# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 02/Ten Sermons of Religion/Sermon 10

X.
OF COMMUNION WITH GOD.
THE COMMUNION OP THE HOLY GHOST BE WITH YOU ALL. 2 Cor. xiii. 14.
Simeon the Stylite lived on the top of the pillar at Antioch for seven-and-thirty years, for the sake of being nearer to God and holding communion with Him. Some men shut themselves up in convents and nunneries under vows of perpetual asceticism, thinking that God will come into the soul the easier if the flesh be worn thin, the body looped and windowed with bad usage and unnatural hard fare. All the monasteries are designed to produce communion with God. "He dwells," say the priests, "not in the broad way and the green, but in the stillness of the ​ cloister." All the churches in Christendom are built to promote access to Him in various forms. "This is the gate of heaven," says the priest of his church. All the ritual services are for this end,—to draw God down to men, or draw men up to God; or to appease His "wrath." So also are the mosques of the Mahometans, the synagogues of the Jews, and all the temples of the world. The Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon at Athens, St Peter's at Rome, the Mormon temple at Nauvoo,—all are but the arms of man artificially lengthened and reached out to grasp the Holy Ghost, enfold it to the human heart, and commune with it soul to soul. The little hymn which a mother teaches her child, cradled on her knee, the solemn litany which England pays her thousand priests to chant each day in every cathedral of the land,—all are for the same end, to promote communion with God. For this the Quaker sits silent in his unadorned meeting-house waiting for the Spirit, lying low in the hand of God to receive His inspiration. For this you and I lift up our hearts in silent or unspoken prayer. The petition for this communion is common to the enlightened of all mankind. It may ascend equally from Catholic or Quaker, from bond and free, from Hebrew, Buddhist, Christian, Mahometan,—from all who have any considerable growth of soul.
I love to look at common life—business and politics—from the stand-point of religion, and hence am thought to be hard upon the sins of the State and the sins of business, trying all things by the higher law of God. But if religion is good for anything, it is as a rule of conduct for daily life, in the business of the individual and the business of the nation. It is poor policy and bad business that cannot bear to be looked at in the light that lighteneth every man, and tried by the divine measure of all things. It is a poor clock that will not keep the time of the universe.
I love to look at philosophy—science and metaphysics—from the stand-point of religion, and see how the conclusions of the intellect square with the natural instincts of the heart and soul. Then I love to change places, and look at religion and all spontaneous instincts of the soul, with the eye of the intellect, from the stand-point of philo​ sophy. Hence I am thought to be hard upon the Church; amiable enough toward natural, human religion, but cruel toward revealed, divine theology. Yet if the intellect is good for anything, it is good to try the foundations of religion with. The mind is the eye of consciousness. It is a poor doctrine that cannot bear to be looked at in the dry light of reason. Let us look hard and dry at this notion of communion with God, and by reason severely ascertain if there be such a thing; what it is; how it is to be had; and what comes thereof.
There must be such a thing as communion between God and man. I mean, deffining that provisionally, there must be a giving on God's part, and a taking on man's part. To state the matter thus is to make it evident,—since it follows from the nature of God; for from the necessity of his nature the Infinite Being must create and preserve the finite, and to the finite must, in its forms, give and communicate of his own kind. It is according to the infinite nature of God to do so; as according to the finite nature of light to shine, of fire to burn, of water to wet. It follows as well from the nature of man as finite and derivative. From the necessity of his nature, he must receive existence and the means of continuance. He must get all his primitive power, which he starts with, and all his materials for secondary and automatic growth, from the Primitive and Infinite Source. The mode of man's finite being is of necessity a receiving; of God's infinite being, of necessity a giving. You cannot conceive of any finite thing existing without God, the Infinite basis and ground thereof ; nor of God existing without something. God is the necessary logical condition of a world, its necessitating cause; a world, the necessary logical condition of God, his necessitated consequence. Communion between the two is a mutual necessity of nature, on God's part and on man's part. I mean it is according to the infinite perfection of God's nature to create, and so objectify Himself, and then preserve and bless whatever He creates. So by His nature He creates, preserves, and gives. And it is according to the finite nature of man to take. So by his nature, soon as created, he depends and receives, and is preserved only by receiving from the Infinite Source.
