Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/266

Rh two thousand Catholic go down on their knees together. In 1620, our Puritan fathers wished to have all New England ploughed up and made fit for farms. Suppose they had gone down on their knees and asked God to do it ? Not a furrow would have been turned to-day, not a ploughshare forged or cast. A few weeks ago, London men wanted the Grqat Eastern launched. What if all the English clergy, Episcopal, Dissenters, had put up prayer's in the meetinghouses petitioning God to do this work, and the Queen and Parliament had knelt down on their knees in supplication, saying,—"Have mercy upon us, O Lord! miserable offenders. There is no health in us. We beseech Thee to launch her, good Lord!" They might have prayed till they were black in the face, the vessel would not stir an inch. But they used the natural means God gave them. The thinkers prayed great scientific thoughts—they prayed steam-engines and hydraulic-rams. The labourers prayed work—they prayed with levers, and windlasses, and coal-fire. With sore toil, the hydraulic-rams sweat through their iron skin, twelve inches thick ; and the launch took place. Mind gave his right arm to Matter, and Miss Leviathan, on her marriage day, coy, timid, reluctant, walked with him to the water, and they became one. Ere long they will take a whole town's population, a wealth of merchandise, and swim the Atlantic together, breast to breast, stroke after stroke, three thousand miles in a week!

Prayer, the devout helpmeet of work, is the brave man's encouragement, when struggling after perfection. But prayer as a substitute for work—not a wife, to glad the toil and halve the rest, but a witch, to do by magic miracle—that is blasphemy against the true God — sterile and contemptible. Ministers talk of a "revival of religion in answer to prayer!" It will no more come than the submarine telegraph from Europe to America. It is the effectual fervent work of a righteous man that availeth much—his headwork and hand-work. Gossiping before God, tattling mere words, asking him to do my duty, that is not prayer. I also believe in prayer from the innermost of my heart, else must I renounce my manhood and the Godhood above and about me. I also believe in prayer. It is the upspringing of my soul to meet the Eternal, and thereby I seek to alter