Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/304

58 come the common custom of the people, for the happiness which has ensued to us all.

But, Lord, with shame and weeping, we lament the sins which thy people have committed against thee; that, with all the blessings of other days gathered in our arms, with all the strength of holy institutions and of great ideas enlarging our consciousness, we are still a people so proud and so wicked, who tread thy law underneath unholy feet. Father, we mourn that we have trodden the needy down to the ground, that we have broken the poor to fragments and ground them to the dust, and on the day of the nation's jubilee we mourn that the hands of millions of men are chained together, and their minds are fettered by ignorance. Yea, Lord, we take shame and confusion of face to ourselves that we suffer this monstrous sin to linger in the midst of us, making the nation's face gather blackness in its walk on earth. We mourn that our rulers are base, and the prayer of the people has become an abomination before thee, because of our wickedness and the oppression with which we have tortured the weakest of men. We will not ask thee to save us in our sins, to free us from the consequence of wrong, while we fold the evil in our mistaken arms, but we pray thee that we may be afflicted in our basket and store, that our great men may be vanity, and our governors a lie, till we repent of our wickedness and put away the evil from the midst of us.

O thou Infinite One, who hast given us strength proportioned to our need, we pray that we may use the faculties thou hast given us to overcome the evil that lies before us in our path. May our minds devise the right way, our conscience point to us the justice which we should follow, and our hands work out our own redemption, even as thou commandest in every bone of our body and every faculty of our soul. So may we serve our nation better even than our fathers, the patriots or the pilgrims, being faithful to the light of our day and generation, and walking whither thou wouldst have us to go. So may light come forth, and beauty and holiness cover the whole land, and peace and joy and righteousness be the possession of us all. Thus may thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.