Theodore Parker

“ Here is humanity that overleaps the bounds of class and of nation, and sees a brother in the beggar, pirate, slave, one family of men variously dressed in cuticles of white or yellow, black or red. Here, too, is a new loveliness, somewhat akin to the savage beauty of our own wild woods, seen in their glorious splendor an hour before autumnal suns go down and leave a trail of glory lingering in the sky. Here, too, is a piety somewhat heedless of scriptures, liturgies, and forms, and creeds; it finds its law written in nature, its glorious everlasting Gospel in the soul of man ”

“ It has long been known that Religion—in its true estate—created the deepest welfare of Man. Socrates, Seneca, Plutarch, Antoninus, Fenelon can tell us this. It might well be so. Religion comes from what is strongest, deepest, most beautiful and divine; lays no rude hand on soul or sense; condemns no faculty as base. It sets no bounds to Reason but Truth; none to Affection but Love; none to Desire but Duty; none to the Soul but Perfection; and these are not limits, but the charter of infinite freedom.
No doubt there is joy in the success of earthly schemes. ”

“ He loves Religion as a bride, for her own sake, not for what she brings. He lies low in the hand of God. The breath of the Father is on him.
If Joy comes to this man, he rejoices in its rosy light. His Wealth, his Wisdom, his Power, is not for himself alone, but for all God's children. Nothing is his which a brother needs more than he. Like God himself, he is kind to the thankless and unmerciful. Purity without and Piety within; these are his Heaven, both present and to come. Is not his flesh as holy as his soul—his body a temple of God? ”

“ Thou art a stealer of mankind. In thy borders, for long years, the cradle of liberty has been placed. The golden serpent of commerce has twined its snaky folds about it all, and fascinated into sloop the child. Tread lightly, soldiers: he yet may wake. Yes, in his time this child, shall wake; and Boston shall scourge out the memory of the men who have trodden her laws under foot, violated the dearest instincts of her heart, and profaned her religion. I appeal from Boston, swollen with wealth, drunk with passion, and mad against freedom—to Boston in her calm and sober hour. ”

“ Shall we live petrified to stone, a despotism many-headed, sitting—another sphinx—by the wayside of history, to scare young nations in their march and impede their progress? Or shall we pursue the journey—a great, noble-hearted Commonwealth, a nation possessing the continent, full of riches, full of justice, full of wisdom, full of piety, and full of peace? It depends on ourselves. It is for America, for this generation of Americans, to say which of the three shall happen. No fate holds us up. Our character is our destiny. I am not a timid man ”

“ I call on
the democrats, who think Justice is greater than the Baltimore Convention—I call on the whigs and democrats to come forward and join with me in opposing this wicked war! I call on the men of Boston, on the men of the old Bay State, to act worthy of their fathers, worthy of their country, worthy of themselves! Men and brothers, I call on you all to protest against this most infamous war, in the name of the State, in the name of the country, in the name of man—yes, in the name of God; leave not your children saddled with a war debt, to cripple the nation's commerce for years to come. ”

“ This inspiration is not given to the learned alone, not to the great and wise, but to every faithful child of God. The world is close to the body; God closer to the soul, not only without but within, for the all-pervading current flows into each. The clear sky bends over each man, little or great; let him uncover his head, there is nothing between him and infinite space. So the ocean of God encircles all men; uncover the soul of its sensuality, selfishness, sin, there is nothing between it and God, who flows into the man, as light into the air. ”

“ The girl grows into a woman; the bud swells into the blossom, that into the fruit. The process over, the work begins anew. How much more must it be so in the other life. What old powers we shall discover now buried in the flesh, what new powers shall come upon us in that new state, no man can know; it were but poetic idleness to talk of them. We see in some great man, what power of intellect, imagination, justice, goodness, piety, he reveals, lying latent in us all. How men bungle in their works of art! No Raphael can paint a dew-drop or a flake of frost. ”

“ Then shall the Bible—which is a whole library of the deepest and most earnest thoughts and feelings, end piety, and love, ever recorded in human speech—be read oftener than ever before, not with superstition, but with reason, conscience, and faith, fully active. Then shall it sustain men bowed down with many sorrows; rebuke sin, encourage virtue, sow the world broadcast and quick with the seed of love, that man may reap a harvest for life everlasting.
With all the obstacles men have thrown in its path, how much has the Bible done for mankind. No abuse has deprived us of all its blessings! ”

