Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/12

iv pervades the thoughts of other theologians. There is no need to bid us here believe that " Religion is not a gloomy thing," and that in spite of the sorrowful looks and dark forebodings of the teacher his faith is indeed a Gospel of good tidings ! We feel that Theodore Parker's religion was joy and light, and that his soul dwelt therein, like an eagle amid the fields of the upper air.

Regarding the Prayers now printed, one observation may seem desirable. It was Parker's habit continually to use in his addresses to God a phrase which has been found to startle many religious minds. He frequently called Him "Thou, who art our Father and our Mother both," the "Father and Mother of the world."

In the Preface to the preceding volume the Editor called attention to this characteristic of Theism, that it teaches us to see in God not only a Father full of care for His children's welfare, but a Mother full also of tenderness and pity. Too long, we believe, 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, which in rejecting the Madonna have rejected all that she imaged forth of that Divine tenderness, which the prophet of old had recognized when he declared that although a woman should forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb," yet would the Lord never forget or cease to pity His creatures. To such as would object to the use of such expressions as those of Parker we would ask in all seriousness: Is not a mother then the holiest thing on earth? her love the purest? her memory the dearest? We call God "our Father in Heaven," and bless the Christ who taught us to do so. But is there any irreverence in adding the name of one parent to that of the other? and can we think that a mother's sacred title is unworthy to be joined with that of father? Surely ideas like these are the legacy of miserable ages of asceticism, wherein womanhood and motherhood were deemed unholy things, and God's great order