure. Let me say a word of each. I. Some contend for what I call the conventional standard; that is, the manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these forms there are three modes or degrees namely, first, the form of bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without proof, but because they are taught with authority; and third, a passive acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance thereof. II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes of action. It is plain, that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear very different when tested by one or the other of these standards. It may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is but fair to try it by both standards. Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in any one State, would vary with the health of the judge. However, to do what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it is plain, that, estimated by any ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small. There is, as men often say, "A general decline of piety;" that is a common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. The disease which is thus lamented is said to be acute, but is proved to be chronic also; only it would seem, from the lamentations of some modern Jeremiahs, that the decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became. Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view, let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a “Great awakening,” but a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great decline of religion a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that modern philosophy, the physics of |