All the angels of God...

Part three of
Rev.Bellows on Practical Righteousness.

"We have got, therefore, to believe that while morals are dependent upon faith, and while faith is to be purified by morals, we must keep the two great commandments together, and learn at last that you cannot love man unless you love God, and that you cannot love God unless you love man; that you have got to love in God what is human, and in man what is divine; and that the two commandments must be kept and held close together; that there is no divorce between them possible, and that a mere morality is no morality at all, and a mere piety is no piety at all; but that faith and works, love for God and love for man, are to be kept close, united, inseparable; and that through the strength that faith gives we shall at last do the works of practical righteousness; and through practical righteousness purify and illumine piety. And when our Unitarian body rises to the full dignity of this conception, it will despise all questionings and all doubtings about its having inherent and evangelical piety. It will manifest its evangelical piety in its practical righteousness; and the sect that does that will command the attention of the world. And it is probably only because we do not manifest it in any very eminent degree that we have not the possession of that first place and that leadership that we are always wondering slips out of the hands of people who have such intelligent and rational and simple conceptions of Christian truth and Christian life. Let us live the Unitarian gospel, and it will show itself to be the original gospel of Christ. Let us live the Unitarian gospel; it will be a gospel of practical righteousness. Let us really have the practical righteousness— which we sometimes boast of having — in our personal lives, in our homes, in our business, in our ministry, everywhere that we are; and I tell you, you will not have any longer to wonder, to mourn, or to grieve that your cause does not move forward like lightning towards its final triumph. All the angels of God, all the divine passions of Christ, all the inspirations of the Holy Ghost, follow the track of righteous living; for righteous living is alone possible in the eternal faith of the divine truth and in the image of the Almighty God. Morality is the life of God. It is no earth-born thing. Its roots are in the divine nature. It is living in justice, in truth, in mercy, and in love; and that morality will be the life of heaven; and we shall find that' piety and morality are one, and that they are both bound fast to the throne of God."

Blessings