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 ”

“ I know the faults of Boston, and I think I would not disguise them; the poverty, unnatural poverty, which shivers in the cellar; the unnatural wealth which bloats in the parlor; the sin which is hid in the corners of the jail; and the more dangerous sin which sets up Christianity for a pretence; the sophistry which lightens in the newspapers, and thunders in the pulpit:—I know all these things, and do not pretend to disguise them; and still I think no city of the old world, of the same population, has so much which good men prize, and so little which good men deplore. ”

“ It is for the scholar to attract this ground-lightning and this lightning of the sky, condense it into useful thunder to destroy the wrong, then spread it forth a beauteous and a cheering light, shedding sweet influence and kindling life anew. A few great men of other times tell us what may be now.
Nothing will be done without toil—talent is only power of work, and genius greater power for higher forms of work—nothing without self-denial; nothing great and good save by putting your idea before yourself, and counting it dearer than your flesh and blood. ”

“ I do not wonder that a man of great powers should covet this great position, and feel a noble dissatisfaction and unrest until he found himself there, gravitating towards it as naturally as the Mississippi to the ocean. Put in it such men as I point to, one with the intellect of a Webster, the conscience of a Channing, the philanthropy of much humbler men; let him aim at the welfare of the nation and mankind; let him have just political ideas in advance of the nation, and, in virtue thereof, ability to solve the terrible social and political questions of this age ”

“ The scholar never had so fair a chance before; here is the noblest opportunity for one that wields the Pen; it is mightier than the Sword, the Office, or the Purse. All things concede at last to Beauty, Justice, Truth and Love, and these he is to represent. He has what freedom he will pay for and take. Let him talk never so heroic, he will find fit audience, nor will it long be few. Men will rise up and welcome his quickening words as vernal grass at the first rains of spring. A great nation which cannot live by bread alone, asks for the bread of life ”

“ I believe in Justice and the Law of God; that ultimately the right will prevail. Wrong will prevail for a time, and attract admiration. I have seen in a haberdasher's shop-window the figure of a wooden woman showily arrayed, turning round on a pivot, and attracting the gaze of all the passers-by; but ere long it is forgotten. So it will be with this transient love of slavery in Boston; but the love of right will last as long as the granite in New Hampshire hills. I will not tell you to despair of freedom because politicians are false; they are often so. Despair of freedom for the black man! ”

“ Oh ingenuous young maid or man, if such you are,—if not, then let me dream you such; seek you this beauty, complete perfection of a man, and having this, go hold the Purse, the Office, or the Pen, as suits you best; but out of that life, writing, voting, acting, living in all forms, you shall pay men back for your culture, and in the scholar's noble kind, and represent the higher facts of human thought. Will men still say, "This Wrong is consecrated; it has stood for ages and shall stand for ever!" Tell them, "No. A wrong, though old as Sin, is not now sacred, nor shall it stand!" ”

“ The government often only checks this work.
By most subtle contrivances, though not of you and me, a provision is made for the great. Without willing it, we prepare a cradle for every giant, ready to receive him soon as he is born. A young woman has a rare genius for music; no legal and constitutional provision has been made for her, society having no instinctive and prophetic consciousness of such an advent; but men with music in their souls, and spell-bound by their ears, are drawn together, and encourage her sweet soul into all the wildest, sweetest, and most bewildering witchery of song. ”

“ Sir, the question is, whether Massachusetts will stand to the truth against temptation [that is the question] ! whether she will be just against temptation! whether she will defend herself against her own prejudices! She has conquered every thing else in her time; she has conquered this ocean which washes her shore; she has conquered her own sterile soil; she has conquered her stern and inflexible climate; she has fought her way to the universal respect of the world; she has conquered every one's prejudices but her own. The question now is, whether she will conquer her own prejudices! ”

“ Defer that to no appetite, to no passion, to no foolish compliance with other men's ways, to no ungodly custom, even if become a law. Ask always "Is it right for me?" Be brave and self-denying for conscience' sake. Fear not to differ from men; keeping your modesty, keep your integrity also. Let not even your discretion consume your valor. Fear not to be scrupulously upright and pure; be afraid neither of men's hate, nor even of their laugh and haughty scorn, but shudder at the thought of tampering with your sense of right, even in the smallest matters. ”

