Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/269

256 and perfect love. Knowing Him, you cannot fail to love with your understanding and your heart, to love His world about us, within us, and all His laws. The warmth and moisture of the ground, they come out in the grass and in the trees, in the beauty and the fragrance of these violets, in this rose which, "beside his sweetness, is a cure;" and so your and my piety must blossom in our service of God with every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit—the normal use of every power and opportunity we have, Sundays, Mondays, all time.

Then daily work shall be a gospel, life our continual transfiguration to a nobler growth. We shall bless our town, our nation, our age, our race. When we die, we shall leave the world better because we have lived, with more welfare now, fitter for progress hereafter. We shall bear away with us the triumphant result of every trial, every duty, every effort, every tear, every prayer, every suffering, nay, of each longing aspiration after excellence. And there and then the motherly hand of God shall be reached out over us, and we shall hear the blessed word—"Come, my beloved, thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into thy Mother's joy!"