Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/356

110 purple beauty, and scarfed the mountains with savage loveliness, and with the morning's and the evening's two- fold ring of beauty thou marriest for ever the day and night, revealing in this material magnificence tokens and signs of thine own loving-kindness, which passeth knowledge, and the sovereign beauty of thy spirit, which steals into our souls.

Father, we thank thee that, creating this world so great and adorning it so fair, thou hast yet made our spirit vaster than the bounds of time and space, and givest us power to adorn it with magnificence that shames the green and purple lining of the sea, and to put the stars of heaven out of sight with its sweet glory and the bravery of its spiritual loveliness. We thank thee for the great nature thou hast given us; we bless thee for its power of ceaseless progress, of continually growing greater and nobler, and fairer decked with beauty springing from the innermost of our soul. We thank thee for every triumph which mankind has won, for all the great truths which have come sounding musical from past times, for all the noble men whom in distant days thou raisedst up out of humanity, to tell us of our power, and in their lives to reveal to us so much of thyself.

We thank thee for men and women in our own time not less gifted, nor less faithful, who also speak as thou inspirest them, telling words of truth and of justice and of love, and by street- side, and in lane, and house, and everywhere, pursuing the calm and beautiful gospel of their lives, wherein they publish humanity to all mankind.

We thank thee for all that has come to us from past times and our own day. We bless thee for the special gifts thou givest to us in our several families and homes and hearts. We thank thee for the new-born life we rejoice in, and for other lives that are spared, long familiar to our eyes and our heart.

We bless thee for the various seasons of life, thanking thee for the little bud of infancy, and for the great handsome flower of manly and womanly life, fragrant with hope, and prophetic in its beauty. And not less do we thank thee for the ripened fruit of humanity; yea, we bless thee for venerable age, crowned with silver, and rich with the recollections and the beatitudes of many deeds