That is the conclusion of modern metaphysical science. ​ The stream of philosophy runs down from Aristotle to Hegel and Hickok, and breaks off with this conclusion ; and I see not how it can be gainsaid. The statements are apodictic, self-evident at every step.
All that is painfully abstract; let me make it plainer if I can,—at least shoot one shaft more at the same mark from the other side. You start with yourself, with no- thing but yourself. You are conscious of yourself ; not of yourself perhaps as Substance, surely as Power to be, to do, to suffer. But you are conscious of yourself not as self-originated at all, or as self-sustained alone; only as dependent,—first for existence, ever since for support.
You take the primary ideas of consciousness which are inseparable from it, the atoms of self-consciousness ; amongst them you find the ideas of God. Carefully exa- mined by the scrutinizing intellect, it is the idea of God as Infinite,—perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, holy,—absolute being, with no limitation. It is this which made you, made all; sustains you, sustains all; made your body, not by a single act, but by a series of acts extending over millions of years,—for man's body is the resultant of all created things ; made your spirit,—your mind, your conscience, your affections, your soul, your will; appointed for each its natural mode of action; set each at its several aim. Self-consciousness leads you to consciousness of God; at last to consciousness of Infinite God. He is the Primitive, whence you are the derivative. You must receive, or you could not be a finite man; and He must give, or He could not be the Infinite God. Hence the communion is unavoidable, an ontological fact.
God must be omnipresent in space. There can be no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no spot on an insect's wing, no little cell of life which the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss, and brings to light, but God is there, in the mote that peoples the sunbeams, in that spot on the insect's wing, in that cell of life the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss.
God must be also omnipresent in time. There is no second of time elapsing now, there has been none millions of years ago, before the oldest stars began to burn, but God was in that second of time. ​ Follow the eye of the great space-penetrating telescope at Cambridge into the vast halls of creation, to the furthest nebulous spot seen in Orion's belt,—a spot whose bigness no natural mind can adequately conceive,—and God is there. Follow the eye of the great sharply denning microscope at Berlin into some corner of creation, to that little dot, one of many millions that people an inch of stone, once animate with swarming life, a spot too small for mortal mind adequately to conceive,—and God is there.
Get you a metaphysic microscope of time to divide a second into its billionth part; God is in that. Get you a metaphysic telescope of time, to go back in millenniums as the glass in miles, and multiply the duration of a solar system by itself to get an immensity of time,—still God is there, in each elapsing second of that millennial stream of centuries; His Here conterminous with the all of space, His Now coeval with the all of time.
Through all this space, in all this time, His Being extends, "spreads undivided, operates unspent;" God in all His infinity, — perfectly powerful, perfectly wise, perfectly just, perfectly loving and holy. His being is an infinite activity, a creating, and so a giving of Himself to the world. The world's being is a becoming, a being created and continued. This is so in the nebula of Orion's belt, and in the seed-sporule of the smallest moss. It is so now, and was the same millions of millenniums ago.
All this is philosophy, the unavoidable conclusion of the human mind. It is not the opinion of Coleridge and Kant, but their science; not what they guess, but what they know.
In virtue of this immanence of God in matter, we say the world is a revelation of God ; its existence a show of His. Some good books picture to us the shows of things, and report in print the whisper of God which men have heard in the material world. They say that God is a good optician,—for the eye is a telescope and a miscroscope, the two in one; that He is a good chemist also, ordering all things "by measure and number and weight ; M that He is a good mechanic,—for the machinery of the world, old as it is, is yet "constructed after the most approved principles of modern science." All that is true, but the finite ​ mechanic is not in his work; he wakes it and then with- draws. God is in His work,—
"As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;"
"Acts not by partial, but by general laws."
All nature works from within; the force that animates it is in every part. It was objected to Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy, that it makes the world all mechanism, which goes without external help, and so is a universe without a God; men thinking that He could not work at all in the world-machine, unless they saw the Great Hand on the crank now and then, or felt the jar of miraculous interposition when some comet swept along the sky. The objection was not just, for the manifold action of the universe is only the Infinite God's mode of operation. Newton merely showed the mode of operation,—that it was constant and wonderful, not changing and miraculous; and so described a higher mode of operation than those men could fathom, or even reverence.
