Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/310

Rh body takes an interest in yon,—that yon have a friend ill the world!'

"'Comes of nothing,’ does it?' ’No plan in the world, no thought,’ is there? 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,’—that is, because he is a fool. He must be a fool to think so, a natural born fool, a fool in four letters. Well, I pity him; so does God. Poor fool, he could not help thinking so. I do not believe in Dr Banbaby's God,—a great, ugly devil, sending Elias and two bears—miraculous she-bears—to kill, and ’carry off to hell,’ forty-two babies who laughed at his bald head. I don't believe in such a devilish God as that! it is worse than the fool's no-God. But there is Wisdom and Power somewhere! Think of all this,—sermon on the mount, sermon on the hill, sermon in the pond, in the oak tree—a dear good sermon that is,—sermon in the wild-rose and the lily! Yes, that-swallow twitters away a whole one Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm of praise to God. How all Nature breaks forth into voice as soon as you listen ! I don't blame her; I would if I could. Sing away there, fire-hang-bird! buzz away there, humble bee in the pumpkin blossom! there is an Infinite Goodness somewhere! You don't know it, but you grow out of it, all of you! The world itself is but one little moss, drinking from the cup God holds in his hand. Ah me! if the Rev. Banbaby would come out here and read God's fresh handwriting, and not blear his eyes so continually over the black print of John Calvin and the Synod of Dort; if he would study St Nature only half as much as St Revelation, he would never have preached that sermon on the 'Damnation of the Unbaptized,' and declared that all such were lost, and especially infants, on whom God visits the sins of their parents for ever and ever,—which he did let fly on the Sunday after poor widow Faithful lost her only child, a dear little boy of fifteen months. No wonder she went crazy the next week, and I took her to Worcester!

"This must be the meaning of it all,—it is a Revelation op God's Love. That is what it is. Consider the lilies of the pond,—they all teach this: If God so clothe the lilies in brother Jacob's mill-pond, watch over them, ripen their seed thus curiously under water, sow it there, and keep the race as lasting as the stars, will He not much rather