“ The martyr knows it, and laughs at the bullets which make an involuntary subject of despotism an immortal republican, giving him citizenship in the democracy of everlasting life. There the slave is free from his master; the weary is at rest; the needy has no want of bread; all tears are wiped from every eye; justice is done; souls dear to ours are in our arms once more; the distractions of life are all over; no injustice, no sorrow, no fear. That is the great comfort with the mass of mankind,—the most powerful talisman which enchants them of their weary woe. ”

“ You and I, American men and women, we must end Slavery soon, or it ruins our democracy—the sooner the better, and at the smaller cost. And if we are faithful, as our patriot fathers and our pilgrim fathers, then, when you and your children shall assemble eighteen years hence to keep the one hundredth birthday of the land, there shall not be a slave in all America!
Then what a prospect, what a history, is there for the American people with their industrial democracy! For all men freedom in the market, freedom in the school, freedom in the Church, freedom in the State! ”

“ It is a most dreadful doctrine; utterly false! Has a legislator, Pharaoh, Darius, Herod, Henry the Eighth, a single tyrant, any moral right to repudiate God, and declare himself not amenable to the moral law of the universe? You all answer, No! Have ten millions of men out of nineteen millions in America a right to do this? Has any man a moral right to repudiate justice and declare himself not amenable to conscience and to God? Where did he get the right to invade the conscience of mankind? Is it because he is legislator, magistrate, governor, president, king? a right to do wrong! ”

“ I would call on all men, by the one nature that is in you, by the great human heart beating alike in all your bosoms, to protest manfully against this desecration of the earth, this high treason against both man and God. Teach your rulers that you are Americans, not slaves ; Christians, not heathen; men, not murderers, to kill for hire! You may effect little in this generation, for its head seems crazed and its heart rotten. But there will be a day after today. It is for you and me to make it better: a day of peace, when nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation ”

“ Ours is an age of great activity. The peaceful hand was never so busy as to-day; the productive head never created so fast before. See how the forces of nature yield themselves up to man: the river stops for him, content to be his servant, and weave and spin; the ocean is his vassal, his toilsome bondsman; the lightning stoops out of heaven, and bears thoughtful burdens on its electric track from town to town. All this comes from the rapid activity of the lower intellect of man. Is there a conscious piety to correspond with this,—a conscious love of truth and right and love,—a love of God? ”

“ I know the delight of being loved, for I have sunned myself in the affection of father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and relative; and if anybody knows the beauty and blessedness of friendship, I think that I do, for I have sounded its depths and tasted its joy. But the love that I have received from mortal men, from father and mother, wife, and relative, and friend—it is but little, nay, it is nothing, compared to the still and calm delight which I feel from consciousness of being loved by the Infinite God. My mortal friends love me, perhaps, through their weakness ”

“ We pray thee, on this day of our gratitude, that we may rouse up everything that is humanest in our heart, pledging ourselves anew to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thee, Thou our Father and our Mother on earth and in the heavens too. Thus, Lord, may our thanksgiving be worthy of the nature thou hast given us and the heritage thou hast bequeathed. Thus may our psalm of gratitude be a hymn of thanksgiving for millions who have broken off their chains, and for a great country full of joy, of blessedness, of freedom, and of peace. ”

“ A little philosophy turns men from Religion. Much knowledge restores them to their faith, to the bosom of Piety. The great men of the world, men gifted with the deepest insight, and living the most royal life, have been Man's pioneers in these steps of progress. Moses, Hermes, Confucius, Budha, Zoroaster, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, have lent their holy hands in Man's greatest work. Religion filled their soul with strength and light. It is only little men, that make wide the mouth and draw out the tongue at pure and genuine piety and nobleness of heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And just so it is with the true, good man : as the years go by him, his estate of religion greatens, and becomes more and more. The little flowers of humanity — a warm spring day calls them out, where there is no deepness of earth: but to raise the great oak-trees of human righteousness, you want a deep, rich soil, and threescore, fourscore, fivescore summers and winters, for the tree to grow in, broadly buttressed below, broad-branched above, to wrestle with the winds, and take the sunshine of God's heaven on its top. ”

“ In the outward and inward trials, we know not which way to turn. The heart faints and is ready to perish. Then in the deep silence of the soul, when the man turns inward to God, light, comfort, peace dawn on him. His troubles—they are but a dew-drop on his sandal. His enmities or jealousies, hopes, fears, honours, disgraces, all the undeserved mishaps of life, are lost to the view; diminished, and then hid in the mists of the valley he has left behind and below him. Resolution comes over him with its vigorous wing; Truth is clear as noon; the soul in faith rushes to its God. ”

