Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/285

Rh We thank thee for the great men and women whom thou in all times hast raised up, the guides and teachers unto humbler-gifted men. We thank thee for the philosophers who have taught us truth, and for the great poets who have touched man's heart with the fire of heaven and stirred to noble deeps the human soul. We bless thee for those expounders of thy law whose conscience has revealed thine ever live ideas of justice, and who have taught them to men. We bless thee for those warm-hearted champions of mankind whose arms of philanthropy clasp whole nations to their heart, warmed with the noble personal life of such. Yea, we thank thee for those of great religious sense, who have taught mankind truer ideas of thee, and wisely guided the souls of men, thereby controlling passion and leading thy children in paths of pleasantness and of peace. We thank thee that in no land hast thou ever left thyself without a witness, and while material nature proclaims thy glory, and day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth forth thy praise, that our human nature still more largely proclaims thy greatness and thy goodness, and the presence of thy providence, watching over all. We thank thee for the goodly fellowship of prophets in all lands, and called by many names; for the glorious company of apostles, speaking in every tongue, and the noble army of martyrs, whose blood, reddening the soil of the whole world, has made it fertile for noble human purposes.

And, while we thank thee for these, we bless thee also for the unrecorded millions of men of common faculties, who were the human soil whereon these trees of human genius stood, and grew their leaves so shady and so green, and their fruit so sound and fair. O Lord, we thank thee for the humble toiling millions of men who earnestly looked for the light, and finding walked therein, passing upward and onward towards thy kingdom, blessed by thee.

We thank thee for all the triumphs which mankind has achieved, by the few of genius or the many who have had faithful and earnest souls. We thank thee for all of truth that is demonstrated in science, for all of beauty that is writ in poetry or stamped on the rock by art. We bless thee for what of justice is recorded in books, or embodied in institutions and laws. We thank thee for that philanthropy which begins to bless the world, and here in our