Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/362

116 beauty to means of human growth, we thank thee, and for this great power which thou givest us, feeding alike on truth and beauty, gaining the victory over material things, making the ground, the winds and the waters, the stars and the very fire of heaven, to serve our various needs. We thank thee for this great moral power, wherebyour conscience comes into accord with thine, and we know thy justice and make it our human rule of conduct, making ourselves useful to each other and acceptable to thee.

We thank thee for these generous affections which, un- selfish, reach out their arms to father and mother, to kinsfolk and friend, to lover and beloved, husband and wife, parent and child, and all the great relationships wherewith the world is full. We thank thee for the greatening power of charity, which transcends the bounds of family and kindred blood, of acquaintance and congenial soul, and goes for ever loving on, careful for those who are cast down, and seeking to bless with light those who are sitting benighted in the corners of the earth, to strike the fetters from the slave, to give knowledge to the ignorant, and to teach virtue and piety to men that are bound together in their sins, in nowise able to lift themselves up.

Father, we thank thee that we know thee ; we bless thee for this great religious faculty, whereby we turn this world of matter and the world of soul into one great accordant psalm, and even the voices of the beasts that perish come to our ears full of religious melody, reminding us of thy providence, which is kind and large not only to angels and to men, but to the meanest thing which serves thy purpose in the world.

Father, we thank thee for that transcendent world, em- bracing the earth of matter and the humanity of men, that world of spirits which thou thyself inhabitest, and whereunto thou drawest thy children from year to year, as thine angel strikes off the fetters of our flesh, and clothes us with immortality. Father, we thank thee for our dear ones who have gone before us, where the mortal eye sees them not, but where the human heart knows it is well with the child, and that thou stillest the agonies of father, husband, wife or lover, with thy sweet beneficence, and art kind and merciful alike to thy saint and thy sinner. We thank thee for that other world which draws our eyes through our