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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional
+Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3), by Theodore Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
+
+Author: Theodore Parker
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2010 [EBook #34637]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, SERMONS (2/3) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SPEECHES, ADDRESSES,
+
+AND
+
+OCCASIONAL SERMONS,
+
+BY
+
+THEODORE PARKER,
+
+MINISTER OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN BOSTON.
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+BOSTON:
+HORACE B. FULLER,
+(SUCCESSOR TO WALKER, FULLER, AND COMPANY,)
+245, WASHINGTON STREET.
+
+1867.
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
+THEODORE PARKER,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
+of the District of Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
+
+
+I.
+
+A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--Preached
+at the Melodeon, on Sunday, February 18, 1849
+
+                                                               PAGE 1
+
+II.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE MOST CHRISTIAN USE OF THE
+SUNDAY.--A Sermon preached at the Melodeon, on Sunday,
+January 30, 1848                                                   56
+
+III.
+
+A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.--Preached at the Melodeon
+on Sunday, September 20, 1846                                     105
+
+IV.
+
+THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.--An Address
+delivered before the Onondaga Teachers' Institute at Syracuse,
+New York, October 4, 1849                                         139
+
+V.
+
+THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA, AND THE
+SIGNS OF THE TIMES.--An Address delivered before
+several literary Societies in 1848                                198
+
+VI.
+
+A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN
+QUINCY ADAMS.--Delivered at the Melodeon, on Sunday,
+March 5, 1848                                                     252
+
+VII.
+
+A SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY
+SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE THE ABOLITION OF
+SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, April 6, 1848                     331
+
+VIII.
+
+A SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND
+ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, May 31, 1848                             344
+
+IX.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY, AND THE
+ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR, December, 1848                        360
+
+
+
+
+A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--PREACHED AT THE
+MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1849.
+
+MATTHEW VIII. 20.
+
+    By their fruits ye shall know them.
+
+
+Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I
+ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I
+use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition
+of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of
+piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all
+manly excellence, and was the condition of all noble, manly development;
+that love of truth, love of justice, love of love, were respectively the
+condition of intellectual, moral, and affectional development, and that
+they were also respectively the intellectual, moral, and affectional
+forms of piety; that the love of God as the Infinite Father, the
+totality of truth, justice, and love was the general condition of the
+total development of man's spiritual powers. But I showed, that
+sometimes this piety, intellectual, moral, affectional or total, did not
+arrive at self-consciousness; the man only unconsciously loving the
+Infinite in one or all these modes, and in such cases the man was a
+loser by frustrating his piety, and allowing it to stop in the truncated
+form of unconsciousness.
+
+Now what is in you will appear out of you; if piety be there in any of
+these forms, in either mode, it will come out; if not there, its fruits
+cannot appear. You may reason forward or backward: if you know piety
+exists, you may foretell its appearance; if you find fruits thereof, you
+may reason back and be sure of its existence. Piety is love of God as
+God, and as we only love what we are like, and in that degree, so it is
+also a likeness to God. Now it is a general doctrine in Christendom that
+divinity must manifest itself; and, in assuming the highest form of
+manifestation known to us, divinity becomes humanity. However, that
+doctrine is commonly taught in the specific and not generic form, and is
+enforced by an historical and concrete example, but not by way of a
+universal thesis. It appears thus: The Christ was God; as such He must
+manifest himself; the form of manifestation was that of a complete and
+perfect man. I reject the concrete example, but accept the universal
+doctrine on which the special dogma of the Trinity is erected. From that
+I deduce this as a general rule: If you follow the law of your nature,
+and are simple and true to that, as much of godhead as there is in you,
+so much of manhood will come out of you, and, as much of manhood comes
+out of you, so much of godhead was there within you; as much subjective
+divinity, so much objective humanity.
+
+Such being the case, the demands you can make on a man for manliness
+must depend for their answer on the amount of piety on deposit in his
+character; so it becomes important to know the condition of this town in
+respect of piety, for if this be not right in the above sense, nothing
+else is right; or, to speak more clerically, "Unless the Lord keep the
+city, the watchman waketh but in vain," and unless piety be developed or
+a-developing in men, it is vain for the minister to sit up late of a
+Saturday night to concoct his sermon, and to rise up early of a Sunday
+morning to preach the same; he fights but as one that beateth the air,
+and spends his strength for that which is nought. They are in the right,
+therefore, who first of all things demand piety: so let us see what
+signs or proof we have, and of what amount of piety in Boston.
+
+To determine this, we must have some test by which to judge of the
+quality, distinguishing piety from impiety, and some standard whereby to
+measure the quantity thereof; for though you may know what piety is in
+you, I what is in me, and God what is in both and in all the rest of us,
+it is plain that we can only judge of the existence of piety in other
+men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in
+some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard
+measure.
+
+Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides
+alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal
+unlike: each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and
+standard measure. Let me say a word of each.
+
+I. Some contend for what I call the conventional standard; that is, the
+manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these
+forms there are three modes or degrees: namely, first, the form of
+bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain
+doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without
+proof, but because they are taught with authority; and third, a passive
+acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance
+thereof.
+
+II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of
+piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes
+of action.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is plain, that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear
+very different when tested by one or the other of these standards. It
+may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds
+the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may
+leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this
+importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is
+but fair to try it by both standards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its
+manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the
+outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general
+ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the
+Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies
+the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the
+unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a
+State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then
+the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in
+any one State, would vary with the health of the judge. However, to do
+what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it is plain, that,
+estimated by any ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small.
+There is, as men often say, "A general decline of piety;" that is a
+common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter
+worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the
+complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. The disease
+which is thus lamented is said to be acute, but is proved to be chronic
+also; only it would seem, from the lamentations of some modern
+Jeremiahs, that the decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the
+more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became.
+
+Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view,
+let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come
+nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The
+majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant
+Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a "Great awakening," but
+a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great
+decline of religion--a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that
+modern philosophy, the physics of Galileo and Newton, the metaphysics of
+Descartes and of Kant, mark another decline of religion--a decline of
+piety in the philosophical form; that all the modern democracy of the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marks a yet further decline of
+religion--a decline of piety in the political form; that all the modern
+secular societies, for removing the evils of men and their sins, mark a
+yet fourth decline of religion--a decline of piety in the philanthropic
+form. Certainly, when measured by the mediæval standard of Catholicism,
+these mark four great declensions of piety, for, in all four, the old
+principle of subordination to an external and personal authority is set
+aside.
+
+All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical
+establishments are breaking down; other establishments are a-building
+up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the
+last of the Popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great
+schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no
+longer Roman. The old forms of piety, such as service in Latin, the
+withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the
+ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood--all these are protested
+against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works
+greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail
+that the Virgin Mary appeared on the nineteenth of September, 1846, to
+two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such things to
+Ronge and Wessenberg? Neither the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous
+mother, avails aught against this untoward generation, charm they never
+so wisely. The decline of piety goes on. By the new Constitution of
+France, all forms of religion are equal; the Catholic and the
+Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under the
+broad shield of the law. Even Spain, the fortress walled and moated
+about, whither the spirit of the middle ages retired and shut herself up
+long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with
+unfeminine queens and nuns--even Spain fails with the general failure.
+British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into
+woollen mills. Monks and nuns forget their beads in some new
+handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy
+with serving, careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not
+cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long
+unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas,
+making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the
+Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of
+St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright,
+Watt, and Fulton,--the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom.
+It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on
+the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs
+which is Solomon's, that get printed there: but fiery novels of Eugene
+Sue, and George Sand; and so extremes meet.
+
+Protestant establishments share the same peril. A new sect of
+Protestants rises up in Germany, who dissent as much from the letter and
+spirit of Protestantism, as the Protestants from Catholicism; men that
+will not believe the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of the
+Trinity, the depravity of man, the eternity of future punishment, nor
+justification by faith--a justification before God, for mere belief
+before men. The new spirit gets possession of new men, who cannot be
+written down, nor even howled down. Excommunication or abuse does no
+good on such men as Bauer, Strauss, and Schwegler; and it answers none
+of their questions. It seems pretty clear, that in all the north of
+Germany, within twenty years, there will be entire freedom of worship,
+for all sects, Protestant and Catholic.
+
+In England, Protestantism has done its work less faithfully than in
+Germany. The Protestant spirit of England came here two hundred years
+ago, so that new and Protestant England is on the west of the ocean; in
+England, an established church lies there still, an iceberg in the
+national garden. But even there, the decline of the ecclesiastical form
+of piety is apparent: the new bishops must not sit in the House of
+Lords, till the old ones die out, for the number of lords spiritual must
+not increase, though the temporal may; the new attempt, at Oxford and
+elsewhere, to restore the Middle Ages, will not prosper. Bring back all
+the old rites and forms into Leeds and Manchester; teach men the
+theology of Thomas Aquinas, or of St. Bernard; bid them adore the
+uplifted wafer, as the very God, men who toil all day with iron mills,
+who ride in steam-drawn coaches, and talk by lightning in a whisper,
+from the Irk to the Thames,--they will not consent to the philosophy or
+the theology of the Middle Ages, nor be satisfied with the old forms of
+piety, which, though too elevated for their fathers in the time of
+Elizabeth, are yet too low for them, at least too antiquated. Dissenters
+have got into the House of Commons; the test-act is repealed, and a man
+can be a captain in the army, or a postmaster in a village, without
+first taking the Lord's Supper, after the fashion of the Church of
+England. Some men demand the abandonment of tithes, the entire
+separation of Church and State, the return to "The voluntary principle"
+in religion. "The battering ram which levelled old Sarum," and other
+boroughs as corrupt, now beats on the church, and the "Church is in
+danger." Men complain of the decline of piety in England. An intelligent
+and very serious writer, not long ago, lamenting this decline, in proof
+thereof, relates, that formerly men began their last wills, "In the name
+of God, Amen;" and headed bills of lading with, "Shipped in good order,
+by the grace of God;" that indictments for capital crimes charged the
+culprit with committing felony, "At the instigation of the devil," and
+now, he complains, these forms have gone out of use.
+
+In America, in New England, in Boston, when measured by that standard,
+the same decline of piety is apparent. It is often said that our
+material condition is better than our moral; that in advance of our
+spiritual condition. There is a common clerical complaint of a certain
+thinness in the churches; men do not give their bodily attendance, as
+once they did; they are ready enough to attend lectures, two or three in
+a week, no matter how scientific and abstract, or how little connected
+with their daily work, yet they cannot come to the church without
+teasing beforehand, nor keep awake while there. It is said the minister
+is not respected as formerly. True, a man of power is respected, heard,
+sought, and followed, but it is for his power, for his words of grace
+and truth, not for his place in a pulpit; he may have more influence as
+a man, but less as a clergyman. Ministers lament a prevalent disbelief
+of their venerable doctrines; that there is a concealed skepticism in
+regard to them, often not concealed. This, also, is a well-founded
+complaint; the well-known dogmas of theology were never in worse repute;
+there was never so large a portion of the community in New England who
+were doubtful of the Trinity, of eternal damnation, of total depravity,
+of the atonement, of the Godhead of Jesus, of the miracles of the New
+Testament, and of the truth of every word of the Bible. A complaint is
+made, that the rites and forms which are sometimes called "the
+ordinances of religion," are neglected; that few men join the church,
+and though the old hedge is broken down before the altar, yet the number
+of communicants diminishes, and it is no longer able-headed men, the
+leaders of society, who come; that the ordinances seem haggard and
+ghastly to young men, who cannot feed their hungry souls on such a thin
+pittance of spiritual aliment as these afford; that the children are not
+baptized. These things are so; so in Europe, Catholic and Protestant; so
+in America, so in Boston. Notwithstanding the well-founded complaint
+that our modern churches are too costly for the times, we do not build
+temples which bear so high a proportion to our wealth as the early
+churches of Boston; the attendance at meeting does not increase as the
+population; the ministers are not prominent, as in the days of Wilson,
+of Cotton, and of Norton; their education is not now in the same
+proportion to the general culture of the times. Harvard College,
+dedicated to "Christ and the Church," designed at first chiefly for the
+education of the clergy, graduates few ministers; theological literature
+no longer overawes all other. The number of church members was never so
+small in proportion to the voters as now; the number of Protestant
+births never so much exceeded the number of Protestant baptisms. Young
+men of superior ability and superior education have little affection for
+the ministry; take little interest in the welfare of the church. Nay,
+youths descended from a wealthy family seldom look that way. It is poor
+men's sons, men of obscure family, who fill the pulpits; often,
+likewise, men of slender ability, eked out with an education
+proportionately scant. The most active members of the churches are
+similar in position, ability, and culture. These are undeniable facts.
+They are not peculiar to New England. You find them wherever the
+voluntary principle is resorted to. In England, in Catholic countries,
+you find the old historic names in the Established Church; there is no
+lack of aristocratic blood in clerical veins; but there and everywhere
+the church seems falling astern of all other craft which can keep the
+sea.
+
+Since these things are so, men who have only the conventional standard
+wherewith to measure the amount of piety, only that test to prove its
+existence by, think we are rapidly going to decay; that the tabernacle
+is fallen down, and no man rises to set it up. They complain that Zion
+is in distress; theological newspapers lament that there are no revivals
+to report; that "The Lord has withheld His arm," and does not "pour out
+His Spirit upon the churches." Ghastly meetings are held by men with
+sincere and noble heart, but saddened face; speeches are made which seem
+a groan of linked wailings long drawn out. Men mourn at the infidelity
+of the times, at the coldness of some, at the deadness of others. All
+the sects complain of this, yet each loves to attribute the deadness of
+the rival sects to their special theology; it is Unitarianism which is
+choking the Unitarians, say their foes, and the Unitarians know how to
+retort after the same fashion. The less enlightened put the blame of
+this misfortune on the good God who has somehow "withheld His hand," or
+omitted to "pour out His Spirit,"--the people perishing for want of the
+open vision. Others put the blame on mankind; some on "poor human
+nature," which is not what might have been expected, not perceiving
+that if the fault be there it is not for us to remedy, and if God made
+man a bramble-bush, that no wailing will make him bear figs. Yet others
+refer this condition to the use made of human nature, which certainly is
+a more philosophical way of looking at the matter.
+
+Now there is one sect which has done great service in former days, which
+is, I think, still doing something to enlighten and liberalize the land,
+and, I trust, will yet do more, more even than it consciously intends.
+The name of Unitarian is deservedly dear to many of us, who yet will not
+be shackled by any denominational fetters. This sect has always been
+remarkable for a certain gentlemanly reserve about all that pertained to
+the inward part of religion; other faults it might have, but it did not
+incur the reproach of excessive enthusiasm, or a spirituality too
+sublimated and transcendental for daily use. This sect has long been a
+speckled bird among the denominations, each of which has pecked at her,
+or at least cawed with most unmelodious croak against this new-fledged
+sect. It was said the Unitarians had "denied the Lord that bought them;"
+that theirs was the church of unbelief--not the church of Christ, but of
+No-Christ; that they had a Bible of their own, and a thin, poor Bible,
+too; that their ways were ways of destruction; "Touch not, taste not,
+handle not," was to be written on their doctrines; that they had not
+even the grace of lukewarmness, but were moral and stone-cold; that
+they looked fair on the side turned towards man, but on the Godward side
+it was a blank wall with no gate, nor window, nor loop-hole, nor eyelet
+for the Holy Ghost to come through; that their prayers were only a show
+of devotion to cover up the hard rock of the flinty heart, or the frozen
+ground of morality. Their faith, it was said, was only a conviction
+after the case was proven by unimpeachable evidence, and good for
+nothing; while belief without evidence, or against proof, seems to be
+the right ecclesiastical talisman.
+
+For a long time the Unitarian sect did not grumble unduly, but set
+itself to promote the cultivation of reason and apply that to religion;
+to cultivate morality and apply it to life; and to demand the most
+entire personal freedom for all men in all matters pertaining to
+religion. Hence came its merits; they were very great merits, too, and
+not at all the merits of the times, held in common with the other sects.
+I need not dwell on this, and the good works of Unitarianism, in this
+the most Unitarian city in the world; but as a general thing the
+Unitarians, it seems to me, did neglect the culture of piety; and of
+course their morality, while it lasted, would be unsatisfactory, and in
+time would wither and dry up because it had no deepness of earth to grow
+out of. The Unitarians, as a general thing, began outside, and sought to
+work inward, proceeding from the special to the general, by what might
+be called the inductive mode of religious culture; that was the form
+adopted in pulpits, and in families so far as there was any religious
+education attempted in private. That is not the method of nature, where
+all growth is the development of a living germ, which by an inward power
+appropriates the outward things it needs, and grows thereby. Hence came
+the defects of Unitarianism, and they were certainly very great defects;
+but they came almost unavoidably from the circumstances of the times.
+The sensational philosophy was the only philosophy that prevailed; the
+Orthodox sects had always rejected a part of that philosophy, not in the
+name of science, but of piety, and they supplied its place not with a
+better philosophy, but with tradition, speaking with an authority which
+claimed to be above human nature. It was not in the name of reason that
+they rejected a false philosophy, but in the name of religion often
+denounced all philosophy and the reason which demanded it. The
+Unitarians rejected that portion of Orthodoxy, became more consistent
+sensationalists, and arrived at results which we know. Now it is easy to
+see their error; not difficult to avoid it; but forty or fifty years ago
+it was almost impossible not to fall into this mistake. Sometimes it
+seems as if the Unitarians were half conscious of this defect, and so
+dared not be original, but borrowed Orthodox weapons, or continued to
+use Trinitarian phrases long after they had blunted those weapons of
+their point, and emptied the phrases of their former sense. In the
+controversy between the Orthodox and Unitarians, neither party was
+wholly right: the Unitarians had reason to charge the Orthodox with
+debasing man's nature, and representing God as not only unworthy, but
+unjust, and somewhat odious; the Trinitarians were mainly right in
+charging us with want of conscious piety, with beginning to work at the
+wrong end; but at the same time it must be remembered, that, in
+proportion to their numbers, the Unitarians have furnished far more
+philanthropists and reformers than any of the other sects. It is time to
+confess this on both sides.
+
+For a long time the Unitarian sect did not complain much of the decline
+of piety; it did not care to have an organization, loving personal
+freedom too well for that, and it had not much denominational feeling;
+indeed, its members were kept together, not so much by an agreement and
+unity of opinion among themselves, as by a unity of opposition from
+without; it was not the hooks on their shields that held the legion
+together with even front, but the pressure of hostile shields crowded
+upon them from all sides. They did not believe in spasmodic action; if a
+body was dead, they gave it burial, without trying to galvanize it into
+momentary life, not worth the spark it cost; they knew that a small
+cloud may make a good many flashes in the dark, but that many
+lightnings cannot make light. They stood apart from the violent efforts
+of other churches to get converts. The converts they got commonly
+adhered to their faith, and in this respect differed a good deal from
+those whom "Revivals" brought into other churches; with whom
+Christianity sprung up in a night, and in a night also perished. Some
+years ago, when this city was visited and ravaged by Revivals, the
+Unitarians kept within doors, gave warning of the danger, and suffered
+less harm and loss from that tornado than any of the sects. Unitarianism
+seems, in this city, to have done its original work; so the company is
+breaking up by degrees, and the men are going off, to engage in other
+business, to weed other old fields, or to break up new land, each man
+following his own sense of duty, and for himself determining whether to
+go or stay. But at the same time, an attempt is made to keep the company
+together; to cultivate a denominational feeling; to put hooks and
+staples on the shields which no longer offer that formidable and even
+front; to teach all trumpets to give the same sectarian bray, all voices
+to utter the same war-cry. The attempt does not succeed; the ranks are
+disordered, the trumpets give an uncertain sound, and the soldiers do
+not prepare themselves for denominational battle; nay, it often happens
+that the camp lacks the two sinews of war--both money, and men. Hence
+the denominational view of religious affairs has undergone a change; I
+make no doubt a real and sincere change, though I know this has been
+denied, and the change thought only official. The men I refer to are
+sincere and devout men; some of them quite above the suspicion of mere
+official conduct. This sect is now the loudest in its wailing; these
+Christian Jeremiahs tell us that we do not realize spiritual things,
+that we are all dead men, that there is no health in us. These cold
+Unitarian Thomases crowd unwontedly together in public to bewail the
+spiritual weather, the dearth of piety in Boston, the "General decline
+of religion" in New England. Church unto church raises the Macedonian
+cry, "Come over and help us!" The opinion seems general that piety is in
+a poor way, and must have watchers, the strongest medicine, and nursing
+quite unusual, or it will soon be all over, and Unitarianism will give
+up the ghost. Various causes have I heard assigned for the malady; some
+think that there has been over-much preaching of philosophy, though
+perhaps there is not evidence to convict any one man in particular of
+the offence; that philosophy is the dog in the manger, who keeps the
+hungry Unitarian flock from their spiritual hay, and cut-straw, which
+are yet of not the smallest use to him. But look never so sharp, and you
+do not find this dangerous beast in the neighborhood of the fold. Others
+think that there has been also an excess of moral preaching, against the
+prevalent sins of the nation, I suppose--but few individuals seem
+liable to conviction on that charge. Yet others think this decline comes
+from the fact that the terrors have not been duly and sufficiently
+administered from the pulpit; that while Catholics and Methodists thrive
+under such influences, the Unitarian widows are neglected in the weekly
+ministration of terror and of threat; that there has not been so much an
+excess of lightning in the form of philosophy or morality, but only a
+lack of thunder.
+
+This temporary movement among the Unitarians of Boston is natural; in
+some respects it is what our fathers would have called "judicial." The
+Unitarians have been cold, have looked more at the outward
+manifestations of goodness than at the inward spirit of piety which was
+to make the manifestations; they have not had an excess of philosophy,
+or of morality, but a defect of piety. They have been more respectable
+than pious. They have not always quite rightly appreciated the
+enthusiasm of sterner and more austere sects; not always done justice to
+the inwardness of religion those sects sought to promote. When their
+churches get a little thin, and their denominational affairs a little
+disturbed, it is quite natural these Unitarians should look after the
+cause and pass over to lamentations at the present state of things;
+while looking at the community from the new point of view, it is quite
+natural that they should suppose piety on the decline, and religion
+dying out. Yes, in general it is plain that, if men have no eyes but
+conventional eyes, no spirit but that of the ecclesiastical order they
+serve in, and of the denomination they belong to, it is natural for them
+to think that because piety does not flow in the old ecclesiastical
+channel, it does not flow anywhere, and there is none at all to run.
+Thus it is easy to explain the complaint of the Catholics at the great
+defection of the most enlightened nations of Europe; the lamentation of
+the Protestants at the heresy of the most enlightened portion of their
+sect; and the Unitarian wail over the general decline of piety in the
+city of Boston. Some men can only judge the present age by the
+conventional standard of the past, and as the old form of piety does not
+appear, they must conclude there is no piety.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now recur to the other or natural standard, and look at the
+manifestation of piety in the form of morality. Last Sunday I spoke of
+our moral condition; and it appeared that morals were in a low state
+here when compared with the ideal morals of Christianity. Now as the
+outward deed is but the manifestation of the inward life, and objective
+humanity the index of subjective divinity, so the low state of morals
+proves a low state of piety; if the heart of this town was right towards
+God, then would its hand also be right towards man. I am one of those
+who for long years have lamented the want of vital piety in this
+people. We not only do not realize spiritual things, but we do not make
+them our ideals. I see proofs of this want of piety in the low morals of
+trade, of the public press; in poverty, intemperance, and crime; in the
+vices and social wrongs touched on the last Sunday. I judge the tree by
+its fruit. But it is not on this ground that the ecclesiastical
+complaint is based. Men who make so much ado about the absence of piety,
+do not appeal for proof thereof to the great vices and prominent sins of
+the times; they see no sign of that in our trade and our politics; in
+the misery that festers in putrid lanes, one day to breed a pestilence,
+which it were even cheaper to hinder now, than cure at a later time;
+nobody mentions as proof the Mexican War, the political dishonesty of
+officers, the rapacity of office-seekers, the servility of men who will
+tamely suffer the most sacred rights of three millions of men to be
+trodden into the dust. Matters which concern millions of men came up
+before your Congress; the great Senator of Massachusetts loitered away
+the time of the session here in Boston, managing a lawsuit for a few
+thousand dollars, and no fault was publicly found with such neglect of
+public duty; but men see no lack of piety indicated by this fact, and
+others like it; they find signs of that lack in empty pews, in a
+deserted communion-table, in the fact that children, though brought up
+to reverence truth and justice, to love man and to love God, are not
+baptized with water; or in the fact that Unitarianism or Trinitarianism
+is on the decline! How many wailings have we all heard or read, because
+the Puritan churches of Boston have not kept the faith of their grim
+founders; what lamentations at the rising up of a sect which refuses the
+doctrine of the Trinity, or at the appearance of a few men who,
+neglecting the common props of Christianity, rest it, for its basis, on
+the nature of man and the nature of God: though almost all the eminent
+philanthropy of the day is connected with these men, yet they are still
+called "Infidel," and reviled on all hands!
+
+The state of things mentioned in the last sermon does indicate a want of
+piety, a deep and a great want. I do not see signs of that in the debt
+and decay of churches, in absence from meetings, in doubt of theological
+dogmas, in neglect of forms and ceremonies which once were of great
+value; but I do see it in the low morals of trade, of the press; in the
+popular vices. On a national scale I see it in the depravity of
+political parties, in the wicked war we have just fought, in the slavery
+we still tolerate and support. Yes, as I look on the churches of this
+city, I see a want of piety in the midst of us. If eminent piety were in
+them, and allowed to follow its natural bent, it would come out of them
+in the form of eminent humanity; they would lead in the philanthropies
+of this day, where they hardly follow. In this condition of the churches
+I see a most signal proof of the low estate of piety; they do not
+manifest a love of truth, which is the piety of the intellect; nor a
+love of justice, which is the piety of the moral sense; nor a love of
+love, which is the piety of the affections; nor a love of God as the
+Infinite Father of all men, which is the total piety of the whole soul.
+For lack of this internal divinity there is a lack of external humanity.
+Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? This is what I complain
+of, what I mourn over.
+
+The clergymen of this city are most of them sincere men, I doubt not;
+some of them men of a superior culture; many of them laborious men;
+most, perhaps all of them, deeply interested in the welfare of the
+churches, and the promotion of piety. But how many of them are marked
+and known for their philanthropy, distinguished for their zeal in
+putting down any of the major sins of our day, zealous in any work of
+reform? I fear I can count them all on the fingers of a single hand; yet
+there are enough to bewail the departure of monastic forms, and of the
+theology which led men in the dimness of a darker age, but cannot shine
+in the rising light of this. I find no fault with these men; I blame
+them not; it is their profession which so blinds their eyes. They are as
+wise and as valiant as the churches let them be. What sect in all this
+land ever cared about temperance, education, peace betwixt nations, or
+even the freedom of all men in our own, so much as this sect cares for
+the baptizing of children with water, and that for the baptizing of men;
+this for the doctrine of the Trinity, and all for the infallibility of
+the Bible? Do you ask the sects to engage in the work of extirpating
+concrete wrong? It is in vain; each reformer tries it--the mild sects
+answer, "I pray thee have me excused;" the sterner sects reply with
+awful speech. A distinguished theological journal of another city thinks
+the philanthropies of this day are hostile to piety, and declares that
+true spiritual Christianity never prevails where men think slavery is a
+sin. A distinguished minister of a highly respectable sect declares the
+temperance societies unchristian, and even atheistical. He reasons thus:
+The church is an instrument appointed by God and Christ, to overcome all
+forms of wrong, intemperance among the rest; to neglect this instrument
+and devise another, a temperance society, to wit, is to abandon the
+institutions of God and Christ, and so it is unchristian and
+atheistical. In other words, here is intemperance, a stone of stumbling,
+and a rock of offence, in our way; there is an old wooden beetle, which
+has done great service of old time, and is said to have been made by
+God's own hand; men smite therewith the stone or smite it not; still it
+lies there a stone of stumbling and a stone of shame; other men
+approach, and with a sledge-hammer of well-tempered steel smite the
+rock, and break off piece after piece, smoothing the rough
+impracticable way; they call on men to come to their aid, with such
+weapons as they will. But our minister bids them beware; the beetle is
+"of the Lord," the iron which breaks the rock in pieces is an
+unchristian and atheistical instrument. Yet was this minister an
+earnest, a pious, and a self-denying man, who sincerely sought the good
+of men. He had been taught to know no piety but in the church's form. I
+would not do dishonor to the churches; they have done great service,
+they still do much; I would only ask them to be worthy of their
+Christian name. They educate men a little, and allow them to approach
+emancipation, but never to be free and go alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I see much to complain of in the condition of piety; yet nothing to be
+alarmed at. When I look back, it seems worse still, far worse. There has
+not been "A decline of piety" in Boston of late years. Religion is not
+sick. Last Sunday, I spoke of the great progress made in morality within
+fifty years; I said it was an immense progress within two hundred years.
+Now, there cannot be such a progress in the outward manifestation
+without a corresponding and previous development of the inward
+principle. Morality cannot grow without piety more than an oak without
+water, earth, sun, and air. Let me go back one hundred years; see what a
+difference between the religious aspect of things then and now!
+certainly there has been a great growth in spirituality since that day.
+I am not to judge men's hearts; I may take their outward lives as the
+test and measure of their inward piety. Will you say the outward life
+never completely comes up to that? It does so as completely now as then.
+Compare the toleration of these times with those; compare the
+intelligence of the community; the temperance, sobriety, chastity,
+virtue in general. Look at what is now done in a municipal way by towns
+and States for mankind; see the better provision made for the poor, for
+the deaf, the dumb, the blind, for the insane, even for the idiot; see
+what is done for the education of the people--in schools, academies,
+colleges, and by public lectures; what is done for the criminal to
+prevent the growth of crime. See what an amelioration of the penal laws;
+how men are saved and restored to society, who had once been wholly
+lost. See what is done by philanthropy still more eminent, which the
+town and State have not yet overtaken and enacted into law; by the
+various societies for reform--those for temperance, for peace, for the
+discipline of prisons, for the discharged convicts, for freeing the
+slave. See this Anti-slavery party, which, in twenty years, has become
+so powerful throughout all the Northern States, so strong that it cannot
+be howled down, and men begin to find it hardly safe to howl over it; a
+party which only waits the time to lift up its million arms, and hurl
+the hateful institution of slavery out of the land! All these humane
+movements come from a divine piety in the soul of man. A tree which
+bears such fruits is not a dead tree; is not wholly to be despaired of;
+is not yet in a "decline," and past all hope of recovery. Is the age
+wanting in piety, which makes such efforts as these? Yes, you will say,
+because it does no more. I agree to this, but it is rich in piety
+compared to other times. Ours is an age of faith; not of mere belief in
+the commandments of men, but of faith in the nature of man and the
+commandments of God.
+
+This prevailing and contagious complaint about the decline of religion
+is not one of the new things of our time. In the beginning of the last
+century, Dr. Colman, first minister of the church in Brattle street,
+lamented in small capitals over the general decline of piety:--"The
+venerable name of religion and of the church is made a sham pretence for
+the worst of villanies, for uncharitableness and unnatural oppression of
+the pious and the peaceable;" "the perilous times are come, wherein men
+are lovers only of their own selves." "Ah, calamitous day," says he,
+"into which we are fallen, and into which the sins of our infatuated age
+have brought us!" He looks back to the founders of New England; they
+"were rich in faith, and heirs of a better world," "men of whom the
+world was not worthy;" "they laid in a stock of prayers for us which
+have brought down many blessings on us already." Samuel Willard
+bewailed "the checkered state of the gospel church;" it was "in every
+respect a gloomy day, and covered with thick clouds."
+
+We retire yet further back, to the end of the seventeenth century; a
+hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, Dr. Increase Mather, not only in
+his own pulpit, but also at "the great and Thursday lecture," lamented
+over "the degeneracy and departing glory of New England." He complained
+that there was a neglect of the Sabbath, of the ordinances, and of
+family worship; he groaned at the lax discipline of the churches, and
+looked, says another, "as fearfully on the growing charity as on the
+growing vices of the age." He called the existing generation "an
+unconverted generation." "Atheism and profaneness," says he, "have come
+to a prodigious height;" "God will visit" for these things; "God is
+about to open the windows of heaven, and pour down the cataracts of His
+wrath ere this generation ... is passed away." If a comet appeared in
+the sky, it was to admonish men of the visitation, and make "the haughty
+daughters of Zion reform their pride of apparel." "The world is full of
+unbelief" (that is, in the malignant aspect and disastrous influence of
+comets), "but there is an awful Scripture for them that do profanely
+condemn such signal works!"
+
+One of the present and well-known indications of the decline of piety,
+that is often thought a modern luxury, and ridiculously denounced in
+the pulpit, which has done its part in fostering the enjoyment, was
+practised to an extent that alarmed the prim shepherds of the New
+England flock in earlier days. The same Dr. Mather preached a series of
+sermons "tending to promote the power of godliness," and concludes the
+whole with a discourse "Of sleeping at sermons," and says: "To sleep in
+the public worship of God is a thing too frequently and easily
+practised; it is a great and a dangerous evil." "Sleeping at a sermon is
+a greater sin than speaking an idle word. Therefore, if men must be
+called to account for idle words, much more for this!" "Gospel sermons
+are among the most precious talents which any in this world have
+conferred upon them. But what a sad account will be given concerning
+those sermons which have been slept away! As light as thou makest of it
+now, it may be conscience will roar for it upon a death-bed!" "Verily,
+there is many a soul that will find this to be a dismal thought at the
+day of judgment, when he shall remember so many sermons I might have
+heard for my everlasting benefit, but I slighted and slept them all
+away. Therefore consider, if men allow themselves in this evil their
+souls are in danger to perish." "It is true that a godly man may be
+subject unto this as well as unto other infirmities; but he doth not
+allow himself therein." "The name of the glorious God is greatly
+prophaned by this inadvertency." "The support of the evangelical
+ministry is ... discouraged." He thought the character of the pulpit was
+not sufficient explanation of this phenomenon, and adds, in his
+supernatural way, "Satan is the external cause of this evil;" "he had
+rather have men wakeful at any time than at sermon time." The good man
+mentions, by way of example, a man who "had not slept a wink at a sermon
+for more than twenty years together," and also, but by way of warning,
+the unlucky youth in the Acts who slept at Paul's long sermon, and fell
+out of the window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding
+something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did
+so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them to death." "The
+holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not
+punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it."
+"Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks forever and
+ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to
+have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending dayes of
+eternity." Other men denounced their "Wo to sleepy sinners," and issued
+their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."
+
+Dr. Mather thought there was "A deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be
+much in mourning and humiliation that God's bottle may be filled with
+tears." He thought piety was going out because surplices were coming
+in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like
+the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical
+instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy
+fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-slavery societies are
+to many of their sons--an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic!"
+The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that
+"all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at
+once." Inoculation for the smallpox was as vehemently and ably opposed
+as the modern attempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to
+the machinations of men than to the all-wise providence of God."
+
+"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical
+historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the
+primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers;
+a change in the tenor of the divine dispensation towards this country
+was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our
+pease fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with
+multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become
+epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our
+inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable ruins." "The
+serious people throughout the land were awakened by these intimations of
+divine displeasure to inquire into the causes and matters of the
+controversie." Accordingly, 1679, a synod was convened at Boston, to
+"inquire into the causes of the Lord's controversie with his New England
+people," who determined the matter.[1]
+
+A little later, in 1690, the General Court considered the subject anew,
+and declared, that "A corruption of manners, attended with inexcusable
+degeneracies and apostacies ... is the cause of the controversie." We
+"are now arriving at such an extremity, that the axe is laid to the root
+of the trees, and we are in eminent danger of perishing, if a speedy
+reformation of our provoking evils prevent it not." In 1702, Cotton
+Mather complains that "Our manifold indispositions to recover the dying
+power of Godliness, were successive calamities, under all of which, our
+apostacies from that Godliness, have rather proceeded than abated." "The
+old spirit of New England has been sensibly going out of the world, as
+the old saints in whom it was have gone; and, instead thereof, the
+spirit of the world, with a lamentable neglect of strict piety, has
+crept in upon the rising generation."
+
+You go back to the time of the founders and fathers of the colony, and
+it is no better. In 1667, Mr. Wilson, who had "A singular gift in the
+practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that "God would
+judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their
+contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and
+sloth," and before that he said, "People rise up as Corah, against their
+ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the
+church,... I think God is provoked by it. Another sin I take to be the
+making light ... of the authority of the Synods." John Norton, whose
+piety was said to be "Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled,
+after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the
+blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New
+England, who "Liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before
+he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while
+he was under the roof, mourned at "The condition of the churches;" and,
+in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President
+of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to
+"Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the
+professors of religion falling into."[2] In 1641, such was the condition
+of piety in Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man,
+because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was
+appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal
+in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The
+church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a
+minister, one hundred and fifty years ago, "before the dragon cast
+forth several floods to devour it; but not the least of these floods was
+one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what
+alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the
+country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to
+seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first
+mother, they soon hooked in the husbands also." So, in 1637, the Synod
+of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman
+was duly convicted of holding "About thirty monstrous opinions," and
+subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The
+synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation and emptying of private
+passions," condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony,
+as erroneous, and decided to "Refer doubts to be resolved by the great
+God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "The dark and distracted
+condition of the churches of New England."
+
+"The good old times," when piety was in a thriving state, and the
+churches successful and contented, lay as far behind the "Famous Johns,"
+as it now does behind their successors in office and lamentation. Then,
+as now, the complaint had the same foundation: ministers and other good
+men could not see that new piety will not be put into the old forms,
+neither the old forms of thought, nor the old forms of action. In the
+days of Wilson, Cotton, and Norton, there was a gradual growth of
+piety; in the days of the Mathers, of Colman, and Willard, and from that
+time to this, there has been a steady improvement of the community, in
+intellectual, moral, and religious culture. Some men could not see the
+progress two hundred years ago, because they believed in no piety,
+except as it was manifested in their conventional forms. It is so now.
+Mankind advances by the irresistible law of God, under the guidance of a
+few men of large discourse, who look before and after, but amid the
+wailing of many who think each advance is a retreat, and every stride a
+stumble.
