Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/236

220 your baby-soul. But your character grew more and more, your intellectual, moral, and religious life continually became greater and greater; when you needed much, you had no lack, when little, there seemed nothing over; demand and supply are still commensurate. Nothing is more under our control than the amount of this voluntary communion with God.

We cannot help that, but we can progressively enlarge the amount of inspiration we receive from Heaven, spite of the disappointments and sorrows of life ; nay, by means thereof.

Sometimes a man makes a conscious and serious effort to receive and enlarge this communion. He looks over his daily life; his eye runs back to childhood, and takes in all the main facts of his outward and inward history. He sees much to mend, something also to approve. Here he erred through passion, there sinned by ambition; the desire from within, leagued with opportunity from without, making temptation too strong for him. He is penitent for the sin that was voluntary, or for the heedlessness whereby he went astray,—sorrowful at his defeat. But he remembers the manly part of him, and with new resolution braces himself for new trials. He thinks of the powers that lie unused in his own nature. He looks out at the examples of lofty men, his soul is stirred to its deeper depths. A new image of beauty rises, living from that troubled sea, and the Ideal of human loveliness is folded in his arms. "This fair Ideal," says he, "shall be mine. I also will be as whole and beautiful. Ah, me! how can I ever get such lovely life?" Then he thinks of the Eternal Wisdom, the Eternal Justice, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Holiness, which surrounds him, and now fills up his consciousness, waiting to bless. He reaches out his arms towards that Infinite Motherliness which created him at first and preserved him ever since; which surpassed when he fell