These things being so, all material things that are must needs be in communion with God; their creation was their first passive act of communion; their existence, a continual act of communion. As God is infinite, nothing can be without Him, nothing without communion with Him. The stone I sit on is in communion with God ; the pencil I write with; the gray field-fly reposing in the sun- shine at my foot. Let God withdraw from the space occupied by the stone, the pencil, and fly, they cease to be. Let Him withdraw any quality of his nature therefrom, and they must cease to be. All must partake of Him, immanent in each and yet transcending all.
In this communion these and all things receive after their kind, according to their degree of being and the mode thereof. The mineral, the vegetable, and the animal represent three modes of being, three degrees of existence ; and hence so many modes and degrees of dependence on God and of communion with Him. They are, they grow, they move and live, in Him, and by means of Him, and only so. But none of these are conscious of this communion. In that threefold form of being there is no consciousness of God ; they know nothing of their dependence and their communion. The water-fowl, in the long ​ pilgrimage of many a thousand miles, knows naught of Him who teaches its way
"Along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost."
To the dog, man stands for God or devil. The "half-reasoning elephant" knows nobody and is conscious of nothing higher than his keeper, who rides upon his neck, pulling his ears with curved hook. All these are ignorant of God.
We come to man. Here he is, a body and a spirit. The vegetable is matter, and something more; the animal is vegetable also, and something more; man is animal likewise, and something more. So far as I am matter, a vegetable, an animal,—and I am each in part,—I have the appropriate communion of the vegetable, the mineral, the animal world. My body, this hand, for example, is subject to statical, dynamical, and vital laws. God is in this hand; without his infinite existence, its finite existence could not be. It is a hand only by its unconscious communion with Him. It wills nothing; it knows nothing; yet all day long, and all the night, each monad thereof retains all the primary statical and dynamical qualities of matter; continually the blood runs through its arteries and veins, mysteriously forming this complicated and amazing work. Should God withdraw, it were a hand no more; the blood would cease to flow in vein and artery; no monad would retain its primary dynamical and static powers; each atom would cease to be.
All these things, the stone, the pencil, and the fly and hand, are but passive and unconscious communicants of God; they are bare pipes alone into which His omnipotence flows. Yes, they are poor, brute things, which know Him not, nor cannot ever know. The stone and pencil know not themselves; this marvellous hand knows naught; and the fly never says, reasoning with itself, "Lo, here am I, an individual and a conscious thing sucking the bosom of the world." It never separates the Not-me and the Me. But I am conscious; I know myself, and through myself know God. I am a mind to think, a conscience to perceive the just and right; I am a heart to love, a soul ​ to know of God. For communion with my God I have other faculties than what He gives to stone and pencil, hand and fly.
Put together all these things which are not body, and call them Spirit : this spirit as a whole is dependent on God, for creation first, and for existence ever since; it lives only by communion with Him. So far as I am a body, I obviously depend on God, and am no more self- created and self-sufficing than the pencil or the fly. So far as I am a, spirit, I depend equally on Him. Should God withdraw Himself or any of His qualities from my mind, I could not think; from conscience, I should know nothing of the right; from the heart, there could be no love ; from the soul, then there could be no holiness, no faith in Him that made it. Thus the very existence of the spirit is a dependence on God, and so far a communion with Him.
I cannot wholly separate my spirit from this communion; for that would be destruction of the spirit, annihilation, which is in no man's power. Only the Infinite can create or annihilate an atom of matter or a monad of spirit. There is a certain amount of communion of the spirit with God, which is not conscious ; that lies quite beyond my control. I "break into the bloody house of life," and my spirit rushes out of the body, and while the static and dynamic laws of nature reassume their sway over my material husk, rechanging it to dust, still I am, I depend, and so involuntarily commune with God. Even the popular theology admits this truth, for it teaches that the living wicked still commune with God through pain and wandering and many a loss; and that the wicked dead commune with Him through hell against their will, as with their will the heavenly saints through heavenly joy.
I cannot end this communion with my God; but I can increase it, greaten it largely, if I will. The more I live my higher normal life, the more do I commune with God. If I live only as mere body, I have only corporeal and unconscious communion, as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal, no more. As children, we all begin as low as this. The child unborn or newly born has no self consciousness, knows nothing of its dependence, its spontaneous communion with its God, whereon by laws it depends for being and continuance. As we outgrow our babyhood we are ​ conscious of ourselves, distinguish, the Me and the Not-me, and learn at length of God.
