The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 02/Theodore Parker's Prayers/Prayer 33

by Theodore Parker

XXXIII.

JUNE 20, 1858.

O thou Infinite Presence, who occupiest all space and all time with thy perfections, we flee unto thee, and would feel for a moment the consciousness of thee, and in the light of thy countenance would we spread out our life before thee, and so pay thee worship in our prayer that we may give thee manly and womanly service all our days, with continual cleanness of hands and gladness of heart. We know that thou needest no prayer from our lips or our hearts, but in our feebleness and dependence upon thee, we love to join ourselves for a moment, in our silent or our spoken prayer, with thee, who art our Father and our Mother, that we may gird up our loins and strengthen our spirit before thee.

O Lord, who givest to mankind liberally, and upbraidest not, we thank thee for the blessings thou bestowest from day to day. We thank thee for this material world, now clad in its garment of Northern beauty, for the great sun which all day pours down his light upon the waiting and the grateful world, and for the earth underneath our feet. We bless thee for the green luxuriance which fills up all the valleys and covers all the hills, and hangs in its leafy splendour from every tree. We bless thee for the grass, bread for the cattle, its harvest of use spread everywhere, and for the various beauty which here and there spangles all useful things which thine eye looks down upon. We thank thee for the grain which is the food of man, and for the green fruit hanging pendent on many a bough which waves in the summer wind, its wave- offering unto thee. We thank thee that all night long, when our eyes are closed, above our head there is another world of beauty, where star speaketh unto star, and though there be no voice nor language, yet thy great spirit therein watches alike over the sleeping and the wakeful world.

Father, we thank thee for this great human world which thou hast created. We bless thee for the glorious nature which thou hast given us, above the material things and above the beasts who feed thereon, which thou hast made also subservient unto us. We thank thee for the vast talents, so various and so fair, which thou hast lodged in these earthen vessels of our bodies. We bless thee for our vast capacity for improvement in every noblest thing, and that thou hast so made the world that while we seek the daily bread for our body which perishes in the using, we gain also by thy sweet providence that bread of life which groweth not old, and strengthens our soul for ever and ever.

We thank thee for the joys thou givest us here on earth, for the blessing which comes as the result of our. daily toil, which feeds our mouths, and clothes our bodies, and houses and heals us in the world where shelter and medicine are kind to our mortal flesh. We thank thee for the education which comes from the process of all honest work, the humblest and the highest. We bless thee for the moral sense, telling us of that star of right which shines for ever in thine heaven, and sheds down the light of thine unchanging law, even in the darkness of our folly and our sin. We bless thee for this great human heart by which we live, making us dear to kinsfolk and acquaintance, to friend and relation, joining the lover and beloved, wife and husband, child and parent, in sweet alliances of gentleness and love. Father, we thank thee for this soul of ours, which hungers and thirsts after thee, and will not be fed save with thy truth, thy justice, and thy love.

We bless thee for the glorious history which thou hast given to humankind; that from the wild babyhood wherein thou createdst man at first, thou hast led us up thus far, through devious ways to us not understood, but known to be ordered by thee, tending to that grand destination which thou appointest for all mankind. We thank thee for the great prophets who have gone before us in every land and in every age, gifted with genius in their nature, and inspired from thee through the noble use of the talents thou gavest them. We thank thee for the truths they taught, for the justice they showed, for the love to men which was their faith and their daily life, and the piety wherein they walked and were strengthened and made glad. We bless thee for the ways of the world which were made smooth by the toil of these great men, and that we can walk serene on paths once slippery with their blood and now monumented with their memorial bones. O Lord, we thank thee for our noble brother who in many generations gone by brought so much of truth to darkling man, showed so much of justice, and lived so much of philanthropy to men and of piety to thee.

Our Father, while we thank thee for the material and the human world, we bless thee also for that divine world which transcends them both. We thank thee for that heaven, the abode of spirits disembodied from the earth, and we lift up our eyes towards those who have gone before us, our fathers, or our children, husband or wife, kinsfolk and friends, and we thank thee that we know that they are all safe with thee, thy fatherly arms around them, and thy motherly eye giving them thy blessing.

We thank thee for thyself, who fillest that world and also this globe of matter and this sphere of man with thy transcendent presence. We bless thee for thine almighty power, thine all-knowing wisdom, thine all-righteous justice, and thine all-blessing love, which watches over and saves every son and daughter of mankind. In the midst of things which we do not understand, we bless thee that we are sure of thee, and have towards thee that perfect love which casts out every fear.

We pray thee that in our soul there may be such depth of piety and such serene and tranquil trust in thee, that in our period of passion we shall tame every lust that wars against the soul, making it our servant, not our master; and in manhood's more dangerous day may we tame likewise the power of ambition, and make that our servant, to run before us and prepare the way where our laborious justice, our truth-loving wisdom, our philanthropy and our morality, with generous feet, shall tread triumphant in their journey on. May we use this world of matter to build up the being that we are to a nobler stature of strength and of beauty; and the great powers which thou hast given us, of mind, of conscience, of heart, and of soul, may we educate and culture them till we attain the measure of the stature of a perfect man, and have passed from glory to glory, till thy truth is our thought, and thy justice our will, and thy loving-kindness is the feeling of our heart, and thine own holiness of integrity is our daily life. Thus may thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.