Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/336

90 but to serve thee with our work in all the daily toil of our mortal lives. We know that thou needest neither our psalm of thanksgiving, nor our aspiring prayer, but our heart and our flesh cry out for thee, the Living God, and for a moment we would join ourselves to thee, and warm and freshen our spirit in the sunlight of thy countenance, and come away clean and strengthened and made whole.

Our Father, we thank thee for the material world in which thou hast placed us. We thank thee for the return of Spring, bringing back the robin and the swallow from their wide wanderings, wherein thy providence is their constant guard, watching over and blessing these songsters of the sky. We thank thee for the buds swelling on every bough, and the grass whose healthy greenness marks the approaching summer, and the flowers, those prophets of better days that are to come. We bless thee for the air we breathe, for the light whereby we walk on the earth, for the darkness that folded us in its arms when we lay down thereunder, and that when we awoke we were still with thee. We thank thee for the bread which we feed upon, for the shelter which our hands have woven or have builded up, to fend us from annoying elements. We thank thee for all the means of use and of beauty which thou givest us in the ground and the air and the heavens, in things that move, that grow, that live. We thank thee that thou makest these all to wait on us, having kindness for our flesh, and a lesson also for our thinking soul. We thank thee for the human world, whereof thou hast made us in thine own image and likeness. We thank thee for the great faculties which thou hast given us, of body and of mind, of conscience and of heart and soul. We thank thee for the noble destination which therein thou shadowest forth, for the great wants which thou makest in our spiritual nature, for the unbounded appetite thou givest us for the true and the beautiful, the right and the just, for the love and welfare of our brother men, and the vast and overshadowing hope which thou givest us towards thee. We thank thee for this great nature thou hast given, with its hungerings and thirstings for ultimate welfare, for duty now and blessedness to come.

We thank thee for all the various conditions of mortal life. We bless thee for the little children who are of thy