+
+Now-a-days nobody complains at "The ungodly custom of wearing long
+hair;" no dandy is dealt with by the church, for his dress; the weakest
+brother is not offended by "Regular singing,"--so it be regular,--"by
+organs and the like;" nobody laments at "The reading of Scripture
+lessons," or "The use of the Lord's Prayer" in public religious
+services, or is offended, because a clergyman makes a prayer at a
+funeral, and solemnizes a marriage,--though these are "prelatical
+customs," and were detested by our fathers. Yet, other things, now as
+much dreaded, and thought "of a bad and dangerous tendency," will one
+day prove themselves as innocent, though now as much mourned over. Many
+an old doctrine will fade out, and though some think a star has fallen
+out of heaven, a new truth will rise up and take its place. It is to be
+expected that ministers will often complain of "The general decay of
+religion." The position of a clergyman, fortunate in many things, is
+unhappy in this: he seldom sees the result of his labors, except in the
+conventional form mentioned above. The lawyer, the doctor, the merchant
+and mechanic, the statesman and the farmer, all have visible and
+palpable results of their work, while the minister can only see that he
+has baptized men, and admitted them to his church; the visible and
+quotable tokens of his success, are a large audience, respectable and
+attentive, a thriving Sunday school, or a considerable body of
+communicants. If these signs fail, or become less than formerly, he
+thinks he has labored in vain; that piety is on the decline, for it is
+only by this form that he commonly tests and measures piety itself.
+Hence, a sincere and earnest minister, with the limitations which he so
+easily gets from his profession and social position, is always prone to
+think ill of the times, to undervalue the new wine which refuses to be
+kept in the old bottles, but rends them asunder; hence he bewails the
+decline of religion, and looks longingly back to the days of his
+fathers.
+
+But you will ask, Why does not a minister demand piety in its natural
+form? Blame him not; unconsciously he fulfils his contract, and does
+what he is taught, ordained, and paid for doing. It is safe for a
+minister to demand piety of his parish, in the conventional form; not
+safe to demand it in the form of morality--eminent piety, in the form
+of philanthropy: it would be an innovation; it would "Hurt men's
+feelings;" it might disturb some branches of business; at the North, it
+would interfere with the liquor-trade; at the South, with the
+slave-trade; everywhere it would demand what many men do not like to
+give. If a man asks piety in the form of bodily attendance at church, on
+the only idle day in the week, when business and amusement must be
+refrained from; in the form of belief in doctrines which are commonly
+accepted by the denomination, and compliance with its forms,--that is
+customary; it hurts nobody's feelings; it does not disturb the
+liquor-trade, nor the slave-trade; it interferes with nothing, not even
+with respectable sleep in a comfortable pew. A minister, like others
+loves to be surrounded by able and respectable men; he seeks, therefore,
+a congregation of such. If he is himself an able man, it is well; but
+there are few in any calling, whom we designate as able. Our weak man
+cannot instruct his parishioners; he soon learns this, and ceases to
+give them counsel on matters of importance. They would not suffer it,
+for the larger includes the less, not the less the larger. He is not
+strong by nature; their position overlooks and commands his. He must
+speak and give some counsel; he wisely limits himself to things of but
+little practical interest, and his parishioners are not offended: "That
+is my sentiment exactly," says the most worldly man in the church,
+"Religion is too pure to be mixed up with the practical business of the
+street." The original and effectual preaching in such cases, is not from
+the pulpit down upon the pews, but from the pews up to the pulpit, which
+only echoes, consciously or otherwise, but does not speak.
+
+In a solar system, the central sun, not barely powerful from its
+position, is the most weighty body; heavier than all the rest put
+together; so with even swing they all revolve about it. Our little
+ministerial sun was ambitious of being amongst large satellites; he is
+there, but the law of gravitation amongst men is as certain as in
+matter; he cannot poise and swing the system; he is not the sun thereof,
+not even a primary planet, only a little satellite revolving with many
+nutations round some primary, in an orbit that is oblique, complicated,
+and difficult to calculate; now waxing in a "Revival," now waning in a
+"Decline of piety," now totally eclipsed by his primary that comes
+between him and the light which lighteth every man. Put one of the cold
+thin moons of Saturn into the centre of the solar system,--would the
+universe revolve about that little dot? Loyal matter with irresistible
+fealty gravitates towards the sun, and wheels around the balance-point
+of the world's weight, be it where it may, called by whatever name.
+
+While ministers insist unduly on the conventional manifestation of
+piety, it is not a thing unheard of for a layman to resolve to go to
+heaven by the ecclesiastical road, yet omit resolving to be a good man
+before he gets there. Such a man finds the ordinary forms of piety very
+convenient, and not at all burdensome; they do not interfere with his
+daily practice of injustice and meanness of soul; they seem a substitute
+for real and manly goodness; they offer a royal road to saintship here
+and heaven hereafter. Is the man in arrears with virtue, having long
+practised wickedness and become insolvent? This form is a new bankrupt
+law of the spirit, he pays off his old debts in the ecclesiastical
+currency--a pennyworth of form for a pound of substantial goodness. This
+bankrupt sinner, cleared by the ecclesiastical chancery, is a solvent
+saint; he exhorts at meetings, strains at every gnat, and mourns over
+"The general decay of piety," and teaches other men the way in which
+they should go--to the same end.
+
+    "So morning insects that in muck begun,
+    Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the evening sun."
+
+I honor the founders of New England; they were pious men--their lives
+proved it; but domineered over by false opinions in theology, they put
+their piety into very unnatural and perverted forms. They had ideas
+which transcended their age; they came here to make those ideas into
+institutions. That they had great faults, bigotry, intolerance, and
+superstition, is now generally conceded. They were picked men, "wheat
+sifted out of three kingdoms," to plant a new world withal. They have
+left their mark very deep and very distinct in this town, which was
+their prayer and their pride. It may seem unjust to ourselves to compare
+a whole community like our own with such a company as filled Boston in
+the first half century of its existence,--men selected for their
+spiritual hardihood; but here and now, in the midst of Boston, are men
+quite as eminent for piety who as far transcend this age, as the
+Puritans and the pilgrims surpassed their time. The Puritan put his
+religion into the ecclesiastical form; not into the form of the Roman or
+the English Church, but into a new one of his own. His descendant,
+inheriting his father's faith in God, and stern self-denial, but
+sometimes without his bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, with
+little fear but with more love of God, and consequently with more love
+of man, puts his piety into a new form. It is not the form of the old
+Church; the Church of the Puritans is to him often what the Church of
+the Pope and the prelates was to his ungentle sire. He puts his piety
+into the form of goodness; eminent piety becomes philanthropy, and takes
+the shape of reform. In such men, in many of their followers, I see the
+same trust in God, the same scorn of compromising right and truth, the
+same unfaltering allegiance to the eternal Father, which shone in the
+pilgrims who founded this new world, which fired the reformers of the
+Church; yes, which burned in the hearts of Paul and John. Piety has not
+failed and gone out; each age has its own forms thereof; the old and
+passing can never understand the new, nor can they consent to decrease
+with the increase of the new. Once, men put their piety into a church,
+Catholic or Protestant; they made creeds and believed them; they devised
+rites and symbols, which helped their faith. It was well; but we cannot
+believe those creeds, nor be aided by such symbols and such rites. Why
+pretend to drag a weighty crutch about because it helped your father
+once, wandering alone and in the dark, sounding on his dim and perilous
+way? Once earthen roads were the best we knew, and horses' feet had
+shoes of swiftness; now we need not, out of reverence, refuse the iron
+road, the chariot and the steed of flame; nor out of irreverence need we
+spurn the path our fathers trod; sorely bested and hunted after,
+tear-bedewed and travel-stained, they journeyed there, passing on to
+their God. If the mother that bore us were never so rude, and to our
+eyes might seem never so graceless now, still she was our mother, and
+without her we should not have been born. Wives and children may men
+have, and manifold; each has but one mother. The great institution we
+call the Christian Church has been the mother of us all; and though in
+her own dotage she deny our piety, and call us infidel, far be it from
+me to withhold the richly earned respect. Behind a decent veil, then,
+let us hide our mother's weakness, and ourselves pass on. Once piety
+built up a theocracy, and men say it was divine; now piety, everywhere
+in Christendom, builds up democracies; it is a diviner work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The piety of this age must manifest itself in Morality, and appear in a
+church where the priests are men of active mind and active hand; men of
+ideas, who commune with God and man through faith and works, finding no
+truth is hostile to their creed, no goodness foreign to their litany, no
+piety discordant with their psalm. The man who once would have built a
+convent and been its rigorous chief, now founds a temperance society,
+contends against war, toils for the pauper, the criminal, the madman,
+and the slave, for men bereft of senses and of sense. The synod of Dort
+and of Cambridge, the assembly of divines at Westminster, did what they
+could with what piety they had; they put it into decrees and platforms,
+into catechisms and creeds. But the various conventions for reform put
+their piety into resolves and then into philanthropic works. I do not
+believe there has ever been an age when piety bore so large a place in
+the whole being of New England as at this day, or attendance on
+church-forms so small a part. The attempts made and making for a better
+education of the people, the lectures on science and literature
+abundantly attended in this town, the increased fondness for reading,
+the better class of books which are read--all these indicate an
+increased love of truth, the intellectual part of piety; societies for
+reform and for charity show an increase of the moral and affectional
+parts of piety; the better, the lovelier idea of God which all sects are
+embracing, is a sign of increased love of God. Thus all parts of piety
+are proving their existence by their work. The very absence from the
+churches, the disbelief of the old sour theologies, the very neglect of
+outward forms and ceremonies of religion, the decline of the ministry
+itself, under the present circumstances, shows an increase of piety. The
+baby-clothes were well and wide for the baby; now, the fact that he
+cannot get them on, shows plainly that he has outgrown them, is a boy
+and no longer a baby.
+
+Once Piety fled to the Church as the only sanctuary in the waste wide
+world, and was fondly welcomed there, fed and fostered. When power fled
+off from the Church--"Wilt thou also go away?" said she; "Lord," said
+Piety, "to whom shall we go? Thou only hast the words of everlasting
+life." Once convents and cathedrals were what the world needed as
+shelter for this fair child of God; then she dwelt in the grim edifice
+that our fathers built, and for a time counted herself "lodged in a
+lodging where good things are." Now is she grown able to wander forth
+fearless and free, lodging where the night overtakes her, and doing what
+her hands find to do, not unattended by the Providence which hitherto
+has watched over and blessed her. I respect piety in the Hebrew saints,
+prophets, and bards, who spoke the fiery speech, or sung their sweet and
+soul-inspiring psalm:
+
+    "Out from the heart of Nature rolled
+    The burdens of the Bible old."
+
+I honor piety among the saints of Greece, clad in the form of
+philanthropy and art, speaking still in dramas, in philosophies, and
+song, and in the temple and the statue too:
+
+    "Not from a vain and shallow thought
+    His awful Jove young Phidias brought."
+
+I admire at the piety of the Middle Ages, which founded the monastic
+tribes of men, which wrote the theologies, scholastic and mystic both,
+still speaking to the mind of men, or in poetic legends insinuated
+truth; which built that heroic architecture, overmastering therewith the
+sense and soul of man:
+
+    "The passive master lent his hand
+    To the vast Soul that o'er him planned:
+    And the same Power that reared the shrine,
+    Bestrode the tribes that knelt therein."
+
+But the piety which I find now, in this age, here in our own land, I
+respect, honor, and admire yet more; I find it in the form of moral
+life; that is the piety I love, piety in her own loveliness. Would I
+could find poetic strains as fit to sing of her--but yet such
+
+    "Loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
+    But is, when unadorned, adorned the most."
+
+Let me do no dishonor to other days, to Hebrew or to Grecian saints.
+Unlike and hostile though they were, they jointly fed my soul in
+earliest days. I would not underrate the mediæval saints, whose words
+and works have been my study in a manlier age; yet I love best the fair
+and vigorous piety of our own day. It is beautiful, amid the strong,
+rank life of the nineteenth century, amid the steam-mills and the
+telegraphs which talk by lightning, amid the far-reaching enterprises of
+our time, and 'mid the fierce democracies, it is beautiful to find this
+fragrant piety growing up in unwonted forms, in places where men say no
+seed of heaven can lodge and germinate. So in a June meadow, when a boy,
+and looking for the cranberries of another year, faded and tasteless,
+amid the pale but coarse rank grass, and discontented that I found them
+not, so I have seen the crimson arethusa or the cymbidium shedding an
+unexpected loveliness o'er all the watery soil and all the pale and
+coarse rank grass, a prophecy of summer near at hand. So in October,
+when the fields are brown with frost, the blue and fringed gentian meets
+your eye, filling with thankful tears.
+
+There is no decline of piety, but an increase of it; a good deal has
+been done in two hundred years, in one hundred years, yes, in fifty
+years. Let us admit, with thankfulness of heart, that piety is in
+greater proportion to all our activity now than ever before: but then
+compare ourselves with the ideal of human nature, our piety with the
+ideal piety, and we must confess that we are little and very low. Boston
+is the most active city in the world, the most enterprising. In no place
+is it so easy to obtain men's ears and their purses for any good word
+and work. But think of the evils we know of and tolerate; think of an
+ideal Christian city, then think of Boston; of a Christian man, aye of
+Christ himself, and then think of you and me, and we are filled with
+shame. If there were a true, manly piety in this town, in due proportion
+to our numbers, wealth, and enterprise, how long would the vices of this
+city last? How long would men complain of a dead body of divinity and a
+dead church, and a ministry that was dead? How long would intemperance
+continue, and pauperism, in Boston; how long slavery in this land?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Last Sunday, in the name of the poor, I asked you for your charity.
+To-day I ask for dearer alms: I ask you to contribute your piety. It
+will help the town more than the little money all of us can give. Your
+money will soon be spent; it feeds one man once; we cannot give it
+twice, though the blessing thereof may linger long in the hand which
+gave. Few of us can give much money to the poor; some of us none at all.
+This we can all give: the inspiration of a man with a man's piety in his
+heart, living it out in a man's life. Your money may be ill spent, your
+charity misapplied, but your piety never. After all, there is nothing
+you can give which men will so readily take and so long remember as
+this. Mothers can give it to their daughters and their sons; men, after
+spending thereof profusely at home, can coin their inexhausted store
+into industry, patience, integrity, temperance, justice, humanity, a
+practical love of man. A thousand years ago, it was easy to excuse men
+if they chiefly showed religion in the conventional pattern of the
+church. Forms then were helps, and the nun has been mother to much of
+the charity of our times. It is easy to excuse our fathers for their
+superstitious reverence for rites and forms. But now, in an age which
+has its eyes a little open, a practical and a handy age, we are without
+excuse if our piety appears not in a manly life, our faith in works. To
+give this piety to cheer and bless mankind, you must have it first, be
+cheered and blessed thereby yourself. Have it, then, in your own way;
+put it into your own form. Do men tell you, "This is a degenerate age,"
+and "Religion is dying out?" tell them that when those stars have faded
+out of the sky from very age, when other stars have come up to take
+their place, and they too have grown dim and hollow-eyed and old, that
+religion will still live in man's heart, the primal, everlasting light
+of all our being. Do they tell you that you must put piety into their
+forms; put it there if it be your place; if not, in your place. Let men
+see the divinity that is in you by the humanity that comes out from you.
+If they will not see it, cannot, God can and will. Take courage from the
+past, not its counsel; fear not now to be a man. You may find a new Eden
+where you go, a river of God in it, and a tree of life, an angel to
+guard it; not the warning angel to repel, but the guiding angel to
+welcome and to bless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was four years yesterday since I first came here to speak to you; I
+came hesitatingly, reluctant, with much diffidence as to my power to do
+what it seemed to me was demanded. I did not come merely to pull down,
+but to build up, though it is plain much theological error must be
+demolished before any great reform of man's condition can be brought
+about. I came not to contend against any man, or sect, or party, but to
+speak a word for truth and religion in the name of man and God. I was in
+bondage to no sect; you in bondage to none. When a boy I learned that
+there is but one religion though many theologies. I have found it in
+Christians and in Jews, in Quakers and in Catholics. I hope we are all
+ready to honor what is good in each sect, and in rejecting its evil not
+to forget our love and wisdom in our zeal.
+
+When I came I certainly did not expect to become a popular man, or
+acceptable to many. I had done much which in all countries brings odium
+on a man, though perhaps less in Boston than in any other part of the
+world. I had rejected the popular theology of Christendom. I had exposed
+the low morals of society, had complained of the want of piety in its
+natural form. I had fatally offended the sect, small in numbers, but
+respectable for intelligence and goodness, in which I was brought up. I
+came to look at the signs of the times from an independent point of
+view, and to speak on the most important of all themes. I thought a
+house much smaller than this would be much too large for us. I knew
+there would be fit audience; I thought it would be few, and the few
+would soon have heard enough and go their ways.
+
+I know I have some advantages above most clergymen: I am responsible to
+no sect; no sect feels responsible for me; I have rejoiced at good
+things which I have seen in all sects; the doctrines which I try to
+teach do not rest on tradition, on miracles, or on any man's authority;
+only on the nature of man. I seek to preach the natural laws of man. I
+appeal to history for illustration, not for authority. I have no fear of
+philosophy. I am willing to look a doubt fairly in the face, and think
+reason is sacred as conscience, affection, or the religious faculty in
+man. I see a profound piety in modern science. I have aimed to set forth
+absolute religion, the ideal religion of human nature, free piety, free
+goodness, free thought. I call that Christianity, after the greatest man
+of the world, one who himself taught it; but I know that this was never
+the Christianity of the churches, in any age. I have endeavored to teach
+this religion and apply it to the needs of this time. These things
+certainly give me some advantages over most other ministers. Of the
+disadvantages which are personal to myself, I need not speak in public,
+but some which come from my position, ought to be noticed with a word.
+The walls of this house, the associations connected with it, furnish
+little help to devotion; we must rely on ourselves wholly for that.
+Other clergymen, by their occasional exchanges, can present their
+hearers with an agreeable variety in substance and in form. A single
+man, often heard, becomes wearisome and unprofitable, for "No man can
+feed us always." This I feel to be a great disadvantage which I labor
+under. Your kindness and affectionate indulgence make me feel it all the
+more. But one man cannot be twenty men.
+
+When I came here I knew I should hurt men's feelings. My theology would
+prove more offensive and radical than men thought; the freedom of speech
+which men liked at a distance would not be pleasing when near at hand;
+my doctrines of morality I knew could not be pleasing to all men; not to
+all good men. I saw by your looks that in my abstractions I did not go
+too far for your sympathy, or too fast for your following. I soon found
+that my highest thought and most pious sentiment were most warmly
+welcomed as such; but when I came to put abstract thought and mystical
+piety into concrete goodness, and translate what you had accepted as
+Christian faith into daily life; when I came to apply piety to trade,
+politics, life in general, I knew that I should hurt men's feelings. It
+could not be otherwise. Yet I have had a most patient and faithful
+hearing. One thing I must do in my preaching: I must be in earnest. I
+cannot stand here before you and before God, attempting to teach piety
+and goodness, and not feel the fire and show the fire. The greater the
+wrong, the more popular, the more must I oppose it, and with the
+clearer, abler speech. It is not necessary for me to be popular, to be
+acceptable, even to be loved. It is necessary that I should tell the
+truth. But let that pass. You come hither week after week, it is now
+year after year that you come, to listen to one humble man. Do you get
+poor in your souls? Does your religion become poor and low? Are you
+getting less in the qualities of a man? If so, then leave me, to empty
+seats, to cold and voiceless walls; go elsewhere, and feed your souls
+with a wise passiveness, or an activity wiser yet. Such is your duty;
+let no affection for me hinder you from performing it. The same
+theology, the same form suits not all men. But if it is not so, if I do
+you good, if you grow in mind and conscience, heart and soul, then I ask
+one thing--Let your piety become natural life, your divinity become
+humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The Synod declared: "That God hath a controversie with his New
+England people is undeniable." "There are visible manifest evils, which
+without doubt the Lord is provoked by." 1. "A great and visible decay of
+the power of Godliness amongst many professors in these churches." 2.
+"Pride doth abound in New England. Many have offended God by strange
+apparel." 3. "Church fellowship and other divine institutions are
+grossly neglected." "Quakers are false worshippers," "and Anabaptists
+... do no better than set up an Altar against the Lord's Altar." 4. "The
+holy and glorious name of God hath been polluted;" "because of swearing
+the land mourns." "It is a frequent thing for men to sit in prayer-time
+... and to give way to their own sloth and sleepiness." "We read of but
+one man in Scripture that slept at a sermon, and that sin had like to
+have cost him his life." 5. "There is much Sabbath-breaking; since there
+are multitudes that do profanely absent themselves from the public
+worship of God,... walking abroad and travelling ... being a common
+practice on the Sabbath Day." "Worldly unsuitable discourses are very
+common upon the Lord's Day." "This brings wrath, fires, and other
+judgments upon a professing people." 6. "As to what concerns families
+and Government thereof, there is much amiss." "Children and servants ...
+are not kept in due subjection." "This is a sin which brings great
+judgments, as we see in Eli's and David's family." 7. "Inordinate
+passions, sinful heats and hatreds, and that amongst church members." 8.
+"There is much intemperance:" "it is a common practice for
+town-dwellers, yea, and church members, to frequent public houses, and
+there to misspend precious time." 9. "There is much want of truth
+amongst men." "The Lord is not wont to suffer such an iniquity to pass
+unpunished." 10. "Inordinate affection unto the world." "There hath been
+in many professors an insatiable desire after land and worldly
+accommodations; yea, so as to forsake churches and ordinances, and to
+live like heathen, only so that they might have elbow-room in the world.
+Farms and merchandisings have been preferred before the things of God."
+"Such iniquity causeth war to be in the gate, and cities to be burned
+up." "When Lot did forsake the land of Canaan and the church which was
+in Abraham's family, that so he might have better worldly accommodations
+in Sodom, God fired him out of all." "There are some traders that sell
+their goods at excessive rates; day-laborers and mechanics are
+unreasonable in their demands." 11. "There hath been opposition to the
+work of reformation." 12. "A public spirit is greatly wanting in the
+most of men." 13. "There are sins against the gospel, whereby the Lord
+has been provoked." "Christ is not prized and embraced in all his
+offices and ordinances as ought to be."
+
+[2] In 1646, Mr. Samuel Symonds wrote to Governor Winthrop, as follows:
+"I will also mention the text preached upon at our last fast, and the
+propositions raised thereupon, because it was so seasonable to New
+England's condition. Jeremiah 30:17; For I will restore health to thee,
+and heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord; because they called thee an
+outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom noe man careth for.
+
+"1. Prop. That sick tymes doe passe over Zion.
+
+"2. That sad and bitter neglect is the portion, aggravation and
+affliction of Zion in the tyme of his sicknesse and wounds, but
+especially in the neglect of those that doe neglect it, and yet,
+notwithstanding, doe acknowledge it to be Zion.
+
+"3. That the season of penitent Zion's passion, is the season of God's
+compassion.
+
+"This sermon tended much to the settling of Godly minds here in God's
+way, and to raise their spirits, and, as I conceive, hath suitable
+effects."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE MOST CHRISTIAN USE OF THE SUNDAY.--A SERMON
+PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 1848.
+
+MARK II. 27.
+
+    The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
+
+
+From past ages we have received many valuable institutions, that have
+grown out of the transient wants or the permanent nature of man. Amongst
+these are two which have done a great service in promoting the
+civilization of mankind, which still continue amongst us. I speak now of
+the institution of Sunday, and that of preaching. By the one, a seventh
+part of the time is separated from the common pursuits of life, in order
+that it may be devoted to bodily relaxation, and to the culture of the
+spiritual powers of man; by the other, a large body of men, in most
+countries the best educated class, are devoted to the cultivation of
+these spiritual powers. Such at least is the theory of those two
+institutions, be their effect in practice what it may. This morning,
+let us look at one of them, and so I invite your attention to some
+thoughts relative to the Sunday--to the most Christian and profitable
+use of that day.
+
+There is a stricter party of Christians amongst us, who speak out their
+opinions concerning the Sunday; this comprises what are commonly called
+the more "evangelical" sects. There is a party less strict in many
+particulars, comprising what are commonly called the more "liberal"
+sects. They have hitherto been comparatively silent on this theme. Their
+opinions about the Sunday have not usually been so plainly spoken out,
+but have been made apparent by their actions, by occasional and passing
+words, rather than by full, distinct, and emphatic declarations. The
+stricter party, of late years, have been growing a little more strict;
+the party less strict likewise advance in the opposite direction.
+Recently, a call has been published by a few men, for a convention to
+consult and take some steps towards the less rigid course, for the
+purpose, as I understand it, of making the Sunday even more valuable
+than it is now. I take it for granted that both parties desire to make
+the best possible use of the Sunday--the use most conducive to the
+highest interests of mankind; that they desire this equally. There are
+good men on both sides, the more and the less strict; pious men, in the
+best sense of that word, may be found on both sides. There is no need
+of imputing bad motives to either party in order to explain the
+difference between the two.
+
+Such is the aspect of the two parties in the field, looking opposite
+ways, but at one another. It seems likely that there will be a quarrel,
+and, as is usual in such cases, hard words on each side, hard thoughts
+and unkind feelings on both sides. Before the quarrel begins, and our
+eyes are blinded by the dust of controversy; before our blood is fired,
+and we become wholly incapable of judgment--let us look coolly at the
+matter, and ask, Do we need any change in respect to the observance of
+the Sunday? Are the present opinions respecting the origin, nature, and
+original design of that institution just and true? Is the present mode
+of observing it the most profitable that can be devised? The inquiry is
+one of great importance.
+
+To answer these questions, it is necessary to go back a little into the
+history of the Hebrew Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. However, it is
+not needful to go much into detail, or consume this precious hour in a
+learned discussion on antiquarian matters which concern none but
+scholars.
+
+With the Hebrews the actual observance of Saturday--the Sabbath--as a
+day rest, seems to be of pretty late origin. The first mention of it in
+authentic Hebrew history, as actually observed, occurs about two hundred
+years after Samuel, and about six hundred after Moses--a little less
+than nine hundred before Christ. The passage is found in 2 Kings 4: 23;
+a child had died, as the narrative relates--the mother wished to send
+for Elisha, "the man of God." Her husband objects, saying, "Wherefore
+wilt thou go to him to-day? it is neither new moon nor Sabbath." This
+connection with the new moon is significant. In the earlier historical
+books of Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and the first of
+Kings, there is no mention of the Sabbath, not the least allusion to it.
+
+This seems to have been the origin of its observance:--The worship of
+one God, with the distinctive name Jehovah, gradually got established in
+the Hebrew nation; for this they seem largely indebted to Moses.
+Gradually this worship of Jehovah became connected with a body of
+priests, who were regularly organized at length, and claimed descent
+from Levi--some of them from Aaron, his celebrated descendant, the elder
+brother of Moses. The rise of the Levitical priesthood is remarkable,
+and easily traced in the Old Testament. Some books are entirely
+destitute of a Levitical spirit, such as Genesis and Judges; others are
+filled with it, as Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the books of Chronicles.
+With the priesthood it seems there came the observance of certain days
+for religious or festal purposes--New Moon days, Full Moon days, and the
+like. These seem to have been derived from the nations about them, with
+whom the moon--deified as Astarte, the Queen and Mother of Heaven, and
+under other names--was long an object of worship. The observance of
+those days points back to the period when Fetichism, the worship of
+Nature, was the prominent form of religion. With the other days of
+religious observance came the seventh day, called the Sabbath. No one
+knows its true historical origin. The statement respecting its origin,
+in the fourth commandment, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, can
+hardly be accepted as literally true by any one in this century. No
+scientific man, in the present stage of philosophic inquiry, will
+believe that God created the universe in six days, and then rested on
+the seventh. Did other nations observe this day before the Hebrews; was
+it also connected with some Fetichistic form of worship; what was the
+historical event which led to the selection of that day in special? This
+it is easy to ask, but perhaps not possible to answer. These are curious
+questions; they are of little practical importance to us at this moment.
+
+After the Hebrew institutions of religion got fixed--the worship of
+Jehovah, the Levitical priesthood, and the peculiar forms of
+sacrifice--it became common to refer their origin back to the time of
+Moses, who lived fourteen or fifteen hundred years before Christ. Since
+few memorials from his age have come down to us, it is plain we can know
+little of him. But from the impression which his character left on his
+nation, and through them on the whole world; from the myths so early
+connected with his name, it seems pretty clear that he was one of the
+greatest and most extraordinary men that ever lived. Mankind seldom tell
+great things of little men. It is difficult to say what share he had in
+making the laws of the Hebrew nation which are commonly referred to
+him,--and, as it is popularly taught, revealed to him directly by
+Jehovah. Perhaps we are not safe in referring to him even the whole of
+the ten commandments; surely not in any one of their present forms.[3]
+Was the Sabbath observed as a day of rest before Moses? Was its
+observance enforced by him? Was it even known to him? These questions
+are not easily answered. This is only certain: from the time of Moses to
+that of Jehoram, a period of about six hundred years, there is no
+historical mention of its observance, not the least allusion to it. Yet
+we have documents which treat of that period,--the books of Joshua,
+Judges, Samuel, and the Kings,--some of them historical documents, which
+go into the minute detail of the national peculiarities, and were
+evidently written with a good deal of concern for strict integrity and
+truth; they refer to the national rite of circumcision. Now, if the
+Sabbath had been observed during that period, it is difficult to believe
+it would have received no passing notice in those historical books. But
+not only is there no mention of it therein, none even in the times of
+David and Solomon, who favored the priesthood so strongly; but in the
+book of Chronicles, the most Levitical book in the Bible, at a date more
+than two hundred years later than the time of Jehoram, it is distinctly
+declared that the Sabbath had not been kept for nearly five hundred
+years.[4] But even if this statement is true, which is scarcely
+probable, it is plain from the frequent mention of the Sabbath in the
+writings of the latter part of that period--Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
+others--that the institution was one well known and highly regarded by
+religious men. After the return from the Babylonian exile, it seems to
+have been kept with considerable rigor; this we learn from the book of
+Nehemiah.
+
+The Hebrew law, as it is contained in the Pentateuch, is a singular
+mixture of conflicting statutes, evidently belonging to different ages,
+many of them wholly unsuitable to the condition of the people when the
+laws are alleged to have been given. However, they are all referred back
+to the time of Moses in the Pentateuch itself, and by the popular
+theology at the present day. In the law the command is given to keep
+the seventh day as a day of rest, and that command is referred
+distinctly to Jehovah himself. The reason is given for choosing that
+day:--"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the
+seventh day he rested and was refreshed;" the Sabbath, therefore, was to
+be kept in commemoration of the fact, that after Jehovah had spent the
+week in creating the world, "he rested and was refreshed." It was to be
+a day of rest for master and slave, for man and beast. A special
+sacrifice was offered on that day, in addition to the usual ceremonies,
+but no provision was made for the religious instruction of the people.
+The Sabbath was what its Hebrew name implies, a rest from all labor. The
+law, in general terms, forbade all work; but, not content with that, it
+descends to minute details, specifically prohibiting by statute the
+gathering or preparation of food on the Sabbath, even of food to be
+consumed on that day itself; the lighting of a fire, or the removal from
+one's place; and, by a decision where the statute did not apply, forbade
+the gathering of sticks of wood. The punishment for violating the
+Sabbath in general, or in any one of these particulars, was death:
+"Whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death." However, amusement
+was not prohibited, nor eating and drinking, only work. The command,
+"Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day," at a later period,
+was liberally interpreted, and a man was allowed to go two thousand
+cubits, a Sabbath-day's journey.
+
+Long after the time of Moses, some of the Hebrews returned from exile
+amongst a more civilized and refined people. It seems probable that only
+the stricter portion returned and established themselves in the land of
+their fathers. Nehemiah, their leader, enforced the observance of the
+Sabbath with a strictness and rigor of which earlier times afford no
+evidence. But the nation was not content with making it a day of
+idleness. They established synagogues, where the people freely assembled
+on the Sabbath and other public days, for religious instruction, and
+thus founded an excellent institution which has shown itself fruitful of
+good results. So far as I know, that is the earliest instance on record
+of provision being made for the regular religious instruction of the
+whole people. Experience has shown its value, and now all the most
+highly civilized nations of the earth have established similar
+institutions. However, in the synagogues the business of religious
+instruction was not at all in the hands of the priests, but in those of
+the people, acting in their primary character without regard to
+Levitical establishments. A priest, as such, is never an instructor of
+the people; he is to go through his ritual, not beyond it.
+
+It is easy to learn from the New Testament what were the current
+opinions about the Sabbath in the time of Christ. It was unlawful to
+gather a head of wheat on the Sabbath, as a man walked through the
+fields; it was unlawful to cure a sick man, though that cure could be
+effected by a touch or a word; unlawful for a man to walk home and carry
+the light cushion on which he had lain. What was unlawful was reckoned
+wicked also; for what is a crime in the eyes of the priest, he commonly
+pretends is likewise a sin before the eyes of God. Yet it was not
+unlawful to eat, drink, and be merry on the Sabbath; nor to lift a sheep
+out of the ditch; nor to quarrel with a man who came to deliver mankind
+from their worst enemies. It was lawful to perform the rite of
+circumcision on the Sabbath, but unlawful to cure a man of any sickness.
+Jesus once placed these two, the allowing of that ritual mutilation and
+the prohibition of the humane act of curing the sick on the Sabbath, in
+ridiculous contrast. In the fourth gospel he goes further, and actually
+denies the alleged ground for the original institution of the Sabbath;
+he denies that God had ever ceased from his work, or rested: "My father
+worketh hitherto."[5] However, in effecting these cures he committed a
+capital offence; the Pharisees so regarded it, and took measures to
+insure his punishment. It does not appear that they were illegal
+measures. It is probable they took regular and legal means to bring him
+to condign punishment as a Sabbath-breaker. He escaped by flight.
+
+Such was the Sabbath with the Hebrews, such the recorded opinion of
+Jesus concerning it. There were also other days in which labor was
+forbidden, but with them we have nothing to do at present. Jesus taught
+piety and goodness without the Hebrew limitations; of course, then, the
+new wine of Christianity could not be put into the old bottles of the
+Jews. Their fast days and Sabbath days, their rites and forms, were not
+for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, not long after the death of Christ, his followers became gradually
+divided into two parties. First, there were the Jewish Christians; that
+was the oldest portion, the old school of Christians. They are mentioned
+in ecclesiastical history as the Ebionites, Nazarines, and under yet
+other names. Peter and James were the great men in that division of the
+early Christians. Matthew, and the author of the Gospel according to the
+Hebrews, were their evangelists. The church at Jerusalem was their
+strong-hold. They kept the whole Hebrew law; all its burdensome ritual,
+its circumcision and its sacrifices, its new-moon days and its full-moon
+days, Sabbath, fasts, and feasts; the first fifteen bishops of the
+church at Jerusalem were circumcised Jews. It seems to me they
+misunderstood Jesus fatally; counting him nothing but the Messiah of the
+Old Testament, and Christianity, therefore, nothing but Judaism
+brightened up and restored to its original purity.
+
+I have often mentioned how strongly Matthew, taking him for the author
+of the first gospel, favors this way of thinking. He represents Jesus as
+commanding his disciples to observe all the Mosaic law, as the Pharisees
+interpreted that law,[6] though such a command is utterly inconsistent
+with the general spirit of Christ's teachings, and even with his plain
+declaration, as preserved in other parts of the same gospel. It is
+worthy of note, that this command is peculiar to Matthew. But there is
+another instance of the same Jewish tendency, though not so obvious at
+first sight. Matthew represents Jesus as saying, "The Son of man," that
+is, the Messiah, "is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Accordingly, he is
+competent to expound the law correctly, and determine what is lawful to
+do on that day. In Matthew, therefore, Jesus, in his character of
+Messiah, is represented as giving a judicial opinion, and ruling that it
+"is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Now, Mark and Luke represent
+it a little different. In Mark, Jesus himself declares that "The Sabbath
+was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Matthew entirely omits
+that remarkable saying. According to Mark, Jesus declares in general
+terms, that man is of more consequence than the observance of the
+Sabbath, while Matthew only considers that the Messiah is "Lord of the
+Sabbath day." The cause of this diversity is quite plain. Matthew was a
+Jewish Christian, and thought Christianity was nothing but restored
+Judaism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other party may be called liberal Christians, though they must not
+be confounded with the party which now bears that name. They were the
+new school of the early Christians. They rejected the Hebrew law, so far
+as it did not rest on human nature, and considered that Christianity was
+a new thing; Christ, not a mere Jew, but a universal man, who had thrown
+down the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles. All the old,
+artificial distinctions, therefore, were done away with at once. Paul
+was the head of the liberal party among the primitive Christians. He was
+considered a heretic; and though he was more efficient than any of the
+other early preachers of Christianity, yet the author of the Apocalypse
+thought him not worthy of a place in the foundation of the new
+Jerusalem, which rests on the twelve apostles.[7] The fourth gospel with
+peculiarities of its own, is written wholly in the interest of this
+party; James is not mentioned in it at all, and Peter plays but quite a
+subordinate part, and is thrown into the shade by John. The disciples
+are spoken of as often misunderstanding their great Teacher. These
+peculiarities cannot be considered as accidental; they are monuments of
+the controversy then going on between the two parties. Paul stood in
+direct opposition to the Jewish Christians. This is plain from the
+epistle to the Galatians, in which the heads of the rival sects appear
+very unlike the description given of them in the book of Acts. The
+observance of Jewish sacred days was one of the subjects of controversy.