I live as spirit, I have spiritual communion with God. Depend on Him I must j when I become self-conscious, I feel that dependence, and know of this communion, where- by I receive from Him.
The quantity of my receipt is largely under my control. As I will, I can have less or more. I cultivate my mind, greatening its quantity by all its growth I have so much more communion with my Father; each truth I get is a point common to Him and me. I cultivate my conscience, increasing my moral sense; each atom of justice that I get is another point common with the Deity. So I cultivate and enlarge my affections; each grain of love—philanthropic or but friendly—is a new point common to me and God. Then, too, I cultivate and magnify my soul, greatening my sense of holiness, by fidelity to all my nature; and all that I thus acquire is a new point I hold in common with the Infinite. I earnestly desire His truth, His justice, His holiness and love, and He communicates the more. Thus I have a fourfold voluntary consciousness of God through, my mind and conscience, heart and soul; know Him as the absolutely true and just and amiable and holy; and thereby have a fourfold voluntary communion with my God. He gives of his infinite kind; I receive in my finite mode, taking according to my capacity to receive.
I may diminish the quantity of this voluntary communion. For it is as possible to stint the spirit of its God, as to starve the body of its food; only not to the final degree,—to destruction of the spirit. This fact is well known. You would not say that Judas had so much and so complete communion with God as Jesus had. And if Jesus had yielded to the temptation in the story, all would declare that for the time he must diminish the income of God upon his soul. For unfaithfulness in any part lessens the quantity and mars the quality of our communion with the Infinite.
In most various ways men may enlarge the power to communicate with God ; complete and normal life is the universal instrument thereof. Here is a geologist chipping the stones, or studying the earthquake-waves; here a ​ metaphysician chipping the human mind, studying its curious laws,—psychology, logic, ontology; here is a merchant, a mechanic, a poet, each diligently using his intellectual gift; and as they acquire the power to think, by so much more do they hold intellectual communion with the thought of God, their finite mind communing with the Infinite. My active power of understanding, imagination, reason, is the measure of my intellectual communion with Him.
A man strives to know the everlasting right, to keep a conscience void of all offence; his inward eye is pure and single; all is true to the Eternal Right. His moral powers continually expand, and by so much more does he hold communion with his God. As far as it can see, his finite conscience reads in the book the Eternal Right of God. A man's power of conscience is the measure of his moral communion with the Infinite.
I repress my animal self-love, I learn to be well-tempered, disinterested, benevolent, friendly to a few, and philanthropic unto all; my heart is ten times greater than ten years ago. To him that hath shall be given according to the quantity and quality of what he has, and I communicate with God so much the more. The greatness of my heart is the measure of my affectional communion with Him.
I cultivate the religious faculty within me, keeping my soul as active as my sense; I quicken my consciousness of the dear God; I learn to reverence and trust and love, seeking to keep his every rule of conduct for my sense and soul; I make my soul some ten times larger than it was, and just as I enhance its quantity and quality, so much the more do I religiously commune with God. The power of my religious sense is the measure of my communion with my Father. I feed on this, and all the more I take, the more I grow, and still the more I need.
In all this there is nothing miraculous, nothing mysterious, nothing strange. From his mother's breast it is the largest child that takes the most.
At first a man's spiritual communion is very little, is most exceeding small; but in normal life it becomes more and more continually. Some of you, grown men, can doubtless remember your religious experience when you were children. A very little manna was food enough for ​ your baby-soul. But your character grew more and more, your intellectual, moral, and religious life continually became greater and greater; when you needed much, you had no lack, when little, there seemed nothing over; demand and supply are still commensurate. Nothing is more under our control than the amount of this voluntary communion with God.
"Misfortunes, do the best we can,
Will come to great and small."
We cannot help that, but we can progressively enlarge the amount of inspiration we receive from Heaven, spite of the disappointments and sorrows of life ; nay, by means thereof.
"Thy home is with the humble, Lord!
The simple are Thy rest;
Thy lodging is in childlike hearts,
Thou makest there Thy nest."