“ O thou who art always near to us, we in our consciousness would for a moment draw near unto thee, and, feeling thee at our heart, would remember the circumstances of our daily lives, the joys we delight in, the sorrows we bear, the sins wherewith we transgress against thee, the grave, and solemn, and joyous duties thou givest us to do.
O thou who givest to mankind liberally, we thank thee for the world of matter wherein thou hast placed us, for the heavens above our head, for the stars that burn in perennial splendour, though the misty exhalations of the earth may hide them from our sight. ”

“ America, the mother of a thousand Anglo-Saxon States, tropic and temperate, on both sides the Equator, may behold the Mississippi and the Amazon uniting their waters, the drainage of two vast continents in the Mediterranean of the Western World; may count her children at last by hundreds of millions—and among them all behold no tyrant and no slave! What a spectacle—the Anglo-Saxon family occupying a whole hemisphere, with industry, freedom, religion. The fulfilment of this vision is our province; we are the involuntary instruments of God. Shall America scorn the mission God sends her on? ”

“ No nation offers a field so fair. We can speak and listen, we can print and read, with none to molest or make us afraid. More than all that, we can live as high as we please. There is no government, no church, to lay its iron hands on our heads and say—"Stop there!" Misguiding ministers may believe in the damnation of babies newly born, may pray curses on us all; they cannot light a fagot to burn a man: their spirit is willing, but their flesh is weak! It is a grand age and nation to live in and work for. ”

“ As the men who discovered corn, tamed the ox, the horse, invented language and letters, who conquered fire and water, and yoked these two brute furious elements with an iron bond, as gentle now as any lamb,—as they who tamed the lightning, sending it of their errands, and as they who sculptured loveliness in stone two thousand years ago, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever,—as these and all such transmit their wealthy works to man, so he who sets forth a truth and developes wisdom, any human excellence of gift or growth, greatens the spiritual glory of his race. ”

“ Father in heaven, so gifted as we are, surrounded so, and so destined for immortal welfare, we pray thee that we may live great and noble lives on the earth, unfolding our nature day by day, using our bodies for their purpose, and the soul for its higher use, growing wiser and better as we change time into life, and daily work into exalted character. So may we live that every day we learn some new truth, practise some new virtue, and become dearer and more beautiful in thine own sight. So may thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. ”

“ If trouble comes on him, which Prudence could not foresee, nor Strength overcome, nor Wisdom escape from, he bears it with a heart serene and full of peace. Over every gloomy cavern, and den of despair, Hope arches her rainbow; the ambrosial light descends. Religion shows him that, out of desert rocks, black and savage, where the Vulture has her home, where the Storm and the Avalanche are born, and whence they descend, to crush and to kill; out of these hopeless cliffs, falls the river of Life, which flows for all, and makes glad the people of God. ”

“ You know its followers soon as you see them; the rose is faded out of their cheeks; their mouths drooping and sad; their appearance says, Alas, my fellow-worm! there is no more sunshine, for the world is damned! It is a faith of stern, morose men, well befitting the descendants of Odin, and his iron peers; its Religion is a principle, not a sentiment; a foreign matter imported into the soul, by forethought and resolution; not a native fountain of joy and gladness, leaping up in winter's frost and summer's gladness, playing in the sober autumn or the sunshine of spring. ”

“ When you remember what our fathers have done; what we have done—substituted a new industrial for a military state, the self-rule of this day for the vicarious government of the middle ages; when you remember what a momentum the human race has got during its long run—it is plain that slavery is on the way to end.
As soon as the North awakes to its ideas, and uses its vast strength of money, its vast strength of numbers, and still more gigantic strength of educated intellect, we shall tread this monster underneath our feet. See how Spain has fallen—how poor and miserable is Spanish America. ”

“ Nature bore great men anew, and fresh families sprung up as noble as the old. But if this generation in America could believe that there was no law of God for you and me to keep—say the Acts of Congress what they might say—no law to tame the ambition of men of mountain greatness, and curb the eagle's flight of human tyranny, that would be a calamity which the nation would never recover from. No! then religion would die out, affection fall dead; conscience would perish, intellect give up the ghost, and be no more. No law higher than human will! ”