+Let us look only at the matter of the Sabbath, as it came in question
+between the two parties. Paul exalts Christ far above the Messianic
+predictions of the Old Testament, calling him an image of the invisible
+God, and declaring that all the fulness of divinity dwells in him, and
+adds, that he had annulled the old Hebrew law. "Therefore," says Paul,
+"let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day,
+or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath."[8] Here he distinctly states the
+issue between the two Christian sects. Elsewhere he speaks of the Jewish
+party, as men that "would pervert the gospel of Christ," by teaching
+that a man was "justified by the works of the law;" that is, by a minute
+observance of the Hebrew ritual.[9] Paul rejects the authority of the
+Old Testament. The law of Moses was but a schoolmaster's servant, to
+bring us to Christ; man had come to Christ, and needed that servant no
+longer; the law was a taskmaster and guardian set over man in his
+minority, now he had come of age, and was free; the law was a shadow of
+good things, and they had come; it was a law of sin and death, which no
+man could bear, and now the law of the spirit of life, as revealed by
+Jesus Christ, had made men free from the law of sin and death. Such was
+the work of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Thus sweeping off
+the authority of the old law in general, he proceeds to particulars: he
+rejects circumcision, and the offering of sacrifices; rejects the
+distinction of nations as Jew and Gentile; the distinction of meats as
+clean and unclean, and all distinction of days, as holy and not holy. If
+one man thought one day holier than another day; if another man thought
+all days equally holy, he would have each man true to his conviction,
+but not seek to impose that conviction on his brothers. Such was Paul's
+opinion of "The law of Moses;" such, of the Sabbath; the Christians were
+not "subject to ordinances."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us come now to the common practice of the early Christians. The
+apostles went about and preached Christianity, as they severally
+understood it. They spoke as they found opportunity; on the Sabbath to
+the Jews in the synagogues, and on other days, as they found time and
+hearers. It does not appear from the New Testament, that they limited
+themselves to any particular day; they were missionaries, some of them
+remained but a little while in a place, making the most of their time.
+It seems that the early Christians, who lived in large towns, met every
+day for religious purposes. But as that would be found inconvenient, one
+day came to be regarded as the regular time of their meetings. The
+Jewish Christians observed the Sabbath with pharisaic rigor, while the
+liberal Christians neglected it. But both parties of Christians
+observed, at length, the first day of the week as a peculiar day. No one
+knows when this observance of the Sunday began; it is difficult to find
+proof in the New Testament, that the apostles regarded it as a peculiar
+day; it seems plain that Paul did not. But it is certain that in the
+second century after Jesus, the Christians in general did so regard it,
+and perhaps all of them.
+
+Why was the Sunday chosen as the regular day for religious meeting? It
+was regarded as the day on which Jesus rose from the dead; and,
+following the mythical account in Genesis, it was the day on which God
+began the creation, and actually created the light. Here there were two
+reasons for the selection of that day; both are frequently mentioned by
+the early Christian writers. Sunday, therefore, was to them a symbol of
+the new creation, and of the light that had come into the world. The
+liberal Christians, in separating from the Jewish Sabbath, would
+naturally exalt the new religious day. Athanasius, I think, is the first
+who ascribes a divine origin to the institution of Sunday. He says, "The
+Lord changed this day from the Sabbath to the Sunday;" but Athanasius
+lived three centuries after Christ, and seems to have known little about
+the matter.
+
+The officers and the order of services in the churches on the Sunday
+seem derived from the usages of the Jewish synagogues. The Sunday was
+thus observed: the people came together in the morning; the exercises
+consisted of readings from the Old Testament and such writings of the
+Christians as the assembly saw fit to have read to them. In respect to
+these writings there was a wide difference in the different churches,
+some accepting more and others less. The overseer, or bishop, made an
+address, perhaps an exposition of the passage of Scripture. Prayers were
+said and hymns chanted; the Lord's supper was celebrated. The form no
+doubt differed, and widely, too, in different places. It was not the
+form of servitude but the spirit of freedom, they observed. But all
+these things were done, likewise, on other days; the Lord's supper could
+be celebrated on any day, and is on every day by the Catholic church,
+even now; for the Catholics have been true to the early practices in
+more points than the Protestants are willing to admit. In some places it
+is certain there was a "communion" every day. Sunday was regarded holy
+by the early Christians, just as certain festivals are regarded holy by
+the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and the Lutherans, at this day; as the
+New Englanders regard Thanksgiving day as holy. Other days, likewise,
+were regarded as holy; were used in the same manner as the Sunday. Such
+days were observed in honor of particular events in the life of Jesus,
+or in honor of saints and martyrs, or they were days consecrated by
+older festivals belonging to the more ancient forms of religion. In the
+Catholic church such days are still numerous. It is only the Puritans
+who have completely rejected them, and they have been obliged to
+substitute new ones in their place. However, there was one peculiarity
+of the Sunday which distinguished it from most or all other days. It was
+a day of religious rejoicing. On other days the Christians knelt in
+prayer; on the Sunday they stood up on joyful feet, for light had come
+into the world. Sunday was a day of gladness and rejoicing. The early
+Christians had many fasts; they were commonly held on Wednesdays and
+Fridays, often on Saturday also, the more completely to get rid of the
+Jewish superstition which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there must
+be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is
+strictly forbidden in the "canons of the apostles;" a clergyman must be
+degraded and a layman excommunicated, for the offence. Says St.
+Ignatius, in the second century, if the epistle be genuine, "Every
+lover of Christ feasts on the Lord's day." "We deem it wicked," says
+Tertullian in the third century, "to fast on the Sunday, or to pray on
+our knees." "Oh," says St. Jerome, "that we could fast on the Sunday, as
+Paul did and they that were with him." St. Ambrose says, the "Manichees
+were damned for fasting on the Lord's day." At this day the Catholic
+church allows no fast on Sunday, save the Sunday before the crucifixion;
+even Lent ceases on that day.
+
+It does not appear that labor ceased on Sunday, in the earliest age of
+Christianity. But when Sunday became the regular and most important day
+for holding religious meetings, less labor must of course be performed
+on that day. At length it became common in some places to abstain from
+ordinary work on the Sunday. It is not easy to say how early this was
+brought about. But after Christianity had become "respectable," and
+found its way to the ranks of the wealthy, cultivated and powerful, laws
+got enacted in its favor. Now, the Romans, like all other ancient
+nations, had certain festal days in which it was not thought proper to
+labor unless work was pressing. It was disreputable to continue common
+labor on such days without an urgent reason; they were pretty numerous
+in the Roman calendar. Courts did not sit on those days; no public
+business was transacted. They were observed as Christmas and the more
+important saints' days in Catholic countries; as Thanksgiving day and
+the Fourth of July with us. In the year three hundred and twenty-one,
+Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, placed Sunday among
+their ferial days. This was perhaps the first legislative action
+concerning the day. The statute forbids labor in towns, but expressly
+excludes all prohibition of field-labor in the country.[10] About three
+hundred and sixty-six or seven, the Council of Laodicea decreed that
+Christians "ought not to Judaize and be idle on the Sabbath, but to work
+on that day; especially observing the Lord's day, and if it is possible,
+as Christians, resting from labor." Afterwards the Emperor Theodosius
+forbade certain public games on Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and the
+whole time from Easter to Pentecost. Justinian likewise forbade
+theatrical exhibitions, races in the circus, and the fights of wild
+beasts, on Sunday, under severe penalties. This was done in order that
+the religious services of the Christians might not be disturbed. By his
+laws the Sunday continued to be a day in which public business was not
+to be transacted. But the Christmas days, the fifteen days of Easter,
+and numerous other days previously observed by Christians or pagans,
+were put in the same class by the law. All this it seems was done from
+no superstitious notions respecting those days, but for the sake of
+public utility and convenience. However, the rigor of the Jewish
+Sabbatical laws was by no means followed. Labors of love, _opera
+caritatis_, were considered as suitable business for those days. The
+very statute of Theodosius recommended the emancipation of slaves on
+Sunday. All impediments to their liberation were removed on that day,
+and though judicial proceedings in all other matters were forbidden on
+Sunday, an exception was expressly made in favor of emancipating slaves.
+This statute was preserved in the code of Justinian.[11] All these laws
+go to show that there were similar customs previously established among
+the Christians, without the aid of legislation.
+
+About the middle of the sixth century the Council of Orleans forbade
+labor in the fields, though it did not forbid travelling with cattle and
+oxen, the preparation of food, or any work necessary to the cleanliness
+of the house or the person--declaring that rigors of that sort belong
+more to a Jewish than to a Christian observance of the day. That, I
+think, is the earliest ecclesiastical decree which has come down to us
+forbidding field-labor in the country; a decree unknown till five
+hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ. But before that, in the
+year three hundred and thirteen, the Council of Elvira in Spain
+decreed, that if any one in a city absented himself three Sundays
+consecutively from the church, he should be suspended from communion for
+a short time. Such a regulation, however, was founded purely on
+considerations of public utility. Many church establishments have
+thought it necessary to protect themselves from desertion by similar
+penal laws.
+
+In Catholic countries, at the present day, the morning of Sunday is
+appropriated to public worship, the people flocking to church. But the
+afternoon and evening are devoted to society, to amusement of various
+kinds. Nothing appears sombre, but every thing has a festive air; even
+the theatres are open. Sunday is like Christmas, or a Thanksgiving day
+in Boston, only the festive demonstrations are more public. It is so in
+the Protestant countries on the continent of Europe. Work is suspended,
+public and private, except what is necessary for the observance of the
+day; public lectures are suspended; public libraries closed; but
+galleries of paintings and statues are thrown open and crowded; the
+public walks are thronged. In Southern Germany, and, doubtless,
+elsewhere, young men and women have I seen in summer, of a Sunday
+afternoon, dancing on the green, the clergyman, Protestant or Catholic,
+looking on and enjoying the cheerfulness of the young people. Americans
+think their mode of keeping Sunday is unholy; they, that ours is Jewish
+and pharisaical. In Paris, sometimes, courses of scientific lectures
+are delivered after the hours of religious services, to men who are busy
+during the week with other cares, and who gladly take the hours of their
+only leisure day to gain a little intellectual instruction.
+
+When England was a Catholic country, Catholic notions of Sunday of
+course prevailed. Labor was suspended; there was service in the
+churches, and afterwards there were sports for the people, but they were
+attended with quarrelling, noise, uproar, and continual drunkenness. It
+was so after the Reformation. In the time of Elizabeth, the laws forbade
+labor except in time of harvest, when it was thought right to work, if
+need were, and "save the thing that God hath sent." Some of the
+Protestants wished to reform those disorders, and convert the Sunday to
+a higher use. The government, and sometimes the superior clergy, for a
+long time interfered to prevent the reform, often to protect the abuse.
+The "Book of Sports," appointed to be read in churches, is well known to
+us from the just indignation with which it filled our fathers.
+
+Now, it is plain, that in England, before the Reformation, the Sunday
+was not appropriated to its highest use; not to the highest interests of
+mankind; no, not to the highest concerns, which the people, at that
+time, were capable of appreciating. The attempts, made then and
+subsequently, by government, to enforce the observance of the day, for
+purposes not the highest, led to a fearful reaction; that to other and
+counter reactions. The ill consequences of those movements have not yet
+ceased on either side of the ocean.
+
+The Puritans represented the spirit of reaction against ecclesiastical
+and other abuses of their time, and the age before them. Let me do these
+men no injustice. I honor the heroic virtues of our fathers not less
+because I see their faults; see the cause of their faults, and the
+occasion which demanded such masculine and terrible virtues as the
+Puritans unquestionably possessed. I speak only of their doctrine of the
+Sunday. They were driven from one extreme to the other, for oppression
+makes wise men mad. They took mainly the notions of the Sabbath, which
+belong to the later portions of the Old Testament; they interpreted them
+with the most pharisaical rigor, and then applied them to the Sunday.
+Did they find no warrant for that rigor in the New Testament? they found
+enough in the Old; enough in their own character, and their consequent
+notions of God. They thus introduced a set of ideas respecting the
+Sunday, which the Christian church had never known before, and rigidly
+enforced an observance thereof utterly foreign both to the letter and
+spirit of the New Testament. They made Sunday a terrible day; a day of
+fear, and of fasting, and of trembling under the terrors of the Lord.
+They even called it by the Hebrew name--the Sabbath. The Catholics had
+said it was not safe to trust the Scriptures in the hands of the people,
+for an inspired Word needed an expositor also inspired. The abuse which
+the Puritans made of the Bible by their notions of the Sunday, seemed a
+fulfilment of the Catholic prophecy. But the Catholics did not see what
+is plain to all men now--that this very abuse of Sunday and Scripture
+was only the reaction against other abuses, ancient, venerated, and
+enforced by the Catholic church itself.
+
+Every sect has some institution which is the symbol of its religious
+consciousness, though not devised for that purpose. With the early
+Christians, it was their love-feasts and communion; with the Catholics,
+it is their gorgeous ritual with its ancient date and divine
+pretensions--a ritual so imposing to many; with the Quakers, who scorn
+all that is symbolic, the symbol equally appears in the plain dress and
+the plain speech, the broad brim, and _thee_ and _thou_. With the
+Puritans, this symbol was the Sabbath, not the Sunday. Their Sabbath was
+like themselves, austere, inflexible as their "divine decrees;" not
+human and of man, but Hebrew and of the Jews, stern, cold, and sad.
+
+The Puritans were possessed with the sentiment of fear before God; they
+had ideas analogous to that sentiment, and wrought out actions akin to
+those ideas. They brought to America their ideas and sentiments. Behold
+the effect of their actions. Let us walk reverently backward, with
+averted eyes to cover up their folly, their shame, and their sin, as
+they could not walk to conceal the folly of their progenitors. The
+Puritans are the fathers of New England and her descendant States; the
+fathers of the American idea; of most things in America that are good;
+surely, of most that is best. They seem made on purpose for their work
+of conquering a wilderness and founding a State. It is not with gentle
+hands, not with the dalliance of effeminate fingers, that such a task is
+done. The work required energy the most masculine, in heart, head, and
+hands. None but the Puritans could have done such a work. They could
+fast as no men; none could work like them; none preach; none pray; none
+could fight as they fought. They have left a most precious inheritance
+to men who have the same greatness of soul, but have fallen on happier
+times. Yet this inheritance is fatal to mere imitators, who will go on
+planting of vineyards, where the first planter fell intoxicated with the
+fruit of his own toil. This inheritance is dangerous to men who will be
+no wiser than their ancestors. Let us honor the good deeds of our
+fathers; and not eat, but reverently bury their honored bones.
+
+The Puritans represented the natural reaction of mankind against old
+institutions that were absurd or tyrannical. The Catholic church had
+multiplied feast days to an extreme, and taken unnecessary pains to
+promote fun and frolic. The Puritans would have none of the saints' days
+in their calendar; thought sport was wicked; cut down Maypoles, and
+punished a man who kept Christmas after the old fashion. The Catholic
+church had neglected her golden opportunities for giving the people
+moral and religious instruction; had quite too much neglected
+public prayer and preaching, but relied mainly on sensuous
+instruments--architecture, painting, music. In revenge, the Puritan had
+a meeting-house as plain as boards could make it; tore the pictures to
+pieces; thought an organ "was not of God," and had sermons long and
+numerous, and prayers full of earnestness, zeal, piety, and faith, in
+short, possessed of all desirable things except an end. Did the
+Catholics forbid the people the Bible, emphatically the book of the
+people--the Puritan would read no other book; called his children Hebrew
+names, and reënacted "the laws of God" in the Old Testament, "until we
+can make better." Did Henry and Elizabeth underrate the people and
+overvalue the monarchy, nature had her vengeance for that abuse, and the
+Puritan taught the world that kings, also, had a joint in their necks.
+
+The Puritans went to the extreme in many things: in their contempt for
+amusements, for what was graceful in man or beautiful in woman; in their
+scorn of art, of elegant literature, even of music; in their general
+condemnation of the past, from which they would preserve little
+excepting what was Hebrew, which, of course, they over-honored as much
+as they undervalued all the rest. In their notions respecting the Sunday
+they went to the same extreme. The general reason is obvious. They
+wished to avoid old abuses, and thought they were not out of the water
+till they were in the fire. But there was a special reason, also: the
+English are the most empirical of all nations. They love a fact more
+than an idea, and often cling to an historical precedent rather than
+obey a great truth which transcends all precedents. The national
+tendency to external things, perhaps, helped lead them to these peculiar
+notions of the Sabbath. The precedent they found in "The chosen people,"
+and established, as they thought, by God himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ideas of the Puritans respecting the Sunday are still cherished in
+the popular theology of New England. There is one party in our churches
+possessed of many excellences, which has always had the merit of
+speaking out fully what it thinks and feels. At this day that party
+still represents the Puritanic opinions about the Sunday, though a
+little modified. They teach that God created the world in six days, and
+rested the seventh; that he commanded mankind, also, to rest on that
+day; commanded a man to be stoned to death for picking up sticks of a
+Saturday; that by divine authority the first day of the week was
+substituted for the seventh, and therefore that it is the religious duty
+of all men to rest from work on that day, for the Hebrew law of the
+Sabbath is binding on Christians for ever. It is maintained that
+abstinence from work on Sunday is as much a religious duty as abstinence
+from theft or hatred; that the day must be exclusively devoted to
+religion, in the technical sense of that word, to public or private
+worship, to religious reading, thought, or conversation. To attend
+church on that day is thought to be a good in itself, though it should
+lead to no further good, and therefore a duty as imperative as the duty
+of loving man and God. The preacher may not edify, still the duty of
+attending to his ministration of the word remains the same; for the
+attendance is a good in itself. It is taught that work, that amusement,
+common conversation, the reading of a book not technically religious, is
+a sin, just as clearly a sin as theft or hatred, though perhaps not so
+great. Writing a letter, even, is denounced as a sin, though the letter
+be written for the purpose of arresting the progress of a war, and
+securing life and freedom to millions of men.
+
+Now, it is very plain that such ideas are not consistent with the truth.
+In the language of the church, they are a heresy. As we learn the facts
+of the case we must give up such ideas concerning the Sunday. It is like
+any other day. Christianity knows no classes of days, as holy or
+profane; all days are the Lord's days, all time holy time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But then comes the other question, What is the best use to be made of
+the day; the use most conducive to the highest interests of mankind?
+Will it be most profitable to "give up the Sunday," to use it as the
+Catholics do, as the Puritans did, or to adopt some other method? To
+answer these questions fairly, let us look and see the effects of the
+present notions about the Sunday, and the stricter mode of observing it
+here in New England. The experience of two hundred years is worth
+looking at. Let us look at the good effects first.
+
+The good and evil of any age are commonly bound so closely together,
+that in plucking up the tares, there is danger lest the wheat also be
+uprooted, at least trodden down. In America, especially in New England,
+every thing is intense, with of course a tendency to extravagance, to
+fanaticism. Look at some of the most obvious signs of that intensity. No
+conservatism in the world is so bigoted as American conservatism; no
+democracy so intense. Nowhere else can you find such thorough-going
+defenders of the existing state of things, social, ecclesiastical,
+civil; such defenders of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery,
+and war; nowhere such radical enemies to the existing state of things;
+such foes of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery, and war. No
+"Revivals of religion" are like the American; none of old were like
+these. See how the American soldiers fight; how the American men will
+work. Puritanism was intense enough in England; in the New World it was
+yet more so. Our fathers were intense Calvinists; more Calvinistic than
+Calvin--they became Hopkinsian. They hated the Pope; kings and bishops
+were their aversion. They feared God. Did they love him--love him as
+much? They had an intense religious activity, but they had another
+intensity. It is better that we should say it, rather than men who do
+not honor them. That intensity of action, when turned towards material
+things, or, as they called them, "carnal things," needed some powerful
+check. It was found in their bigotry and superstition. In such an age as
+theirs, when the Reformation broke down all the ordinary restraints of
+society, and rent asunder the golden ties which bound man to the past;
+when the Anglican church ended in fire, and the English monarchy in
+blood; when men full of piety thanked God for the fire and the
+bloodshed, and felt the wrongs of a thousand years driving them almost
+to madness--what was there to keep such men within bounds, and restrain
+them from the wildest license and unbridled anarchy? Nothing but
+superstition; nothing short of fear of hell. They broke down the
+monarchy; they trod the church under their feet. She who had once been
+counted as the queen and mother of society, was now to be regarded only
+as the Apocalyptical woman in scarlet, the mother of abominations, bride
+of the devil, and queen of hell. The Old Testament wrought on the minds
+of these men like a charm, to stimulate and to soothe. "One day," said
+they, "is made holy by God; in it shall no work be done by man or beast,
+or thing inanimate. On that day all must attend church as an act of
+religion." Here, then, was a bar extending across the stream of
+worldliness, filling one seventh part of its channel, wide and deep, and
+wonderfully interrupting its whelming tide. I admire the divine skill
+which compounds the gases in the air; which balances centripetal and
+centrifugal forces into harmonious proportions,--those fair ellipses in
+the unseen air; but still more marvellous is that same skill, diviner
+now, which compounds the folly and the wisdom of mankind; balances
+centripetal and centrifugal forces here, stilling the noise of kings and
+the tumult of the people, making their wrath to serve him, and the
+remnant thereof restraining forever.
+
+On Sunday, master and man, the slave stolen from the wilderness, the
+servant--a Christian man bought from some Christian conqueror,--must
+cease from their work. Did the covetous, the cruel, the strong, oppress
+the weak for six days, the Sabbath said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but
+no further." The servant was free from his master, and the weary was at
+rest. The plough stood still in the furrow; the sheaf lay neglected in
+the field; the horse and the ox enjoyed their master's Sabbath of rest,
+all heedless of the divine decrees, of election or reprobation, yet not
+the less watched over by that dear Providence which numbered the hairs
+of the head, and overruled the falling of a sparrow for the sparrow's
+good. All must attend church, master and man, rich and poor, oppressor
+and oppressed. Good things and great things got read out of the Bible,
+it was the book of the people, the New Testament, written much of it in
+the interest of all mankind, with special emphasis laid on the rights of
+the weak and the duties of the strong. Good things got said in sermon
+and in prayer. The speakers must think, the hearers think, as well as
+tremble. Begin to think in a circle narrow as a lady's ring, or the
+Assembly's Catechism, you will think out; for thought, like all
+movement, tends to the right line. Calvinism has always bred thinkers,
+and when barbarism was the first danger was perhaps the only thing which
+could do it. Calvinism, too, has always shown itself in favor of popular
+liberty to a certain degree, and though it stops far short of the mark,
+yet goes far beyond the Catholic or Episcopalian.
+
+Sunday, thus enforced by superstition, has yet been the education-day of
+New England; the national school-time for the culture of man's highest
+powers; therein have the clergy been our educators, and done a vast
+service which mankind will not soon forget. It was good seed they sowed
+on this soil of the New World; the harvest is proof of that. They
+builded wiser than they knew. Their unconscious hands constructed the
+thought of God. Even their superstition and bigotry did much to preserve
+church and clergy to us; much also to educate and develop the highest
+powers of man. But for that superstition we might have seen the same
+anarchy, the same unbridled license in the seventeenth century, which we
+saw in the eighteenth, as a consequence of a similar revolution, a
+similar reaction; only it would have been carried out with the intensity
+of that most masculine and earnest race of men. How much further English
+atrocities would have gone than the French did go; how long it would
+have taken mankind, by their proper motion, to reascend from a fall so
+adverse and so low, I cannot tell. I see what saved them from the
+plunge.
+
+True, the Sunday was not what it should be, more than the week;
+preaching was not what it should be, more than practice. But without
+that Sunday, and without that preaching, New England would have been a
+quite different land; America another nation altogether; the world by no
+means so far advanced as now. New England with her descendants has
+always been the superior portion of America. I flatter no man's
+prejudice, but speak a plain truth. She is superior in intelligence, in
+morality--that is too plain for proof. The prime cause of that
+superiority must be sought in the character of the fathers of New
+England; but a secondary and most powerful cause is to be found also in
+those two institutions--Sunday and preaching. Why is it that all great
+movements, from the American Revolution down to anti-slavery, have begun
+here? Why is it that education societies, missionary societies, Bible
+societies, and all the movements for the advance of mankind, begin here?
+Why, it is no more an accident than the rising of the tide. Find much of
+the cause in the superior character, and therefore in the superior aims
+of the forefathers, much also will be found due to this--Once in the
+week they paused from all work; they thought of their God, who had
+delivered them from the iron house and yoke of bondage; they listened to
+the words of able men, exhorting them to justice, piety, and a heavenly
+walk with God; they trembled at fear of hell; they rejoiced at hope of
+heaven. The church--no, the "meeting-house"--was the common property of
+all; the minister the common friend. The slave looked up to him; the
+chief magistrate dared not look down on him. For more than a hundred
+years the ablest men of New England went into the pulpit. No talent was
+thought too great, no learning too rich and profound, no genius too holy
+and divine, for the work of teaching men their highest duty, and
+helping to their highest bliss. He was the minister to all. There was
+not then a church for the rich, and a chapel for the poor; the rich and
+the poor met together, for one God was the maker of them all--their
+Father too; they had one Gospel, one Redeemer,--their Brother not less
+than their God; they journeyed toward the same heaven, which had but one
+entrance for great and little; they prayed all the same prayer. The
+effect of this socialism of religion is seldom noticed; so we walk on
+moist earth, not thinking that we tread on the thunder-cloud and the
+lightning. But it is not in human nature for men of intense religious
+activity to meet in the same church, sing the same psalm, pray the same
+prayer, partake the same elements of communion, and not be touched with
+compassion--each for all, and all for each. The same causes which built
+up religion in New England, built up democracy along with it. Is it not
+easy to see the cause which made the rich men of New England the most
+benevolent of rich men; gave them their character for generosity and
+public spirit--yes, for eminent humanity? The acorn is not more
+obviously the parent of the oak than those two institutions of New
+England the parent of such masculine virtues as distinguish her sons.
+
+Regarded merely as a day of rest from labor, the Sunday has been of
+great value to us. Considering the intense character of the nation, our
+tendency to material things, and our restless love of work, it seems as
+if a Moses of the nineteenth century, legislating for us, would enact
+two rest-days in the week, rather than one. It is a good thing that a
+man once a week pauses from his work, arrays himself in clean garments,
+and is at rest.
+
+Regarded in its other aspects, Sunday has aided the intellectual culture
+of the people to a degree not often appreciated. To many a man, yes, to
+most men, it is their only reading day, and they will read "secular"
+books, spite of the clerical admonition. Many a poor boy in New England,
+who has toiled all the week, and would gladly have studied all the
+night, did not obstinate Nature forbid, has studied stealthily all
+Sunday, not Jeremiah and the prophets, but Homer and the mathematics,
+and risen at length to eminence amongst cultivated men;--he has to thank
+the Sunday for the beginnings of that manly growth.
+
+The moral and religious effect of the day is yet more important. One
+seventh part of the time was to be devoted to moral and religious
+culture. The clergy watched diligently over Sunday, as their own day.
+Work was then the accident; religion was the business. Every thing with
+us becomes earnest; Sunday as earnest as the week. It must not be spent
+idly. Perhaps no body of clergymen, for two hundred years, on the whole,
+were ever so wakeful and active as the American. They also are earnest
+and full of intensity, especially in the more serious sects. I think I
+am not very superstitious; not often inclined to lean on my father's
+staff rather than walk on my own feet; not over-much accustomed to take
+things on trust because they have been trusted to all along: but I must
+confess that I see a vast amount of good achieved by the aid of these
+two institutions, the Sunday and preaching, which could not have been
+done without them. I know I have my prejudices; I love the Sunday; a
+professional bias may warp me aside, for I am a preacher--the pulpit is
+my joy and my throne. Judge you how far my profession and my prejudice
+have led me astray in estimating the value of the Sunday, its preaching,
+and the good they have achieved for us in New England. I know what
+superstition, what bigotry, has been connected with both; I know it has
+kept grim and terrible guard about these institutions. I look upon that
+superstition and bigotry, as on the old New England guns which were
+fought with in the Indian wars, the French wars, and the
+Revolution;--things that did service when men knew not how to defend
+what they valued most with better tools and more Christian. I look on
+both with the same melancholy veneration, but honor them the more that
+now they are old, battered, unfit for use and covered with rust; I would
+respectfully hang them up, superstition and the musket, side by side;
+honorable, but harmless, with their muzzles down, and pray God it might
+never be my lot to handle such ungodly weapons, though in a cause never
+so humane and holy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us look a little at the ill effects of these notions of the Sunday
+and the observance which they led to. It is thought an act of religion
+to attend church and give a mere bodily presence there. Hence the
+minister often relies on this circumstance to bring his audience
+together; preaches sermons on the duty of going to church, while
+ingenuous boys blush for his weakness, and ask, "Were it not better to
+rely on your goodness, your piety, your wisdom; on your superior ability
+to teach men, even on your eloquence, rather than tell them it is an act
+of religion to come and hear you, when both they and you are painfully
+conscious that they are thereby made no wiser, no better, nor more
+Christian?" This notion is a dangerous one for a clergyman. It flatters
+his pride and encourages his sloth. It blinds him to his own defects,
+and leads him to attribute his empty benches to the perverseness of
+human nature and the carnal heart, which a few snow-flakes can frighten
+from his church, while a storm will not keep them from a lecture on
+science or literature. No doubt it is a man's duty to seek all
+opportunities of becoming wiser and better. So far as church-going helps
+that work, so far it is a duty. But to count it in itself, irrespective
+of its consequences, an act of religion, is to commit a dangerous
+error, which has proved fatal to many a man's growth in goodness and
+piety. Let us look to the end, not merely at the means.
+
+This notion has also a bad effect on the hearers. It is thought an act
+of religion to attend church, whether you are edified or not by sermon,
+by psalm, or prayer; an act of religion, though you could more
+profitably spend the time in your own closet at home, or with your own
+thoughts in the fields. Of course, then, he who attends once a day is
+thought a Christian to a certain degree; if twice, more so; if thrice,
+why that denotes an additional amount of growth in grace. In this way
+the day is often spent in a continual round of meetings. Sermon follows
+sermon; prayer treads upon the footsteps of prayer; psalm effaces psalm,
+till morning, afternoon, evening, all are gone. The Sunday is ended and
+over; the man is tired--but has he been profited and made better
+thereby? The sermons and the prayers have cancelled one another, been
+heard and forgot. They were too numerous to remember or produce their
+effect. So on a summer's lake, as the winds loiter and then pass by,
+ripple follows ripple, and wave succeeds to wave, yet the next day the
+wind has ceased and the unstable water bears no trace left there by all
+the blowings of the former day, but bares its incontinent bosom to the
+frailest and most fleeting clouds.
+
+Another ill effect follows from regarding attendance at church as an act
+of religion in itself:--It is forgotten that a man cannot teach what he
+does not know. If you have more manhood than I, more religion; if you
+are the more humane and the more divine, it is idle for me to try and
+teach you divinity and humanity; idle in you to make believe you are
+taught. The less must learn of the greater, not the greater directly of
+the less. It is too often forgotten by the preacher that his hearers may
+be capable of teaching him; that he cannot fill them out of an
+emptiness, but a fulness. Hence, it comes to pass that no one, how
+advanced soever, is allowed to graduate, so to say, from the church.
+Perhaps it may do a great man, mature in Christianity, good to sit down
+with his fellows and hear a little man talk who knows nothing of
+religion; it may increase his sympathy with mankind. It can hardly be an
+act of religion to such a man so advanced in his goodness and piety;
+perhaps not the best use he could make of the hour.
+
+The current opinion hinders social tendencies. A man must not meet with
+his friend and neighbor, or if he does, he must talk with bated breath,
+with ghostly countenance, and of a ghostly theme. From this abuse of the
+Sunday comes much of the cold and unsocial character which strangers
+charge us with. As things now go, there are many who have no opportunity
+for social intercourse except the hours of the Sunday. Then it is
+forbidden them. So they suffer and lose much of the charm of life;
+become ungenial, unsocial, stiff, and hard, and cold.
+
+This notion hinders men, also, from intellectual culture. They must read
+no book but one professedly religious. Such works are commonly poor and
+dull; written mainly by men of little ability, of little breadth of
+view; not written in the interest of mankind, but only of a sect--the
+Calvinists or Unitarians. A good man groans when he looks over the
+immense piles of sectarian books written with good motives, and read
+with the most devout of intentions, but which produce their best effect
+when they lead only to sleep. Yet it is commonly taught that it is
+religion to spend a part of Sunday in reading such works, in listening,
+or in trying to listen, or in affecting to try and listen, to the most
+watery sermons, while it is wicked to read some "secular" book,
+philosophy, history, poem, or tale, which expands the mind and warms the
+heart. Our poor but wisdom-seeking boy must read his Homer only by
+stealth. There are many men who have no time for intellectual pursuits,
+none for reading, except on Sunday. It is cruel to tell them they shall
+read none but sectarian books or listen only to sectarian words.
+
+But there are other evils yet. These notions and the corresponding
+practice tend to make religion external, consisting in obedience to
+form, in compliance with custom; while religion is and can be only
+piety and goodness, love to God and love to man. To keep the Sunday
+idle, to attend church, is not being religious. It is easy to do that;
+easy to stop there, and then to look at real, manly saints, who live in
+the odor of sanctity, whose sentiment is a prayer, their deeds religion,
+and their whole life a perpetual communion with God, and say, "Infidel!
+Unbeliever."
+
+Then, as one day is devoted to religion, it is thought that is enough;
+that religion has no more business in the world than the world in
+religion. So division is made of the territory of mortal life, in which
+partition worldliness has six days, while poor religion has only the
+Sunday, and content with her own limits, feels no salient wish to absorb
+or annex the week! It is painful to see this abuse of an institution so
+noble. No commonness of its occurrence renders it less painful. It is
+painful to be told that men of the most scrupulous sects on Sunday, are
+in the week the least scrupulous of men.
+
+But even in religious matters it is thought all things which pertain
+directly to the religious welfare of men are not proper to be discussed
+on Sunday. One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery,
+against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the
+gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on
+eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of
+mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the
+time, the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith
+to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education,
+temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not
+Christian, to do that of a Sunday! Yet wonderful to say, it is not
+thought very wicked to hold a political caucus on Sunday for the merest
+party purposes; not wicked at all to work all day at the navy-yards in
+fitting out vessels, if they are only vessels of war; not at all wicked
+to toil all Sunday, if it is only in aiming to kill men in regular
+battle. Theological newspapers can expend their cheap censure on a
+member of Congress for writing a letter on Sunday, yet have no word of
+fault to find with the order which sets hundreds to work on Sunday in
+preparing armaments of war; not a word against the war which sets men to
+butcher their Christian brothers on the day which Christians celebrate
+as the anniversary of Christ's triumph over death! These things show
+that we have not yet arrived at the most profitable and Christian mode
+of using the Sunday; and when I consider these abuses I wonder not that
+the cry of "Infidel" is met by the unchristian taunt, yet more deserved
+and biting, "Thou hypocrite!" I wonder not that some men say, "Let us
+away with the Sunday altogether; and if we have no place for rest, we
+will have none for hypocrisy."
+
+The efforts honestly made by good and honest men, to Judaize the day
+still more; to revive the sterner features of ancient worship; to put a
+yoke on us which neither we nor our fathers could bear; to transform the
+Christian Sunday into the Jewish Sabbath, must lead to a reaction. Abuse
+on one side will be met by abuse on the other; despotic asceticism by
+license; Judaism by heathenism. Superstition is the mother of denial.
+Men will scorn the Sunday; abuse its timely rest. Its hours that may be
+devoted to man's highest interests will be prostituted to low aims, and
+worldliness make an unbroken sweep from one end of the month to the
+other; and then it will take years of toil before mankind can get back
+and secure the blessings now placed within an easy reach. I put it to
+you, men whose heads time has crowned with white, or sprinkled with a
+sober gray, if you would deem it salutary to enforce on your
+grandchildren the Sabbath austerities which your parents imposed on you?
+In your youth was the Sunday a welcome day; a genial day; or only
+wearisome and sour? Was religion, dressed in her Sabbath dress, a
+welcome guest; was she lovely and to be desired? Your faces answer. Let
+us profit by your experience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How can we make the Sunday yet more valuable? If we abandon the
+superstitious notions respecting its origin and original design, the
+evils that have hitherto hindered its use will soon perish of
+themselves. They all grow out of that root. If men are not driven into
+a reaction by pretensions for the Sunday which facts will not warrant;
+if unreasonable austerities are not forced upon them in the name of the
+law, and the name of God; there is no danger in our day that men will
+abandon an institution which already has done so much service to
+mankind. Let Sunday and preaching stand on their own merits, and they
+will encounter no more opposition than the common school and the
+work-days of the week. Then men will be ready enough to appropriate the
+Sunday to the highest objects they know and can appreciate. Tell men the
+Sunday is made for man, and they will use it for its highest use. Tell
+them man is made for it, and they will war on it as a tyrant. I should
+be sorry to see the Sunday devoted to common work; sorry to hear the
+clatter of a mill, or the rattle of the wheels of business on that day.
+I look with pain on men engaged needlessly in work on that day; not with
+the pain of wounded superstition, but a deeper regret. I would not water
+my garden with perfumes when common water was at hand. We shall always
+have work enough in America; hand-work, and head-work, for common
+purposes. There is danger that we shall not have enough of rest, of
+intellectual cultivation, of refinement, of social intercourse; that our
+time shall be too much devoted to the lower interests of life, to the
+means of living and not the end.
+
+I would not consider it an act of religion to attend church: only a
+good thing to go there when the way of improvement leads through it;
+when you are made wiser and better by being there. I am pained to see a
+man spend the whole of a Sunday in going to church,--and forgetting
+himself in getting acquainted with the words of the preachers. I think
+most intelligent hearers, and most intelligent and Christian preachers,
+will confess that two sermons are better than three, and one is better
+than two. One need only look at the afternoon face of a congregation in
+the city, to be satisfied of this. If one half the day were devoted to
+public worship, the other half might be free for private studies of men
+at home, for private devotion, for social relaxation, for intercourse
+with one's own family and friends. Then Sunday afternoon and evening
+would afford an excellent opportunity for meetings for the promotion of
+the great humane movements of the day, which some would think not
+evangelical enough to be treated of in the morning. Would it be
+inconsistent with the great purposes of the day, inconsistent with
+Christianity, to have lectures on science, literature, and similar
+subjects delivered then? I do not believe the Catholic custom of
+spending the Sunday afternoon in England, before the Reformation, was a
+good one. It diverted men from the higher end to the lower. I cannot
+think that here and now we need amusement so much as society,
+instruction, refinement, and devotion. Yet it seems to me unwise to
+restrain the innocent sports of children of a Sunday, to the same degree
+that our fathers did; to make Sunday to them a day of gloom and sadness.
+Thoughtful parents are now much troubled in this matter; they cannot
+enforce the old discipline, so disastrous to themselves; they fear to
+trust their own sense of what is right;--so, perhaps, get the ill of
+both schemes, and the good of neither. There are in Boston about thirty
+thousand Catholics, twenty-five thousand of them, probably, too ignorant
+to read with pleasure or profit any book. At home, amusement formed a
+part of their Sunday service; it was a part of their religion to make a
+festive use of Sunday afternoon. What shall they do? Is it Christian in
+us by statute to interdict them from their recreation? With the
+exception of children and these most ignorant persons, it does not
+appear that there is any class amongst us who need any part of the
+Sunday for sport.
