Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/267

254 and improve myself, not Thee, Thou Unchangeable, who art perfect from the beginning. Then I mingle my soul with the Infinite Presence. I am ashamed of my wickedness, my cowardice, sloth, fear. New strength comes into me of its own accord, as the sunlight to these flowers which open their little cups. Then I find that he that goeth forth even weeping, bearing this precious seed of prayer, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, and bring his sheaves with him!

This revival will not come all at once, as the lightning shineth from the east to the west, but as the morning comes, little by little: so will it be welcomed too. As that material day-spring from on high comes grateful to grass and trees, to men and women, so will this revival come upon our hearts, as natural consequence of such prayer and manly toil—our toilsome prayer, our prayerful toil. It will come as the agriculture of New England cam—one little field made ready this year, another next—the Indian corn growing triumphant amid the black stumps of the oaken forest which the axe had hewn down and the fire had swept away, the savage looking grimly on, no longer meditating war, but yet wondering at the apples which litter the ground with the ruddy loveliness of unwonted, unexpected health. It is coming already:—the peace-men, the temperance-men, anti-slavery men, educational men, the men of science, poetic men, the reform-men, men of commerce, manufactures, agriculture—every good man, every good woman—all these are helps to it, each digging up and planting his little plot of ground. Good ministers of all denominations—Catholic, Protestant, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Methodist, Baptist, Quaker, Universalist, Spiritualist,—there are thousands of them, are toiling after that great end, even though they know it not. Many have done something, some much,—one man more than any. His name is not honoured in the churches—of course not! Was Jesus, in the Temple? They cast him out even from the synagogue. There is a scholarly man in New England gifted with such genius for literature as no other American has ever shown. He has large power of intuitive perception of the beautiful, the true, the just, the good, the holy; cultivated singularly well, having the poetic power of pictured speech, not less, that the inward eye to see.