“ So the lighthouse on the rocks of Boston harbor, is a pleasant thing to see and to imagine, with its great lamp looking far out to sea, and shining all night long, a star of special providence; seen afar off, when stormy skies shut other stars from sight, it assures the mariner of his whereabouts, guides the whaler and the Indiaman safe into port and peace, bringing wealth to the merchant, and a husband to the lingering wife, almost a widow in the cheating sea's delay and her own heart-sickness from hope so long deferred. ”

“ But as I live longer, and see the passion and the ambition of men, see the force of circumstances, I know better. No ship sails across the ocean with a straight course, without changing a sail: it frequently leaves its direct line, now "standing" this way, now that; and the course is a very crooked one, although, as a whole, it is towards the mark.
America is a young nation, composite, not yet unified; and it is, therefore, not quite so easy to say what is the chief desire of the people; but, if I understand American history, this desire is the Love of Individual Liberty. ”

“ Let us compare Boston, in this respect, with any European city that you can name; let us compare it with gay and frivolous Vienna, the gayest and most frivolous city of all Europe, not setting Paris aside. For though the surface of life in Paris sparkles and glitters all over [Pg 245] with radiant and iridescent and dazzling bubbles, empty and ephemeral, yet underneath there flows a stream which comes from the great fountain of nature, and tends on to the ocean of human welfare. No city is more full of deep thought and earnest life. ”

“ We are consciously, in part, yet still more unconsciously, aiming at democracy,—at a government of all the people, by all the people, and for the sake of all the people. Of course that must be a government by the higher law of God, by the Eternal Justice to which you and I and all of us owe reverence. We all love freedom for ourselves; one day we shall love it for every man,—for the tawny Indian and the sable Negro, as much as for you and me. This love of freedom has appeared in the ideas of New England,—and New England was once America ”

“ I call a man a Tory who, for himself or for others, seeks a privilege adverse to the rights of mankind; who puts the accidents of men before the substance of manhood. I may safely say the cities, in the main, are Tory towns; that Boston, in this sense, is a Tory town. They are so, just as in the middle ages the cities were on the other side. This is unavoidable in our form of civilization just now. Accordingly, in all the great cities of the North, slavery is in the ascendant: but, as soon as we get off the pavement, we come upon different ideas; freedom culminates and rises to the meridian. ”

“ What is a fine of a thousand dollars, and jailing for six months, to the liberty of a man? My money perish with me, if it stand between me and the eternal law of God. I trust there are manly men enough in this house to secure the freedom of every fugitive slave in Boston, without breaking a limb or rending a garment.
One thing more I think is very plain, that the fugitive has the same natural right to defend himself against the slave-catcher, or his constitutional tool, that he has against a murderer or a wolf. ”

“ And thou our God, the Father of us all, Father and Mother too, Parent of freemen, Parent also of the slave, look down upon us in our sad estate. Look down upon thy saints, and bless them; yea, bless thy sinners too; save from the wicked heart. Bless this town by thy chastisement; this State by thine afflictions; this nation by thy rod. Teach us to resist evil and with good, till we break the fetters from every foot, the chains from every hand, and let the oppressed go free. ”

“ Thus it is right to love a man and not to hate him, to do him justice and not injustice, to allow him the natural rights which he has not alienated. No man made these things right; no man can make them wrong. If all the men in Jerusalem and ever so many more, if all the men in the world, were to pass a unanimous vote that it was right to hate a man and not love him, right to do him injustice and not justice, right to deprive him of his natural rights not alienated by himself, the opinion would not alter the fact, nor make right wrong and wrong right. ”

“ Uninvited, its ideas steal into parlor and pulpit, its kingdom coming within men and without observation. The shoemaker feels it as he toils in his narrow shop; it cheers the maiden weaving in the mill, whose wheels the Merrimac is made to turn; the young man at college bids it welcome to his ingenuous soul. So at the breath of spring new life starts up in every plant; the sloping hills are green with corn, and sunny banks are blue and fragrant with the wealth of violets, which only slept till the enchanter came. ”

“ Setting aside the institution of slavery, and the statutes relating thereto, I think we have the most righteous Establishments in the world. By no means perfect, they produce the greatest variety of action in the individuals, the greatest unity of action in society, and afford an opportunity to achieve the purpose of social and individual life. Here is the great institution of democracy, the government of all, by all, and for all, resting on the American idea, that all men have natural rights which only the possessor can alienate; that all are equal in their rights ”

