Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/44

28 communion with the Infinite God ; for I believe that Ho inspires men, not only through the conscience, the affections, and the soul, but also through the intellect—through the reason, imagination, and understanding. But he does this, not arbitrarily, miraculously, against the nature of the mind, but by a mode of operation as constant as the gravitation of planets or the chemical attraction of atoms of metal. Yet I do not find that He inspires thoughtless men with truth, more than malicious men with love. Tell me God inspired the Hebrew saints with wisdom, filled the vast urns of Moses and of Jesus; I believe it, but not Hebrew saints alone. The Grecian saints, the saints of Rome, of Germany, of France, of either England, Old or New; all the sons of men hang on the breasts of Heaven, and draw inspiration from Him "in whom we live and move and have our being." Intellectual inspiration comes in the form of truth, but the income from God is proportionate to the wisdom which seeks and so receives. A mind small as a thimble may be filled full thereof, but will it receive as much as a mind whose ocean-bosom is thirsty for a whole heaven of truth? Bring larger intellect, and you have the more. A drop would overflow a hollow cherry-stone, while whole Mediterranean Seas fill but a fraction of the Atlantic's mighty deep. There still is truth in the sweet heaven, near and waiting for mankind. A man of little mind can only take in the contents of his primer; he should not censure his neighbour whose encyclopedic head dines on the science of mankind, and still wanders crying for lack of meat.

How mankind loves the truth! We will not let it go;

so native is it to the mind of man. Look on the power of a special truth, a great idea; view it merely as a force in the world of men. At first, nothing seems so impotent. It has no hands nor feet; how can it go alone? It seems as if the censor of the press could blot it out for ever. It flatters no man, offers to serve no personal and private interest and then forbear its work, will be no man's slave. It seems ready to perish; surely it will give up the ghost