Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/234

218 conscious of ourselves, distinguish, the Me and the Not-me, and learn at length of God.

I live as spirit, I have spiritual communion with God. Depend on Him I must j when I become self-conscious, I feel that dependence, and know of this communion, where- by I receive from Him.

The quantity of my receipt is largely under my control. As I will, I can have less or more. I cultivate my mind, greatening its quantity by all its growth I have so much more communion with my Father; each truth I get is a point common to Him and me. I cultivate my conscience, increasing my moral sense; each atom of justice that I get is another point common with the Deity. So I cultivate and enlarge my affections; each grain of love—philanthropic or but friendly—is a new point common to me and God. Then, too, I cultivate and magnify my soul, greatening my sense of holiness, by fidelity to all my nature; and all that I thus acquire is a new point I hold in common with the Infinite. I earnestly desire His truth, His justice, His holiness and love, and He communicates the more. Thus I have a fourfold voluntary consciousness of God through, my mind and conscience, heart and soul; know Him as the absolutely true and just and amiable and holy; and thereby have a fourfold voluntary communion with my God. He gives of his infinite kind; I receive in my finite mode, taking according to my capacity to receive.

I may diminish the quantity of this voluntary communion. For it is as possible to stint the spirit of its God, as to starve the body of its food; only not to the final degree,—to destruction of the spirit. This fact is well known. You would not say that Judas had so much and so complete communion with God as Jesus had. And if Jesus had yielded to the temptation in the story, all would declare that for the time he must diminish the income of God upon his soul. For unfaithfulness in any part lessens the quantity and mars the quality of our communion with the Infinite.

In most various ways men may enlarge the power to communicate with God ; complete and normal life is the universal instrument thereof. Here is a geologist chipping the stones, or studying the earthquake-waves; here a