Sometimes a man makes a conscious and serious effort to receive and enlarge this communion. He looks over his daily life; his eye runs back to childhood, and takes in all the main facts of his outward and inward history. He sees much to mend, something also to approve. Here he erred through passion, there sinned by ambition; the desire from within, leagued with opportunity from without, making temptation too strong for him. He is penitent for the sin that was voluntary, or for the heedlessness whereby he went astray,—sorrowful at his defeat. But he remembers the manly part of him, and with new resolution braces himself for new trials. He thinks of the powers that lie unused in his own nature. He looks out at the examples of lofty men, his soul is stirred to its deeper depths. A new image of beauty rises, living from that troubled sea, and the Ideal of human loveliness is folded in his arms. "This fair Ideal," says he, "shall be mine. I also will be as whole and beautiful. Ah, me! how can I ever get such lovely life?" Then he thinks of the Eternal Wisdom, the Eternal Justice, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Holiness, which surrounds him, and now fills up his consciousness, waiting to bless. He reaches out his arms towards that Infinite Motherliness which created him at first and preserved him ever since; which surpassed when he fell ​ short, furnishing the great plan of his life and the world's life, and is of all things perfect Cause and Providence. Then, deeply roused in every part, he communicates with the Infinite Mind and Conscience, Heart and Soul. He is made calmer by the thought of the immense tranquillity which enfolds the nervous world in its all-embracing, silent arms. He is comforted by the motherly aspect of that Infinite Eye, which never slumbers in its watch over the suffering of each great and every little thing, converting it all to good. He is elevated to confidence in himself, when he feels so strong in the never-ending love which makes, sustains, and guides the world of matter, beasts, and men; makes from perfect motives, sustains with perfect providence, and guides by perfect love to never-ending bliss. Yea, the tranquillity, pity, love, of the Infinite Mother enters into his soul, and he is tranquil, soothed, and strong, once more. He has held communion with his God, and the Divine has given of the Deity's own kind. His artistic fancy and his plastic hand have found an Apollo in that, pliant human block.
That is a prayer. I paint the process out in words,— they are not my prayer itself, only the cradle of my blessed heavenly babe. I paint it not in words,—it is still my prayer, not less the aspiration of my upward-flying soul. I carry my child cradled only in my arms.
I have this experience in my common and daily life, with no unusual grief to stir, or joy to quicken, or penitence to sting me into deep emotion: then my prayer is only a border round my daily life, to keep the web from ravelling away through constant use and wear; or else a fringe of heaven, whereby I beautify my common consciousness and daily work.
But there strikes for me a greater hour; some new joy binds me to this, or puts another generation into my arms; another heart sheds its life into my own; some great sorrow sends me in upon myself and God; out of the flower of self-indulgence the bee of remorse stings me into agony. And then I rise from out my common consciousness, and take a higher, wider flight into the vast paradise of God, and come back laden from the new and honeyed fields wherein I have a newer and fresher life and sweeter communings with loftier loveliness than I had known be​ fore. Thus does the man, that will, hold commune with his Father, face to face, and get great income from the Soul of all.
In all this there is nothing miraculous; there has been no change on God's part, but a great change on man's. We have received what He is universally giving. So in winter it is clear and cold, the winds are silent, clouds gather over the city's face, and all is still. How cold it is! In a few hours the warmth steals out from the central fire,—the earth's domestic, household hearth; the clouds confine it in, those airy walls, that it flee not off, nor spread to boundless space; the frost becomes the less intense, and men are gladdened with the milder day. So, when magnetic bars in time have lost their force, men hang them up in the line of the meridian, and the great loadstone, the earth from her own breast, restores their faded magnetism. Thus is it that human souls communicate with the great central Fire and Light of all the world, the loadstone of the universe, and thus recruit, grow young again, and so are blessed and strong.
There may be a daily, conscious communion with God, marked by reverence, gratitude, aspiration, trust, and love; it will not be the highest prayer.
"’T is the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights that the soul is competent to gain."
And the highest prayer is no common event in a man's life. Ecstasy, rapture, great delight in prayer, or great increase thereby,—they are the rarest things in the life of any man. They should be rare. The tree blossoms but once a year; blooms for a week, and then fulfils and matures its fruit in the long months of summer and of harvest-time,—fruit for a season, and seed for many an age. The sun is but a moment at meridian. Jesus had his temptation but once, but once his agony,—the two foci round which his beauteous ellipse was drawn. The intensest consciousness of friendship does not last long. They say men have but once the ecstasy of love; human nature could not bear such a continual strain. So all the blossomings of rapture must needs be short. The youthful ecstasy of love leads man and maid by moonlight up the steep, sheer cliffs of life, "while all below, the world in mist lies lost;" then, in the daylight of marriage they ​ walk serenely on, along the high table-land of mortal life, and though continually greatening their connubial love and joy, it is without the early ecstasy.