“ Here you find most fully the sentiments and ideas of America, not such as rule the nation now, but which, unconsciously to the people, have caused the noble deeds of our history, and now prophesy a splendid future for this young giant here. These sentiments and ideas are brought to consciousness in this literature. Here a precedent is not a limitation; a fact of history does not eclipse an idea of nature; an investment is not thought more sacred than a right. Here is more hope than memory; little deference to wealth and rank, but a constant aspiration for truth, justice, love and piety ”

“ He who claimed to own the body and the soul of more than a hundred of his fellow creatures, enriched by the unrequited toil, which they unwillingly gave him when stung by the lash of his hireling overseers, has gone home to the Father of negro slaves, who is no respecter of persons; gone where the servant is free from his master. Black and white, conqueror and vanquished, the bond and the free, alike come up before the Infinite Father, whose perfect justice is perfect love; and there the question is, "What hast thou done with the talent committed unto thee?" ”

“ Literature, which was once the sacrament of the few, only a shew-bread to the people, is now the daily meat of the multitude. The best works get reprinted with great speed; the highest poetry is soon in all the newspapers. Authors know this, and write accordingly. It is only scientific works which ask for a special public. But even science, the proudest of the day, must come down from the clouds of the academy, lay off its scholastic garb, and appear before the eyes of the multitude in common work-day clothes. ”

“ I know of no position in the world more desirable for a really great man, a man with a genius for statesmanship, a million-minded man, than to take this young, daring, hopeful nation, so full of promise, so ready for work, and lead them forward in the way of political righteousness, giving us ideas, persuading us to build institutions thereof, and make the high thought of a man of genius the common life of a mighty nation, young as yet and capable of taking any lesson of national nobility which the most gifted man can devise ”

“ But practical, political atheism has become a common thing in America, in New England. This is not a denial of the essence of God and his being, but of his function as Supreme Ruler of the church, of the State, of the people, of the universe. Of that there is danger. The devil of ambition tempts the great man to it; the devil of covetousness, the little man. Both strike hands, and say, "There is no higher law;" and low men lift up their mean foreheads in the pulpits of America and say, "It is the voice of a God, and not of a man. There is no higher law." ”

“ But when the winds blow their trumpets, the sea rises in its strength, snaps asunder the bonds that had confined his mighty limbs, and the world is littered with the idle hay! Stop the human race in its development and march to freedom? As well might the boys of Boston, some lustrous night, mounting the steeples of this town, call on the stars to stay their course! ”

“ There would be no Catafalques in the street; but the upper mountain-tops would miss that early sun which kissed their foreheads, while all below the world was wrapped in drowsy mist, and the whole race of man would be losers by the fading out of so much poetry, or truth, or justice, love and faith.
The office of President of the United States is undeniably one of great importance. If you put in it a great man, one with ability to invent, to organize and to administer, he has a better opportunity to serve mankind than most kings of Europe. ”

“ In respect to its form, this portion of our literature is an imitation. That is natural enough, considering the youth of the country. Every nation, like every man, even one born to genius, begins by imitation. Raphael, with servile pencil, followed his masters in his youth, but at length his artistic eye attracted new-born angels from the calm stillness of their upper heaven, and with liberal, free hand, with masterly and original touch, the painter of the newness amazed the world. ”

“ The law of God has eminent domain everywhere, over the private passions of Oliver and Charles, the special interests of Carthage and of Rome, over all customs, all official business, all precedents, all human statutes, all treaties between Judas and Pilate, or England and France, over all the conventional affairs of one man or of mankind. My own conscience is to declare that law for me, yours for you, and is before all private passions, or public interests, the decision of majorities, and a world full of precedents. ”

“ Here there is no such class: a man born at all is well born; with a great nature, nobly born; the career opens to all that can run, to all men that wish to try; our aristocracy is movable, and the scholar has scope and verge enough.
Germany has the largest class of scholars; men of talent, sometimes of genius, of great working power, exceedingly well furnished for their work, with a knowledge of the past and the present. On the whole, they seem to have a greater power of thought than the scholars of any other land. They live in a country where intellectual worth is rated at its highest value. ”

“ Ask the sorrowing world; let Austria and Hungary make reply. Nay, ask the Southern States of America to show us their rapid increase in riches, in civilization; to show us their schools and their scholars, their literature, their science, and their art! No law of God for States! It is writ on the iron leaf of destiny, "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a curse to any people." Let the wicked hand of the South join with the Northern wicked hand, iniquity shall not prosper. But the eye of the wicked shall fail; they shall not escape ”