Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/17

xviii of correction and susceptible of final purification. The repentant sinner seeks the restoration of his soul to the peace of Divine love, but he leaves the punishment of his offences to God's wisdom and God's justice. No “substitute” can ever bear it for him, no “conversion” of his own can evade it. The doom of sin is not an infinite risk with a large margin for escape. It is the certainty of a complete, albeit finite, retribution.

In God, the “Parent of Good, Almighty,” we have both parents in One. All the power and care and forethought and inexorable loving severity which we attribute to the Fatherly character is fulfilled in Him. And all the inexhaustible forgiving love and tenderness which a mother's heart reveals, is His also. Like a father, He supplies our bodily wants and the spiritual food for the higher needs of our souls. Like a mother, He bestows on us the flowers and fruits of earth and all the thousand innocent joys, which are needless for mere existence, but are given to make us happy, to win our hearts to confidence and thankfulness. Too long has the Catholic Church separated off this Mother Side of Deity into another object of worship; and more fatal still has been the error of the Reformed Churches, who in rejecting the Madonna, have rejected all that she imaged forth of the Divine mansuetude and tenderness. God is Himself and alone (as Parker often rightly addressed Him in his prayers) “.” Theism bids us adore Him with the mingled sentiments of reverence and love due to both relations. Nay, it bids us behold in His sole ineffable Unity all that men have dimly shadowed out in the creeds of the past, the “Lord of Light,” the “Mover” of all things, the “Greatly Wise Lord,” the “All-Father,” the “Eternal One,” and, above all, the triune God of Christendom, the God who in Himself alone is to us Creating, Redeeming, and Sanctifying God.

Such is the first great doctrine of Theism,.

And the second is like it and flows out of it.

God is ever present in the souls of His creatures. He presides over and governs the world of matter, and He is no less present and active in the world of spirit. As He influences and constrains unconscious matter, so He inspires and helps free and conscious man. There is but one kind of inspiration possible, albeit many degrees thereof. It is the action of the