Men sometimes seek to have their daily prayer high and ecstatic as their highest hour and walk with God; it cannot be; it should not be. Some shut themselves up in convents to make religion their business,—all their life; to make an act of prayer their only act. They always fail; their religion dwindles into ritual service, and no more; their act of prayer is only kneeling with the knees and talking talk with windy tongues. A Methodist, in great ecstasy of penitence or fear, becomes a member of a church. He all at once is filled with rapturous delight; religious joy blossoms in his face, and glitters in his eye. How glad is the converted man!
"Then when he kneels to meditate,
Sweet thoughts come o'er his soul,
Countless, and bright, and beautiful,
Beyond his own control."
But by and by his rapture dies away, and he is astonished that he has no such ecstasy as before. He thinks that he has "fallen from grace," has "grieved away" the Holy Ghost, and tries by artificial excitement to bring back what will not come without a new occasion. Certain religious convictions once made my heart spring in my bosom. Now it is not so. The fresh leaping of the heart will only come from a fresh conquest of new truth. The old man loves his wife a thousand times better than when, for the first time, he kissed her gracious mouth; but his heart burns no longer as when he first saw his paradise in her reciprocating eye. The tree of religious consciousness is not in perpetual blossom,—but now in leaf, now flower, now fruit.
It is a common error to take no heed of this voluntary communion with God, to live intent on business or on pleasure, careful, troubled about many things, and seldom heed the one thing needed most; to take that as it comes. If all this mortal life turned out just as we wished it, this error would be still more common; only a few faculties would get their appropriate discipline. Men walking only on a smooth and level road use the same muscles always, ​ and march like mere machines. But disappointment comes on us. Sorrow checks our course, and we are forced to think and feel,—must march now up hill, and then down, shifting the strain from part to part. In mere prosperity most men are contented to enlarge their estate, their social rank, their daily joy, and lift their children's faces to the vulgar level of the vulgar flood whereon their fathers float. There comes some new adventure to change and mend all this. Now it is a great joy, success not looked for,—some kindred soul is made one with us, and on the pinions of instinctive connubial love we fly upwards and enlarge our intercourse with God,—the object of passion a communion angel to lead the human soul to a higher seat in the universe and a more intimate acquaintance with the Soul of all. Sometimes the birth of a new immortal into our arms does this, and on the pinions of instinctive affection men soar up to heaven and bring back healing on their wings,—the object of affection the communion angel to convey and welcome them to heaven.
Sometimes it is none of these, but sorrow, grief, and disappointment, that do this. I set my heart upon a special thing;—it is not mine, or if I get the honour, the money, the social rank I sought, it was one thing in my eye and another in my grasp. The one bird which I saw in the bush was worth ten like that I hold in my hand. The things I loved are gone,—the maid, the lover, husband, wife, or child; the mortal is taken from longing arms. The heart looks up for what can never die. Then there is a marriage and a birth, not into your arms, but out of them and into heaven ; and the sorrow and the loss stir you to woo and win that Object of the soul which cannot pass away. Your sorrow takes you on her wings, and you go up higher than before ; higher than your success, higher than friendship's daily wing ascends ; higher than your early love for married mate had ever borne you up ; higher than the delight in your first-born child or latest born. You have a new communion with your Father, and get a great amount of inspiration from Him.
This is the obvious use of such vicissitudes, and seems a portion of their final cause. In the artificial, ecclesiastical life of monasteries, men aim to reproduce this part of nature's discipline, and so have times of watching, fasting, ​ bodily torture. But in common life such discipline asks not our consent to come.
As I look over your faces and recall the personal history of those I know, I see how universal is this disappointment. But it has not made you more melancholy and less manly men; life is not thereby the less a blessing, and the more a load. With no sorrows you would be more sorrowful. For all the sorrows that man has faithfully contended with, he shall sail into port deeper fraught with manliness. The wife and mother at thirty years of age imprisoned in her chair, her hands all impotent to wipe a tear away, does not suffer for nothing. She has thereby been taught to taste the fruits of sweeter communion with her God. These disappointments are rounds in the ladder whereby we climb to heaven.
