Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/229

Rh The stream of philosophy runs down from Aristotle to Hegel and Hickok, and breaks off with this conclusion ; and I see not how it can be gainsaid. The statements are apodictic, self-evident at every step.

All that is painfully abstract; let me make it plainer if I can,—at least shoot one shaft more at the same mark from the other side. You start with yourself, with no- thing but yourself. You are conscious of yourself ; not of yourself perhaps as Substance, surely as Power to be, to do, to suffer. But you are conscious of yourself not as self-originated at all, or as self-sustained alone; only as dependent,—first for existence, ever since for support.

You take the primary ideas of consciousness which are inseparable from it, the atoms of self-consciousness ; amongst them you find the ideas of God. Carefully exa- mined by the scrutinizing intellect, it is the idea of God as Infinite,—perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, holy,—absolute being, with no limitation. It is this which made you, made all; sustains you, sustains all; made your body, not by a single act, but by a series of acts extending over millions of years,—for man's body is the resultant of all created things ; made your spirit,—your mind, your conscience, your affections, your soul, your will; appointed for each its natural mode of action; set each at its several aim. Self-consciousness leads you to consciousness of God; at last to consciousness of Infinite God. He is the Primitive, whence you are the derivative. You must receive, or you could not be a finite man; and He must give, or He could not be the Infinite God. Hence the communion is unavoidable, an ontological fact.

God must be omnipresent in space. There can be no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no spot on an insect's wing, no little cell of life which the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss, and brings to light, but God is there, in the mote that peoples the sunbeams, in that spot on the insect's wing, in that cell of life the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss.

God must be also omnipresent in time. There is no second of time elapsing now, there has been none millions of years ago, before the oldest stars began to burn, but God was in that second of time.