+
+I am not one of those who wish "to give up the Sunday;" indeed there are
+few such men amongst us; I would make it yet more useful and profitable.
+I would remove from it the superstition and the bigotry which have so
+long been connected with it; I would use it freely, as a Christian not
+enslaved by the letter of Judaism, but made free by an obedience to the
+law of the spirit of life. I would use the Sunday for religion in the
+wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for
+humanity, for science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it
+by impudent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the
+other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can
+make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ
+it for all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into
+libertinism.
+
+The Sunday is made for man, as are all other days; not man for the
+Sunday. Let us use it, then, not consuming its hours in a Jewish
+observance; not devote it to the lower necessities of life, but the
+higher; not squander it in idleness, sloth, frivolity, or sleep; let us
+use it for the body's rest, for the mind's culture, for head and heart
+and soul.
+
+Men and women, you have received the Sunday from your fathers, as a day
+to be devoted to the highest interests of man. It has done great service
+for them and for you. But it has come down accompanied with superstition
+which robs it of half its value. It is easy for you to make the day far
+more profitable to yourselves than it ever was to your fathers; easy to
+divest it of all bigotry, to free it from all oldness of the letter;
+easy to leave it for your children an institution which shall bless them
+for ages yet to come: or it is easy to bind on their necks unnatural
+restraints; to impose on their conscience and understanding absurdities
+which at last they must repel with scorn and contempt. It is in your
+hands to make the Sunday Jewish or Christian.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] These celebrated commandments have come down to us in three distinct
+forms; namely, in Exodus xx., in Exodus xxxiv., and in Deut. v. The
+differences between these several codes are quite remarkable and
+significant.
+
+[4] 2 Chron. 36:21.
+
+[5] John 5:1-18, and 7:19-24.
+
+[6] Matthew 23:1-3.
+
+[7] Rev. 21:14.
+
+[8] Coloss. 2:16.
+
+[9] Galat. 1:5.
+
+[10] Justinian, _Cod._ Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 3.
+
+[11] _Cod._, Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 2. See also, l. 3 and 11.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.--PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY,
+SEPTEMBER 20, 1846.
+
+WISDOM OF SOLOMON III. 1, 4.
+
+    The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God: their
+    hope is full of immortality.
+
+
+It is the belief of mankind that we shall all live forever. This is not
+a doctrine of Christianity alone. It belongs to the human race. You may
+find nations so rude that they live houseless, in caverns of the earth;
+nations that have no letters, not knowing the use of bows and arrows,
+fire or even clothes, but no nation without a belief in immortal life.
+The form of that belief is often grotesque and absurd; the mode of proof
+ridiculous; the expectations of what the future life is to be are often
+childish and silly. But notwithstanding all that, the fact still
+remains, the belief that the soul of a man never dies.
+
+How did mankind come by this opinion? "By a miraculous revelation," says
+one. But according to the common theory of miraculous revelations, the
+race could not have obtained it in this way, for according to that
+theory the heathen had no such revelations; yet we find this doctrine
+the settled belief of the whole heathen world. The Greeks and Romans
+believed it long before Christ; the Chaldees, with no pretence to
+miraculous inspiration, taught the idea of immortality; while the Jews,
+spite of their alleged revelations, rested only in the dim sentiment
+thereof.
+
+It was not arrived at by reasoning. It requires a good deal of hard
+thinking to reason out and prove this matter. Yet you find this belief
+among nations not capable as yet of that art of thinking and to that
+degree, nations who never tried to prove it, and yet believe it as
+confidently as we. The human race did not sit down and think it out;
+never waited till they could prove it by logic and metaphysics; did not
+delay their belief till a miraculous revelation came to confirm it. It
+came to mankind by intuition; by instinctive belief, the belief which
+comes unavoidably from the nature of man. In this same way came the
+belief in God; the love of man; the sentiment of justice. Men could see,
+and knew they could see, before they proved it; before they had theories
+of vision; without waiting for a miraculous revelation to come and tell
+them they had eyes, and might see if they would look. Some faculties of
+the body act spontaneously at first--so others of the spirit.
+
+Immortality is a fact of man's nature, so it is a part of the universe,
+just as the sun is a fact in the heavens and a part of the universe.
+Both are writings from God's hand; each therefore a revelation from Him,
+and of Him; only not miraculous, but natural, regular, normal. Yet each
+is just as much a revelation from Him as if the great Soul of all had
+spoken in English speech to one of us and said, "There is a sun there in
+the heavens, and thou shalt live for ever." Yes, the fact is more
+certain than such speech would make it, for this fact speaks always--a
+perpetual revelation, and no words can make it more certain.
+
+As a man attains consciousness of himself, he attains consciousness of
+his immortality. At first he asks proof no more of his eternal existence
+than of his present life; instinctively he believes both. Nay, he does
+not separate the two; this life is one link in that golden and electric
+chain of immortality; the next life another and more bright, but in the
+same chain. Immortality is what philosophers call an ontological fact;
+it belongs essentially to the being of man, just as the eye is a
+physiological fact and belongs to the body of man. To my mind this is
+the great proof of immortality: the fact that it is written in human
+nature; written there so plain that the rudest nations have not failed
+to find it, to know it; written just as much as form is written on the
+circle, and extension on matter in general. It comes to our
+consciousness as naturally as the notions of time and space. We feel it
+as a desire; we feel it as a fact. What is thus in man is writ there of
+God who writes no lies. To suppose that this universal desire has no
+corresponding gratification, is to represent Him, not as the father of
+all but as only a deceiver. I feel the longing after immortality, a
+desire essential to my nature, deep as the foundation of my being; I
+find the same desire in all men. I feel conscious of immortality; that I
+am not to die; no, never to die, though often to change. I cannot
+believe this desire and consciousness are felt only to mislead, to
+beguile, to deceive me. I know God is my father, and the father of the
+nations. Can the Almighty deceive his children? For my own part, I can
+conceive of nothing which shall make me more certain of my immortality.
+I ask no argument from learned lips. No miracle could make me more sure;
+no, not if the sheeted dead burst cerement and shroud, and rising forth
+from their honored tombs stood here before me, the disenchanted dust
+once more enchanted with that fiery life; no, not if the souls of all my
+sires since time began came thronging round, and with miraculous speech
+told me they lived and I should also live. I could only say, "I knew all
+this before, why waste your heavenly speech!" I have now indubitable
+certainty of eternal life. Death removing me to the next state, can give
+me infallible certainty.
+
+But there are men who doubt of immortality. They say they are conscious
+of the want, not of the fact. They need a proof. The exception here
+proves the rule. You do not doubt your personal and conscious existence
+now; you ask no proof of that; you would laugh at me should I try to
+convince you that you are alive and self-conscious. Yet one of the
+leaders of modern philosophy wanted a proof of his as a basis for his
+science, and said,--"I am because I think." But his thought required
+proof as much as his being; yes, logically more, for being is the ground
+of thinking, not thinking of being. At this day there are sound men who
+deny the existence of this outward world, declaring it only a
+dreamworld. This ground, they say, and yonder sun have being but in
+fancy, like the sun and ground you perchance dreamed of last night whose
+being was only a being-dreamed. These are exceptional men, and help
+prove the common rule, that man trusts his senses and believes an
+outward world. Yet such are more common amongst philosophers than men
+who doubt of their immortal life. You cannot easily reason those men out
+of their philosophy and into their senses, nor by your own philosophy
+perhaps convince them that there is an outward world.
+
+I think few of you came to your belief in everlasting life through
+reasoning. Your belief grew out of your general state of mind and heart.
+You could not help it. Perhaps few of you ever sat down and weighed the
+arguments for and against it, and so made up your mind. Perhaps those
+who have the firmest consciousness of the fact are least familiar with
+the arguments which confirm that consciousness. If a man disbelieves it,
+if he denies it, his opinion is not often to be changed immediately or
+directly by argument. His special conviction has grown out of his
+general state of mind and heart, and is only to be removed by a change
+in his whole philosophy. I am not honoring men for their belief, nor
+blaming men who doubt or deny. I do not believe any one ever willingly
+doubted this; ever purposely reasoned himself into the denial thereof.
+Men doubt because they cannot help it; not because they will, but must.
+
+There are a great many things true which no man as yet can prove true;
+some things so true that nothing can make them plainer, or more plainly
+true. I think it is so with this doctrine, and therefore, for myself,
+ask no argument. With my views of man, of God, of the relation between
+the two, I want no proof, satisfied with my own consciousness of
+immortality. Yet there are arguments which are fair, logical, just,
+which satisfy the mind, and may, perhaps, help persuade some men who
+doubt, if such men there are amongst you. I think that immortality is a
+fact of consciousness; a fact given in the constitution of man:
+therefore a matter of sentiment. But it requires thought to pick it out
+from amongst the other facts of consciousness. Though at first merely a
+feeling, a matter of sentiment, on examination it becomes an idea--a
+matter of thought. It will bear being looked at in the sharpest and
+dryest light of logic. Truth never flinches before reason. It is so with
+our consciousness of God; that is an ontological fact, a fact given in
+the nature of man. At first it is a feeling, a matter of sentiment. By
+thought we abstract this fact from other facts; we find an idea of God.
+That is a matter of philosophy, and the analyzing mind legitimates the
+idea and at length demonstrates the existence of God, which we first
+learned without analysis, and by intuition. A great deal has been
+written to prove the existence of God, and that by the ablest men; yet I
+cannot believe that any one was ever reasoned directly into a belief in
+God, by all those able men, nor directly out of it by all the skeptics
+and scoffers. Indirectly such works affect men, change their philosophy
+and modes of thought, and so help them to one or the other conclusion.
+
+The idea of immortality, like the idea of God, in a certain sense, is
+born in us, and fast as we come to consciousness of ourselves we come to
+consciousness of God, and of ourselves as immortal. The higher we
+advance in wisdom, goodness, piety, the larger place do God and
+immortality hold in our experience and inward life. I think that is the
+regular and natural process of a man's development. Doubt of either
+seems to me an exception, an irregularity. Causes that remove the doubt
+must be general more than special.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, in order to have a basis of thought and reasoning, as well as
+of intuition and reason, let me mention some of the arguments for
+everlasting life.
+
+I. The first is drawn from the general belief of mankind. The greatest
+philosophers and the most profound and persuasive religious teachers of
+the whole world have taught this. That is an important fact, for these
+men represent the consciousness of mankind in the highest development it
+has yet reached, and in such points are the truest representatives of
+man. What is more, the human race believes it, not merely as a thing
+given by miraculous revelation, not as a matter proven by science, not
+as a thing of tradition resting on some man's authority, but believes it
+instinctively, not knowing and not asking why, or how; believes it as a
+fact of consciousness. Now in a matter of this sort the opinion of the
+human race is worth considering. I do not value very much the opinion of
+a priesthood in Rome or Judea, or elsewhere on this point, or any other,
+for they may have designs adverse to the truth. But the general
+sentiment of the human race in a matter like this is of the greatest
+importance. This general sentiment of mankind is a quite different thing
+from public opinion, which favors freedom in one country and slavery in
+another; this sentiment of mankind relates to what is a matter of
+feeling with most men. It is only a few thinkers that have made it a
+matter of thought. The opinion of mankind, so far as we know, has not
+changed on this point for four thousand years. Since the dawn of
+history, man's belief in immortality has continually been developing and
+getting deeper fixed.
+
+Still more, this belief is very dear to mankind. Let me prove that. If
+it were true that one human soul was immortal and yet was to be
+eternally damned, getting only more clotted with crime and deeper bit by
+agony as the ages went slowly by, then immortality were a curse, not to
+that man only, but to all mankind--for no amount of happiness, merited
+or undeserved, could ever atone or make up for the horrid wrong done to
+that one most miserable man. Who of you is there that could relish
+Heaven, or even bear it for a moment, knowing that a brother was doomed
+to smart with ever greatening agony, while year on year, and age on age,
+the endless chain of eternity continued to coil round the flying wheels
+of hell? I say the thought of one such man would fill even Heaven with
+misery, and the best man of men would scorn the joys of everlasting
+bliss, would spurn at Heaven and say, "Give me my brother's place; for
+me there is no Heaven while he is there!" Now it has been popularly
+taught, that not one man alone, but the vast majority of all mankind,
+are thus to be condemned; immortal only to be everlastingly wretched.
+That is the popular doctrine now in this land. It has been so taught in
+the Christian churches these sixteen centuries and more--taught in the
+name of Christ! Such an immortality would be a curse to men, to every
+man; as much so to the "saved" as to the "lost;" for who would willingly
+stay in Heaven, and on such terms? Surely not he who wept with weeping
+men! Yet in spite of this vile doctrine drawn over the world to come,
+mankind religiously believes that each shall live for ever. This shows
+how strong is the instinct which can lift up such a foul and hateful
+doctrine and still live on. Tell me not that scoffers and critics shall
+take away man's faith in endless life: it has stood a harder test than
+can ever come again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+II. The next argument is drawn from the nature of man.
+
+1. All men desire to be immortal. This desire is instinctive, natural,
+universal. In God's world such a desire implies the satisfaction thereof
+equally natural and universal. It cannot be that God has given man this
+universal desire of immortality, this belief in it, and yet made it all
+a mockery. Man loves truth; tells it; rests only in it; how much more
+God who is the trueness of truth. Bodily senses imply their objects--the
+eye light, the ear sound; the touch, the taste, the smell, things
+relative thereto. Spiritual senses likewise foretell their object,--are
+silent prophecies of endless life. The love of justice, beauty, truth,
+of man and God, points to realities unseen as yet. We are ever hungering
+after noblest things, and what we feed on makes us hunger more. The
+senses are satisfied, but the soul never.
+
+2. Then, too, while this composite body unavoidably decays, this simple
+soul which is my life decays not. Reason, the affections, all the powers
+that make the man, decay not. True, the organs by which they act become
+impaired. But there is no cause for thinking that love, conscience,
+reason, will, ever become weaker in man; but cause for thinking that all
+these continually become more strong. Was the mind of Newton gone when
+his frame, long over-tasked, refused its wonted work?
+
+3. Here on earth, every thing in its place and time matures. The acorn
+and the chestnut, things natural to this climate, ripen every year. A
+longer season would make them no better nor bigger. It is so with our
+body--that, under proper conditions, becomes mature. It is so with all
+the things of earth. But man is not fully grown as the acorn and the
+chestnut; never gets mature. Take the best man and the greatest--all his
+faculties are not developed, fully grown and matured. He is not complete
+in the qualities of a man; nay, often half his qualities lie all unused.
+Shall we conclude these are never to obtain development and do their
+work? The analogy of nature tells us that man, the new-born plant, is
+but removed by death to another soil, where he shall grow complete and
+become mature.
+
+4. Then, too, each other thing under its proper conditions not only
+ripens but is perfect also after its kind. Each clover-seed is perfect
+as a star. Every lion, as a general rule, is a common representation of
+all lionhood; the ideal of his race made real in him, a thousand years
+of life would not make him more. But where is the Adamitic man; the type
+and representative of his race, who makes actual its idea? Even Jesus
+bids you not call him good; no man has all the manhood of mankind. Yes,
+there are rudiments of greatness in us all, but abortive, incomplete,
+and stopped in embryo. Now all these elements of manhood point as
+directly to another state as the unfinished walls of yonder rising
+church intimate that the work is not complete, that the artist here
+intends a roof, a window there, here a tower, and over all a
+heaven-piercing spire. All men are abortions, our failure pointing to
+the real success. Nay, we are all waiting to be born, our whole nature
+looking to another world, and dimly presaging what that world shall be.
+Death, however we misname him, seasonable or out of time, is the
+birth-angel, that alone.
+
+5. Besides, the presence of injustice, of wrong, points the same way.
+The fact that one man goes out of this life in childhood, in manhood, at
+any time before the natural measure of his days is full; the fact that
+any one is by circumstances made wretched; that he is hindered from his
+proper growth and has not here his natural due--all intimates to me his
+future life. I know that God is just. I know His justice too shall make
+all things right, for He must have the power, the wish, the will
+therefor, to speak in human speech. I see the injustice in this city,
+its pauperism, suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by
+no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemisphere to balance
+this; another life, wherein justice shall come to all and for all. Else
+God were unjust; and an unjust God to me is no God at all, but a
+wretched chimera which my soul rejects with scorn. I see the autumn
+prefigured in the spring. The flowers of May-day foretold the harvest,
+its rosy apples and its yellow ears of corn. As the bud now lying cold
+and close upon the bark of every tree throughout our northern clime is a
+silent prophecy of yet another spring and other summers, and harvests
+too; so this instinctive love of justice scantly budding here and nipped
+by adverse fate, silently but clearly tells of a kingdom of heaven. I
+take some miserable child here in this city, squalid in dress and look,
+ignorant and wicked too as most men judge of vagrant vice, made so by
+circumstances over which that child had no control; I turn off with a
+shudder at the public wrong we have done and still are doing; but in
+that child I see proof of another world, yes, Heaven glittering from
+behind those saddened eyes. I know that child has a man's nature in him,
+perhaps a Channing's trusting piety; perhaps a Newton's mind; has surely
+rudiments of more than these; for what were Channing, Newton, both of
+them, but embryo men? I turn off with a shudder at the public wrong, but
+a faith in God's justice, in that child's eternal life, which nothing
+can ever shake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+III. A third argument is drawn from the nature of God. He, as the
+infinite, the unconditioned, the absolute, is all-powerful, all-wise,
+all-good. Therefore he must wish the best of all possible things; must
+know the best of all possible things; must will the best of all possible
+things, and so bring it to pass. Life is a possible thing; eternal life
+is possible. Neither implies a contradiction; yes, to me they seem
+necessary, more than possible. Now, then, as life, serene and happy
+life, is better than non-existence, so immortality is better than
+perpetual death. God must know that, wish that, will that, and so bring
+that about. Man, therefore, must be immortal. This argument is brief
+indeed, but I see not how it can be withstood.
+
+I do not know that one of you doubts of eternal life. If any does, I
+know not if these thoughts will ever affect his doubt. Still, I think
+each argument is powerful; to one that thinks, reasons, balances, and
+then decides, exceeding powerful. All put together form a mass of
+argument which, as it seems to me, no logic can resist. Yet I beg you to
+understand that I do not rest immortality on any reasoning of mine, but
+on reason itself; not on these logical arguments, but on man's
+consciousness, and the instinctive belief which is common to the human
+race. I believed my immortality before I proved it; believed it just as
+strongly then as now. Nay, could some doubter rise, and, to my thinking,
+vanquish all these arguments, I should still hold fast my native faith,
+nor fear the doubter's arms. The simple consciousness of men is stronger
+than all forms of proof. Still, if men want arguments--why, there they
+are.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The belief in immortality is one thing; the special form thereof, the
+definite notion of the future life, another and quite different. The
+popular doctrine in our churches I think is this: That this body which
+we lay in the dust shall one day be raised again, the living soul joined
+on anew, and both together live the eternal life. But where is the soul
+all this time, between our death-day and our day of rising? Some say it
+sleeps unconscious, dead all this time; others, that it is in Heaven
+now, or else in hell; others, in a strange and transient home, imperfect
+in its joy or woe, waiting the final day and more complete account. It
+seems to me this notion is absurd and impossible: absurd in its doctrine
+relative to the present condition of departed souls; impossible in what
+it teaches of the resurrection of this body. If my soul is to claim the
+body again, which shall it be, the body I was born into, or that I died
+out of? If I live to the common age of men, changing my body as I must,
+and dying daily, then I have worn some eight or ten bodies. So at the
+last, which body shall claim my soul, for the ten had her? The soul
+herself may claim them all. But to make the matter still more intricate,
+there is in the earth but a certain portion of matter out of which human
+bodies can be made. Considering all the millions of men now living, the
+myriads of millions that have been before, it is plain, I think, that
+all the matter suitable for human bodies has been lived over many times.
+So if the world were to end to-day, instead of each old man having ten
+bodies from which to choose the one that fits him best, there would be
+ten men, all clamoring for each body! Shall I then have a handful of my
+former dust, and that alone? That is not the resurrection of my former
+body. This whole doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh seems to me
+impossible and absurd.
+
+I know men refer this, as many other things no better, to Jesus. I find
+no satisfactory evidence that he taught the resurrection of the body;
+there is some evidence that he did not. I know it was the doctrine of
+the Pharisees of his time, of Paul, the early Christians, and more or
+less of the Christian churches to this day. In Christ's time in Judea,
+there were the Sadducees, who taught the eternal death of men; the
+Pharisees who taught the resurrection of the flesh and its reunion with
+the soul; the Essenes, who taught the immortality of the soul, but
+rejected the resurrection of the body. Paul was a Pharisee, and in his
+letters taught the resurrection of the dead, the belief of the
+Pharisees. From him it has come down to us, and in the creed of many
+churches it is still written, "I believe in the resurrection of the
+flesh." Many doubted this in early times, but the council of Nice
+declared all men accursed who dared to doubt the resurrection of the
+flesh. I mention this as absurd and impossible, because it is still, I
+fear, the popular belief, and lest some should confound the doctrine of
+immortality with this tenet of the Pharisees. Let it be remembered the
+immortality of the soul is one thing, the resurrection of the body
+another and quite different.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is this future life? what can we know of it besides its existence?
+Some men speak as if they knew the way around Heaven as around the wards
+of their native city. What we can know in detail is cautiously to be
+inferred from the nature of man and the nature of God. I will modestly
+set down what seems to me.
+
+It must be a conscious state. Man is by his nature conscious; yes,
+self-conscious. He is progressive in his self-consciousness. I cannot
+think a removal out of the body destroys this consciousness; rather that
+it enhances and intensifies this. Yet consciousness in the next life
+must differ as much from consciousness here as the ripe peach differs
+from the blossom, or the bud, or the bark, or the earthly materials out
+of which it grew. The child is no limit to the man, nor my consciousness
+now to what I may be, must be hereafter.
+
+It must be a social state. Our nature is social; our joys social. For
+our progress here, our happiness, we depend on one another. Must it not
+be so there? It must be an advance upon our nature and condition here.
+All the analogy of nature teaches that. Things advance from small to
+great; from base to beautiful. 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. Yet some rude man, tired with his
+work, lies down beneath a tree, his head upon his swarthy arm, and sleep
+shuts, one by one, these five scant portals of the soul, and what an
+artist is he made at once! How brave a sky he paints above him, with
+what golden garniture of clouds set off; what flowers and trees, what
+men and women does he not create, and moving in celestial scenes! What
+years of history does he condense in one short minute, and when he
+wakes, shakes off the purple drapery of his dream as if it were but
+worthless dust and girds him for his work anew! What other powers there
+are shut up in men less known than this artistic phantasy; powers of
+seeing the distant, recalling the past, predicting the future, feeling
+at once the character of men--of this we know little, only by rare
+glimpses at the unwonted side of things. But yet we know enough to guess
+there are strange wonders there waiting to be revealed.
+
+What form our conscious, social, and increased activity shall take, we
+know not. We know of that no more than before our birth we knew of this
+world, of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch, or the things which
+they reveal. We are not born into that world, have not its senses yet.
+This we know, that the same God, all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, rules
+there and then, as here and now. Who cannot trust him to do right and
+best for all? For my own part, I feel no wish to know how or where, or
+what I shall be hereafter. I know it will be right for my truest
+welfare; for the good of all. I am satisfied with this trust.
+
+Yet the next life must be a state of retribution. Thither we carry
+nothing but ourselves, our naked selves. Our fortune we leave behind us;
+our honors and rank return to such as gave; even our reputation, the
+good or ill men thought we were, clings to us no more. We go thither
+without our staff or scrip; nothing but the man we are. Yet that man is
+the result of all life's daily work; it is the one thing which we have
+brought to pass. I cannot believe men who have voluntarily lived mean,
+little, vulgar and selfish lives, will go out of this and into that,
+great, noble, generous, good, and holy. Can the practical saint and the
+practical hypocrite enter on the same course of being together? I know
+the sufferings of bad men here, the wrong they do their nature, and what
+comes of that wrong. I think that suffering is the best part of sin, the
+medicine to heal it with. What men suffer here from their wrong-doing is
+its natural consequence; but all that suffering is a mercy, designed to
+make them better. Every thing in this world is adapted to promote the
+welfare of God's creatures. Must it not be so in the next? How many men
+seem wicked from our point of view, who are not so from their own; how
+many become infamous through no fault of theirs; the victims of
+circumstances, born into crime, of low and corrupt parents, whom former
+circumstances made corrupt! Such men cannot be sinners before God. Here
+they suffer from the tyranny of appetites they never were taught to
+subdue; they have not the joy of a cultivated mind. The children of the
+wild Indian are capable of the same cultivation as children here; yet
+they are savages. Is it always to be so? Is God to be partial in
+granting the favors of another life? I cannot believe it. I doubt not
+that many a soul rises up from the dungeon and the gallows, yes, from
+dens of infamy amongst men, clean and beautiful before God. Christ, says
+the Gospel, assured the penitent thief of sharing heaven with him--and
+that day. Many seem inferior to me, who in God's sight must be far
+before me; men who now seem too low to learn of me here, may be too high
+to teach me there.
+
+I cannot think the future world is to be feared, even by the worst of
+men. I had rather die a sinner than live one. Doubtless justice is there
+to be done; that may seem stern and severe. But remember God's justice
+is not like a man's; it is not vengeance, but mercy; not poison, but
+medicine. To me it seems tuition more than chastisement. God is not the
+Jailer of the Universe, but the Shepherd of the people; not the Hangman
+of mankind, but their Physician; yes, our Father. I cannot fear Him as I
+fear men. I cannot fail to love. I abhor sin, I loathe and nauseate
+thereat; most of all at my own. I can plead for others and extenuate
+their guilt, perhaps they for mine; not I for my own. I know God's
+justice will overtake me, giving me what I have paid for. But I do not,
+cannot fear it. I know His justice is love; that if I suffer, it is for
+my everlasting joy. I think this is a natural state of mind. I do not
+find that men ever dread the future life, or turn pale on their
+death-bed at thought of God's vengeance, except when a priesthood has
+frightened them to that. The world's literature, which is the world's
+confession, proves what I say. In Greece, in classic days, when there
+was no caste of priests, the belief in immortality was current and
+strong. But in all her varied literature I do not remember a man dying,
+yet afraid of God's vengeance. The rude Indian of our native land did
+not fear to meet the Great Spirit, face to face. I have sat by the
+bedside of wicked men, and while death was dealing with my brother, I
+have watched the tide slow ebbing from the shore, but I have known no
+one afraid to go. Say what we will, there is nothing stronger and deeper
+in men than confidence in God, a solemn trust that He will do us good.
+Even the worst man thinks God his Father; and is he not? Tell me not of
+God's vengeance, punishing men for his own glory! There is no such
+thing. Talk not to me of endless hell, where men must suffer for
+suffering's sake, be damned for an eternity of woe. I tell you there is
+no such thing, nor can there ever be. Does not even the hireling
+shepherd, when a single lamb has gone astray, leave the ninety and nine
+safe in their fold, go forth some stormy night and seek the wanderer,
+rejoicing to bring home the lost one on his shoulders? And shall God
+forget His child, his frailest or most stubborn child; leave him in
+endless misery, a prey to insatiate Sin, that grim, bloodthirsty wolf,
+prowling about the human fold? I tell you No; not God. Why, this
+eccentric earth forsakes the sun awhile, careering fast and far away,
+but that attractive power prevails at length, and the returning globe
+comes rounding home again. Does a mortal mother desert her son, wicked,
+corrupt and loathsome though he be? If so, the wiser world cries, Shame!
+But she does not. When her child becomes loathsome and hateful to the
+world, drunk with wickedness, and when the wicked world puts him away
+out of its sight, strangling him to death, that mother forgets not her
+child. She had his earliest kiss from lips all innocent of coming ill,
+and she will have his last. Yes, she will press his cold and stiffened
+form to her own bosom; the bosom that bore and fed the innocent babe
+yearns yet with mortal longing for the murdered murderer. Infamous to
+the world, his very dust is sacred dust to her. She braves the world's
+reproach, buries her son, piously hoping, that as their lives once
+mingled, so their ashes shall. The world, cruel and forgetful oft,
+honors the mother in its deepest heart. Do you tell me that culprit's
+mother loves her son more than God can love him? Then go and worship
+her. I know that when father and mother both forsake me, in the
+extremity of my sin, I know my God loves on. Oh yes, ye sons of men,
+Indian and Greek, ye are right to trust your God. Do priests and their
+churches say No!--bid them go and be silent forever. No grain of dust
+gets lost from off this dusty globe; and shall God lose a man from off
+this sphere of souls? Believe it not.
+
+I know that suffering follows sin, lasting long as the sin. I thank God
+it is so; that God's own angel stands there to warn back the erring
+Balaams, wandering towards woe. But God, who sends the rain, the dew,
+the sun, on me as on a better man, will, at last, I doubt it not, make
+us all pure, all just, all good, and so, at last, all happy. This
+follows from the nature of God himself, for the All-good must wish the
+welfare of His child; the All-wise know how to achieve that welfare; the
+All-powerful bring it to pass. Tell me He wishes not the eternal welfare
+of all men, then I say, That is not the God of the universe. I own not
+that as God. Nay, I tell you it is not God you speak of, but some
+heathen fancy, smoking up from your unhuman heart. I would ask the worst
+of mothers, Did you forsake your child because he went astray, and
+mocked your word? "Oh no," she says; "he was but a child, he knew no
+better, and I led him right, corrected him for his good, not mine!" Are
+we not all children before God; the wisest, oldest, wickedest, God's
+child! I am sure He will never forsake me, how wicked soever I become. I
+know that he is love; love, too, that never fails. I expect to suffer
+for each conscious, wilful wrong; I wish, I hope, I long to suffer for
+it. I am wronged if I do not; what I do not outgrow, live over and
+forget here, I hope to expiate there. I fear a sin; not to outgrow a
+sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man who has lived here a manly life, must enter the next under the
+most favorable circumstances. I do not mean a man of mere negative
+goodness, starting in the road of old custom, with his wheels deep in
+the ruts, not having life enough to go aside, but a positively good man,
+one bravely good. He has lived heaven here, and must enter higher up
+than a really wicked man, or a slothful one, or one but negatively good.
+He can go from earth to heaven, as from one room to another, pass
+gradually, as from winter to spring. To such an one, no revolution
+appears needed. The next life, it seems, must be a continual progress,
+the improvement of old powers, the disclosure or accession of new ones.
+What nobler reach of thought, what profounder insight, what more
+heavenly imagination, what greater power of conscience, faith and love,
+will bless us there and then, it were vain to calculate, it is far
+beyond our span. You see men now, whose souls are one with God, and so
+His will works through them as the magnetic fire runs on along the
+unimpeding line. What happiness they have, it is they alone can say. How
+much greater must it be there; not even they can tell. Here the body
+helps us to some things. Through these five small loop-holes the world
+looks in. How much more does the body hinder us from seeing? Through the
+sickly body yet other worlds look in. He who has seen only the daylight,
+knows nothing of that heaven of stars, which all night long hang
+overhead their lamps of gold. When death has dusted off this body from
+me, who will dream for me the new powers I shall possess? It were vain
+to try. Time shall reveal it all.
+
+I cannot believe that any state in Heaven is a final state, only a
+condition of progress. The bud opens into the blossom, the flower
+matures into the fruit. The salvation of to-day is not blessedness
+enough for to-morrow. Here we are first babes of earth, with a few
+senses, and those imperfect, helpless and ignorant; then children of
+earth; then youths; then men, armed with reason, conscience, affection,
+piety, and go on enlarging these without end. So methinks it must be
+there, that we shall be first babes of Heaven, then children, next
+youths, and so go on growing, advancing and advancing--our being only a
+becoming more and more, with no possibility of ever reaching the end. If
+this be true, then there must be a continual increase of being. So, in
+some future age, the time will come, when each one of us shall have more
+mind, and heart, and soul, than Christ on earth; more than all men now
+on earth have ever had; yes, more than they and all the souls of men now
+passed to Heaven;--shall have, each one of us, more being than they all
+have had, and so more truth, more soul, more faith, more rest and bliss
+of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do men of the next world look in upon this? Are they present with us,
+conscious of our deeds or thoughts? Who knows? Who can say aye or no?
+The unborn know nothing of the life on earth; yet the born of earth know
+somewhat of them, and make ready for their coming. Who knows but men
+born to heaven are waiting for your birth to come--have gone to prepare
+a place for us? All that is fancy, and not fact; it is not philosophy,
+but poetry; no more. Of this we may be sure, that what is best will be;
+what best for saint or sinner; what most conducive to their real good.
+That is no poetry, but unavoidable truth, which all mankind may well
+believe.
+
+There are many who never attained their true stature here, yet without
+blameworthiness of theirs; men cheated of their growth. Many a Milton
+walks on his silent way, and goes down at last, not singing and unsung.
+How many a possible Newton or Descartes has dug the sewers of a city,
+and dies, giving no sign of the wealthy soul he bore!
+
+    "Chill penury repressed his noble rage,
+    And froze the genial current of the soul."
+
+What if the best of you had been born slaves in North Carolina, or among
+savages at New Zealand; nay, in some of the filthy cellars of Boston,
+and turned friendless into the streets; what might you have become?
+Surely not what you are; yet, before God, you might, perhaps, be more
+deserving, and, at death, go to a far higher place. What is so terribly
+wrong here, must be righted there. It cannot be that God will thrust a
+man out of Heaven, because his mother was a savage, a slave, a pauper,
+or a criminal. It is men's impiety which does so here, not Heaven's
+justice there! How the wrong shall be righted I know not, care not now
+to know; of the fact I ask no further certainty. Many that are last
+shall be first. It may be that the pirate, in heaven, having outgrown
+his earthly sins, shall teach justice to the judge who hanged him here.
+They who were oppressed and trampled on, kept down, dwarfed, stinted and
+emaciate in soul, must have justice done them there, and will doubtless
+stand higher in Heaven than we, who, having many talents, used them
+poorly, or hid them idle in the dirt, knowing our Father's will, yet
+heeding not. It was Jesus that said, Many shall come from the east and
+the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, and men, calling
+themselves saints, be thrust out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shall we remember the deeds of the former life; this man that he picked
+rags out of the mud in the streets, and another that he ruled nations?
+Who can tell; nay, who need care to ask? Such a remembrance seems not
+needed for retribution's sake. The oak remembers not each leaf it ever
+bore, though each helped to form the oak, its branch and bole. How much
+has gone from our bodies! we know not how it came or went! How much of
+our past life is gone from our memory, yet its result lives in our
+character! The saddler remembers not every stitch he took while an
+apprentice, yet each stitch helped form the saddle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shall we know our friends again? For my own part I cannot doubt it;
+least of all when I drop a tear over their recent dust. Death does not
+separate them from us here. Can life in heaven do it? They live in our
+remembrance; memory rakes in the ashes of the dead, and the virtues of
+the departed flame up anew, enlightening the dim cold walls of our
+consciousness. Much of our joy is social here; we only half enjoy an
+undivided good. God made mankind, but sundered that into men, that they
+might help one another. Must it not be so there, and we be with our
+real friends? Man loves to think it; yet to trust is wiser than to
+prophesy. But the girl who went from us a little one may be as parent to
+her father when he comes, and the man who left us have far outgrown our
+dream of an angel when we meet again. I cannot doubt that many a man who
+not long ago left his body here, now far surpasses the radiant manliness
+which Jesus won and wore; yes, is far better, greater, too, than many
+poorly conceive of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are times when we think little of a future life. In a period of
+success, serene and healthy life; the day's good is good enough for that
+day. But there comes a time when this day's good is not enough; its ill
+too great to bear. When death comes down and wrenches off a friend from
+our side; wife, child, brother, father, a dear one taken; this life is
+not enough. Oh, no, not to the coldest, coarsest, and most sensual man.
+I put it to you, to the most heartless of you all, or the most cold and
+doubting--When you lay down in the earth your mother, sister, wife, or
+child, remembering that you shall see their face no more, is life
+enough? Do you not reach out your arms for heaven, for immortality, and
+feel you cannot die? When I see men at a feast, or busy in the street, I
+do not think of their eternal life; perhaps feel not my own. But when
+the stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, remorseless, I
+feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall
+cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place, the man to his own.
+It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven.
+I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me. I ask no risen dust to
+teach me immortality. I am conscious of eternal life.
+
+But there are worse hours than these: seasons bitterer than death,
+sorrows that lie a latent poison in the heart, slowly sapping the
+foundations of our peace. There are hours when the best life seems a
+sheer failure to the man who lived it, his wisdom folly, his genius
+impotence, his best deed poor and small; when he wonders why he was
+suffered to be born; when all the sorrows of the world seem poured upon
+him; when he stands in a populous loneliness, and though weak, can only
+lean in upon himself. In such hour he feels the insufficiency of this
+life. It is only his cradle-time, he counts himself just born; all
+honors, wealth and fame are but baubles in his baby hand; his deep
+philosophy but nursery rhymes. Yet he feels the immortal fire burning in
+his heart. He stretches his hands out from the swaddling-clothes of
+flesh, reaching after the topmost star, which he sees, or dreams he
+sees, and longs to go alone. Still worse, the consciousness of sin comes
+over him; he feels that he has insulted himself. All about him seems
+little; himself little, yet clamoring to be great. Then we feel our
+immortality; through the gairish light of day we see a star or two
+beyond. The soul within us feels her wings, contending to be born,
+impatient for the sky, and wrestles with the earthly worm that folds us
+in.
+
+    "Mysterious Night! when our first Parent knew
+      Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
+    Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
+      This glorious canopy of light and blue?
+    Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
+      Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
+    Hesperus with the host of heaven came;
+      And lo, Creation widened in man's view.
+    Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
+      Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
+    Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
+      That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
+    Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
+      If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"
+
+I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its day and night. Its
+flowers and its fruits are dear to me. I would not wilfully lose sight
+of a departing cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star; or in a
+purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws too of matter seem more
+wonderful the more I study them, in the whirling eddies of the dust, in
+the curious shells of former life buried by thousands in a grain of
+chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light above my head. Even the ugly
+becomes beautiful when truly seen. I see the jewel in the bunchy toad.