“ The free man replies, “Burn then if thou wilt; but Truth thou canst not burn down. A lie thou canst not build up. God does not die with his children, nor Truth with its martyrs.”
Then, as Truth is stronger than every lie, and he that has her is mightier than all men, so the fagot of martyrdom proves the fire-pillar of the human race, guiding them from the bondage and darkness of Egypt to the land of liberty and light. Truth, armed with her arrows to smite, her olive to bless, spreads wide her wings amid the outcry of the Priest and the King. ”

“ It was the movement of a noble people, feeling a noble presence about them no less than within. When Cicero, the only great man whom Rome never feared, returned from his exile, all Italy rose up and went out to meet him; so did the North and the West welcome this champion of freedom, this venerable old man. They came not to honour one who had been a President, but one who was a man. That alone, said Mr. Adams, with tears of joy and grief filling his eyes, was reward enough for all that he had done, suffered, or undertaken. Yes, it was too much; too much for one man as the reward of one life! ”

“ Then all this science of the nineteenth century, all this practical energy, this wide command over Nature, this power to organize the world of matter and yoke it to the will of man, this love of freedom and power to combine vast masses in productive industry ; then all this wide literature of modern times, glittering with many-coloured riches, and spread abroad so swift; then all this morality which clamours for the native right of men, this wide philanthropy, laying down its life to bless mankind,—all this shall join with the natural emotions of the soul, welcoming the Infinite God. ”

“ This system makes God not a King but a Father and Mother, infinite in power, wisdom, and love. His love rays out in every direction, seeking to bless the all of things. The world, its overarching heavens, its ocean, its mountains, its flowers that brighten in the sunbeam; the crimson and purple that weave a lustrous veil for the face of Day, at the rising and decline of light; the living things of earth, beast, bird, fish, insect, so full of happiness that the world hums with its joy,—all these it counts but a whisper of God's goodness, though all which these babbling elements can teach. ”

“ What joy had Fox, and Nayler, and Penn, and Woolman, and Scott, and all those pious souls—women and men, who learned to lie low in the hand of God, and rejoice in their consciousness of Him and the visitations of the Eternal Love!
What exquisite delights they are which make up our experience and enjoyment of God. The aspect of beauty, in every form, is always a joy—in the shape and colour of a blade of grass, a nut, a fly's wing, a pearl found in a mussel of a New Hampshire brook. ”

“ The belief in immortality is so intimately connected with the development of religion, that no nation ever doubted of eternal life. How that idealizes and embellishes all our daily doing and suffering! What a power is there that hangs over me, within a day a march perhaps, nay, within an easy walk of an hour, or a minute it may be, certainly not far off, its gates wide open night and day! The weary soul flees thither right often. Poor, weary, worn-out millions, it is your heaven! No king can shut you out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Truth shall triumph, justice shall be law! And, if America fail, though she is one fortieth of God's family, and it is a great loss, there are other nations behind us ; our truth shall not perish, even if we go down.
But we shall not fail! I look into your eyes—young men and women, thousands of you, and men and women far enough from young! I look into the eyes of fifty thousand other men and women, whom, in the last eight months, I have spoken to, face to face, and they say, "No! America shall not fail!" ”

“ It is water only to the eye. Nay, show-water only unto men half-blind. But there, hard by, runs down the stream of life, its waters never frozen, never dry; fed by perennial dews falling unseen from God. Fill there thine urn, oh, brother-man, and thou shalt thirst no more for selfishness and crime, and faint no more amid the toil and heat of day; wash there, and the leprosy of sin, its scales of blindness, shall fall off, and thou be clean for ever. Kneel there and pray; God shall inspire thy heart with truth and love, and fill thy cup with never-ending joy! ”

“ May no success in this world's affairs ever harden our heart, but make us more noble and more generous, and may the world's sorrow and sickness and grief and disappointment and loss only rouse up the better soul that is in us, till we triumph over affliction, and have gained the victory over death. Thus in our souls may there be such a bud of piety as shall open and bloom out into the fragrant flower of morality in our daily lives, and while it thus blossoms broad in use, may it bear seed within itself which shall last for ever and for ever. ”

“ It takes the rose out of the cheek; turns the man in on himself, and gives him more of truth. Then, in a poetic fancy, the man sees visions; has wondrous revelations; every mountain thunders; God burns in every bush; flames out in the crimson cloud; speaks in the wind; descends with every dove; is All in All. The Soul, deep-wrought in its intense struggle, give outness to its thought, and on the trees and stars, the fields, the floods, the corn ripe for the sickle, on Men and Women it sees its burden writ. The Spirit within constrains the man. It is like wine that hath no vent. ”