Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/232

216 pilgrimage of many a thousand miles, knows naught of Him who teaches its way

To the dog, man stands for God or devil. The "half-reasoning elephant" knows nobody and is conscious of nothing higher than his keeper, who rides upon his neck, pulling his ears with curved hook. All these are ignorant of God.

We come to man. Here he is, a body and a spirit. The vegetable is matter, and something more; the animal is vegetable also, and something more; man is animal likewise, and something more. So far as I am matter, a vegetable, an animal,—and I am each in part,—I have the appropriate communion of the vegetable, the mineral, the animal world. My body, this hand, for example, is subject to statical, dynamical, and vital laws. God is in this hand; without his infinite existence, its finite existence could not be. It is a hand only by its unconscious communion with Him. It wills nothing; it knows nothing; yet all day long, and all the night, each monad thereof retains all the primary statical and dynamical qualities of matter; continually the blood runs through its arteries and veins, mysteriously forming this complicated and amazing work. Should God withdraw, it were a hand no more; the blood would cease to flow in vein and artery; no monad would retain its primary dynamical and static powers; each atom would cease to be.

All these things, the stone, the pencil, and the fly and hand, are but passive and unconscious communicants of God; they are bare pipes alone into which His omnipotence flows. Yes, they are poor, brute things, which know Him not, nor cannot ever know. The stone and pencil know not themselves; this marvellous hand knows naught; and the fly never says, reasoning with itself, "Lo, here am I, an individual and a conscious thing sucking the bosom of the world." It never separates the Not-me and the Me. But I am conscious; I know myself, and through myself know God. I am a mind to think, a conscience to perceive the just and right; I am a heart to love, a soul