Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/241

Rh bodily torture. But in common life such discipline asks not our consent to come.

As I look over your faces and recall the personal history of those I know, I see how universal is this disappointment. But it has not made you more melancholy and less manly men; life is not thereby the less a blessing, and the more a load. With no sorrows you would be more sorrowful. For all the sorrows that man has faithfully contended with, he shall sail into port deeper fraught with manliness. The wife and mother at thirty years of age imprisoned in her chair, her hands all impotent to wipe a tear away, does not suffer for nothing. She has thereby been taught to taste the fruits of sweeter communion with her God. These disappointments are rounds in the ladder whereby we climb to heaven.

In cities there is less to help us communicate with God than in the fields. These walls of brick and stone, this artificial ground we stand on, all reminds us of man; even the city horse is a machine. But in the country it is God's ground beneath our feet ; God's hills on every side; his heaven, broad, blue, and boundless, overhead; and every bush and every tree, the morning song of earliest birds, the chirp of insects at mid-day, the solemn stillness of the night, and the mysterious hosts of stars that all night long climb up the sky, or silently go down,—these continually affect the soul, and cause us all to feel the Infinite Presence, and draw near to that; and earth seems less to rest in space than in the love of God. So, in cities, men build a great church,—at London, Paris, Venice, or at Rome,—seeking to compensate for lack of the natural admonitions of the woods and sky; and, to replace the music of the fields and nature's art, enlist the painter's plastic hand and the musician's sweetest skill.

All that seek religion are in search for communion with God. What is there between Him and thee? Nothing but thyself. Each can have what inspiration each will take. God is continually giving; He will not withhold from you or me. As much ability as He has given, as much as you have enlarged your talent by manly use, so much will He fill with inspiration. I hold up my little cup. He fills it full. If yours is greater, rejoice in that, and