+The more I live, the more I love this lovely world; feel more its Author
+in each little thing; in all that is great. But yet I feel my
+immortality the more. In childhood the consciousness of immortal life
+buds forth feeble, though full of promise. In the man it unfolds its
+fragrant petals, his most celestial flower, to mature its seed
+throughout eternity. The prospect of that everlasting life, the perfect
+justice yet to come, the infinite progress before us, cheer and comfort
+the heart. Sad and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not be
+so forever. The light of heaven breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow,
+sin; the sombre clouds which overhung the east, grown purple now, tell
+us the dawn of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by that, smile
+in the new-born glow; we are beguiled of our sadness before we are
+aware. The certainty of this provokes us to patience, it forbids us to
+be slothfully sorrowful. It calls us to be up and doing. The thought
+that all will at last be right with the slave, the poor, the weak, and
+the wicked, inspires us with zeal to work for them here, and make it all
+right for them even now.
+
+There is small merit in being willing to die; it seems almost sinful in
+a good man to wish it when the world needs him here so much. It is weak
+and unmanly to be always looking and sighing voluptuously for that. But
+it is of great comfort to have in your soul a sure trust in
+immortality; of great value here and now to anticipate time and live
+to-day the eternal life. That we may all do. The joys of heaven will
+begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven and do its duties.
+That may begin to-day. It is everlasting life to know God, to have His
+Spirit dwelling in you, yourself at one with Him. Try that and prove its
+worth. Justice, usefulness, wisdom, religion, love, are the best things
+we hope for in Heaven. Try them on--they will fit you here not less
+becomingly. They are the best things of earth. Think no outlay of
+goodness and piety too great. You will find your reward begin here. As
+much goodness and piety, so much Heaven. Men will not pay you--God will;
+pay you now; pay you hereafter and for ever.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.--AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE
+ONONDAGA TEACHERS' INSTITUTE, AT SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 4, 1849.
+
+
+Education is the developing and furnishing of the faculties of man. To
+educate the people is one of the functions of the State. It is generally
+allowed in the free States of America, that the community owes each
+child born into it a chance for education, intellectual, moral, and
+religious. Hence the child has a just and recognized claim on the
+community for the means of this education, which is to be afforded him,
+not as a charity, but as a right.
+
+The fact indicates the progress mankind has made in not many years. Once
+the state only took charge of the military education of the people; not
+at all of their intellectual, moral, or religious culture. They received
+their military discipline, not for the special and personal advantage of
+the individuals, Thomas and Oliver, but for the benefit of the state.
+They received it, not because they were men claiming it in virtue of
+their manhood, but as subjects of the state, because their military
+training was needful for the state, or for its rulers who took the name
+thereof. Then the only culture which the community took public pains to
+bestow on its members, was training them to destroy. The few, destined
+to command, learned the science of destruction, and the kindred science
+of defence; the many, doomed to obey, learned only the art to destroy,
+and the kindred art of defence.
+
+The ablest men of the nation were sought out for military teachers,
+giving practical lessons of the science and the art; they were covered
+with honor and loaded with gold. The wealth of the people and their
+highest science went to this work. Institutions were founded to promote
+this education, and carefully watched over by the state, for it was
+thought the Commonwealth depended on disciplined valor. The soldier was
+thought to be the type of the state, the archetype of man; accordingly
+the highest spiritual function of the state was the production of
+soldiers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Most of the civilized nations have passed through that stage of their
+development: though the few or the many are still taught the science or
+the art of war in all countries called Christian, there is yet a class
+of men for whom the state furnishes the means of education that is not
+military; means of education which the individuals of that class could
+not provide for themselves. This provision is made at the cost of the
+state; that is, at the cost of every man in the state, for what the
+public pays, you pay and I pay, rich or poor, willingly and consciously,
+or otherwise. This class of men is different in different countries, and
+their education is modified to suit the form of government and the idea
+of the state. In Rome the state provides for the public education of
+priests. Rome is an ecclesiastical state; her government is a
+Theocracy--a government of all the people, but by the priests, for the
+sake of the priests, and in the name of God. Place in the church is
+power, bringing honor and wealth; no place out of the church is of much
+value. The offices are filled by priests, the chief magistrate is a
+priest, supposed to derive his power and right to rule, not
+democratically, from the people, or royally, by inheritance,--for in
+theory the priest is as if he had no father, as theoretically he has no
+child,--but theocratically from God.
+
+In Rome the priesthood is thought to be the flower of the state. The
+most important spiritual function of the state, therefore, is the
+production of priests; accordingly the greatest pains are taken with
+their education. Institutions are founded at the public cost, to make
+priests out of men; these institutions are the favorites of government,
+well ordered, well watched over, well attended, and richly honored.
+Institutions for the education of the people are of small account, ill
+endowed, watched over but poorly, thinly attended, and not honored at
+all. The people are designed to be subjects of the church, and as little
+culture is needed for that, though much to make them citizens thereof,
+so little is given.
+
+As there are institutions for the education of the priests, so there is
+a class of men devoted to that work; able men, well disciplined,
+sometimes men born with genius, and always men furnished with the
+accomplishments of sacerdotal and scientific art; very able men, very
+well disciplined, the most learned and accomplished men in the land.
+These men are well paid and abundantly honored, for on their
+faithfulness the power of the priesthood, and so the welfare of the
+state, is thought to depend. Without the allurement of wealth and
+honors, these able men would not come to this work; and without the help
+of their ability, the priests could not be well educated. Hence their
+power would decline; the class, tonsured and consecrated but not
+instructed, would fall into contempt; the theocracy would end. So the
+educators of the priests are held in honor, surrounded by baits for
+vulgar eyes; but the public educators of the people, chiefly women or
+ignorant men, are held in small esteem. The very buildings destined to
+the education of the priests are conspicuous and stately; the colleges
+of the Jesuits, the Propaganda, the seminaries for the education of
+priests, the monasteries for training the more wealthy and _regular_
+clergy, are great establishments, provided with libraries, and furnished
+with all the apparatus needful for their important work. But the
+school-houses for the people are small and mean buildings, ill made, ill
+furnished, and designed for a work thought to be of little moment. All
+this is in strict harmony with the idea of the theocracy, where the
+priesthood is mighty and the people are subjects of the Church; where
+the effort of the state is toward producing a priest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In England the state takes charge of the education of another class, the
+nobility and gentry; that is, of young men of ancient and historical
+families, the nobility, and young men of fortune, the gentry. England is
+an oligarchical state; her government an aristocracy, the government of
+all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the
+name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a
+noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There,
+nobility is the blossom of the state; aristocratic birth brings wealth,
+office, and their consequent social distinction. Political offices are
+chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king,
+the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and
+the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of
+birth. He is not merely noble but royal; his right to rule is not at
+all derived from the people, but from his birth. Thus he has the two
+essentials of aristocratic influence, birth and wealth, not merely in
+the heroic degree, but in the supreme degree.
+
+As the state is an aristocracy, its most important spiritual function is
+the production of aristocrats; each noble family transmits the full
+power of its blood only to a single person--the oldest son; of the
+highest form, the royal, only one is supposed to be born in a
+generation, only one who receives and transmits in full the blood royal.
+
+As the nobility are the blossom of the state, great pains must be taken
+with the education of those persons born of patrician or wealthy
+families. As England is not merely a military or ecclesiastical state,
+though partaking largely of both, but commercial, agricultural and
+productive in many ways; as she holds a very prominent place in the
+politics of the world, so there must be a good general education
+provided for these persons; otherwise their power would decline, the
+nobility and gentry sink into contempt, and the government pass into
+other hands,--for though a man may be born to rank and wealth, he is not
+born to knowledge, nor to practical skill. Hence institutions are
+founded for the education of the aristocratic class: Oxford and
+Cambridge, "those twins of learning," with their preparatories and
+help-meets.
+
+The design of these institutions is to educate the young men of family
+and fortune. The aim in their academic culture is not as in Pagan Rome,
+a military state, to make soldiers, nor as in Christian Rome, to turn
+out priests; it is not, as in the German universities, to furnish the
+world with scholars and philosophers, men of letters and science, but to
+mature and furnish the gentleman, in the technical sense of that word, a
+person conventionally fitted to do the work of a complicated
+aristocratic state, to fill with honor its various offices, military,
+political, ecclesiastical or social, and enjoy the dignity which comes
+thereof. These universities furnish the individual who resorts thither
+with opportunities not otherwise to be had; they are purchased at the
+cost of the state, at the cost of each man in the state. The alumnus at
+Oxford pays his term-bills, indeed, but the amount thereof is a trifle
+compared to the actual cost of his residence there; mankind pays the
+residue.
+
+These institutions are continually watched over by the state, which is
+the official guardian of aristocratic education; they are occasionally
+assisted by grants from the public treasury, though they are chiefly
+endowed by the voluntary gifts of individual men. But these private
+gifts, like the public grants, come from the earnings of the whole
+nation. They are well endowed, superintended well, and richly honored;
+their chancellors and vice-chancellors are men of distinguished social
+rank; they have their representatives in Parliament; able men are sought
+out for teachers, professors, heads of houses; men of good ability, of
+masterly education, and the accomplishments of a finished gentleman;
+they are well paid, and copiously rewarded with honors and social
+distinction. Gentility favors these institutions; nobility watches over
+them, and royalty smiles upon them. In this threefold sunlight, no
+wonder that they thrive. The buildings at their service are among the
+most costly and elegant in the land; large museums are attached to them,
+and immense libraries; every printer in England, at his own cost, must
+give a copy of each book he publishes to Cambridge and Oxford. What
+wealth can buy, or artistic genius can create, is there devoted to the
+culture of this powerful class.
+
+But while the nobility and gentry are reckoned the flower of the state,
+the common people are only the leaves, and therefore thought of small
+importance in the political botany of the nation. Their education is
+amazingly neglected; is mainly left to the accidental piety of private
+Christians, to the transient charity of philanthropic men, or the
+"enlightened self-interest" of mechanics and small-traders, who now and
+then found institutions for the education of some small fraction of the
+multitude. But such institutions are little favored by the government,
+or the spirit of the dominant class; gentility does not frequent them,
+nor nobility help them, nor royalty watch over to foster and to bless.
+The Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's
+money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to
+spare for the education of her people. No honor attends the educators of
+the people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are
+erected for their use; no great libraries got ready at the public
+charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and
+collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge; at the magnificence of
+public edifices in London, new or ancient--the House of Parliament, the
+Bank, the palaces of royal and noble men, the splendor of the
+churches--but you ask, where are the school-houses for the people? You
+go to Bridewell and Newgate for the answer. All this is consistent with
+the idea of an aristocracy. The gentleman is the type of the state; and
+the effort of the state is towards producing him. The people require
+only education enough to become the servants of the gentleman, and seem
+not to be valued for their own sake, but only as they furnish pabulum
+for the flower of the oligarchy.
+
+In Rome and England, great sums have been given by wealthy men, and by
+the state itself, to furnish the means of a theocratic or aristocratic
+education to a certain class; and to produce the national priests, and
+the national gentlemen. There public education is the privilege of a
+few, but bought at the cost of the many; for the plough-boy in
+Yorkshire, who has not culture enough to read the petition for daily
+bread in the Lord's Prayer, helps pay the salary of the Master of
+Trinity, and the swine-herd in the Roman Campagna, who knows nothing of
+religion, except what he learns at Christmas and Easter, by seeing the
+Pope carried on men's shoulders into St. Peter's, helps support the
+Propaganda and the Roman College. The privileged classes are to receive
+an education under the eye of the state, which considers itself bound to
+furnish them the means of a public education, partly at the individual's
+cost, chiefly at the cost of the public. The amount of education depends
+on three things:--on the educational attainments of the human race; on
+the wealth and tranquillity of the special nation, enabling it to avail
+itself of that general attainment; and on the natural powers and
+industry of the particular individual in the nation. Such is the
+solidarity of mankind that the development of the individual thus
+depends on that of the race, and the education of a priest in Rome or a
+gentleman in England is the resultant of these three forces,--the
+attainment of mankind, the power of the nation, and the private
+character and conduct of the man himself. Each of these three is a
+variable and not a constant quantity. So the amount of education which a
+man can receive at Oxford or at Rome fluctuates and depends on the
+state of the nation and of the world; but as the attainments of mankind
+have much increased within a few years, as the wealth of England has
+increased, and her tranquillity become more secure, you see how easy it
+becomes for the state to offer each gentleman an amount of education
+which it would have been quite impossible to furnish in the time of the
+Yorks and the Lancasters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In America things are quite other and different. I speak of the Free
+States of the North; the Slave States have the worst features of an
+oligarchy combined with a theocratic pride of caste, which generates
+continual unkindness; there the idea of the state is found inconsistent
+with the general and public education of the people; it is as much so in
+South Carolina as in England or Rome; even more so, for the public and
+general culture of all is only dangerous to a theocracy or aristocracy
+while it is directly fatal to slavery. In England, and still more in
+Catholic Rome, the churches--themselves a wonderful museum of
+curiosities, and open all the day to all persons--form an important
+element for the education of the most neglected class. But slavery and
+education of the people are incommensurable quantities. No amount of
+violence can be their common measure. The republic, where master and
+slave were equally educated, would soon be a red-republic. The
+slave-master knows this, and accordingly puts education to the ban, and
+glories in keeping three million barbarians in the land, and, of course,
+suffers the necessary degradation which comes thereof. But in the free
+states of the North the government is not a theocracy, or an
+aristocracy; the state, in theory is not for the few, nor even for the
+majority, but for all; classes are not recognized, and therefore not
+protected in any privilege. The government is a democracy, the
+government of all, by all, for all, and in the name of all. A man is
+born to all the rights of mankind; all are born to them, so all are
+equal. Therefore, what the state pays for, not only comes at the cost of
+all, but must be for the use and benefit of all. Accordingly, as a
+theocracy demands the education of priests, and an aristocracy that of
+the nobility and the gentry, so a democracy demands the education of
+all. The aim must be, not to make priests and gentlemen of a few, a
+privileged class, but to make men of all; that is, to give a normal and
+healthy development of their intellectual, moral, affectional and
+religious faculties, to furnish and instruct them with the most
+important elementary knowledge, to extend this development and
+furnishing of the faculties as far as possible.
+
+Institutions must be founded for this purpose--to educate all, rich and
+poor, men well-born with good abilities, men ill-born with slender
+natural powers. In New England, these institutions have long since been
+founded at the public cost, and watched over with paternal care, as the
+ark of our covenant, the palladium of our nation. It has been recognized
+as a theory, and practised on as a fact, that all the property in the
+land is held by the state for the public education of the people, as it
+is for their defence; that property is amenable to education as to
+military defence.
+
+In a democracy there are two reasons why this theory and practice
+prevail. One is a political reason. It is for the advantage of the
+state; for each man that keeps out of the jail and the poor-house,
+becomes a voter at one-and-twenty; he may have some office of trust and
+honor; the highest office is open before him. As so much depends on his
+voting wisely, he must have a chance to qualify himself for his right of
+electing and of being elected. It is as necessary now in a democracy,
+and as much demanded by the idea thereof, that all should be thus
+qualified by education, as it once was in a military state, that all
+should be bred up soldiers.
+
+The other is a philosophical reason. It is for the advantage of the
+individual himself, irrespective of the state. The man is a man, an
+integer, and the state is for him; as well as a fraction of the state,
+and he for it. He has a man's rights; and, however inferior in might to
+any other man, born of parentage how humble soever, to no wealth at all,
+with a body never so feeble, he is yet a man, and so equal in rights to
+any other man born of a famous line, rich and able; of course he has a
+right to a chance for the best culture which the educational attainment
+of mankind, and the circumstances of the nation render possible to any
+man; to so much thereof as he has the inborn power and the voluntary
+industry to acquire. This conclusion is getting acted on in New England,
+and there are schools for the dumb and the blind, even for the idiot and
+the convict.
+
+So, then, as the idea of our government demands the education of all,
+the amount of education must depend on the same three variables
+mentioned before; it must be as good as it is possible for them to
+afford. The democratic state has never done its political and
+educational duty, until it affords every man a chance to obtain the
+greatest amount of education which the attainment of mankind renders it
+possible for the nation, in its actual circumstances, to command, and
+the man's nature and disposition render it possible for him to take.
+
+Looking at the matter politically, from the point of view of the State,
+each man must have education enough to exercise his rights of electing
+and being elected. It is not easy to fix the limits of the amount; it is
+also a variable continually increasing. Looking at the matter
+philosophically, from the point of view of the individual, there is no
+limit but the attainment of the race and the individual's capacity for
+development and growth. Only a few men will master all which the
+circumstances of the nation and the world render attainable; some will
+come short for lack of power, others for lack of inclination. Make
+education as accessible as it can now be made, as attractive as the
+teachers of this age can render it, the majority will still get along
+with the smallest amount that is possible or reputable. Only a few will
+strive for the most they can get. There will be many a thousand farmers,
+traders, and mechanics in their various callings, manual and
+intellectual, to a single philosopher. This also is as it should be, and
+corresponds with the nature of man and his function on the earth. Still
+all have the natural right to the means of education to this extent, by
+fulfilling its condition.
+
+To accomplish this work, the democratic education of the whole people,
+with the aim of making them men, we want public institutions founded by
+the people, paid for by the public money; institutions well endowed,
+well attended, watched over well, and proportionably honored; we want
+teachers, able men, well disciplined, well paid, and honored in
+proportion to their work. It is a good thing to educate the privileged
+classes, priests in a theocracy, and gentlemen in an aristocracy. Though
+they are few in number, it is a great work; the servants thereof are not
+too well paid, nor too much held in esteem in England, nor in Rome, nor
+too well furnished with apparatus. But the public education of a whole
+people is a greater work, far more difficult, and should be attended
+with corresponding honor, and watched over even more carefully by the
+state.
+
+After the grown men of any country have provided for their own physical
+wants, and insured the needful physical comforts, their most important
+business is to educate themselves still further, and train up the rising
+generation to their own level. It is important to leave behind us
+cultivated lands, houses and shops, railroads and mills, but more
+important to leave behind us men grown, men that are men; such are the
+seed of material wealth,--not it of them. The highest use of material
+wealth is its educational function.
+
+Now the attainments of the human race increase with each generation; the
+four leading nations of Christendom, England, France, Germany, and the
+United States, within a hundred years, have apparently, at the least,
+doubled their spiritual attainments; in the free states of America,
+there is a constant and rapid increase of wealth, far beyond the
+simultaneous increase of numbers; so not only does the educational
+achievement of mankind become greater each age, but the power of the
+state to afford each man a better chance for a better education,
+greatens continually, the educational ability of the state enlarging as
+those two factors get augmented. The generation now grown up, is,
+therefore, able and bound to get a better culture than their fathers,
+and leave to their own children a chance still greater.
+
+Each child of genius, in the nineteenth century, is born at the foot of
+the ladder of learning, as completely as the first child, with the same
+bodily and spiritual nakedness; though of the most civilized race, with
+six, or sixty thousands of years behind him, he must begin with nothing
+but himself. Yet such is the union of all mankind, that, with the aid of
+the present generation, in a few years he will learn all that mankind
+has learned in its long history; next go beyond that, discovering and
+creating anew; and then draw up to the same height the new generation,
+which will presently surpass him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man's education never ends, but there are two periods thereof, quite
+dissimilar, the period of the Boy, and that of the Man. Education in
+general is the developing and instructing the faculties, and is,
+therefore, the same in kind to both man and boy, though it may be
+brought about by different forces. The education of the boy, so far as
+it depends on institutions, and conscious modes of action, must be so
+modified as to enable him to meet the influences which will surround him
+when he is a man; otherwise, his training will not enable him to cope
+with the new forces he meets, and so will fail of the end of making him
+a man. I pass over the influence of the family, and of nature, which do
+not belong to my present theme. In America, the public education of men
+is chiefly influenced by four great powers, which I will call
+educational forces, and which correspond to four modes of national
+activity:
+
+I. The political action of the people, represented by the State;
+
+II. The industrial action of the people, represented by Business;
+
+III. The ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Church;
+
+IV. The literary action of the people, represented by the Press.
+
+I now purposely name them in this order, though I shall presently refer
+to them several times, and in a different succession. These forces act
+on the people, making us such men as we are; they act indirectly on the
+child before he comes to consciousness; directly, afterwards, but most
+powerfully on the man. What is commonly and technically called
+education--the development and instruction of the faculties of children,
+is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but
+introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this
+preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of
+the school-masters. Their business is to give the child such a
+development of his faculties, and such furniture of preliminary
+knowledge, that he can secure the influence of all these educational
+forces, appreciating and enhancing the good, withstanding,
+counteracting, and at last ending the evil thereof, and so continue his
+education; and at the same time that he can work in one or more of those
+modes of activity, serving himself and mankind, politically by the
+state, ecclesiastically by the church, literarily by the press, or at
+any rate, industrially by his business. To give children the preparatory
+education necessary for this fourfold receptivity, or activity, we need
+three classes of public institutions:
+
+I. Free common schools;
+
+II. Free high schools;
+
+III. Free colleges.
+
+Of these I will presently speak in detail, but now, for the sake of
+shortness, let me call them all collectively by their generic name--the
+School. It is plain the teachers who work by this instrument ought to
+understand the good and evil of the four educational forces which work
+on men grown, in order to prepare their pupils to receive the good
+thereof, and withstand the evil. So then let us look a moment at the
+character of these educational forces, and see what they offer us, and
+what men they are likely to make of their unconscious pupils. Let us
+look at the good qualities first, and next at the evil.
+
+It is plain that business, the press, and politics all tend to promote a
+great activity of body and mind. In business, the love of gain, the
+enterprising spirit of our practical men in all departments, their
+industry, thrift and forecast, stimulate men to great exertions, and
+produce a consequent development of the faculties called out. Social
+distinction depends almost wholly on wealth; that never is accumulated
+by mere manual industry, such is the present constitution of society,
+but it is acquired by the higher forms of industry, in which the powers
+of nature serve the man, or he avails himself of the creations of mere
+manual toil. Hence there is a constant pressure towards the higher modes
+of industry for the sake of money; of course, a constant effort to be
+qualified for them. So in the industrial departments the mind is more
+active than the hand. Accordingly it has come to pass that most of the
+brute labor of the free states is done by cattle, or by the forces of
+nature--wind, water, fire--which we have harnessed by our machinery, and
+set to work. In New England most of the remaining work which requires
+little intelligence is done by Irishmen, who are getting a better
+culture by that very work. Men see the industrial handiwork of the
+North, and wonder; they do not always see the industrial head-work,
+which precedes, directs and causes it all; they seldom see the complex
+forces of which this enterprise and progress are the resultant.
+
+There is no danger that we shall be sluggards. Business now takes the
+same place in the education of the people that was once held by war: it
+stimulates activity, promotes the intercourse of man with man, nation
+with nation; assembling men in masses, it elevates their temperature, so
+to say; it leads to new and better forms of organization; it excites men
+to invention, so that thereby we are continually acquiring new power
+over the elements, peacefully annexing to our domain new provinces of
+nature--water, wind, fire, lightning--setting them to do our work,
+multiplying the comforts of life, and setting free a great amount of
+human time. It is not at all destructive; not merely conservative, but
+continually creates anew. Its creative agent is not brute force, but
+educated mind. A man's trade is always his teacher, and industry keeps a
+college for mankind, much of our instruction coming through our hands;
+with us, where the plough is commonly in the hands of him who owns the
+land it furrows, business affords a better education than in most other
+countries, and develops higher qualities of mind. There is a marked
+difference in this respect between the North and South. There was never
+before such industry, such intense activity of head and hand in any
+nation in a time of peace.
+
+The press encourages the same activity, enterprise, perseverance. Both
+of these encourage generosity; neither honors the miser, who gets for
+the sake of getting, or "starves, cheats, and pilfers to enrich an
+heir;" he does not die respectably in Boston, who dies rich and
+bequeaths nothing to any noble public charity. It encourages industry
+which accumulates with the usual honesty, and for a rather generous
+use.
+
+The press furnishes us with books exceedingly cheap. We manufacture
+literature cheaper than any nation except the Chinese. Even the best
+books, the works of the great masters of thought, are within the reach
+of an industrious farmer or mechanic, if half a dozen families combine
+for that purpose. The educational power of a few good books scattered
+through a community, is well known.
+
+Then the press circulates, cheap and wide, its newspapers, emphatically
+the literature of men who read nothing else: they convey intelligence
+from all parts of the world, and broaden the minds of home-keeping
+youths, who need not now have homely wits.
+
+The state, also, promotes activity, enterprise, hardihood, perseverance
+and thrift. The American Government is eminently distinguished by these
+five qualities. The form of government stimulates patriotism, each man
+has a share in the public lot. The theocracies, monarchies, and
+aristocracies of old time have produced good and great examples of
+patriotism, in the few or the many; but the nobler forms of love of
+country, of self-denial and disinterested zeal for its sake, are left
+for a democracy to bring to light.
+
+Here all men are voters, and all great questions are, apparently and in
+theory, left to the decision of the whole people. This popular form of
+government is a great instrument in developing and instructing the mind
+of the nation. It helps extend and intensify the intelligent activity
+which is excited by business and the press. Such is the nature of our
+political institutions that, in the free states, we have produced the
+greatest degree of national unity of action, with the smallest
+restriction of personal freedom, have reconciled national unity with
+individual variety, not seeking uniformity; thus room is left for as
+much individualism as a man chooses to take; a vast power of talent,
+enterprise and invention is left free for its own work. Elsewhere, save
+in England, this is latent, kept down by government. Since this power is
+educated and has nothing to hold it back; since so much brute work is
+done by cattle and the forces of nature, now domesticated and put in
+harness, and much time is left free for thought, more intelligence is
+demanded, more activity, and the citizens of the free states have become
+the most active, enterprising and industrious people in the world; the
+most inventive in material work.
+
+In all these three forms of action there is much to stir men to love of
+distinction. The career is open to talent, to industry; open to every
+man; the career of letters, business, and politics. Our rich men were
+poor men; our famous men came of sires else not heard of. The laurel,
+the dollar, the office, and the consequent social distinction of men
+successful in letters, business and politics, these excite the obscure
+or needy youth to great exertions, and he cannot sleep; emulation wakes
+him early, and keeps him late astir. Behind him, scattering "the rear of
+darkness," stalk poverty and famine, gaunt and ugly forms, with scorpion
+whip to urge the tardier, idler man. The intense ambition for money, for
+political power, and the social results they bring, keeps men on the
+alert. So ambition rises early, and works with diligence that never
+tires.
+
+The Church, embracing all the churches under that name, cultivates the
+memory of men, and teaches reverence for the past; it helps keep
+activity from wandering into unpopular forms of wickedness or of
+unbelief. Men who have the average intelligence, goodness and piety, it
+keeps from slipping back, thus blocking to rearward the wheels of
+society, so that the ascent gained shall not be lost; men who have less
+than this average it urges forward, addressing them in the name of God,
+encouraging by hope of heaven, and driving with fear of hell. It turns
+the thought of the people towards God; it sets before us some facts in
+the life, and some parts of the doctrine, of the noblest One who ever
+wore the form of man, bidding us worship him. The ecclesiastical worship
+of Jesus of Nazareth is, perhaps, the best thing in the American church.
+It has the Sunday and the institution of preaching under its control. A
+body of disciplined men are its servants; they praise the ordinary
+virtues; oppose and condemn the unpopular forms of error and of sin.
+Petty vice, the vice of low men, in low places, is sure of their lash.
+They promote patriotism in its common form. Indirectly, they excite
+social and industrial rivalry, and favor the love of money by the honor
+they bestow upon the rich and successful. But at the same time they
+temper it a little, sometimes telling men, as business or the state does
+not, that there is in man a conscience, affection for his brother-man,
+and a soul which cannot live by bread alone; no, not by wealth, office,
+fame and social rank. They tell us, also, of eternity, where worldly
+distinctions, except of orthodox and heterodox, are forgotten, where
+wealth is of no avail; they bid us remember God.
+
+Such are the good things of these great national forces; the good things
+which in this fourfold way we are teaching ourselves. The nation is a
+monitorial school, wonderfully contrived for the education of the
+people. I do not mean to say that it is by the forethought of men that
+the American democracy is at the same time a great practical school for
+the education of the human race. This result formed no part of our plan,
+and is not provided for by the Constitution of the United States; it
+comes of the forethought of God, and is provided for in the Constitution
+of the Universe.
+
+Now each of these educational forces has certain defects, negative
+evils, and certain vices, positive evils, which tend to misdirect the
+nation, and so hinder the general education of the people: of these,
+also, let me speak in detail.
+
+The state appeals to force, not to justice; this is its last appeal; the
+force of muscles aided by force of mind, instructed by modern science in
+the art to kill. The nation appeals to force in the settlement of
+affairs out of its borders. We have lately seen an example of this, when
+we commenced war against a feeble nation, who, in that special
+emergency, had right on her side, about as emphatically as the force was
+on our side. The immediate success of the enterprise, the popular
+distinction acquired by some of the leaders, the high honor bestowed on
+one of its heroes, all this makes the lesson of injustice attractive. It
+may be that a similar experiment will again be tried, and doubtless with
+like success. Certainly there is no nation this side of the water which
+can withstand the enterprise, the activity, the invention, industry and
+perseverance of a people so united, and yet so free and intelligent.
+Another successful injustice of this character, on a large scale, will
+make right still less regarded, and might honored yet more.
+
+The force we employ out of our borders, might opposed to right, we
+employ also at home against our brethren, and keep three millions of
+them in bondage; we watch for opportunities to extend the institution of
+slavery over soil unpolluted by that triple curse, and convert the
+Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, into an instrument for
+the defence of slavery.
+
+The men we honor politically, by choosing them to offices in the state,
+are commonly men of extraordinary force, sometimes, it is true, only of
+extraordinary luck, but of only ordinary justice; men who, perhaps, have
+mind in the heroic degree, but conscience of the most vulgar pattern.
+They are to keep the law of the United States when it is wholly hostile
+to the law of the universe, to the everlasting justice of God.
+
+I am not speaking to politicians, professional representatives of the
+state; not speaking for political effect; not of the state as a
+political machine for the government of the people. I am speaking to
+teachers, for an educational purpose; of the state as an educational
+machine, as one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the
+people. Now by this preference of force and postponement of justice at
+home and abroad, in the selection of men for office, with its wealth,
+and rank, and honor, by keeping the law of the land to the violation of
+the law of God, it is plain we are teaching ourselves to love wrong; at
+least to be insensible to the right. What we practise on a national
+scale as a people, it is not easy to think wrong when practised on a
+personal scale, by this man and that.
+
+The patriotism, also, which the state nurses, is little more than that
+Old Testament patriotism which loves your countryman, and hates the
+stranger; the affection which the Old Testament attributes to Jehovah,
+and which makes him say, "I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau;" a patriotism
+which supports our country in the wrong as readily as in the right, and
+is glad to keep one sixth part of the nation in bondage without hope. It
+is not a patriotism which, beginning here, loves all the children of
+God, but one that robs the Mexican, enslaves the African, and
+exterminates the Indian.
+
+These are among the greater evils taught us by the political action of
+the people as a whole. If you look at the action of the chief political
+parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either
+party, than in the politics of the nation, the resultant of both; no
+more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively
+at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for
+that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It
+legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth, than
+for the laboring man who now accumulates. This party goes for the
+dollar; the other for the majority, and aims at the greatest good of the
+greatest number, leaving the good of the smaller number to most
+uncertain mercies. Neither party seems to aim at justice, which protects
+both the wealth that labor has piled up, and the laborer who now creates
+it; justice, which is the point of morals common to man and God, where
+the interests of all men, abroad and at home, electing and elected,
+greatest number and smallest number, exactly balance. Falsehood, fraud,
+a willingness to deceive, a desire for the power and distinction of
+office, a readiness to use base means in obtaining office--these vices
+are sown with a pretty even hand upon both parties, and spring up with
+such blossoms and such a fruitage as we all see. The third political
+party has not been long enough in existence to develop any distinctive
+vices of its own.
+
+I shall not speak of the public or private character of the politicians
+who direct the state; no doubt that is a powerful element in our
+national education; but as a class, they seem no better and no worse
+than merchants, mechanics, ministers and farmers, as a class; so in
+their influence there is nothing peculiar, only their personal character
+ceases to be private, and becomes a public force in the education of the
+people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Churches have the same faults as the State. There is the same
+postponement of justice and preference of force, the same neglect of the
+law of God in their zeal for the statutes of men; the same crouching to
+dollars or to numbers. However, in the churches these faults appear
+negatively, rather than as an affirmation. The worldliness of the church
+is not open, self-conscious and avowed; it is not, as a general thing,
+that human injustice is openly defended, but rather justice goes by
+default. But if the churches do not positively support and teach
+injustice, as the state certainly does, they do not teach the opposite,
+and, so far as that goes, are allies of the state in its evil influence.
+The fact that the churches, as such, did not oppose the war, and do not
+oppose slavery, its continuance, or its extension; nay, that they are
+often found its apologists and defenders, seldom its opponents; that
+they not only pervert the sacred books of the Christians to its defence,
+but wrest the doctrines of Christianity to justify it; the fact that
+they cannot, certainly do not, correct the particularism of the
+political parties, the love of wealth in one, of mere majorities in the
+other; that they know no patriotism not bounded by their country, none
+coextensive with mankind; that they cannot resist the vice of party
+spirit--these are real proofs that the church is but the ally of the
+state in this evil influence.
+
+But the church has also certain specific faults of its own. It teaches
+injustice by continually referring to the might of God, not His justice;
+to His ability and will to damn mankind, not asking if He has the right?
+It teaches that in virtue of His infinite power, He is not amenable to
+infinite justice, and to infinite love. Thus, while the state teaches,
+in the name of expediency and by practice, that the strong may properly
+be the tyrants of the weak, the mighty nation over the feeble, the
+strong race over the inferior, that the government may dispense with
+right at home and abroad--the church, as theory in Christ's name,
+teaches that God may repudiate His own justice and His own love.
+
+The churches have little love of truth, as such, only of its uses. It
+must be such a truth as they can use for their purposes; canonized
+truth; truth long known; that alone is acceptable and called "religious
+truth;" all else is "profane and carnal," as the reason which discovers
+it. They represent the average intelligence of society; hence, while
+keeping the old, they welcome not the new. They promote only popular
+forms of truth, popular in all Christendom, or in their special sect.
+They lead in no intellectual reforms; they hinder the leaders.
+Negatively and positively, they teach, that to believe what is
+clerically told you in the name of religion, is better than free,
+impartial search after the truth. They dishonor free thinking, and
+venerate constrained believing. When the clergy doubt, they seldom give
+men audience of their doubt. Few scientific men not clerical believe the
+Bible account of creation,--the universe made in six days, and but a few
+thousand years ago,--or that of the formation of woman, and of the
+deluge. Some clerical men still believe these venerable traditions,
+spite of the science of the times; but the clerical men who have no
+faith in these stories not only leave the people to think them true and
+miraculously taught, but encourage men in the belief, and calumniate the
+men of science who look the universe fairly in the face and report the
+facts as they find them.
+
+The church represents only the popular morality, not any high and
+aboriginal virtue. It represents not the conscience of human nature,
+reflecting the universal and unchangeable moral laws of God, touched and
+beautified by his love, but only the conscience of human history,
+reflecting the circumstances man has passed by, and the institutions he
+has built along the stream of time. So, while it denounces unpopular
+sins, vices below the average vice of society, it denounces also
+unpopular excellence, which is above the average virtue of society. It
+blocks the wheels rearward, and the car of humanity does not roll down
+hill; but it blocks them forward also. No great moral movement of the
+age is at all dependent directly on the church for its birth; very
+little for its development. It is in spite of the church that reforms go
+forward; it holds the curb to check more than the rein to guide. In
+morals, as in science, the church is on the anti-liberal side, afraid of
+progress, against movement, loving "yet a little sleep, a little
+slumber;" conservative and chilling, like ice, not creative, nor even
+quickening, as water. It doffs to use and wont; has small confidence in
+human nature, much in a few facts of human history. It aims to separate
+Piety from Goodness, her natural and heaven-appointed spouse, and marry
+her to Bigotry, in joyless and unprofitable wedlock. The church does
+not lead men to the deep springs of human nature, fed ever from the far
+heights of the Divine nature, whence flows that river of God, full of
+living water, where weary souls may drink perennial supply. While it
+keeps us from falling back, it does little directly to advance mankind.
+In common with the state, this priest and Levite pass by on the other
+side of the least developed classes of society, leaving the slave, the
+pauper, and the criminal, to their fate, hastening to strike hands with
+the thriving or the rich.
+
+These faults are shared in the main by all sects; some have them in the
+common, and some in a more eminent degree, but none is so distinguished
+from the rest as to need emphatic rebuke, or to deserve a special
+exemption from the charge. Such are the faults of the church of every
+land, and must be from the nature of the institution; like the state, it
+can only represent the average of mankind.
+
+I am not speaking to clergymen, professional representatives of the
+church, not of the church as an ecclesiastical machine for keeping and
+extending certain opinions and symbols; not for an ecclesiastical
+purpose; I speak to teachers, for an educational purpose, of the church
+as an educational machine, one of the great forces for the spiritual
+development of the people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Business of the land has also certain vices of its own; while it
+promotes the virtues I have named before, it does not tend to promote
+the highest form of character. It does not promote justice and humanity,
+as one could wish; it does not lead the employer to help the operative
+as a man, only to use him as a tool, merely for industrial purposes. The
+average merchant cares little whether his ship brings cloth and cotton,
+or opium and rum. The average capitalist does not wish the stock of his
+manufacturing company divided into small shares, so that the operatives
+can invest their savings therein and have a portion of the large
+dividends of the rich; nor does he care whether he takes a mortgage on a
+ship or a negro slave, nor whether his houses are rented for sober
+dwellings, or for drunkeries; whether the state hires his money to build
+harbors at home, or destroy them abroad. The ordinary manufacturer is as
+ready to make cannons and cannon-balls to serve in a war which he knows
+is unjust, as to cast his iron into mill-wheels, or forge it into
+anchors. The common farmer does not care whether his barley feeds
+poultry for the table, or, made into beer, breeds drunkards for the
+almshouse and the jail; asks not whether his rye and potatoes become the
+bread of life, or, distilled into whiskey, are deadly poison to men and
+women. He cares little if the man he hires become more manly or not; he
+only asks him to be a good tool. Whips for the backs of negro slaves are
+made, it is said, in Connecticut with as little compunction as Bibles
+are printed there; "made to order," for the same purpose--for the
+dollar. The majority of blacksmiths would as soon forge fetter-chains to
+enslave the innocent limbs of a brother-man, as draught-chains for oxen.
