Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/176

Rh Lord. When the elder brother comes near the house of the Infinite God, he hears the music and dancing, and is not wroth, but falls on his brother's neck and kisses him, and finds himself in the finding of the lost, and lives anew in the living of the dead.

I know the delight of being loved, for I have sunned myself in the affection of father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and relative; and if anybody knows the beauty and blessedness of friendship, I think that I do, for I have sounded its depths and tasted its joy. But the love that I have received from mortal men, from father and mother, wife, and relative, and friend—it is but little, nay, it is nothing, compared to the still and calm delight which I feel from consciousness of being loved by the Infinite God. My mortal friends love me, perhaps, through their weakness; they are not good enough to love a better man; God loves me for His strength, for His infinity. They are exclusive, perhaps loving others the less from loving me the more; but God includes all, the heathen, the Hebrew, the Mahometan, the atheist, and the Christian; nay, Cain, Iscariot, the kidnapper, are all folded in the arms of the Infinite Mother, who will not suffer absolute evil to come to the least or the worst of these, but so tempers the mechanism of humanity that all shall come to the table of blessedness at last! Death itself is no limit. God's love is eternal also, providing retribution for all I do; but pain is medicine. What is not delight is discipline, the avenue to nobler joy.

Feeling a consciousness of this Divine love for me, knowing that it is joined with infinite power, wisdom, justice, and holiness, that it is perfect Cause to plan and perfect Providence to administer—why, all the sorrows and sufferings of life, how easily they are borne! I writhe in mortal agony, but my Father's arms are round me—the agony is still. I am not recognized by the world, my little merit is not acknowledged, not appreciated, it is so small; but God recognizes and appreciates it, and smiles down on the little good I do, and it is not lost. Nobody feels for me or with me; but the great God sympathizes with me. I have His infinite power and His infinite love heeding me every moment. I am tormented by the loss of friends—father, mother, wife, child; my dearest of the