Of Conscious Religion as a Source of Joy (1853)

AUTHOR: Parker, Theodore

In his musings on the nature and purpose of joy in religion, Parker comments on the relation of the animal world to divine joy. For Parker, animals are naturally divine.

KEYWORDS: animals, religion, Transcendentalism

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

As its title suggests, this sermon is predominantly about the place, function, and role of joy in religion. Parker comments the general nature of joy, differentiating between sensual or corporeal joy, the joy of desire, and the joy of the soul. Religious joy belongs to the latter category, which is a “higher quality of joy” (266). It is in his discussion of the general nature of joy that Parker turns to the natural, specifically animal world: “You are pleased to see birds feeding their widemouthed little ones; sheep and oxen intent upon their grassy bread; reapers under a hedge enjoying their mid-day meal, reposing on sheaves of corn new cut. All this is nature” (266-267). Notably, the passage provides two instances of joy, namely the human joy in the observation of simple, animal enjoyment of life. Hence, for Parker, the pleasure and joy experienced in contemplating pastoral works of art is much greater than the overindulgence and feasting that contradict natural simplicity. The highest expression of joy comes in depictions of a pure, spiritual quality, such as those of the Last Supper (267). The simple, natural pleasures are linked to the highest kind of joy through providence: “Natural desire is the prophecy of satisfaction” (270). Parker comments on this kind of divinely provided simple joy of animal life in a remarkable and extended passage, which is worth quoting in full:

The young fish, you shall even now find on the shallow beaches of some sheltered Atlantic bay, how happy they are! Voiceless, dwelling in the cold, unsocial element of water, moving with the flapping of the sea, and never still amid the ocean waves' immeasurable laugh, — how delighted are these little children of God! Their life seems one continuous holiday, the shoal waters a play-ground. Their food is plenteous as the water itself. Society is abundant, and of the most unimpeachable respectability. They have their little child's games which last all day. No one is hungry, ill-mannered, ill-dressed, dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy. They fear no hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and bloodless little atomies seem ever full of joy as they can hold; wise without study, learned enough without book or school, and well cared for amid their own neglect. They recollect no past, they provide for no future, the great God of the ocean their only memory or forethought. These little, short-lived minnows are to me a sermon eloquent; they are a psalm to God, above the loftiest hymnings of Theban Pindar, or of the Hebrew king.
    On the land, see the joy of the insects just now coming into life. The new-born butterfly, who begins his summer life to-day, how joyous he is in his claret-colored robe, so daintily set off with a silver edge! No Pharisee, enlarging the borders of his garments, getting greetings in the markets and the uppermost seat at feasts, and called of men “Rabbi,” is ever so brimful of glee as our little silver-bordered fly. He has a low seat in the universe, for he is only a butterfly; but to him it is good as the uppermost; and in the sunny, sheltered spots in the woods, with brown leaves about him, and the promise of violets and five-fingers by and by, the great sun gently greets him, and the dear God continually says to this son of a worm, “Come up higher”!
    The adventurous birds that have just come to visit us, how delighted they are, and of a bright morning how they tell their joy! each robin and blackbird waking, not with a dry mouth and a parched tongue, but with a bosom full of morning psalms to gladden the day with “their sweet jargoning.” What a cheap luxury they pick up in the fields; and in a clear sunrise and a warm sky find a delight which makes the pomp of Nebuchadnezzar seem ridiculous!
    Even the reptiles, the cold snake, the bunchy and calumniated toad, the frog, now newly wakened from his hybernating sleep, have a joy in their existence which is complete and seems perfect. How that long symbol of “the old enemy” basks delighted in the sun! In the idle days which I once had, I have seen, as I thought, the gospel of God's love written in the life of this reptile, for whom Christians have such a mythological hatred, but whom the good God blesses with a new, shining skin every year, — written more clearly than even Nazarene Jesus could tell the tale. No wonder! it was the dear God who wrote His gospel in that scroll. How joyously the frogs welcome in the spring, which knocks at the icy door of their dwelling, and rouses them to new life! What delight have they in their thin, piping notes at this time, and in the hoarse thunders wherewith they will shake the bog in weeks to come; in their wooing and their marriage song!
    The young of all animals are full of delight. God baptizes his new-born children of the air, the land, the sea, with joy; admits them to full communion in his great church, where He that taketh thought for oxen suffers no sparrow to fall to the ground without his fatherly love. A new lamb, or calf, or colt, just opening its eyes on the old world, is happy as fabled Adam in his Eden. With what sportings, and friskings, and frolickings do all young animals celebrate their Advent and Epiphany in the world of time! As they grow older, they have a wider and a wiser joy, — the delight of the passions and the affections, to apply the language of men to the consciousness of the cattle. It takes the form, not of rude leapings, but of quiet cheerfulness. The matronly cow, ruminating beside her playful and hornless little one, is a type of quiet joy and entire satisfaction, — all her nature clothed in well-befitting happiness.
    Even animals that we think austere and sad,— the lonely hawk, the solitary jay, who loves New England winters, and the innumerable shellfish,— have their personal and domestic joy, well known to their intimate acquaintances. The toad, whom we vilify as ugly, and even call venomous, malicious, and spiteful, is a kind neighbor, and seems as contented as the day is long. So is it with the spider, who is not the malignant kidnapper that he is thought, but has a little, harmless world of joy. A stream of welfare flows from end to end of their little life, — not very broad, not very deep, but wide and deep enough to bathe their every limb, and bring contentment and satisfaction to every want. Did not the same God who pours out the light from yonder golden sun, and holds all the stars in his leash of love, make and watch over the smallest of these creatures? Nay, He who leaves not forsaken Jesus alone never deserts the spider and the toad.
    Wait a few weeks and go into the fields, of a warm day, at morning, noon, or night, and all creation is a-hum with happiness, the young and old, the reptile, insect, beast, and fowls of heaven, rejoice in their brave delight. All about us is full of joy, fuller than we notice. Take a handful of water from the rotting timbers of a wharf; little polyps are therein, medusae and the like, with few senses, few faculties; but they all swim in a tide of joy, and it seems as if the world was made for them alone; for them the tide ebbs and flows, for them the winter goes, the summer comes, and the universe subsists for them alone (270-274).

While Parker's rhapsodic musings on the joys of animal life are of course highly anthropomorphic, they strongly resonate with other Transcendentalist accounts of spiritual, divine nature by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and A. Bronson Alcott. Parker emphatically emphasizes that the animal world is suffused by spirit, explicitly calling animals “children of God,” “a psalm to God,” and “a gospel of God.” Hence, their joy is “complete,” “perfect,” and “entire.” In fact, for Parker, animal existence is not just full of joy but fundamentally is nothing but joy. Animal existence is pure divine self-enjoyment. For Parker, while animals rank below humans in the hierarchy of life, have a direct, unmediated relationship to spirit that humans lack. Humans have “wandered far from the true road of material happiness” (275). In contrast, the' material existence of animals is their spiritual existence. They live in spirit. They are naturally religious. In this sense, the animal world serves as a blueprint and model for the reintegration of material and spiritual joys – of all human bodily and mental faculties (which, for Parker, of course outstrip those of any animal) – in order to achieve an existential joy that is “perfect,” “complete,” and “entire” (and given the human superiority over animals, would then be more perfect, more complete, and more entire than “mere” animal joy – “the real happiness of religion” (309)). We “look on sunny nature, on the minnow in the sea, on the robin in the field, on the frog, the snake, the spider, and the toad, and smile at sight of their gladness in the world, and wish to share it” (309), as Parker puts it.

 

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