In cities there is less to help us communicate with God than in the fields. These walls of brick and stone, this artificial ground we stand on, all reminds us of man; even the city horse is a machine. But in the country it is God's ground beneath our feet ; God's hills on every side; his heaven, broad, blue, and boundless, overhead; and every bush and every tree, the morning song of earliest birds, the chirp of insects at mid-day, the solemn stillness of the night, and the mysterious hosts of stars that all night long climb up the sky, or silently go down,—these continually affect the soul, and cause us all to feel the Infinite Presence, and draw near to that; and earth seems less to rest in space than in the love of God. So, in cities, men build a great church,—at London, Paris, Venice, or at Rome,—seeking to compensate for lack of the natural admonitions of the woods and sky; and, to replace the music of the fields and nature's art, enlist the painter's plastic hand and the musician's sweetest skill.
All that seek religion are in search for communion with God. What is there between Him and thee? Nothing but thyself. Each can have what inspiration each will take. God is continually giving; He will not withhold from you or me. As much ability as He has given, as much as you have enlarged your talent by manly use, so much will He fill with inspiration. I hold up my little cup. He fills it full. If yours is greater, rejoice in that, and ​ bring it faithfully to the same. urn. He who fills the violet with beauty, and the sun with light,—who gave to Homer his gift of song, such reason to Aristotle, and to Jesus the manly gifts of justice and the womanly grace of love and faith in Him,—will not fail to inspire also you and me. Were your little cup to become as large as the Pacific sea, He still would fill it full.
There is such a thing as having a godly heart, a desire to conform to the ideal of man in all things, and to be true to Him that is "of all Creator and Defence." He who has that is sure of conscious spiritual communion with the Father; sure to find his character enlarging in every manly part; sure to be supplied with unexpected growth, and to hold more of the Divine; sure of the voluntary inspiration which is proper to the self-conscious man.
There are continual means of help even for men who dwell hedged up in towns. There are always living voices which can speak to us. A good book helps one; this feeds his soul for a time on the fair words of David, Paul, or John, Taylor, A Kempis, Wordsworth, Emerson; that, on the life of him who gives a name to Christendom. He who has more than I, will help me; him that has less, I shall help. Some men love certain solemn forms, as aids to their devotion; I hope that they are helped thereby,— that baptism helps the sprinkler or the wet; that circumcision aids the Jew, and sacrifice the heathen who offers it. But these are not the communion, only at most its vehicle. Communion is the meeting of the finite and the Infinite.
If a man have a truly pious soul, then his whole inward, outward life will at length become religion; for the dis- position to be true to God's law will appear the same in his business as in his Sunday vow. His whole work will be an act of faith, he will grow greater, better, and more refined by common life, and hold higher communion with the Ever-Present; the Sun of righteousness will beautify his every day.
God is partial to no one, foreign to none. Did he inspire the vast soul of Moses,—the tender hearts of lowly saints in every clime and every age? He waits to come down on you and me, a continual Pentecost of inspiration. Here in the crowded vulgar town, everywhere, is a Patmos, ​ a Sinai, a Gethsemane; the Infinite Mother spreads wide her arms to fold us to that universal breast, ready to inspire your soul. God's world of truth is ready for your intellect; His ocean of justice waits to flow in upon your conscience; and all His heaven of love broods continually by night and day over each heart and every soul. From that dear bounty shall we be fed. The Motherly Love invites all,—as much communion as we will, as much inspiration as our gifts and faithfulness enable us to take. He is not far from any one of us. Shall we not all go home,—the prodigal rejoice with him that never went astray? Even the consciousness of sin brings some into nearness with the Father, tired of their draff and husks; and then it is a blessed sin. Sorrow also brings some, and then it is a blessed grief; joy yet others, and then it is blessed thrice. In this place is one greater than the temple, greater than all temples; for the human nature of the lowliest child transcends all human history. And we may live so that all our daily life shall be a continual approach and mounting up towards God. What is the noblest life? Not that born in the most famous place, acquiring wealth and fame and rank and power over matter and over men; but that which, faithful to itself continually, holds communion with the Infinite, and, thence receiving of God's kind, in mortal life displays the truth, the justice, holiness, and love of God.
"O, blessed be our trials then,
This deep in which we lie;
And blessed be all things that teach
God's dear Infinity."
THE END.