Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/353

Rh lines of our lot. We bless thee for the material universe where thou hast placed us. We thank thee for the heavens over our heads, purple and golden in their substance, and jewelled all over by night with such refulgent fires. We thank thee for the moon which there walks in beauty, shedding her romantic glory on the slumbering ground, and making poetic the rudest thing in country or in town. We thank thee for that great sun which brings us the day- spring from on high, and fringes the earth at morning and at evening with such evangelic beauty, and all day warms the great growing world with thy loving-kindness and thy tender mercy too. We thank thee for the earth under- neath our feet, and the garment of green beauty where- with the shoulders of the Northern world are now so sumptuously clad. We thank thee for the harvest of bread for the cattle and of bread for man, growing out of the ground, and waving in the summer wind. We thank thee for the beauty which thou enthronest in every leaf, which thou incarnatest in every little grass, and wherewith thou fringest the brooks which run among the hills, and borderest the paths which men have trod in wood and field. We thank thee likewise for the noble nature which thou hast given to us, for this spiritual earth and heaven which we are; we thank thee for the glow of material splendour, of purple and of gold, wherewith thou investest us, and for the more than starry beauty with which our souls are jewelled forth. We thank thee for the lesser truths which walk in beauty in our infantile darkness, and the greater which in manhood's prime shed down the constant day, and fringe with morning and with evening beauty our manly life. We thank thee for the other harvests, both of beauty and of use, which grow out from the human soul, for the truths that we know, for the justice that we see, for the love that we feel to our brother-men, and all the manifold felicities we gather from the accordance of congenial souls that make sweet music on the earth. We bless thee for our dear ones, folded in our arms, sheltered underneath our roof, fed with the toil of our hands or our heads, for those who are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and those others not less who are soul of our soul. We thank thee for those who daily or weekly gather with us, the benediction to our eyes, their voice the household