Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/337

Rh kingdom, and whom thou yet sufferest to come unto us ; we thank thee for these perpetual prophets of thine, whose coming foretells that progressive kingdom of righteousness which is ever at our doors, waiting to be revealed; we thank thee for the joy which these little buds of promise give to many a father's and mother's heart. We thank thee for the power of youth ; we bless thee for its green promise, its glad foretelling, and its abundant hope, and its eye that looks ever upwards and ever on. We thank thee for the strength of manhood and of womanhood, into whose hands thou committest the ark of the family, the community, the nation, and the world. We thank thee for the strength of the full-grown body, for the vigour of the mature, expanded, and progressive mind, and all the vast ability which thou treasurest up in these earthen vessels of our bodies, holding for a moment the immortal soul thou confidest to their care. We bless thee for the old age which crowns man's head with silver honours, the fruit of long and experienced life, and enriches his heart with the wisdom which babyhood knew not, which youth could not comprehend, and only long-continued manhood or womanhood could mature at length and make perfect. O Lord, we thank thee that thou hast made us thus wondrously and curiously, and bindest together the ages of infancy and youth and manhood and old age, by the sweet tie of family and of social love.

We thank thee for that other, the transcendent world, which is the home of the souls thou hast disenchanted of this dusty flesh and taken to thyself, where the eye may not see, nor the ear hear, nor our own hungering and thirsting heart fully understand, all the mysterious glory which thou preparest for thy daughters and thy sons. We thank thee for the good men who have gone before us thither. We bless thee that the little ones whom thou sufferest to come unto us, when they depart from us, thou takest to this other world and watchest over and blessest there. We thank thee that thereinto thou gatherest those who pass out of earth, in their babyhood, their youth, their manhood, their old age, and settest the crown of immortality on the baby's or the old man's brow, and blessest all of thy children with thyself.

O thou, who art Almighty Power, All-present Spirit,