+Christian mechanics and pious young women, who would not hurt the hair
+of an innocent head, have I seen at Springfield, making swords to
+slaughter the innocent citizens of Vera Cruz and Jalapa. The ships of
+respectable men carry rum to intoxicate the savages of Africa, powder
+and balls to shoot them with; they carry opium to the Chinese; nay,
+Christian slaves from Richmond and Baltimore to New Orleans and
+Galveston. In all commercial countries, the average vice of the age is
+mixed up with the industry of the age, and unconsciously men learn the
+wickedness long intrenched in practical life. It is thought industrial
+operations are not amenable to the moral law, only to the law of trade.
+"Let the supply follow the demand" is the maxim. A man who makes as
+practical a use of the golden rule as of his yard-stick, is still an
+exception in all departments of business.
+
+Even in the commercial and manufacturing parts of America, money
+accumulates in large masses; now in the hands of an individual, now of a
+corporation. This money becomes an irresponsible power, acting by the
+laws, but yet above them. It is wielded by a few men, to whom it gives a
+high social position and consequent political power. They use this
+triple form of influence, pecuniary, social and political, in the spirit
+of commerce, not of humanity, not for the interest of mankind; thus the
+spirit of trade comes into the state. Hence it is not thought wrong in
+politics to buy a man, more than in commerce to buy a ship; hence the
+rights of a man, or a nation, are looked on as articles of trade, to be
+sold, bartered, and pledged; and in the Senate of the United States, we
+have heard a mass of men, more numerous than all our citizens seventy
+years ago, estimated as worth twelve hundred millions of dollars.
+
+In most countries business comes more closely into contact with men than
+the state, or the church, or the press, and is a more potent educator.
+Here it not only does this, but controls the other three forces, which
+are mainly instruments of this; hence this form of evil is more
+dangerous than elsewhere, for there is no power organized to resist it
+as in England or Rome; so it subtly penetrates everywhere, bidding you
+place the accidents before the substance of manhood, and value money
+more than man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Notwithstanding the good qualities of the Press, the books it
+multiplies, and the great service it renders, it also has certain vices
+of its own. From the nature of the thing the greater part of literature
+represents only the public opinion of the time. It must therefore teach
+deference to that, not deference to truth and justice. It is only the
+eminent literature which can do more than this; books, which at first
+fall into few hands though fit, and like the acorns sown with the
+mulleins and the clover, destined to germinate but slowly, long to be
+over-topped by an ephemeral crop, at last, after half an hundred years,
+shall mature their own fruit for other generations of men. The current
+literature of this age only popularizes the thought of the eminent
+literature of the past. Great good certainly comes from this, but also
+great evil.
+
+Of all literature, the newspapers come most into contact with men--they
+are the literature of the people, read by such as read nothing else;
+read also by such as read all things beside. Taken in the mass, they
+contain little to elevate men above the present standard. The political
+journals have the general vice of our politics, and the special faults
+of the particular party; the theological journals have the common
+failings of the church, intensified by the bigotry of the sects they
+belong to; the commercial journals represent the bad qualities of
+business. Put all three together, and it is not their aim to tell the
+truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, nor to promote
+justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular
+literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and ideas which
+prevail in the state, the church, and business. It brings those
+sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing
+them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little
+directly to promote a higher form of human character.
+
+So, notwithstanding the good influence of these four modes of national
+activity in educating the grown men of America, they yet do not afford
+the highest teaching which the people require, to realize individually
+the idea of a man, and jointly that of a democracy. The state does not
+teach perfect justice; the church does not teach that, or love of truth.
+Business does not teach perfect morality, and the average literature,
+which falls into the hands of the million, teaches men to respect public
+opinion more than the word of God, which transcends that. Thus these
+four teach only the excellence already organized or incorporated in the
+laws, the theology, the customs, and the books of the land. I cannot but
+think these four teachers are less deficient here than in other lands,
+and have excellences of their own, but the faults mentioned are
+inseparable from such institutions. An institution is an organized
+thought; of course, no institution can represent a truth which is too
+new or too high for the existing organizations, yet that is the truth
+which it is desirable to teach. So there will always be exceptional men,
+with more justice, truth and love than is represented by the
+institutions of the time, who seem therefore hostile to these
+institutions, which they seek to improve and not destroy. Contemporary
+with the priests of Judah and Israel were the prophets thereof,
+antithetic to one another as the centripetal and centrifugal forces,
+but, like them, both necessary to the rhythmic movement of the orbs in
+heaven, and the even poise of the world.
+
+In Rome and in England the idea of a theocracy and an aristocracy has
+become a fact in the institutions of the land, which accordingly favor
+the formation of priests and gentlemen. The teachers of the educated
+class, therefore, may trust to the machinery already established to do
+their work, only keeping off the spirit of the age which would make
+innovations; and such is the respectability and popular esteem of the
+institutions, that this is done easier than men think, by putting an
+exceptional book in the index at Rome or in the academical fire at
+Oxford. But here, the idea of a democracy is by no means so well
+established and organized in institutions. It is new, and while a
+theocrat and an aristocrat are respected everywhere, a democrat is held
+in suspicion; accordingly, to make men, the teacher cannot trust his
+educational machinery, he must make it, and invent anew as well as turn
+his mill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These things being so, it is plain the teachers in the schools should be
+of such a character that they can give the children what they will most
+want when they become men; such an intellectual and moral development
+that they can appreciate and receive the good influence of these four
+educational forces, and withstand, resist, and exterminate the evil
+thereof. In the schools of a democracy which are to educate the people
+and make them men, you need more aboriginal virtue than in the schools
+of an aristocracy or a theocracy, where a few are to be educated as
+gentlemen or priests. Since the institutions of the land do not
+represent the idea of a democracy, and the average spirit of the people,
+which makes the institutions, represents it no more, if the children of
+the people are to become better than their fathers, it is plain their
+teachers must be prophets, and not priests merely; must animate them
+with a spirit higher, purer and more holy than that which inspires the
+state, the church, business, or the common literature of the times. As
+the teacher cannot impart and teach what he does not possess and know,
+it is also plain that the teacher must have this superior spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To accomplish the public education of the children of the people, we
+need the three classes of institutions just mentioned: free Common
+Schools, free High Schools and free Colleges. Let me say a word of each.
+
+The design of the Common School is to take children at the proper age
+from their mothers, and give them the most indispensable development,
+intellectual, moral, affectional and religious; to furnish them with as
+much positive, useful knowledge as they can master, and, at the same
+time, teach them the three great scholastic helps or tools of
+education--the art to read, to write and calculate.
+
+The children of most parents are easily brought to school, by a little
+diligence on the part of the teachers and school committee; but there
+are also children of low and abandoned, or, at least, neglected parents,
+who live in a state of continual truancy; they are found on the banks of
+your canals; they swarm in your large cities. When those children become
+men, through lack of previous development, instruction and familiarity
+with these three instruments of education, they cannot receive the full
+educational influence of the state and church, of business and the
+press: they lost their youthful education, and therefore they lose, in
+consequence, their manly culture. They remain dwarfs, and are barbarians
+in the midst of society; there will be exceptional men whom nothing can
+make vulgar; but this will be the lot of the mass. They cannot perform
+the intelligent labor which business demands, only the brute work, so
+they lose the development which comes through the hand that is active in
+the higher modes of industry, which, after all, is the greatest
+educational force; accordingly, they cannot compete with ordinary men,
+and remain poor; lacking also that self-respect which comes of being
+respected, they fall into beggary, into intemperance, into crime; so,
+from being idlers at first, a stumbling-block in the way of society,
+they become paupers, a positive burden which society must take on its
+shoulders; or they turn into criminals, active foes to the industry, the
+order, and the virtue of society.
+
+Now if a man abandons the body of his child, the state adopts that body
+for a time; takes the guardianship thereof, for the child's own sake;
+sees that it is housed, fed, clad, and cared for. If a man abandons his
+child's spirit, and the child commits a crime, the state, for its own
+sake, assumes the temporary guardianship thereof, and puts him in a
+jail. When a man deserts his child, taking no concern about his
+education, I venture to make the suggestion, whether it would not be
+well, as a last resort, for the State to assume the guardianship of the
+child for its own sake, and for the child's sake. We allow no one, with
+ever so thick a skin, to grow up in nakedness; why should we suffer a
+child, with however so perverse a parent, to grow up in ignorance and
+degenerate into crime? Certainly, a naked man is not so dangerous to
+society as an ignorant man, nor is the spectacle so revolting. I should
+have less hope of a state where the majority were so perverse as to
+continue ignorant of reading, writing and calculating, than of one where
+they were so thick-skinned as to wear no clothes. In Massachusetts,
+there is an Asylum for juvenile offenders, established by the city of
+Boston, a Farm School for bad boys, established by the characteristic
+benevolence of the rich men of that place, and a State Reform School
+under the charge of the Commonwealth: all these are for lads who break
+the laws of the land. Would it not be better to take one step more,
+adopt them before they offended, and allow no child to grow up in the
+barbarism of ignorance? Has any man an unalienable right to live a
+savage in the midst of civilization?
+
+We need also public High Schools, to take children where the common
+schools leave them, and carry them further on. Some States have done
+something towards establishing such institutions; they are common in New
+England. Some have established Normal Schools, special High Schools for
+the particular and professional education of public teachers. Without
+these, it is plain there would not be a supply of competent educators
+for the public service.
+
+Then we need free Colleges, conducted by public officers, and paid for
+by the public purse. Without these the scheme is not perfect. The idea
+which lies at the basis of the public education of a people in a
+democracy, is this: Every man, on condition of doing his duty, has a
+right to the means of education, as much as a right, on the same
+condition, to the means of defence from a public enemy in time of war,
+or from starvation in time of plenty and of peace. I say every man, I
+mean every woman also. The amount of education must depend on the three
+factors named before,--on the general achievement of mankind, the
+special ability of the state, and the particular power of the
+individual.
+
+If all is free, common schools, high schools, and colleges, boys and
+girls of common ability and common love of learning, will get a common
+education; those of greater ability, a more extended education, and
+those of the highest powers, the best culture which the race can now
+furnish, and the state afford. Hitherto no nation has established a
+public college, wholly at the public cost, where the children of the
+poor and the rich could enjoy together the great national charity of
+superior education. To do this is certainly not consistent with the idea
+of a theocracy or an aristocracy, but it is indispensable to the
+complete realization of a democracy. Otherwise the children of the rich
+will have a monopoly of superior education, which is the case with the
+girls everywhere--for only the daughters of rich men can get a superior
+education, even in the United States--and with boys in England and
+France, and of course the offices, emoluments and honors which depend on
+a superior education; or else the means thereof will be provided for
+poor lads by private benefactions, charity-funds and the like, which
+some pious and noble man has devoted to this work. In this case the
+institutions will have a sectarian character, be managed by narrow,
+bigoted men, and the gift of the means of education be coupled with
+conditions which must diminish its value, and fetter the free spirit of
+the young man. This takes place in many of the collegiate establishments
+of the North, which, notwithstanding those defects, have done a great
+good to mankind.
+
+The Common Schools giving their pupil the power of reading, writing and
+calculating, developing his faculties and furnishing him with much
+elementary knowledge, put him in communication with all that is written
+in a common form, in the English tongue; its treasures lie level to his
+eye and hand. The High School and the College, teaching him also other
+languages, afford him access to the treasures contained there; teaching
+him the mathematics and furnishing him with the discipline of science,
+they enable him to understand all that has hitherto been recorded in the
+compendious forms of philosophy, and thus place the child of large
+ability in connection with all the spiritual treasures of the world. In
+the mean time, for all these pupils, there is the material and the human
+world about them, the world of consciousness within. They can study both
+and add what they may to the treasures of human discovery or invention.
+
+It seems to me that it is the duty of the state to place the means of
+this education within the reach of all children of superior ability,--a
+duty that follows from the very idea of a democracy, not to speak of
+the idea of Christianity. It is not less the interest of the state to do
+so, for then, youths, well born, with good abilities, will not be
+hindered from getting a breeding proportionate to their birth, and from
+occupying the stations which are adequately filled only by men of
+superior native abilities, enriched by culture, and developed to their
+highest power. Then the work of such stations will fall to the lot of
+such men, and of course be done. Eminent ability, talent, or genius,
+should have eminent education, and so serve the nation in its eminent
+kind; for when God makes a million-minded man, as once or twice in the
+ages, or a myriad-minded man, as He does now and then, it is plain that
+this gift also is to be accounted precious, and used for the advantage
+of all.
+
+I say no state has ever attempted to establish such institutions; yet
+the Government of the United States has a seminary for the public
+education of a few men at the public cost. But it is a school to qualify
+men to fight; they learn the science of destruction, the art thereof,
+the kindred art and science of defence. If the same money we now pay for
+military education at West Point were directed to the education of
+teachers of the highest class, say professors and presidents of
+colleges; if the same pains were taken to procure able men, to furnish
+them with the proper instruction for their special work, and give them
+the best possible general development of their powers, not forgetting
+the moral, the affectional and the religious, and animating them with
+the philanthropic spirit needed for such a work, how much better results
+would appear! But in the present intellectual condition of the people it
+would be thought unworthy of a nation to train up school-masters! But is
+it only soldiers that we need?
+
+All these institutions are but introductory, a preparatory school, in
+three departments, to fit youths for the great educational establishment
+of practical life. This will find each youth and maiden as the schools
+leave him, moulding him to their image, or moulded by him to a better.
+So it is plain what the teachers are to do:--besides teaching the
+special branches which fall to their lot, they are to supply for the
+pupils, the defects of the State, of the Church, of Business, and the
+Press, especially the moral defects. For this great work of mediating
+between the mother and the world, for so furnishing and fitting the
+rising generation, introducing them into practical life, that they shall
+receive all the good of these public educational forces with none of the
+ill, but enhance the one while they withstand the other, and so each in
+himself realize the idea of man, and all in their social capacity, the
+idea of a democracy--it is also plain what sort of men we need for
+teachers: we need able men, well endowed by nature, well disciplined by
+art; we need superior men--men juster than the state, truer and better
+than the churches, more humane than business, and higher than the common
+literature of the press. There are always men of that stamp born into
+the world; enough of them in any age to do its work. How shall we bring
+them to the task? Give young men and women the opportunity to fit
+themselves for the work, at free common schools, high schools, normal
+schools, and colleges; give them a pay corresponding to their services,
+as in England and Rome; give them social rank and honor in that
+proportion, and they will come; able men will come; men well disciplined
+will come; men of talent and even genius for education will come.
+
+In the state you pay a man of great political talents large money and
+large honors; hence there is no lack of ability in politics, none of
+competition for office. In the church you pay a good deal for a "smart
+minister," one who can preach an audience into the pews and not himself
+out of the pulpit. Talent enough goes to business; educated talent too,
+at least with a special education for this, honor, and social
+distinction. Private colleges and theological schools, often, have
+powerful men for their professors and presidents; sometimes, men of much
+talent for education; commonly, men of ripe learning and gentlemanly
+accomplishments. Even men of genius seek a place as teachers in some
+private college, where they are under the control of the leaders of a
+sect--and must not doubt its creed, nor set science a-going freely lest
+it run over some impotent theological dogma--or else of a little
+coterie, or close corporation of men selected because radical or because
+conservative, men chosen not on account of any special fitness for
+superintending the superior education of the people, but because they
+were one-sided, and leaned this way in Massachusetts and that in
+Virginia. Able men seek such places because they get a competent pay,
+competent honors, competent social rank. Senators and ambassadors are
+not ashamed to be presidents of a college, and submit to the control of
+a coterie, or a sect, and produce their results. If such men can be had
+for private establishments to educate a few to work in such trammels and
+such company, certainly, it is not difficult to get them for the public
+and for the education of all. As the state has the most children to
+educate, the most money to pay with, it is clear, not only that they
+need the best ability for this work, but that they can have it soon as
+they make the teacher's calling gainful and respectable.
+
+In England and Rome, the most important spiritual function of the state
+is the production of the gentleman and the priest; in democratic America
+it is the production of the man. Some nations have taken pains with the
+military training of all the people, for the sake of the state, and made
+every man a soldier. No nation has hitherto taken equivalent pains with
+the general education of all, for the sake of the state and the sake of
+the citizens;--"the heathens of China" have done more than any Christian
+people, for the education of all. This was not needed in a theocracy,
+nor an aristocracy; it is essential to a democracy. This is needed
+politically; for where all men are voters, the ignorant man, who cannot
+read the ballot which he casts; the thief, the pirate, and the murderer,
+may, at any time, turn the scale of an election, and do us a damage
+which it will take centuries to repair. Ignorant men are the tools of
+the demagogue; how often he uses them, and for what purposes, we need
+not go back many years to learn. Let the people be ignorant and suffrage
+universal, a very few men will control the state, and laugh at the folly
+of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks
+they ride to insolence and miserable fame.
+
+America has nothing to fear from any foreign foe; for nearly forty years
+she has had no quarrel but of her own making. Such is our enterprise and
+our strength, that few nations would, carelessly, engage in war with us;
+none, without great provocation. In the midst of us, is our danger; not
+in foreign arms, but in the ignorance and the wickedness of our own
+children, the ignorance of the many, the wickedness of the few who will
+lead the many to their ruin. The bulwark of America is not the army and
+navy of the United States, with all the men at public cost instructed
+in the art of war; it is not the swords and muskets idly bristling in
+our armories; it is not the cannon and the powder carefully laid by; no,
+nor is it yet the forts, which frown in all their grim barbarity of
+stone along the coast, defacing the landscape, else so fair: these might
+all be destroyed to-night, and the nation be as safe as now. The more
+effectual bulwark of America is her schools. The cheap spelling-book, or
+the vane on her school-house is a better symbol of the nation than "The
+star-spangled banner;" the printing press does more than the cannon; the
+press is mightier than the sword. The army that is to keep our
+liberties--you are part of that, the noble army of teachers. It is you,
+who are to make a great nation greater, even wise and good,--the next
+generation better than their sires.
+
+Europe shows us, by experiment, that a republic cannot be made by a few
+well-minded men, however well-meaning. They tried for it at Rome, full
+of enlightened priests; in Germany, the paradise of the scholar, but
+there was not a people well educated, and a democracy could not stand
+upright long enough to be set a-going. In France, where men are better
+fitted for the experiment than elsewhere in continental Europe, you see
+what comes of it--the first step is a stumble, and for their president,
+the raw republicans chose an autocrat, not a democrat; not a mere
+soldier, but only the name of a soldier; one that thinks it an insult
+if liberty, equality, and fraternity be but named!
+
+Think you a democracy can stand without the education of all; not barely
+the smallest pittance thereof which will keep a live soul in a live
+body, but a large, generous cultivation of mind and conscience, heart
+and soul? A man, with half an eye, can see how we suffer continually in
+politics for lack of education among the people. Some nations are
+priest-ridden, some king-ridden, some ridden of nobles; America is
+ridden by politicians, a heavy burden for a foolish neck.
+
+Our industrial interests demand the same education. The industrial
+prosperity of the North, our lands yearly enriching, while they bear
+their annual crop; our railroads, mills and machines, the harness with
+which we tackle the elements,--for we domesticate fire and water, yes,
+the very lightning of heaven--all these are but material results of the
+intelligence of the people. Our political success and our industrial
+prosperity, both come from the pains taken with the education of the
+people. Halve this education, and you take away three fourths of our
+political welfare, three fourths of our industrial prosperity; double
+this education, you greaten the political welfare of the people, you
+increase their industrial success fourfold. Yes, more than that, for the
+results of education increase by a ratio of much higher powers.
+
+It seems strange that so few of the great men in politics have cared
+much for the education of the people; only one of those, now prominent
+before the North, is intimately connected with it. He, at great personal
+sacrifice of money, of comfort, of health, even of respectability,
+became superintendent of the common schools of Massachusetts, a place
+whence we could ill spare him, to take the place of the famous man he
+succeeds. Few of the prominent scholars of the land interest themselves
+in the public education of the people. The men of superior culture think
+the common school beneath their notice; but it is the mother of them
+all.
+
+None of the States of the North has ever given this matter the attention
+it demands. When we legislate about public education, this is the
+question before us:--Shall we give our posterity the greatest blessing
+that one generation can bestow upon another? Shall we give them a
+personal power which will create wealth in every form, multiply ships,
+and roads of earth, or of iron; subdue the forest, till the field, chain
+the rivers, hold the winds as its vassals, bind with an iron yoke the
+fire and water, and catch and tame the lightning of God? Shall we give
+them a personal power which will make them sober, temperate, healthy,
+and wise; that shall keep them at peace, abroad and at home, organize
+them so wisely that all shall be united, and yet, each left free, with
+no tyranny of the few over the many, or the little over the great?
+Shall we enable them to keep, to improve, to double manifold the
+political, social, and personal blessings they now possess; shall we
+give them this power to create riches, to promote order, peace,
+happiness--all forms of human welfare, or shall we not? That is the
+question. Give us intelligent men, moral men, men well developed in mind
+and conscience, heart and soul, men that love man and God, industrial
+prosperity, social prosperity, and political prosperity, are sure to
+follow. But without such men, all the machinery of this threefold
+prosperity is but a bauble in a child's hand, which he will soon break
+or lose, which he cannot replace when gone, nor use while kept.
+
+Rich men, who have intelligence and goodness, will educate their
+children, at whatever cost. There are some men, even poor men's sons,
+born with such native power that they will achieve an education, often a
+most masterly culture; men whom no poverty can degrade, or make vulgar,
+whom no lack of means of culture can keep from being wise and great.
+Such are exceptional men; the majority, nine tenths of the people, will
+depend, for their culture, on the public institutions of the land. If
+there had never been a free public school in New England, not half of
+her mechanics and farmers would now be able to read, not a fourth part
+of her women. I need not stop to tell what would be the condition of her
+agriculture, her manufactures, her commerce; they would have been,
+perhaps, even behind the agriculture, commerce and manufactures of South
+Carolina. I need not ask what would be the condition of her free
+churches, or the republican institutions which now beautify her rugged
+shores and sterile soil; there would be no such churches, no such
+institutions. If there had been no such schools in New England, the
+Revolution would yet remain to be fought. Take away the free schools,
+you take away the cause of our manifold prosperity; double their
+efficiency and value, you not only double and quadruple the prosperity
+of the people, but you will enlarge their welfare--political, social,
+personal--far more than I now dare to calculate. I know men object to
+public schools; they say, education must be bottomed on religion, and
+that cannot be taught unless we have a State religion, taught "by
+authority" in all our schools; we cannot teach religion, without
+teaching it in a sectarian form. This objection is getting made in New
+York; we have got beyond it in New England. It is true, all manly
+education must be bottomed on religion; it is essential to the normal
+development of man, and all attempts at education, without this, must
+fail of the highest end. But there are two parts of religion which can
+be taught in all the schools, without disturbing the denominations, or
+trenching upon their ground, namely, piety, the love of God, and
+goodness, the love of man. The rest of religion, after piety and
+goodness are removed, may safely be left to the institutions of any of
+the sects, and so the state will not occupy their ground.
+
+It is often said that superior education is not much needed; the common
+schools are enough, and good enough, for it is thought that superior
+education is needed for men as lawyers, ministers, doctors, and the
+like, not for men as men. It is not so. We want men cultivated with the
+best discipline, everywhere, not for the profession's sake, but for
+man's sake. Every man with a superior culture, intellectual, moral, and
+religious, every woman thus developed, is a safeguard and a blessing. He
+may sit on the bench of a judge or a shoemaker, be a clergyman or an
+oysterman, that matters little, he is still a safeguard and a blessing.
+The idea that none should have a superior education but professional
+men--they only for the profession's sake--belongs to dark ages, and is
+unworthy of a democracy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is the duty of all men to watch over the public education of the
+people, for it is the most important work of the state. It is
+particularly the duty of men who, hitherto, have least attended to it,
+men of the highest culture, men, too, of the highest genius. If a man
+with but common abilities has attained great learning, he is one of the
+"public administrators," to distribute the goods of men of genius, from
+other times and lands, to mankind, their legal heirs. Why does God
+sometimes endow a man with great intellectual power, making, now and
+then, a million-minded man? Is that superiority of gift solely for the
+man's own sake? Shame on such a thought. It is of little value to him
+unless he use it for me; it is for your sake and my sake, more than for
+his own. He is a precious almoner of wisdom; one of the public guardians
+of mankind, to think for us, to help us think for ourselves; born to
+educate the world of feebler men. I call on such men, men of culture,
+men of genius, to help build up institutions for the education of the
+people. If they neglect this, they are false to their trust. The culture
+which hinders a man from sympathy with the ignorant, is a curse to both,
+and the genius which separates a man from his fellow-creatures, lowlier
+born than he, is the genius of a demon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in
+your hands; nine tenths of the children of the people depend on you for
+their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever
+get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon,
+all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will
+easily learn from state and church, from business and the press. It is
+for you to give them such a developing and such a furnishing of their
+powers, that they will withstand, counteract and exterminate that evil.
+Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better
+than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own
+nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing
+of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the
+inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith
+their works.
+
+The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your
+image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these
+children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties.
+Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country,
+not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective
+tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the
+extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage--not a question of
+this sort has come up before Congress, or the people, which could not
+have been better decided by seven men, honest, intelligent, and just,
+who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right
+in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative,
+a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make
+a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not
+too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions,
+all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of
+self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head
+of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the
+"Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land,
+the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice,
+unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years'
+time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of
+development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall
+double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land.
+You can, if you will. I ask If you will? If your works say "Yes," then
+you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a
+charity far nobler yet, education, the greatest charity. You will help
+fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and
+help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of
+that noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the
+Christians still worship as their God. Yes, you will work with God
+himself; He will work with you, work for you, and bless you with
+everlasting life.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA AND THE SIGNS OF THE
+TIMES.--DELIVERED BEFORE SEVERAL LITERARY SOCIETIES, 1848.
+
+
+Every nation has a peculiar character, in which it differs from all
+others that have been, that are, and possibly from all that are to come;
+for it does not yet appear that the Divine Father of the nations ever
+repeats himself and creates either two nations or two men exactly alike.
+However, as nations, like men, agree in more things than they differ,
+and in obvious things too, the special peculiarity of any one tribe does
+not always appear at first sight. But if we look through the history of
+some nation which has passed off from the stage of action, we find
+certain prevailing traits which continually reappear in the language and
+laws thereof; in its arts, literature, manners, modes of religion--in
+short, in the whole life of the people. The most prominent thing in the
+history of the Hebrews is their continual trust in God, and this marks
+them from their first appearance to the present day. They have
+accordingly done little for art, science, philosophy, little for
+commerce and the useful arts of life, but much for religion; and the
+psalms they sung two or three thousand years ago are at this day the
+hymns and prayers of the whole Christian world. Three great historical
+forms of religion, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, all have
+proceeded from them.
+
+He that looks at the Ionian Greeks finds in their story always the same
+prominent characteristic, a devotion to what is beautiful. This appears
+often to the neglect of what is true, right, and therefore holy. Hence,
+while they have done little for religion, their literature,
+architecture, sculpture, furnish us with models never surpassed, and
+perhaps not equalled. Yet they lack the ideal aspiration after religion
+that appears in the literature and art, and even language of some other
+people, quite inferior to the Greeks in elegance and refinement.
+Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks
+for truth is one form of loveliness.
+
+If we take the Romans, from Romulus their first king, to Augustulus the
+last of the Cæsars, the same traits of national character appear, only
+the complexion and dress thereof changed by circumstances. There is
+always the same hardness and materialism, the same skill in organizing
+men, the same turn for affairs and genius for legislation. Rome borrowed
+her theology and liturgical forms; her art, science, literature,
+philosophy, and eloquence; even her art of war was an imitation. But
+law sprung up indigenous in her soil; her laws are the best gift she
+offers to the human race,--the "monument more lasting than brass," which
+she has left behind her.
+
+We may take another nation, which has by no means completed its history,
+the Saxon race, from Hengist and Horsa to Sir Robert Peel: there also is
+a permanent peculiarity in the tribe. They are yet the same bold, handy,
+practical people as when their bark first touched the savage shores of
+Britain; not over religious; less pious than moral; not so much upright
+before God, as downright before men; servants of the understanding more
+than children of reason; not following the guidance of an intuition, and
+the light of an idea, but rather trusting to experiment, facts,
+precedents, and usages; not philosophical, but commercial; warlike
+through strength and courage, not from love of war or its glory;
+material, obstinate, and grasping, with the same admiration of horses,
+dogs, oxen, and strong drink; the same willingness to tread down any
+obstacle, material, human or divine, which stands in their way; the same
+impatient lust of wealth and power; the same disposition to colonize and
+reannex other lands; the same love of liberty and love of law; the same
+readiness in forming political confederations.
+
+In each of these four instances, the Hebrews, the Ionians, the Romans,
+and the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a nationality so strong, that while
+they have mingled with other nations in commerce and in war, as victors
+and vanquished, they have stoutly held their character through all; they
+have thus modified feebler nations joined with them. To take the last,
+neither the Britons nor the Danes affected very much the character of
+the Anglo-Saxons; they never turned it out of its course. The Normans
+gave the Saxon manners, refinement, letters, elegance. The Anglo-Saxon
+bishop of the eleventh century, dressed in untanned sheep-skins, "the
+woolly side out and the fleshy side in;" he ate cheese and flesh, drank
+milk and mead. The Norman taught him to wear cloth, to eat also bread
+and roots, to drink wine. But in other respects the Norman left him as
+he found him. England has received her kings and her nobles from
+Normandy, Anjou, the Provence, Scotland, Holland, Hanover, often seeing
+a foreigner ascend her throne; yet the sturdy Anglo-Saxon character held
+its own, spite of the new element infused into its blood: change the
+ministries, change the dynasties often as they will, John Bull is
+obstinate as ever, and himself changes not; no philosophy or religion
+makes him less material. No nation but the English could have produced a
+Hobbes, a Hume, a Paley, or a Bentham; they are all instantial and not
+exceptional men in that race.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now this idiosyncrasy of a nation is a sacred gift; like the genius of a
+Burns, a Thorwaldsen, a Franklin, or a Bowditch, it is given for some
+divine purpose, to be sacredly cherished and patiently unfolded. The
+cause of the peculiarities of a nation or an individual man we cannot
+fully determine as yet, and so we refer it to the chain of causes which
+we call Providence. But the national persistency in a common type is
+easily explained. The qualities of father and mother are commonly
+transmitted to their children, but not always, for peculiarities may lie
+latent in a family for generations, and reappear in the genius or the
+folly of a child--often in the complexion and features: and besides,
+father and mother are often no match. But such exceptions are rare, and
+the qualities of a race are always thus reproduced, the deficiency of
+one man getting counterbalanced by the redundancy of the next: the
+marriages of a whole tribe are not far from normal.
+
+Some nations, it seems, perish through defect of this national
+character, as individuals fail of success through excess or deficiency
+in their character. Thus the Celts, that great flood of a nation which
+once swept over Germany, France, England, and, casting its spray far
+over the Alps, at one time threatened destruction to Rome itself, seem
+to have been so filled with love of individual independence that they
+could never accept a minute organization of human rights and duties, and
+so their children would not group themselves into a city, as other
+races, and submit to a strong central power, which should curb
+individual will enough to insure national unity of action. Perhaps this
+was once the excellence of the Celts, and thereby they broke the
+trammels and escaped from the theocratic or despotic traditions of
+earlier and more savage times, developing the power of the individual
+for a time, and the energy of a nation loosely bound; but when they came
+in contact with the Romans, Franks and Saxons, they melted away as snow
+in April--only, like that, remnants thereof yet lingering in the
+mountains and islands of Europe. No external pressure of famine or
+political oppression now holds the Celts in Ireland together, or gives
+them national unity of action enough to resist the Saxon foe. Doubtless
+in other days this very peculiarity of the Irish has done the world some
+service. Nations succeed each other as races of animals in the
+geological epochs, and like them, also, perish when their work is done.
+
+The peculiar character of a nation does not appear nakedly, without
+relief and shadow. As the waters of the Rhone, in coming from the
+mountains, have caught a stain from the soils they have traversed which
+mars the cerulean tinge of the mountain snow that gave them birth, so
+the peculiarities of each nation become modified by the circumstances to
+which it is exposed, though the fundamental character of a nation, it
+seems, has never been changed. Only when the blood of the nation is
+changed by additions from another stock is the idiosyncrasy altered.
+
+Now, while each nation has its peculiar genius or character which does
+not change, it has also and accordingly a particular work to perform in
+the economy of the world, a certain fundamental idea to unfold and
+develop. This is its national task, for in God's world, as in a shop,
+there is a regular division of labor. Sometimes it is a limited work,
+and when it is done the nation may be dismissed, and go to its repose.
+_Non omnia possumus omnes_ is as true of nations as of men; one has a
+genius for one thing, another for something different, and the idea of
+each nation and its special work will depend on the genius of the
+nation. Men do not gather grapes of thorns.
+
+In addition to this specific genius of the nation and its corresponding
+work, there are also various accidental or subordinate qualities, which
+change with circumstances, and so vary the nation's aspect that its
+peculiar genius and peculiar duty are often hid from its own
+consciousness, and even obscured to that of the philosophic looker-on.
+These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar
+genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient
+circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which
+the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of
+the present age, and they the character of the men now living. Thus new
+modifications of the national type continually take place; new
+variations are played, but on the same old strings and of the same old
+tune. Once circumstances made the Hebrews entirely pastoral, now as
+completely commercial; but the same trust in God, the same national
+exclusiveness appear, as of old. As one looks at the history of the
+Ionians, Romans, Saxons, he sees unity of national character, a
+continuity of idea and of work; but it appears in the midst of variety,
+for while these remained ever the same to complete the economy of the
+world, subordinate qualities--sentiments, ideas, actions--changed to
+suit the passing hour. The nation's _course_ was laid towards a certain
+point, but they stood to the right hand or the left, they sailed with
+much canvas or little, and swift or slow, as the winds and waves
+compelled: nay, sometimes the national ship "heaves to," and lies with
+her "head to the wind," regardless of her destination; but when the
+storm is overblown resumes her course. Men will carelessly think the
+ship has no certain aim, but only drifts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most marked characteristic of the American nation is Love of
+Freedom; of man's natural rights. This is so plain to a student of
+American history, or of American politics, that the point requires no
+arguing. We have a genius for liberty: the American idea is freedom,
+natural rights. Accordingly, the work providentially laid out for us to
+do seems this,--to organize the rights of man. This is a problem
+hitherto unattempted on a national scale, in human history. Often
+enough attempts have been made to organize the powers of priests, kings,
+nobles, in a theocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, powers which had no
+foundation in human duties or human rights, but solely in the
+selfishness of strong men. Often enough have the mights of men been
+organized, but not the rights of man. Surely there has never been an
+attempt made on a national scale to organize the rights of man as man;
+rights resting on the nature of things; rights derived from no
+conventional compact of men with men; not inherited from past
+generations, nor received from parliaments and kings, nor secured by
+their parchments; but rights that are derived straightway from God, the
+Author of Duty and the Source of Right, and which are secured in the
+great charter of our being.
+
+At first view it will be said, the peculiar genius of America is not
+such, nor such her fundamental idea, nor that her destined work. It is
+true that much of the national conduct seems exceptional when measured
+by that standard, and the nation's course as crooked as the Rio Grande;
+it is true that America sometimes seems to spurn liberty, and sells the
+freedom of three million men for less than three million annual bales of
+cotton; true, she often tramples, knowingly, consciously, tramples on
+the most unquestionable and sacred rights. Yet, when one looks through
+the whole character and history of America, spite of the exceptions,
+nothing comes out with such relief as this love of freedom, this idea of
+liberty, this attempt to organize right. There are numerous subordinate
+qualities which conflict with the nation's idea and work, coming from
+our circumstances, not our soul, as well as many others which help the
+nation perform her providential work. They are signs of the times, and
+it is important to look carefully among the most prominent of them,
+where, indeed, one finds striking contradictions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first is an impatience of authority. Every thing must render its
+reason, and show cause for its being. We will not be commanded, at least
+only by such as we choose to obey. Does some one say, "Thou shalt," or
+"Thou shalt not," we ask, "Who are you?" Hence comes a seeming
+irreverence. The shovel hat, the symbol of authority, which awed our
+fathers, is not respected unless it covers a man, and then it is the man
+we honor, and no longer the shovel hat. "I will complain of you to the
+government!" said a Prussian nobleman to a Yankee stage-driver, who
+uncivilly threw the nobleman's trunk to the top of the coach. "Tell the
+government to go to the devil!" was the symbolical reply.
+
+Old precedents will not suffice us, for we want something anterior to
+all precedents; we go beyond what is written, asking the cause of the
+precedent and the reason of the writing. "Our fathers did so," says
+some one. "What of that?" say we. "Our fathers--they were giants, were
+they? Not at all, only great boys, and we are not only taller than they,
+but mounted on their shoulders to boot, and see twice as far. My dear
+wise man, or wiseacre, it is we that are the ancients, and have
+forgotten more than all our fathers knew. We will take their wisdom
+joyfully, and thank God for it, but not their authority, we know better;
+and of their nonsense not a word. It was very well that they lived, and
+it is very well that they are dead. Let them keep decently buried, for
+respectable dead men never walk."
+
+Tradition does not satisfy us. The American scholar has no folios in his
+library. The antiquary unrolls his codex, hid for eighteen hundred years
+in the ashes of Herculaneum, deciphers its fossil wisdom, telling us
+what great men thought in the bay of Naples, and two thousand years ago.
+"What do you tell of that for?" is the answer to his learning. "What has
+Pythagoras to do with the price of cotton? You may be a very learned
+man; you can read the hieroglyphics of Egypt, I dare say, and know so
+much about the Pharaohs, it is a pity you had not lived in their time,
+when you might have been good for something; but you are too
+old-fashioned for our business, and may return to your dust." An eminent
+American, a student of Egyptian history, with a scholarly indignation
+declared, "There is not a man who cares to know whether Shoophoo lived
+one thousand years before Christ, or three."
+
+The example of other and ancient States does not terrify or instruct us.
