Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/104

88 This effect is not produced on scholarly men so much as on honest and laborious mankind, all the world over. Nature is man's religious book, with lessons for every day. In cities men tread on an artificial ground of brick or stone, breathe an unnatural air, see the heavens only a handful at a time, think the gas-lights better than the stars, and know little how the stars themselves keep the police of the sky. Ladies and gentlemen in towns see Nature only at second-hand. It is hard to deduce God from a brick pavement. Yet ever and anon the mould comes out green and natural on the walls, and through the chinks of the side-walks bursts up the life of the world in many a little plant, which to the microscopic eye of science speaks of the presence of the same Power that slowly elaborates a solar system and a universe. In the country men and women are always in the presence of Nature, and feel its impulse to reverence and trust. Every year the old world puts on new bridal beauty, and celebrates its Whitsunday,—each bush putting its glory on. Spring is our Dominica in Albis. Is not autumn a long All-Saints' day? The harvest is Hallowmass to mankind. How men have marked each annual crisis of the year, — the solstice and the equinox,—and celebrate religious festivals thereon! The material world is the element of communion between man and God. To heedful men God preaches on every mount, utters beatitudes in each little flower of spring.

Our own nature also reminds us of God. Thoughtful men are conscious of their dependence, their imperfection, their finiteness, and naturally turn to the Independent, the Perfect, the Infinite. The events of life, its joys and its sorrows, have a natural tendency to direct the thoughts to the good Father of us all. Religious emotions spring up spontaneously at each great event in the lives of earnest men. When I am sick I become conscious of the Infinite Mother in whose lap I lay my weary head. The lover's eyes see God beyond the maid he loves; Heaven speaks out of the helpless face which the young mother presses to her bosom; each new child connects its parents with the eternal duration of human kind. Who can wait on the ebb and flow of mortal life in a friend, and not return to Him who holds that ocean also in the hollow of his hand! The