Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/238

222 fore. Thus does the man, that will, hold commune with his Father, face to face, and get great income from the Soul of all.

In all this there is nothing miraculous; there has been no change on God's part, but a great change on man's. We have received what He is universally giving. So in winter it is clear and cold, the winds are silent, clouds gather over the city's face, and all is still. How cold it is! In a few hours the warmth steals out from the central fire,—the earth's domestic, household hearth; the clouds confine it in, those airy walls, that it flee not off, nor spread to boundless space; the frost becomes the less intense, and men are gladdened with the milder day. So, when magnetic bars in time have lost their force, men hang them up in the line of the meridian, and the great loadstone, the earth from her own breast, restores their faded magnetism. Thus is it that human souls communicate with the great central Fire and Light of all the world, the loadstone of the universe, and thus recruit, grow young again, and so are blessed and strong. There may be a daily, conscious communion with God, marked by reverence, gratitude, aspiration, trust, and love; it will not be the highest prayer.

And the highest prayer is no common event in a man's life. Ecstasy, rapture, great delight in prayer, or great increase thereby,—they are the rarest things in the life of any man. They should be rare. The tree blossoms but once a year; blooms for a week, and then fulfils and matures its fruit in the long months of summer and of harvest-time,—fruit for a season, and seed for many an age. The sun is but a moment at meridian. Jesus had his temptation but once, but once his agony,—the two foci round which his beauteous ellipse was drawn. The intensest consciousness of friendship does not last long. They say men have but once the ecstasy of love; human nature could not bear such a continual strain. So all the blossomings of rapture must needs be short. The youthful ecstasy of love leads man and maid by moonlight up the steep, sheer cliffs of life, "while all below, the world in mist lies lost;" then, in the daylight of marriage they