+If slavery were a curse to Athens, the corruption of Corinth, the
+undoing of Rome, and all history shows it was so, we will learn no
+lesson from that experience, for we say, "We are not Athenians, men of
+Corinth, nor pagan Romans, thank God, but free republicans, Christians
+of America. We live in the nineteenth century, and though slavery worked
+all that mischief then and there, we know how to make money out of it,
+twelve hundred millions of dollars, as Mr. Clay counts the cash."
+
+The example of contemporary nations furnishes us little warning or
+guidance. We will set our own precedents, and do not like to be told
+that the Prussians or the Dutch have learned some things in the
+education of the people before us, which we shall do well to learn after
+them. So when a good man tells us of their schools and their colleges,
+"patriotic" school-masters exclaim, "It is not true; our schools are the
+best in the world! But if it were true, it is unpatriotic to say so; it
+aids and comforts the enemy." Jonathan knows little of war; he has heard
+his grandfather talk of Lexington and Saratoga; he thinks he should like
+to have a little touch of battle on his own account: so when there is
+difficulty in setting up the fence betwixt his estate and his neighbors,
+he blusters for awhile, talks big, and threatens to strike his father;
+but, not having quite the stomach for that experiment, falls to beating
+his other neighbor, who happens to be poor, weak, and of a sickly
+constitution; and when he beats her at every step,--
+
+    "For 'tis no war, as each one knows,
+    When only one side deals the blows,
+    And t' other bears 'em,"--
+
+Jonathan thinks he has covered himself "with imperishable honors," and
+sets up his general for a great king. Poor Jonathan--he does not know
+the misery, the tears, the blood, the shame, the wickedness, and the sin
+he has set a-going, and which one day he is to account for with God who
+forgets nothing!
+
+Yet while we are so unwilling to accept the good principles, to be
+warned by the fate, or guided by the success, of other nations, we
+gladly and servilely copy their faults, their follies, their vice and
+sin. Like all upstarts, we pique ourselves on our imitation of
+aristocratic ways. How many a blusterer in Congress,--for there are two
+denominations of blusterers, differing only in degree, your great
+blusterer in Congress and your little blusterer in a bar-room,--has
+roared away hours long against aristocratic influence, in favor of the
+"pure democracy," while he played the oligarch in his native village,
+the tyrant over his hired help, and though no man knows who his
+grandfather was, spite of the herald's office, conjures up some
+trumpery coat of arms! Like a clown, who, by pinching his appetite, has
+bought a gaudy cloak for Sabbath wearing, we chuckle inwardly at our
+brave apery of foreign absurdities, hoping that strangers will be
+astonished at us--which, sure enough, comes to pass. Jonathan is as vain
+as he is conceited, and expects that the Fiddlers, and the Trollopes,
+and others, who visit us periodically as the swallows, and likewise for
+what they can catch, shall only extol, or at least stand aghast at the
+brave spectacle we offer, of "the freest and most enlightened nation in
+the world;" and if they tell us that we are an ill-mannered set, raw and
+clownish, that we pick our teeth with a fork, loll back in our chairs,
+and make our countenance hateful with tobacco, and that with all our
+excellences we are a nation of "rowdies,"--why, we are offended, and our
+feelings are hurt. There was an African chief, long ago, who ruled over
+a few miserable cabins, and one day received a French traveller from
+Paris, under a tree. With the exception of a pair of shoes, our chief
+was as naked as a pestle, but with great complacency he asked the
+traveller, "What do they say of me at Paris?"
+
+Such is our dread of authority, that we like not old things; hence we
+are always a-changing. Our house must be new, and our book, and even our
+church. So we choose a material that soon wears out, though it often
+outlasts our patience. The wooden house is an apt emblem of this sign
+of the times. But this love of change appears not less in important
+matters. We think "Of old things all are over old, of new things none
+are new enough." So the age asks of all institutions their right to be:
+What right has the government to existence? Who gave the majority a
+right to control the minority, to restrict trade, levy taxes, make laws,
+and all that? If the nation goes into a committee of the whole and makes
+laws, some little man goes into a committee of one and passes his
+counter resolves. The State of South Carolina is a nice example of this
+self-reliance, and this questioning of all authority. That little brazen
+State, which contains only about half so many free white inhabitants as
+the single city of New York, but which none the less claims to have
+monopolized most of the chivalry of the nation, and its patriotism, as
+well as political wisdom--that chivalrous little State says, "If the
+nation does not make laws to suit us; if it does not allow us to
+imprison all black seamen from the North; if it prevents the extension
+of Slavery wherever we wish to carry it--then the State of South
+Carolina will nullify, and leave the other nine-and-twenty States to go
+to ruin!"
+
+Men ask what right have the churches to the shadow of authority which
+clings to them--to make creeds, and to bind and to loose! So it is a
+thing which has happened, that when a church excommunicates a young
+stripling for heresy, he turns round, fulminates his edict, and
+excommunicates the church. Said a sly Jesuit to an American Protestant
+at Rome, "But the rites and customs and doctrines of the Catholic church
+go back to the second century, the age after the apostles!" "No doubt of
+it," said the American, who had also read the Fathers, "they go back to
+the times of the apostles themselves; but that proves nothing, for there
+were as great fools in the first century as the last. A fool or a folly
+is no better because it is an old folly or an old fool. There are fools
+enough now, in all conscience. Pray don't go back to prove their
+apostolical succession."
+
+There are always some men who are born out of due season, men of past
+ages, stragglers of former generations, who ought to have been born
+before Dr. Faustus invented printing, but who are unfortunately born
+now, or, if born long ago, have been fraudulently and illegally
+concealed by their mothers, and are now, for the first time, brought to
+light. The age lifts such aged juveniles from the ground, and bids them
+live, but they are sadly to seek in this day; they are old-fashioned
+boys; their authority is called in question; their traditions and old
+wives' fables are laughed at, at any rate disbelieved; they get
+profanely elbowed in the crowd--men not knowing their great age and
+consequent venerableness; the shovel hat, though apparently born on
+their head, is treated with disrespect. The very boys laugh pertly in
+their face when they speak, and even old men can scarce forbear a
+smile, though it may be a smile of pity. The age affords such men a
+place, for it is a catholic age, large-minded, and tolerant,--such a
+place as it gives to ancient armor, Indian Bibles, and fossil bones of
+the mastodon; it puts them by in some room seldom used, with other old
+furniture, and allows them to mumble their anilities by themselves; now
+and then takes off its hat; looks in, charitably, to keep the mediæval
+relics in good heart, and pretends to listen, as they discourse of what
+comes of nothing and goes to it; but in matters which the age cares
+about, commerce, manufactures, politics, which it cares much for, even
+in education, which it cares far too little about, it trusts no such
+counsellors, nor tolerates, nor ever affects to listen.
+
+Then there is a philosophical tendency, distinctly visible; a groping
+after ultimate facts, first principles, and universal ideas. We wish to
+know first the fact, next the law of that fact, and then the reason of
+the law. A sign of this tendency is noticeable in the titles of books;
+we have no longer "treatises" n the eye, the ear, sleep, and so forth,
+but in their place we find works professing to treat of the "philosophy"
+of vision, of sound, of sleep. Even in the pulpits, men speak about the
+"philosophy" of religion; we have philosophical lectures, delivered to
+men of little culture, which would have amazed our grandfathers, who
+thought a shoemaker should never go beyond his last, even to seek for
+the philosophy of shoes. "What a pity," said a grave Scotchman, in the
+beginning of this century, "to teach the beautiful science of geometry
+to weavers and cobblers." Here nothing is too good or high for any one
+tall and good enough to get hold of it. What audiences attend the Lowell
+lectures in Boston--two or three thousand men, listening to twelve
+lectures on the philosophy of fish! It would not bring a dollar or a
+vote, only thought to their minds! Young ladies are well versed in the
+philosophy of the affections, and understand the theory of attraction,
+while their grandmothers, good easy souls, were satisfied with the
+possession of the fact. The circumstance, that philosophical lectures
+get delivered by men like Walker, Agassiz, Emerson, and their
+coadjutors, men who do not spare abstruseness, get listened to, and even
+understood, in town and village, by large crowds of men, of only the
+most common culture; this indicates a philosophical tendency, unknown in
+any other land or age. Our circle of professed scholars, men of culture
+and learning, is a very small one, while our circle of thinking men is
+disproportionately large. The best thought of France and Germany finds a
+readier welcome here than in our parent land: nay, the newest and the
+best thought of England, finds its earliest and warmest welcome in
+America. It was a little remarkable, that Bacon and Newton should be
+reprinted here, and La Place should have found his translator and
+expositor coming out of an insurance office in Salem! Men of no great
+pretensions object to an accomplished and eloquent politician: "That is
+all very well; he made us cry and laugh, but the discourse was not
+philosophical; he never tells us the reason of the thing; he seems not
+only not to know it, but not to know that there is a reason for the
+thing, and if not, what is the use of this bobbing on the surface?"
+Young maidens complain of the minister, that he has no philosophy in his
+sermons, nothing but precepts, which they could read in the Bible as
+well as he; perhaps in heathen Seneca. He does not feed their souls.
+
+One finds this tendency where it is least expected: there is a
+philosophical party in politics, a very small party it may be, but an
+actual one. They aim to get at everlasting ideas and universal laws, not
+made by man, but by God, and for man, who only finds them; and from them
+they aim to deduce all particular enactments, so that each statute in
+the code shall represent a fact in the universe; a point of thought in
+God; so, indeed, that legislation shall be divine in the same sense that
+a true system of astronomy is divine--or the Christian religion--the law
+corresponding to a fact. Men of this party, in New England, have more
+ideas than precedents, are spontaneous more than logical; have
+intuitions, rather than intellectual convictions, arrived at by the
+process of reasoning. They think it is not philosophical to take a
+young scoundrel and shut him up with a party of old ones, for his
+amendment; not philosophical to leave children with no culture,
+intellectual, moral, or religious, exposed to the temptations of a high
+and corrupt civilization, and then, when they go astray--as such
+barbarians needs must, in such temptations--to hang them by the neck for
+the example's sake. They doubt if war is a more philosophical mode of
+getting justice between two nations, than blows to settle a quarrel
+between two men. In either case, they do not see how it follows, that he
+who can strike the hardest blow is always in the right. In short, they
+think that judicial murder, which is hanging, and national murder, which
+is war, are not more philosophical than homicide, which one man commits
+on his own private account.
+
+Theological sects are always the last to feel any popular movement. Yet
+all of them, from the Episcopalians to the Quakers, have each a
+philosophical party, which bids fair to outgrow the party which rests on
+precedent and usage, to overshadow and destroy it. The Catholic church
+itself, though far astern of all the sects, in regard to the great
+movements of the age, shares this spirit, and abroad, if not here, is
+wellnigh rent asunder by the potent medicine which this new Daniel of
+philosophy has put into its mouth. Everywhere in the American churches
+there are signs of a tendency to drop all that rests merely on
+tradition and hearsay, to cling only to such facts as bide the test of
+critical search, and such doctrines as can be verified in human
+consciousness here and to-day. Doctors of divinity destroy the faith
+they once preached.
+
+True, there are antagonistic tendencies, for, soon as one pole is
+developed, the other appears; objections are made to philosophy, the old
+cry is raised--"Infidelity," "Denial," "Free-thinking." It is said that
+philosophy will corrupt the young men, will spoil the old ones, and
+deceive the very elect. "Authority and tradition," say some, "are all we
+need consult; reason must be put down, or she will soon ask terrible
+questions." There is good cause for these men warring against reason and
+philosophy; it is purely in self-defence. But this counsel and that cry
+come from those quarters before mentioned, where the men of past ages
+have their place, where the forgotten is re-collected, the obsolete
+preserved, and the useless held in esteem. The counsel is not dangerous;
+the bird of night, who overstays his hour, is only troublesome to
+himself, and was never known to hurt a dovelet or a mouseling after
+sun-rise. In the night only is the owl destructive. Some of those who
+thus cry out against this tendency, are excellent men in their way, and
+highly useful, valuable as conveyancers of opinions. So long as there
+are men who take opinions as real estate, "to have and to hold for
+themselves and their heirs forever," why should there not be such
+conveyancers of opinions, as well as of land? And as it is not the duty
+of the latter functionary to ascertain the quality or the value of the
+land, but only its metes and bounds, its appurtenances and the title
+thereto; to see if the grantor is regularly seized and possessed
+thereof, and has good right to convey and devise the same, and to make
+sure that the whole conveyance is regularly made out,--so is it with
+these conveyancers of opinion; so should it be, and they are valuable
+men. It is a good thing to know that we hold under Scotus, and Ramus,
+and Albertus Magnus, who were regularly seized of this or that opinion.
+It gives an absurdity the dignity of a relic. Sometimes these worthies,
+who thus oppose reason and her kin, seem to have a good deal in them,
+and, when one examines, he finds more than he looked for. They are like
+a nest of boxes from Hingham and Nuremburg, you open one, and behold
+another; that, and lo! a third. So you go on, opening and opening, and
+finding and finding, till at last you come to the heart of the matter,
+and then you find a box that is very little, and entirely empty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, with all this tendency--and it is now so strong that it cannot be
+put down, nor even howled down, much as it may be howled over--there is
+a lamentable want of first principles, well known and established; we
+have rejected the authority of tradition, but not yet accepted the
+authority of truth and justice. We will not be treated as striplings,
+and are not old enough to go alone as men. Accordingly, nothing seems
+fixed. There is a perpetual see-sawing of opposite principles. Somebody
+said ministers ought to be ordained on horseback, because they are to
+remain so short a time in one place. It would be as emblematic to
+inaugurate American politicians, by swearing them on a weathercock. The
+great men of the land have as many turns in their course as the Euripus
+or the Missouri. Even the facts given in the spiritual nature of man are
+called in question. An eminent Unitarian divine regards the existence of
+God as a matter of opinion, thinks it cannot be demonstrated, and
+publicly declares that it is "not a certainty." Some American
+Protestants no longer take the Bible as the standard of ultimate appeal,
+yet venture not to set up in that place reason, conscience, the soul
+getting help of God; others, who affect to accept the Scripture as the
+last authority, yet, when questioned as to their belief in the
+miraculous and divine birth of Jesus of Nazareth, are found unable to
+say yes or no, not having made up their minds.
+
+In politics, it is not yet decided whether it is best to leave men to
+buy where they can buy cheapest, and sell where they can sell dearest,
+or to restrict that matter.
+
+It was a clear case to our fathers, in '76, that all men were "created
+equal," each with "Unalienable Rights." That seemed so clear, that
+reasoning would not make it appear more reasonable; it was taken for
+granted, as a self-evident proposition. The whole nation said so. Now,
+it is no strange thing to find it said that negroes are not "created
+equal" in unalienable rights with white men. Nay, in the Senate of the
+United States, a famous man declares all this talk a dangerous mistake.
+The practical decision of the nation looks the same way. So, to make our
+theory accord with our practice, we ought to recommit the Declaration to
+the hands which drafted that great State-paper, and instruct Mr.
+Jefferson to amend the document, and declare that "All men are created
+equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, if
+born of white mothers; but if not, not."
+
+In this lack of first principles, it is not settled in the popular
+consciousness, that there is such a thing as an absolute right, a great
+law of God, which we are to keep, come what will come. So the nation is
+not upright, but goes stooping. Hence, in private affairs, law takes the
+place of conscience, and, in public, might of right. So the bankrupt
+pays his shilling in the pound, and gets his discharge, but afterwards,
+becoming rich, does not think of paying the other nineteen shillings. He
+will tell you the law is his conscience; if that be satisfied, so is
+he. But you will yet find him letting money at one or two per cent. a
+month, contrary to law; and then he will tell you that paying a debt is
+a matter of law, while letting money is only a matter of conscience. So
+he rides either indifferently--now the public hack, and now his own
+private nag, according as it serves his turn.
+
+So a rich State borrows money and "repudiates" the debt, satisfying its
+political conscience, as the bankrupt his commercial conscience, with
+the notion that there is no absolute right; that expediency is the only
+justice, and that King People can do no wrong. No calm voice of
+indignation cries out from the pulpit and the press and the heart of the
+people, to shame the repudiators into decent morals; because it is not
+settled in the popular mind that there is any absolute right. Then,
+because we are strong and the Mexicans weak, because we want their land
+for a slave-pasture and they cannot keep us out of it, we think that is
+reason enough for waging an infamous war of plunder. Grave men do not
+ask about "the natural justice" of such an undertaking, only about its
+cost. Have we not seen an American Congress vote a plain lie, with only
+sixteen dissenting voices in the whole body; has not the head of the
+nation continually repeated that lie; and do not both parties, even at
+this day, sustain the vote?
+
+Now and then there rises up an honest man, with a great Christian heart
+in his bosom, and sets free a score or two of slaves inherited from his
+father; watches over and tends them in their new-found freedom: or
+another, who, when legally released from payment of his debts, restores
+the uttermost farthing. We talk of this and praise it, as an
+extraordinary thing. Indeed it is so; justice is an unusual thing, and
+such men deserve the honor they thus win. But such praise shows that
+such honesty is a rare honesty. The northern man, born on the
+battle-ground of freedom, goes to the South and becomes the most
+tyrannical of slave-drivers. The son of the Puritan, bred up in austere
+ways, is sent to Congress to stand up for truth and right, but he turns
+out a "dough-face," and betrays the duty he went to serve. Yet he does
+not lose his place, for every dough-faced representative has a
+dough-faced constituency to back him.
+
+It is a great mischief that comes from lacking first principles, and the
+worst part of it comes from lacking first principles in morals. Thereby
+our eyes are holden so that we see not the great social evils all about
+us. We attempt to justify slavery, even to do it in the name of Jesus
+Christ. The whig party of the North loves slavery; the democratic party
+does not even seek to conceal its affection therefor. A great politician
+declares the Mexican war wicked, and then urges men to go and fight it;
+he thinks a famous general not fit to be nominated for President, but
+then invites men to elect him. Politics are national morals, the morals
+of Thomas and Jeremiah, multiplied by millions. But it is not decided
+yet that honesty is the best policy for a politician; it is thought that
+the best policy is honesty, at least as near it as the times will allow.
+Many politicians seem undecided how to turn, and so sit on the fence
+between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. Facing-both-ways is a popular
+politician in America just now, sitting on the fence between honesty and
+dishonesty, and, like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testaments,
+belonging to neither dispensation. It is a little amusing to a trifler
+to hear a man's fitness for the Presidency defended on the ground that
+he has no definite convictions or ideas!
+
+There was once a man who said he always told a lie when it would serve
+his special turn. It is a pity he went to his own place long ago. He
+seemed born for a party politician in America. He would have had a large
+party, for he made a great many converts before he died, and left a
+numerous kindred busy in the editing of newspapers, writing addresses
+for the people, and passing "resolutions."
+
+It must strike a stranger as a little odd, that a republic should have a
+slaveholder for President five sixths of the time, and most of the
+important offices be monopolized by other slaveholders; a little
+surprising that all the pulpits and most of the presses should be in
+favor of slavery, at least not against it. But such is the fact.
+Everybody knows the character of the American government for some years
+past, and of the American parties in politics. "Like master, like man,"
+used to be a true proverb in old England, and "Like people, like ruler,"
+is a true proverb in America; true now. Did a decided people ever choose
+dough-faces?--a people that loved God and man, choose representatives
+that cared for neither truth nor justice? Now and then, for dust gets
+into the brightest eyes; but did they ever choose such men continually?
+The people are always fairly represented; our representatives do
+actually represent us, and in more senses than they are paid for.
+Congress and the Cabinet are only two thermometers hung up in the
+capital, to show the temperature of the national morals.
+
+But amid this general uncertainty there are two capital maxims which
+prevail amongst our huxters of politics: To love your party better than
+your country, and yourself better than your party. There are, it is
+true, real statesmen amongst us, men who love justice and do the right,
+but they seem lost in the mob of vulgar politicians and the dust of
+party editors.
+
+Since the nation loves freedom above all things, the name democracy is a
+favorite name. No party could live a twelvemonth that should declare
+itself anti-democratic. Saint and sinner, statesman and politician,
+alike love the name. So it comes to pass that there are two things
+which bear that name; each has its type and its motto. The motto of one
+is, "You are as good as I, and let us help one another." That represents
+the democracy of the Declaration of Independence, and of the New
+Testament; its type is a free school, where children of all ranks meet
+under the guidance of intelligent and Christian men, to be educated in
+mind, and heart, and soul. The other has for its motto, "I am as good as
+you, so get out of my way." Its type is the bar-room of a tavern--dirty,
+offensive, stained with tobacco, and full of drunken, noisy, quarrelsome
+"rowdies," just returned from the Mexican war, and ready for a "buffalo
+hunt," for privateering, or to go and plunder any one who is better off
+than themselves, especially if also better. That is not exactly the
+democracy of the Declaration, or of the New Testament; but of--no matter
+whom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, again, there is a great intensity of life and purpose. This
+displays itself in our actions and speeches; in our speculations; in the
+"revivals" of the more serious sects; in the excitements of trade; in
+the general character of the people. All that we do we overdo. It
+appears in our hopefulness; we are the most aspiring of nations. Not
+content with half the continent, we wish the other half. We have this
+characteristic of genius: we are dissatisfied with all that we have
+done. Somebody once said we were too vain to be proud. It is not wholly
+so; the national idea is so far above us that any achievement seems
+little and low. The American soul passes away from its work soon as it
+is finished. So the soul of each great artist refuses to dwell in his
+finished work, for that seems little to his dream. Our fathers deemed
+the Revolution a great work; it was once thought a surprising thing to
+found that little colony on the shores of New England; but young America
+looks to other revolutions, and thinks she has many a Plymouth colony in
+her bosom. If other nations wonder at our achievements, we are a
+disappointment to ourselves, and wonder we have not done more. Our
+national idea out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began
+our national career by setting all history at defiance--for that said,
+"A republic on a large scale cannot exist." Our progress since has shown
+that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The political
+ideas of the nation are transcendant, not empirical. Human history could
+not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of
+the new idea: the nation went behind human history and appealed to human
+nature.
+
+We are more spontaneous than logical; we have ideas, rather than facts
+or precedents. We dream more than we remember, and so have many orators
+and poets, or poetasters, with but few antiquaries and general
+scholars. We are not so reflective as forecasting. We are the most
+intuitive of modern nations. The very party in politics which has the
+least culture, is richest in ideas which will one day become facts.
+Great truths--political, philosophical, religious--lie a-burning in many
+a young heart which cannot legitimate nor prove them true, but none the
+less feels, and feels them true. A man full of new truths finds a ready
+audience with us. Many things which come disguised as truths under such
+circumstances pass current for a time, but by and by their bray
+discovers them. The hope which comes from this intensity of life and
+intuition of truths is a national characteristic. It gives courage,
+enterprise, and strength. They can who think they can. We are confident
+in our star; other nations may see it or not, we know it is there above
+the clouds. We do not hesitate at rash experiments--sending fifty
+thousand soldiers to conquer a nation with eight or nine millions of
+people. We are up to every thing, and think ourselves a match for any
+thing. The young man is rash, for he only hopes, having little to
+remember; he is excitable, and loves excitement; change of work is his
+repose; he is hot and noisy, sanguine and fearless, with the courage
+that comes from warm blood and ignorance of dangers; he does not know
+what a hard, tough, sour old world he is born into. We are a nation of
+young men. We talked of annexing Texas and northern Mexico, and did
+both; now we grasp at Cuba, Central America,--all the continent,--and
+speak of a railroad to the Pacific as a trifle for us to accomplish. Our
+national deeds are certainly great, but our hope and promise far
+outbrags them all.
+
+If this intensity of life and hope have its good side, it has also its
+evil; with much of the excellence of youth we have its faults--rashness,
+haste, and superficiality. Our work is seldom well done. In English
+manufactures there is a certain solid honesty of performance; in the
+French a certain air of elegance and refinement: one misses both these
+in American works. It is said America invents the most machines, but
+England builds them best. We lack the phlegmatic patience of older
+nations. We are always in a hurry, morning, noon and night. We are
+impatient of the process, but greedy of the result; so that we make
+short experiments but long reports, and talk much though we say little.
+We forget that a sober method is a short way of coming to the end, and
+that he who, before he sets out, ascertains where he is going and the
+way thither, ends his journey more prosperously than one who settles
+these matters by the way. Quickness is a great desideratum with us. It
+is said an American ship is known far off at sea by the quantity of
+canvas she carries. Rough and ready is a popular attribute. Quick and
+off would be a symbolic motto for the nation at this day, representing
+one phase of our character. We are sudden in deliberation; the
+"one-hour rule" works well in Congress. A committee of the British
+Parliament spends twice or thrice our time in collecting facts,
+understanding and making them intelligible, but less than our time in
+speech-making after the report; speeches there commonly being for the
+purpose of facilitating the business, while here one sometimes is half
+ready to think, notwithstanding our earnestness, that the business is to
+facilitate the speaking. A State revises her statutes with a rapidity
+that astonishes a European. Yet each revision brings some amendment, and
+what is found good in the constitution or laws of one State gets
+speedily imitated by the rest; each new State of the North becoming more
+democratic than its predecessor.
+
+We are so intent on our purpose that we have no time for amusement. We
+have but one or two festivals in the year, and even then we are serious
+and reformatory. Jonathan thinks it a very solemn thing to be merry. A
+Frenchman said we have but two amusements in America--Theology for the
+women and politics for the men; preaching and voting. If this be true,
+it may help to explain the fact that most men take their theology from
+their wives, and women politics from their husbands. No nation ever
+tried the experiment of such abstinence from amusement. We have no time
+for sport, and so lose much of the poetry of life. All work and no play
+does not always make a dull boy, but it commonly makes a hard man.
+
+We rush from school into business early; we hurry while in business; we
+aim to be rich quickly, making a fortune at a stroke, making or losing
+it twice or thrice in a lifetime. "Soft and fair, goes safe and far," is
+no proverb to our taste. We are the most restless of people. How we
+crowd into cars and steamboats; a locomotive would well typify our
+fuming, fizzing spirit. In our large towns life seems to be only a
+scamper. Not satisfied with bustling about all day, when night comes we
+cannot sit still, but alone of all nations have added rockers to our
+chairs.
+
+All is haste, from the tanning of leather to the education of a boy, and
+the old saw holds its edge good as ever--"the more haste the worse
+speed." The young stripling, innocent of all manner of lore, whom a
+judicious father has barrelled down in a college, or law-school, or
+theological seminary, till his beard be grown, mourns over the few years
+he must spend there awaiting that operation. His rule is, "to make a
+spoon or spoil a horn;" he longs to be out in the world "making a
+fortune," or "doing good," as he calls what his father better names
+"making noisy work for repentance, and doing mischief." So he rushes
+into life not fitted, and would fly towards heaven, this young Icarus,
+his wings not half fledged. There seems little taste for thoroughness.
+In our schools as our farms, we pass over much ground but pass over it
+poorly.
+
+In education the aim is not to get the most we can, but the least we can
+get along with. A ship with over-much canvas and over-little ballast
+were no bad emblem of many amongst us. In no country is it so easy to
+get a reputation for learning--accumulated thought, because so few
+devote themselves to that accumulation. In this respect our standard is
+low. So a man of one attainment is sure to be honored, but a man of many
+and varied abilities is in danger of being undervalued. A Spurzheim
+would be warmly welcomed, while a Humboldt would be suspected of
+superficiality, as we have not the standard to judge him by. Yet in no
+country in the world is it so difficult to get a reputation for
+eloquence, as many speak and that well. It is surprising with what
+natural strength and beauty the young American addresses himself to
+speak. Some hatter's apprentice, or shoemaker's journeyman, at a
+temperance or anti-slavery meeting, will speak words like the blows of
+an axe, that cut clean and deep. The country swarms with orators, more
+abundantly where education is least esteemed--in the West or South.
+
+We have secured national unity of action for the white citizens, without
+much curtailing individual variety of action, so we have at the North
+pretty well solved that problem which other nations have so often
+boggled over; we have balanced the centripetal power, the government and
+laws, with the centrifugal power, the mass of individuals, into
+harmonious proportions. If one were to leave out of sight the three
+million slaves, one sixth part of the population, the problem might be
+regarded as very happily solved. As the consequences of this, in no
+country is there more talent, or so much awake and active. In the South
+this unity is attained by sacrificing all the rights of three million
+slaves, and almost all the rights of the other colored population. In
+despotic countries this unity is brought about by the sacrifice of
+freedom, individual variety of action, in all except the despot and his
+favorites; so, much of the nation's energy is stifled in the chains of
+the State, while here it is friendly to institutions which are friendly
+to it, goes to its work, and approves itself in the vast increase of
+wealth and comfort throughout the North, where there is no class of men
+which is so oppressed that it cannot rise. One is amazed at the amount
+of ready skill and general ability which he finds in all the North,
+where each man has a little culture, takes his newspaper, manages
+his own business, and talks with some intelligence of many
+things--especially of politics and theology. In respect to this general
+intellectual ability and power of self-help, the mass of people seem far
+in advance of any other nation. But at the same time our scholars, who
+always represent the nation's higher modes of consciousness, will not
+bear comparison with the scholars of England, France, and Germany, men
+thoroughly furnished for their work. This is a great reproach and
+mischief to us, for we need most accomplished leaders, who by their
+thought can direct this national intensity of life. Our literature does
+not furnish them; we have no great men there; Irving, Channing, Cooper,
+are not names to conjure with in literature. One reads thick volumes
+devoted to the poets of America, or her prose writers, and finds many
+names which he wonders he never heard of before, but when he turns over
+their works, he finds consolation and recovers his composure.
+
+American literature may be divided into two departments: the permanent
+literature, which gets printed in books, that sometimes reach more than
+one edition; and the evanescent literature, which appears only in the
+form of speeches, pamphlets, reviews, newspaper articles, and the like
+extempore productions. Now our permanent literature, as a general thing,
+is superficial, tame, and weak; it is not American; it has not our
+ideas, our contempt of authority, our philosophical turn, nor even our
+uncertainty as to first principles, still less our national intensity,
+our hope, and fresh intuitive perceptions of truth. It is a miserable
+imitation. Love of freedom is not there. The real national literature is
+found almost wholly in speeches, pamphlets, and newspapers. The latter
+are pretty thoroughly American; mirrors in which we see no very
+flattering likeness of our morals or our manners. Yet the picture is
+true: that vulgarity, that rant, that bragging violence, that
+recklessness of truth and justice, that disregard of right and duty, are
+a part of the nation's everyday life. Our newspapers are low and "wicked
+to a fault;" only in this weakness are they un-American. Yet they
+exhibit, and abundantly, the four qualities we have mentioned as
+belonging to the signs of our times. As a general rule, our orators are
+also American, with our good and ill. Now and then one rises who has
+studied Demosthenes in Leland or Francis, and got a second-hand
+acquaintance with old models: a man who uses literary commonplaces, and
+thinks himself original and classic because he can quote a line or so of
+Horace, in a Western House of Representatives, without getting so many
+words wrong as his reporter; but such men are rare, and after making due
+abatement for them, our orators all over the land are pretty thoroughly
+American, a little turgid, hot, sometimes brilliant, hopeful, intuitive,
+abounding in half truths, full of great ideas; often inconsequent;
+sometimes coarse; patriotic, vain, self-confident, rash, strong, and
+young-mannish. Of course the most of our speeches are vulgar, ranting,
+and worthless, but we have produced some magnificent specimens of
+oratory, which are fresh, original, American, and brand new.
+
+The more studied, polished, and elegant literature is not so; that is
+mainly an imitation. It seems not a thing of native growth. Sometimes,
+as in Channing, the thought and the hope are American, but the form and
+the coloring old and foreign. We dare not be original; our American pine
+must be cut to the trim pattern of the English yew, though the pine
+bleed at every clip. This poet tunes his lyre at the harp of Goethe,
+Milton, Pope, or Tennyson. His songs might be better sung on the Rhine
+than the Kennebec. They are not American in form or feeling; they have
+not the breath of our air; the smell of our ground is not in them. Hence
+our poet seems cold and poor. He loves the old mythology; talks about
+Pluto--the Greek devil, the fates and furies--witches of old time in
+Greece, but would blush to use our mythology, or breathe the name in
+verse of our devil, or our own witches, lest he should be thought to
+believe what he wrote. The mother and sisters, who with many a pinch and
+pain sent the hopeful boy to college, must turn over the classical
+dictionary before they can find out what the youth would be at in his
+rhymes. Our poet is not deep enough to see that Aphrodite came from the
+ordinary waters, that Homer only hitched into rhythm and furnished the
+accomplishment of verse to street-talk, nursery tales, and old men's
+gossip in the Ionian towns; he thinks what is common is unclean. So he
+sings of Corinth and Athens, which he never saw, but has not a word to
+say of Boston, and Fall River, and Baltimore, and New York, which are
+just as meet for song. He raves of Thermopylæ and Marathon, with never a
+word for Lexington and Bunker-hill, for Cowpens, and Lundy's Lane, and
+Bemis's Heights. He loves to tell of the Ilyssus, of "smooth-sliding
+Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds," yet sings not of the Petapsco, the
+Susquehanna, the Aroostook, and the Willimantick. He prates of the
+narcissus and the daisy, never of American dandelions and blue-eyed
+grass; he dwells on the lark and the nightingale, but has not a thought
+for the brown thrasher and the bobolink, who every morning in June rain
+down such showers of melody on his affected head. What a lesson Burns
+teaches us, addressing his "rough bur-thistle," his daisy, "wee crimson
+tippit thing," and finding marvellous poetry in the mouse whose nest his
+plough turned over! Nay, how beautifully has even our sweet poet sung of
+our own Green river, our waterfowl, of the blue and fringed gentian, the
+glory of autumnal days.
+
+Hitherto, spite of the great reading public, we have no permanent
+literature which corresponds to the American idea. Perhaps it is not
+time for that; it must be organized in deeds before it becomes classic
+in words; but as yet we have no such literature which reflects even the
+surface of American life, certainly nothing which portrays our intensity
+of life, our hope, or even our daily doings and drivings, as the
+Odyssey paints old Greek life, or Don Quixote and Gil Bias portray
+Spanish life. Literary men are commonly timid; ours know they are but
+poorly fledged as yet, so dare not fly away from the parent tree, but
+hop timidly from branch to branch. Our writers love to creep about in
+the shadow of some old renown, not venturing to soar away into the
+unwinged air, to sing of things here and now, making our life classic.
+So, without the grace of high culture, and the energy of American
+thought, they become weak, cold, and poor; are "curious, not knowing,
+not exact, but nice." Too fastidious to be wise, too unlettered to be
+elegant, too critical to create, they prefer a dull saying that is old
+to a novel form of speech, or a natural expression of a new truth. In a
+single American work,--and a famous one too,--there are over sixty
+similes, not one original, and all poor. A few men, conscious of this
+defect, this sin against the Holy Spirit of Literature, go to the
+opposite extreme, and are American-mad; they wilfully talk rude, write
+in-numerous verse, and play their harps all jangling, out of tune. A yet
+fewer few are American without madness. One such must not here be passed
+by, alike philosopher and bard, in whose writings "ancient wisdom shines
+with new-born beauty," and who has enriched a genius thoroughly American
+in the best sense, with a cosmopolitan culture and literary skill, which
+were wonderful in any land. But of American literature in general, and
+of him in special, more shall be said at another time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another remarkable feature is our excessive love of material things.
+This is more than a Utilitarianism, a preference of the useful over the
+beautiful. The Puritan at Plymouth had a corn-field, a cabbage-garden,
+and a patch for potatoes, a school-house, and a church, before he sat
+down to play the fiddle. He would have been a fool to reverse this
+process. It were poor economy and worse taste to have painters,
+sculptors, and musicians, while the rude wants of the body are uncared
+for. But our fault in this respect is, that we place too much the charm
+of life in mere material things,--houses, lands, well-spread tables, and
+elegant furniture,--not enough in man, in virtue, wisdom, genius,
+religion, greatness of soul, and nobleness of life. We mistake a
+perfection of the means of manliness for the end--manhood itself. Yet
+the housekeeping of a Shakspeare, Milton, Franklin, had only one thing
+worth boasting of. Strange to say, that was the master of the house. A
+rich and vulgar man once sported a coach and four, and at its first
+turn-out rode into the great commercial street of a large town in New
+England. "How fine you must feel with your new coach and four," said one
+of his old friends, though not quite so rich. "Yes," was the reply, "as
+fine as a beetle in a gold snuff-box." All of his kindred are not so
+nice and discriminating in their self-consciousness.
+
+This practical materialism is a great affliction to us. We think a man
+cannot be poor and great also. So we see a great man sell himself for a
+little money, and it is thought "a good operation." A conspicuous man,
+in praise of a certain painter, summed up his judgment with this: "Why,
+Sir, he has made twenty thousand dollars by his pictures." "A good deal
+more than Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael together," might have
+been the reply. But it is easier to weigh purses than artistic skill. It
+was a characteristic praise bestowed in Boston on a distinguished
+American writer, that his book brought him more money than any man had
+ever realized for an original work in this country. "Commerce," said Mr.
+Pitt, "having got into both houses of Parliament, privilege must be done
+away,"--the privilege of wit and genius, not less than rank. Clergymen
+estimate their own and their brothers' importance, not by their
+apostolical gifts, or even apostolic succession, but by the value of the
+living.
+
+All other nations have this same fault, it may be said. But there is
+this difference: in other nations the things of a man are put before the
+man himself; so a materialism which exalts the accidents of the
+man--rank, wealth, birth, and the like--above the man, is not
+inconsistent with the general idea of England or Austria. In America it
+is a contradiction. Besides, in most civilized countries, there is a
+class of men living on inherited wealth, who devote their lives to
+politics, art, science, letters, and so are above the mere material
+elegance which surrounds them. That class has often inflicted a deep
+wound on society, which festers long and leads to serious trouble in the
+system, but at the same time it redeems a nation from the reproach of
+mere material vulgarity; it has been the source of refinement, and has
+warmed into life much of the wisdom and beauty which have thence spread
+over all the world. In America there is no such class. Young men
+inheriting wealth very rarely turn to any thing noble; they either
+convert their talents into gold, or their gold into furniture, wines,
+and confectionary. A young man of wealth does not know what to do with
+himself or it; a rich young woman seems to have no resource but
+marriage! Yet it must be confessed, that at least in one part of the
+United States wealth flows freely for the support of public institutions
+of education.
