Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/287

Rh glory amongst men, and keep our souls clean and un- dented in the midst of a world where sin and wickedness walk in the broad day. Father, within our soul may there be such an earnest and strong love of the qualities of thy being that we shall keep every law which thou hast writ on our sense or in our soul, and do justly and love mercy and walk manfully with thee, doing our duty with nobleness of endeavour, and bearing such cross as time and chance, happening to all, may lay on us. So may thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Perpetual Presence, whom our hearts constrain us to bow down before, and delightedly to look up to, we would draw near to thee once more, secluding our spirits for a moment from all the noises of the world, and con- tinue the psalm of our thanksgiving by aspirations of the soul that are higher and higher yet. We know that thou rememberest us, nor needest thou the music of our psalm nor the faint warbling of our prayer to stir thy fatherly and motherly heart to bestow upon us thy tender mercy and thy loving-kindness. Yea, we know that when earthly father and mother forget us and let us fall, thou takest us up, and in thy right hand bear est thy children forward; nay, when in the wickedness of our heart or the frailty of our flesh we break thy laws and would hide our faces from thee, thou still revealest thyself in justice and in love, and in secret ways overtakest us, liffcest us up when we have fallen, and leadest us from our errors and our sins.

O thou Infinite One, we thank thee for the fairness and the beauty which thou pourest down from the heavens above our head. We bless thee for the genial warmth which goes abroad in the air this day from the golden shining of the sun. We thank thee for the footsteps of Spring throughout our Northern land, giving new vigour to the cattle's grass, and causing hope to spring up with