+
+Here it is difficult for a man of science to live by his thought. Was
+Bowditch one of the first mathematicians of his age? He must be at the
+head of an annuity office. If Socrates should set up as a dealer in
+money, and outwit the brokers as formerly the Sophists, and shave notes
+as skilfully as of old, we should think him a great man. But if he
+adopted his old plan, what should we say of him?
+
+Manliness is postponed and wealth preferred. "What a fine house is
+this," one often says; "what furniture; what feasting. But the master of
+the house!--why every stone out of the wall laughs at him. He spent all
+of himself in getting this pretty show together, and now it is empty,
+and mocks its owner. He is the emblematic coffin at the Egyptian feast."
+"Oh, man!" says the looker-on, "why not furnish thyself with a mind, and
+conscience, a heart and a soul, before getting all this brass and
+mahogany together; this beef and these wines?" The poor wight would
+answer,--"Why, Sir, there were none such in the market!"--The young man
+does not say, "I will first of all things be a man, and so being will
+have this thing and the other," putting the agreeable after the
+essential. But he says, "First of all, by hook or by crook, I will have
+money, the manhood may take care of itself." He has it,--for tough and
+hard as the old world is, it is somewhat fluid before a strong man who
+resolutely grapples with difficulty and will swim through, it can be
+made to serve his turn. He has money, but the man has evaporated in the
+process; when you look he is not there. True, other nations have done
+the same thing, and we only repeat their experiment. The old devil of
+conformity says to our American Adam and Eve, "Do this and you shall be
+as gods," a promise as likely to hold good as the devil's did in the
+beginning. A man was meant for something more than a tassel to a large
+estate, and a woman to be more than a rich housekeeper.
+
+With this offensive materialism we copy the vices of feudal aristocracy
+abroad, making our vulgarity still more ridiculous. We are ambitious or
+proud of wealth, which is but labor stored up, and at the same time are
+ashamed of labor which is wealth in process. With all our talk about
+democracy, labor is thought less honorable in Boston than in Berlin and
+Leipsic. Thriving men are afraid their children will be shoemakers, or
+ply some such honorable and useful craft. Yet little pains are taken to
+elevate the condition or improve the manners and morals of those who do
+all the manual work of society. The strong man takes care that his
+children and himself escape that condition. We do not believe that all
+stations are alike honorable if honorably filled; we have little desire
+to equalize the burdens of life, so that there shall be no degraded
+class; none cursed with work, none with idleness. It is popular to endow
+a college; vulgar to take an interest in common schools. Liberty is a
+fact, equality a word, and fraternity, we do not think of yet.
+
+In this struggle for material wealth and the social rank which is based
+thereon, it is amusing to see the shifting of the scenes; the social
+aspirations of one and the contempt with which another rebuts the
+aspirant. An old man can remember when the most exclusive of men, and
+the most golden, had scarce a penny in their purse, and grumbled at not
+finding a place where they would. Now the successful man is ashamed of
+the steps he rose by. The gentleman who came to Boston half a century
+ago, with all his worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief, and
+that not of so large a pattern as are made now-a-days, is ashamed to
+recollect that his father was a currier, or a blacksmith, or a skipper
+at Barnstable or Beverly; ashamed, also, of his forty or fifty country
+cousins, remarkable for nothing but their large hands and their
+excellent memory. Nay, he is ashamed of his own humble beginnings, and
+sneers at men starting as he once started. The generation of English
+"Snobs" came in with the Conqueror, and migrated to America at an early
+day, where they continue to thrive marvellously--the chief "conservative
+party" in the land.
+
+Through this contempt for labor, a certain affectation runs through a
+good deal of American society, and makes our aristocracy vulgar and
+contemptible. What if Burns had been ashamed of his plough, and Franklin
+had lost his recollection of the candle-moulds and the composing stick?
+Mr. Chubbs, who got rich to-day, imitates Mr. Swipes, who got rich
+yesterday, buys the same furniture, gives similar entertainments, and
+counts himself "as good a man as Swipes, any day." Nay, he goes a little
+beyond him, puts his servants in livery, with the "Chubbs arms" on the
+button; but the new-found family arms are not descriptive of the
+character of the Chubbses, or of their origin and history--only of their
+vanity. Then Mr. Swipes looks down on poor Chubbs, and curls his lip
+with scorn; calls him a "parvenu," "an upstart," "a plebeian;" speaks of
+him as one of "that sort of people," "one of your ordinary men;"
+"thrifty and well off in the world, but a little vulgar." At the same
+time Mr. Swipes looks up to Mr. Bung, who got rich the day before
+yesterday, as a gentleman of old family and quite distinguished, and
+receives from that quarter the same treatment he bestows on his
+left-hand neighbor. The real gentleman is the same all the world over.
+Such are by no means lacking here, while the pretended gentlemen swarm
+in America. Chaucer said a good word long ago:
+
+    "--This is not mine intendément
+    To clepen no wight in no age
+    Only gentle for his lineáge;
+    But whoso that is virtuous,
+    And in his port not outragéous:
+    When such one thou see'st thee beforn,
+    Though he be not gentle born,
+    Thou mayest well see this in soth,
+    That he is gentle, because he doth
+    As 'longeth to a gentleman;
+    Of them none other deem I can;
+    For certainly withouten drede,
+    A churl is deeméd by his deed,
+    Of high or low, as ye may see,
+    Or of what kindred that he be."
+
+It is no wonder vulgar men, who travel here and eat our dinners, laugh
+at this form of vulgarity. Wiser men see its cause, and prophesy its
+speedy decay. Every nation has its aristocracy, or controlling class: in
+some lands it is permanent, an aristocracy of blood; men that are
+descended from distinguished warriors, from the pirates and freebooters
+of a rude age. The nobility of England are proud of their fathers'
+deeds, and emblazon the symbols thereof in their family arms, emblems of
+barbarism. Ours is an aristocracy of wealth, not got by plunder, but by
+toil, thrift, enterprise; of course it is a movable aristocracy: the
+first families of the last century are now forgot, and their successors
+will give place to new names. Now earning is nobler than robbing, and
+work is before war; but we are ashamed of both, and seek to conceal the
+noble source of our wealth. An aristocracy of gold is far preferable to
+the old and immovable nobility of blood, but it has also its peculiar
+vices: it has the effrontery of an upstart, despises its own ladder, is
+heartless and lacks noble principle, vulgar and cursing. This lust of
+wealth, however, does us a service, and gives the whole nation a
+stimulus which it needs, and, low as the motive is, drives us to
+continual advancement. It is a great merit for a nation to secure the
+largest amount of useful and comfortable and beautiful things which can
+be honestly earned, and used with profit to the body and soul of man.
+Only when wealth becomes an idol, and material abundance is made the
+end, not the means, does the love of it become an evil. No nation was
+ever too rich, or overthrifty, though many a nation has lost its soul by
+living wholly for the senses.
+
+Now and then we see noble men living apart from this vulgarity and
+scramble; some rich, some poor, but both content to live for noble aims,
+to pinch and spare for virtue, religion, for truth and right. Such men
+never fail from any age or land, but everywhere they are the exceptional
+men. Still they serve to keep alive the sacred fire in the hearts of
+young men, rising amid the common mob as oaks surpass the brambles or
+the fern.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these secondary qualities of the people which mark the special signs
+of the times, there are many contradictions, quality contending with
+quality; all by no means balanced into harmonious relations. Here are
+great faults not less than great virtues. Can the national faults be
+corrected? Most certainly; they are but accidental, coming from our
+circumstances, our history, our position as a people--heterogeneous,
+new, and placed on a new and untamed continent. They come not from the
+nation's soul; they do not belong to our fundamental idea, but are
+hostile to it. One day our impatience of authority, our philosophical
+tendency, will lead us to a right method, that to fixed principles, and
+then we shall have a continuity of national action. Considering the
+pains taken by the fathers of the better portion of America to promote
+religion here, remembering how dear is Christianity to the heart of all,
+conservative and radical--though men often name as Christian what is
+not--and seeing how truth and right are sure to win at last,--it becomes
+pretty plain that we shall arrive at true principles, laws of the
+universe, ideas of God; then we shall be in unison also with it and Him.
+When that great defect--lack of first principles--is corrected, our
+intensity of life, with the hope and confidence it inspires, will do a
+great work for us. We have already secured an abundance of material
+comforts hitherto unknown; no land was ever so full of corn and cattle,
+clothing, comfortable houses, and all things needed for the flesh. The
+desire of those things, even the excessive desire thereof, performs an
+important part in the divine economy of the human race; nowhere is its
+good effect more conspicuous than in America, where in two generations
+the wild Irishman becomes a decent citizen, orderly, temperate, and
+intelligent. This done or even a-doing, as it is now, we shall go forth
+to realize our great national idea, and accomplish the great work of
+organizing into institutions the unalienable rights of man. The great
+obstacle in the way of that is African slavery--the great exception in
+the nation's history; the national sin. When that is removed, as soon it
+must be, lesser but kindred evils will easily be done away; the truth
+which the land-reformers, which the associationists, the free-traders,
+and others, have seen, dimly or clearly, can readily be carried out. But
+while this monster vice continues, there is little hope of any great and
+permanent national reform. The positive things which we chiefly need for
+this work, are first, education, next, education, and then education, a
+vigorous development of the mind, conscience, affections, religious
+power of the whole nation. The method and the means for that I shall not
+now discuss.
+
+The organization of human rights, the performance of human duties, is an
+unlimited work. If there shall ever be a time when it is all done, then
+the race will have finished its course. Shall the American nation go on
+in this work, or pause, turn off, fall, and perish? To me it seems
+almost treason to doubt that a glorious future awaits us. Young as we
+are, and wicked, we have yet done something which the world will not let
+perish. One day we shall attend more emphatically to the rights of the
+hand, and organize labor and skill; then to the rights of the head,
+looking after education, science, literature, and art; and again to the
+rights of the heart, building up the State with its laws, society with
+its families, the church with its goodness and piety. One day we shall
+see that it is a shame, and a loss, and a wrong, to have a criminal, or
+an ignorant man, or a pauper, or an idler, in the land; that the jail,
+and the gallows, and the almshouse are a reproach which need not be. Out
+of new sentiments and ideas, not seen as yet, new forms of society will
+come, free from the antagonism of races, classes, men--representing the
+American idea in its length, breadth, depth, and height, its beauty and
+its truth, and then the old civilization of our time shall seem
+barbarous and even savage. There will be an American art commensurate
+with our idea and akin to this great continent; not an imitation, but a
+fresh, new growth. An American literature also must come with democratic
+freedom, democratic thought, democratic power--for we are not always to
+be pensioners of other lands, doing nothing but import and quote; a
+literature with all of German philosophic depth, with English solid
+sense, with French vivacity and wit, Italian fire of sentiment and soul,
+with all of Grecian elegance of form, and more than Hebrew piety and
+faith in God. We must not look for the maiden's ringlets on the baby's
+brow; we are yet but a girl; the nameless grace of maturity, and
+womanhood's majestic charm, are still to come. At length we must have a
+system of education, which shall uplift the humblest, rudest, worst born
+child in all the land; which shall bring forth and bring up noble men.
+
+An American State is a thing that must also be; a State of free men who
+give over brawling, resting on industry, justice, love, not on war,
+cunning, and violence,--a State where liberty, equality, and fraternity
+are deeds as well as words. In its time the American Church must also
+appear, with liberty, holiness, and love for its watchwords, cultivating
+reason, conscience, affection, faith, and leading the world's way in
+justice, peace, and love. The Roman Church has been all men know what
+and how; the American Church, with freedom for the mind, freedom for the
+heart, freedom for the soul, is yet to be, sundering no chord of the
+human harp, but tuning all to harmony. This also must come; but hitherto
+no one has risen with genius fit to plan its holy walls, conceive its
+columns, project its towers, or lay its corner-stone. Is it too much to
+hope all this? Look at the arena before us--look at our past history.
+Hark! there is the sound of many million men, the trampling of their
+freeborn feet, the murmuring of their voice; a nation born of this land
+that God reserved so long a virgin earth, in a high day married to the
+human race,--rising, and swelling, and rolling on, strong and certain as
+the Atlantic tide; they come numerous as ocean waves when east winds
+blow, their destination commensurate with the continent, with ideas vast
+as the Mississippi, strong as the Alleghanies, and awful as Niagara;
+they come murmuring little of the past, but, moving in the brightness of
+their great idea, and casting its light far on to other lands and
+distant days--come to the world's great work, to organize the rights of
+man.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. DELIVERED AT
+THE MELODEON, IN BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1848.
+
+
+Within a few days one of the most distinguished statesmen of the age has
+passed away; a man who has long been before the public, familiarly known
+in the new world and the old. He was one of the prominent monuments of
+the age. It becomes us to look at his life, works, and public character,
+with an impartial eye; to try him by the Christian standard. Let me
+extenuate nothing, add nothing, and set down nought from any partial
+love or partial hate. His individuality has been so marked in a long
+life, his good and evil so sharply defined, that one can scarcely fail
+to delineate its most important features.
+
+God has made some men great and others little. The use of great men is
+to serve the little men; to take care of the human race, and act as
+practical interpreters of justice and truth. This is not the Hebrew
+rule, nor the heathen, nor the common rule, only the Christian. The
+great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him. Perhaps
+greatness is always the same thing in kind, differing only in mode and
+in form, as well as degree. The great man has more of human nature than
+other men, organized in him. So far as that goes, therefore, he is more
+me than I am myself. We feel that superiority in all our intercourse
+with great men, whether kings, philosophers, poets, or saints. In kind
+we are the same; different in degree.
+
+In nature we find individuals, not orders and genera; but for our own
+convenience in understanding and recollecting, we do a little violence
+to nature, and put the individuals into classes. In this way we
+understand better both the whole and each of its parts. Human nature
+furnishes us with individual great men; for convenience we put them into
+several classes, corresponding to their several modes or forms of
+greatness. It is well to look at these classes before we examine any one
+great man; this will render it easier to see where he belongs and what
+he is worth. Actual service is the test of actual greatness; he who
+renders, of himself, the greatest actual service to mankind, is actually
+the greatest man. There may be other tests for determining the potential
+greatness of men, or the essential; this is the Christian rule for
+determining the actual greatness. Let us arrange these men in the
+natural order of their work.
+
+First of all, there are great men who discover general truths, great
+ideas, universal laws, or invent methods of thought and action. In this
+class the vastness of a man's genius may be measured, and his relative
+rank ascertained by the transcendency of his ideas, by the newness of
+his truth, by its practical value, and the difficulty of attaining it in
+his time, and under his peculiar circumstances. In literature it is such
+men who originate thoughts, and put them into original forms; they are
+the great men of letters. In philosophy we meet with such; and they are
+the great men of science. Thus Socrates discovered the philosophical
+method of minute analysis that distinguished his school, and led to the
+rapid advance of knowledge in the various and even conflicting
+academies, which held this method in common, but applied it in various
+ways, well or ill, and to various departments of human inquiry; thus
+Newton discovered the law of gravitation, universal in nature, and by
+the discovery did immense service to mankind. In politics we find
+similar, or analogous men, who discover yet other laws of God, which
+bear the same relation to men in society that gravitation bears to the
+orbs in heaven, or to the dust and stones in the street; men that
+discover the first truths of politics, and teach the true method of
+human society. Such are the great men in politics.
+
+We find corresponding men in religion; men who discover an idea so
+central that all sectarianism of parties or of nations seems little in
+its light; who discover and teach the universal law which unifies the
+race, binding man to man, and men to God; who discover the true method
+of religion conducting to natural worship without limitation, to free
+piety, free goodness, free thought. To my mind such are the greatest of
+great men, when measured by the transcendency of their doctrine and the
+service they render to all. By the influence of their idea, letters,
+philosophy, and politics become nobler and more beautiful, both in their
+forms and their substance.
+
+Such is the class of discoverers; men who get truth at first hand, truth
+pertaining either especially to literature, philosophy, politics,
+religion, or at the same time to each and all of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next class consists of such as organize these ideas, methods,
+truths, and laws; they concretize the abstract, particularize the
+general; they apply philosophy to practical purposes, organizing the
+discoveries of science into a railroad, a mill, a steam-ship, and by
+their work an idea becomes fact. They organize love into families,
+justice into a state, piety into a church. Wealth is power, knowledge is
+power, religion power; they organize all these powers, wealth,
+knowledge, religion, into common life, making divinity humanity, and
+that society.
+
+This organizing genius is a very great one, and appears in various
+forms. One man spreads his thought out on the soil, whitening the land
+with bread-corn; another applies his mind to the rivers of New England,
+making them spin and weave for the human race; this man will organize
+his thought into a machine with one idea, joining together fire and
+water, iron and wood, animating them into a new creature, ready to do
+man's bidding; while that with audacious hand steals the lightning of
+heaven, organizes his plastic thought within that pliant fire, and sends
+it of his errands to fetch and carry tidings between the ends of the
+earth.
+
+Another form of this mode of greatness is seen in politics, in
+organizing men. The man spreads his thought out on mankind, puts men
+into true relations with one another and with God; he organizes
+strength, wisdom, justice, love, piety; balances the conflicting forces
+of a nation, so that each man has his natural liberty as complete as if
+the only man, yet, living in society, gathers advantages from all the
+rest. The highest degree of this organizing power is the genius for
+legislation, which can enact justice and eternal right into treaties and
+statutes, codifying the divine thought into human laws, making absolute
+religion common life and daily custom, and balancing the centripetal
+power of the mass, with the centrifugal power of the individual, into a
+well-proportioned state, as God has balanced these two conflicting
+forces into the rhythmic ellipses above our heads. It need not be
+disguised, that politics are the highest business for men of this class,
+nor that a great statesman or legislator is the greatest example of
+constructive skill. It requires some ability to manage the brute forces
+of Nature, or to combine profitably nine-and-thirty clerks in a shop;
+how much more to arrange twenty millions of intelligent, free men, not
+for a special purpose, but for all the ends of universal life!
+
+Such is the second class of great men; the organizers, men of
+constructive heads, who form the institutions of the world, the little
+and the great.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next class consists of men who administer the institutions after
+they are founded. To do this effectually and even eminently, it requires
+no genius for original organization of truths freshly discovered, none
+for the discovery of truths, outright. It requires only a perception of
+those truths, and an acquaintance with the institutions wherein they
+have become incarnate; a knowledge of details, of formulas, and
+practical methods, united with a strong will and a practised
+understanding,--what is called a turn for affairs, tact, or address; a
+knowledge of routine and an acquaintance with men. The success of such
+men will depend on these qualities; they "know the ropes" and the
+soundings, the signs of the times; can take advantage of the winds and
+the tides.
+
+In a shop, farm, ship, factory, or army, in a church or a State, such
+men are valuable; they cannot be dispensed with; they are wheels to the
+carriage; without them cannot a city be inhabited. They are always more
+numerous than both the other classes; more such are needed, and
+therefore born. The American mind, just now, runs eminently in this
+direction. These are not men of theories, or of new modes of thought or
+action, but what are called practical men, men of a few good rules, men
+of facts and figures, not so full of ideas as of precedents. They are
+called common-sense men; not having too much common-sense to be
+understood. They are not likely to be fallen in with far off at sea;
+quite as seldom out of their reckoning in ordinary weather. Such men are
+excellent statesmen in common times, but in times of trouble, when old
+precedents will not suit the new case, and men must be guided by the
+nature of man, not his history, they are not strong enough for the
+place, and get pushed off by more constructive heads.
+
+These men are the administrators, or managers. If they have a little
+less of practical sense, such men fall a little below, and turn out only
+critics, of whom I will not now stop to discourse.
+
+To have a railroad, there must have been first the discoverers, who
+found out the properties of wood and iron, fire and water, and their
+latent power to carry men over the earth; next, the organizers, who put
+these elements together, surveyed the route, planned the structure, set
+men to grade the hill, to fill the valley, and pave the road with iron
+bars; and then the administrators, who, after all that is done, procure
+the engines, engineers, conductors, ticket-distributors, and the rest of
+the "hands;" they buy the coal and see it is not wasted, fix the rates
+of fare, calculate the savings, and distribute the dividends. The
+discoverers and organizers often fare hard in the world, lean men, ill
+clad and suspected, often laughed at, while the administrator is thought
+the greater man, because he rides over their graves and pays the
+dividends, where the organizer only called for the assessments, and the
+discoverer told what men called a dream. What happens in a railroad
+happens also in a Church, or a State.
+
+Let us for a moment compare these three classes of great men. Measured
+by the test referred to, the discoverers are the greatest of all. They
+anticipate the human race, with long steps, striding before their kind.
+They learn not only from the history of man, but man's nature; not by
+empirical experience alone, but by a transcendent intuition of truth,
+now seen as a law, now as an idea. They are wiser than experience, and
+by divination through their nobler nature know at once what the human
+race has not learned in its thousands of years, kindling their lamp at
+the central fire now streaming from the sky, now rushing broad-sheeted
+and terrible as ground-lightning from the earth. Of such men there are
+but few, especially in the highest mode of this greatness. A single One
+makes a new world, and men date ages after him.
+
+Next in order of greatness comes the organizer. He, also, must have
+great intellect, and character. It is no light work to make thoughts
+things. It requires mind to make a mill out of a river, bricks, iron,
+and stone, and set all the Connecticut to spinning cotton. But to
+construct a State, to harness fittingly twenty million men, animated by
+such divergent motives, possessing interests so unlike--this is the
+greatest work of constructive skill. To translate the ideas of the
+discoverer into institutions, to yoke men together by mere
+"abstractions," universal laws, and by such yoking save the liberty of
+all and secure the welfare of each--that is the most creative of poetry,
+the most constructive of sciences. In modern times, it is said, Napoleon
+is the greatest example of this faculty; not a discoverer, but an
+organizer of the highest power and on the largest scale. In human
+history he seems to have had no superior, perhaps no equal.
+
+Some callings in life afford little opportunity to develop the great
+qualities above alluded to. How much genius lies latent no man can know;
+but he that walks familiarly with humble men often stumbles over masses
+of unsunned gold, where men proud in emptiness, looked only for common
+dust. How many a Milton sits mute and inglorious in his shop; how many a
+Cromwell rears only corn and oxen for the world's use, no man can know.
+Some callings help to light, some hide and hinder. But there is none
+which demands more ability than politics; they develop greatness, if the
+man have the germ thereof within him. True, in politics, a man may get
+along with a very little ability, without being a discoverer or an
+organizer; were it otherwise we should not be blessed with a very large
+House, or a crowded Senate. Nay, experience shows that in ordinary times
+one not even a great administrator may creep up to a high place and hang
+on there awhile. Few able administrators sit on the thrones of Europe at
+this day. But if power be in the man, the hand of politics will draw out
+the spark.
+
+In America, politics more than elsewhere demand greatness, for ours is,
+in theory, the government of all, for all, and by all. It requires
+greater range of thought to discover the law for all than for a few;
+after the discovery thereof it is more difficult to construct a
+democracy than a monarchy, or an aristocracy, and after that is
+organized, it is more difficult to administer. It requires more manhood
+to wield at will "the fierce democratie" of America than to rule England
+or France; yet the American institutions are germane to human nature,
+and by that fact are rendered more easy, complicated as they are.
+
+In politics, when the institutions are established, men often think
+there is no room for discoverers and organizers; that administrators
+alone are needed, and choose accordingly. But there are ideas well
+known, not yet organized into institutions: that of free trade, of
+peace, of universal freedom, universal education, universal comfort, in
+a word, the idea of human brotherhood. These wait to be constructed into
+a State without injustice, without war, without slavery, ignorance, or
+want. It is hardly true that Infinity is dry of truths, unseen as yet;
+there are truths enough waiting to be discovered; all the space betwixt
+us and God is full of ideas, waiting for some Columbus to disclose new
+worlds. Men are always saying there is no new thing under the sun, but
+when the discoverer comes, they see their mistake. We want the new eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, it is quite plain where we are to place the distinguished person of
+whom I speak. Mr. Adams was not a discoverer; not an organizer. He added
+no truth to mankind, not known before, and even well known; he made no
+known truth a fact. He was an administrator of political institutions.
+Taking the whole land into consideration, comparing him with his
+competitors, measuring him by his apparent works, at first sight he does
+not seem very highly eminent in this class of political administrators.
+Nay, some would set him down, not an administrator so much as a
+political critic.
+
+Here there is danger of doing him injustice, by neglecting a fact so
+obvious, that it is seldom seen. Mr. Adams was a northern man, with
+northern habits, methods, and opinions. By the North, I mean the free
+States. The chief business of the North is to get empire over nature;
+all tends to that. Young men of talents become merchants,
+merchant-manufacturers, merchant-traders. The object directly aimed at,
+is wealth; not wealth by plunder, but by productive work. Now, to get
+dominion over nature, there must be education, universal education,
+otherwise there is not enough intelligent industry, which alone insures
+that dominion. With widespread intelligence, property will be widely
+distributed, and, of course, suffrage and civil power will get
+distributed. All is incomplete without religion. I deny not that these
+peculiarities of the North, come, also, from other sources, but they all
+are necessary to attain the chief object thereof--dominion over the
+material world. The North subdues nature by thought, and holds her
+powers in thrall. As results of this, see the increase in wealth which
+is signified by northern railroads, ships, mills, and shops; in the
+colleges, schools, churches, which arise; see the skill developed in
+this struggle with nature, the great enterprises which come of that,
+the movements of commerce, manufactures, the efforts--and successful,
+too--for the promotion of education, of religion. All is democratic, and
+becomes more so continually, each descendant founding institutions more
+liberal than those of the parent State. Men designedly, and, as their
+business, become merchants, mechanics, and the like; they are
+politicians by exception, by accident, from the necessity of the case.
+Few northern men are politicians by profession; they commonly think it
+better to be a collector or a postmaster, than a Senator, estimating
+place by money, not power. Northern politicians are bred as lawyers,
+clergymen, mechanics, farmers, merchants. Political life is an accident,
+not an end.
+
+In the South, the aim is to get dominion over men; so, the whole working
+population must be in subjection, in slavery. While the North makes
+brute nature half intelligent, the South makes human nature half brutal,
+the man becoming a thing. Talent tends to politics, not trade. Young men
+of ability go to the army or navy, to the public offices, to diplomatic
+posts, in a word, to politics. They learn to manage men. To do this,
+they not only learn what men think, but why they think it. The young man
+of the North seeks a fortune; of the South, a reputation and political
+power. The politician of the South makes politics the study and work of
+his whole life; all else is accidental and subordinate. He begins low,
+but ends high; he mingles with men; has bland and agreeable manners; is
+frank, honorable, manly, and knows how to persuade.
+
+See the different results of causes so unlike. The North manages the
+commercial affairs of the land, the ships, mills, farms, and shops; the
+spiritual affairs, literature, science, morals, education,
+religion;--writes, calculates, instructs, and preaches. But the South
+manages the political affairs, and has free-trade or tariff, war or
+peace, just as she will. Of the eight Presidents who were elected in
+fifty years, only three were northern men. Each of them has retired from
+office, at the end of a single term, in possession of a fortune, but
+with little political influence. Each of the five southern Presidents
+has been twice elected; only one of them was rich. There is no accident
+in all this. The State of Rhode Island has men that can administer the
+Connecticut or the Mississippi; that can organize Niagara into a cotton
+factory; yes, that can get dominion over the ocean and the land: but the
+State of South Carolina has men that can manage the Congress, can rule
+the North and South, and make the nation do their bidding.
+
+So the South succeeds in politics, but grows poor, and the North fails
+in politics, but thrives in commerce and the arts. There great men turn
+to politics, here to trade. It is so in time of peace, but, in the day
+of trouble, of storms, of revolution like the old one, men of tall
+heads will come up from the ships and the shops, the farms and the
+colleges of the North, born discoverers and organizers, the aristocracy
+of God, and sit down in the nation's councils to control the State. The
+North made the revolution, furnished the men, the money, the ideas, and
+the occasion for putting them into form. At the making of the
+Constitution, the South out-talked the North; put in such claims as it
+saw fitting, making the best bargain it could, violating the ideas of
+the Revolution, and getting the North, not only to consent to slavery,
+but to allow it to be represented in Congress itself. Now, the South
+breaks the Constitution just when it will, puts northern sailors in its
+jails, and the North dares not complain, but bears it "with a patient
+shrug." An eastern merchant is great on a southern exchange, makes
+cotton rise or fall, but no northern politician has much weight at the
+South, none has ever been twice elected President. The North thinks it
+is a great thing to get an inoffensive northern man as Speaker, in the
+House of Representatives. The South is an aristocracy, which the
+democracy of the North would not tolerate a year, were it at the North
+itself. Now it rules the land, has the northern masses, democrats and
+whigs, completely under its thumb. Does the South say, "Go," they
+hasten; "Come," they say "Here we are;" "Do this," they obey in a
+moment; "Whist," there is not a mouse stirring in all the North. Does
+the South say "Annex," it is done; "Fight," men of the North put on the
+collar, lie lies, issue their proclamations, enroll their soldiers, and
+declare it is moral treason for the most insignificant clergyman to
+preach against the war.
+
+All this needs to be remembered in judging of Mr. Adams. True he was
+regularly bred to politics, and "to the manor born;" but he was a New
+England man, with northern notions, northern habits, and though more
+than fifty years in public life, yet he seems to have sought the object
+of New England far more than the object of the South. Measure his
+greatness by his service; but that is not to be measured by immediate
+and apparent success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a notice so brief as this, I can say but little of the details of Mr.
+Adams's life, and purposely pass over many things, dwelling mainly on
+such as are significant of his character. He was born at Quincy, the
+11th of July, 1767; in 1777 he went to Europe with his father, then
+Minister to France. He remained in Europe most of the time, his powers
+developing with rapidity and promise of future greatness, till 1785,
+when he returned and entered the junior class in Harvard College. In
+1787, he graduated with distinguished honors. He studied law at
+Newburyport, with Judge Parsons, till 1790, and was a lawyer in Boston,
+till 1794.
+
+That may be called the period of his education He enjoyed the
+advantages of a residence abroad, which enabled him to acquire a
+knowledge of foreign languages, modes of life, and habits of thought.
+His father's position brought the son in contact with the ablest men of
+the age. He was Secretary of the American minister to Russia at the age
+of fourteen. He early became acquainted with Franklin and Jefferson, men
+who had a powerful influence on his youthful mind. For three years he
+was a student with Judge Parsons, a very remarkable man. These years,
+from 1767 to 1794, form a period marked by intense mental activity in
+America and in Europe. The greatest subjects which claim human
+attention, the laws that lie at the foundation of society, the State,
+the church, and the family, were discussed as never before. Mr. Adams
+drew in liberty and religion from his mother's breast. His cradle rocked
+with the Revolution. When eight years old, from a hill-top hard by his
+house he saw the smoke of Charlestown, burning at the command of the
+oppressor. The lullaby of his childhood was the roar of cannon at
+Lexington and Bunker Hill. He was born in the gathering of the storm, of
+a family that felt the blast, but never bent thereto; he grew up in its
+tumult. Circumstances like these make their mark on the character.
+
+His attention was early turned to the most important matters. In 1793,
+he wrote several papers in the "Centinel," at Boston, on neutral rights,
+advising the American government to remain neutral in the quarrel
+between France, our ally, and others; the papers attracted the attention
+of Washington, who appointed the author Minister to Holland. He remained
+abroad in various diplomatic services in that country, in Russia and
+England, till 1801, when he was recalled by his father, and returned
+home. It was an important circumstance, that he was abroad during that
+time when the nation divided into two great parties. He was not called
+on to take sides with either; he had a vantage ground whence he could
+overlook both, approve their good and shun their evil. The effect of
+this is abundantly evident in all his life. He was not dyed in the wool
+by either political party,--the moral sense of the man drowned in the
+process of becoming a federalist or a democrat.
+
+In 1802, he was elected to the Senate of Massachusetts, yet not wholly
+by the votes of one party. In 1803, he was chosen to the Senate of the
+United States. In the Massachusetts Legislature he was not a strict
+party man; he was not elected to the Senate by a strictly party vote. In
+1806, he was inaugurated as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
+University, and continued in that office about three years. In 1808, he
+resigned his place in the Senate. In 1809, he was sent by Mr. Madison as
+Minister to Russia, and remained abroad in various ministries and
+commissions, till 1817, when he returned, and became Secretary of State
+under Mr. Monroe. This office he filled till he became President, in
+1825. In 1829, failing of reëlection, he retired to private life. In
+1831, he was elected as one of the Representatives to Congress from
+Massachusetts, and continued there till his death, the first President
+that ever sat in an American Congress.
+
+It will be fifty-four years the thirtieth of next May, since he began
+his public career. What did he aim at in that long period? At first
+sight, it is easy to see the aim of some of the conspicuous men of
+America. It has obviously been the aim of Mr. Clay to build up the
+"American System," by the establishment of protective duties; that of
+Mr. Calhoun to establish free trade, leaving a man to buy where he can
+buy cheapest, and sell where he can sell dearest. In respect to these
+matters the two are exactly opposite to one another--antithetic as the
+poles. But each has also, and obviously, another aim,--to build up the
+institution of slavery in the South. In this they agree, and if I
+understand them aright, this is the most important political design of
+each; for which Mr. Calhoun would forego even free trade, and Mr. Clay
+would "compromise" even a tariff. Looked at in reference to their aims,
+there is a certain continuity of action in both these gentlemen. I speak
+not now of another object which both have equally and obviously aimed
+at; not of the personal, but the political object.
+
+At first sight, it does not appear that Mr. Adams had any definite
+scheme of measures which he aimed to establish; there is no obvious
+unity of idea, or continuity of action, that forces itself upon the
+spectator. He does not seem to have studied the two great subjects of
+our political economy, finance and trade, very deeply, or even with any
+considerable width of observation or inquiry; he had no financial or
+commercial hobby. He has worked with every party, and against every
+party; all have claimed, none held him. Now he sides with the
+federalists, then with the democrats; now he opposes France, showing
+that her policy is that of pirates; now he contends against England; now
+he works in favor of General Jackson, who put down the nullification of
+South Carolina with a rough hand; then he opposes the general in his
+action against the Bank; now he contends for the Indians, then for the
+Negroes; now attacks Masonry, and then Free trade. He speaks in favor of
+claiming and holding "the whole of Oregon;" then against annexing Texas.
+
+But there is one sentiment which runs through all his life: an intense
+love of freedom for all men; one idea, the idea that each man has
+unalienable rights. These are what may be called the American sentiment,
+and the American idea; for they lie at the basis of American
+institutions, except the "patriarchal," and shine out in all our
+history--I should say, our early history. These two form the golden
+thread on which Mr. Adams's jewels are strung. Love of human freedom in
+its widest sense is the most marked and prominent thing in his
+character. This explains most of his actions. Studied with this in mind,
+his life is pretty consistent. This explains his love of the
+Constitution. He early saw the peculiarity of the American government;
+that it rested in theory on the natural rights of man, not on a compact,
+not on tradition, but on somewhat anterior to both, on the unalienable
+rights universal in man, and equal in each. He looked on the American
+Constitution as an attempt to organize these rights; resting, therefore,
+not on force, but natural law; not on power, but right. But with him the
+Constitution was not an idol; it was a means, not an end. He did more
+than expound it; he went back of the Constitution, to the Declaration of
+Independence, for the ideas of the Constitution; yes, back of the
+Declaration to Human Nature and the Laws of God, to legitimate these
+ideas. The Constitution is a compromise between those ideas and
+institutions and prejudices existing when it was made; not an idol, but
+a servant. He saw that the Constitution is "not the work of eternal
+justice, ruling through the people," but the work "of man; frail,
+fallen, imperfect man, following the dictates of his nature, and
+aspiring to be perfect."[12] Though a "constitutionalist," he did not
+worship the Constitution. He was much more than a "defender of the
+Constitution,"--a defender of Human Rights.
+
+Mr. Adams had this American sentiment and idea in an heroic degree.
+Perhaps no political man now living has expressed them so fully. With a
+man like him, not very genial or creative, having no great constructive
+skill, and not without a certain pugnacity in his character, this
+sentiment and idea would naturally develop themselves in a negative
+form, that of opposition to Wrong, more often than in the positive form
+of direct organization of the Right; would lead to criticism oftener
+than to creation. Especially would this be the case if other men were
+building up institutions in opposition to this idea. In him they
+actually take the form of what he called "The unalienable right of
+resistance to oppression." His life furnishes abundant instances of
+this. He thought the Indians were unjustly treated, cried out against
+the wrong; when President, endeavored to secure justice to the Creeks in
+Georgia, and got into collision with Governor Troup. He saw, or thought
+he saw, that England opposed the American idea, both in the new world
+and the old. In his zeal for freedom he sometimes forgot the great
+services of England in that same cause, and hated England, hated her
+with great intensity of hatred, hated her political policy, her
+monarchy, and her aristocracy, mocked at the madness of her king, for he
+thought England stood in the way of freedom.[13] Yet he loved the
+English name and the English blood, was "proud of being himself
+descended from that stock," thinking it worth noting, "that Chatham's
+language was his mother tongue, and Wolfe's great name compatriot with
+his own." He confessed no nation had done more for the cause of human
+improvement. He loved the Common Law of England, putting it far above
+the Roman Law, perhaps not without doing a little injustice to the
+latter.[14] The common law was a rude and barbarous code. But human
+liberty was there; a trial by jury was there; the habeas corpus was
+there. It was the law of men "regardful of human rights."
+
+This sentiment led him to defend the right of petition in the House of
+Representatives, as no other man had dared to do. He cared not whether
+it was the petition of a majority, or a minority; of men or women, free
+men or slaves. It might be a petition to remove him from a committee, to
+expel him from the House, a petition to dissolve the Union--he
+presented it none the less. To him there was but one nature in all, man
+or woman, bond or free, and that was human nature, the most sacred thing
+on earth. Each human child had unalienable rights, and though that child
+was a beggar or slave, had rights, which all the power in the world,
+bent into a single arm, could not destroy nor abate, though it might
+ravish away. This induced him to attempt to procure the right of
+suffrage for the colored citizens of the District of Columbia.
+
+This sentiment led him to oppose tyranny in the House of
+Representatives, the tyranny of the majority. In one of his juvenile
+essays, published in 1791, contending against a highly popular work, he
+opposed the theory that a State has the right to do what it pleases,
+declaring it had no right to do wrong.[15] In his old age he had not
+again to encounter the empty hypothesis of Thomas Paine, but the
+substantial enactment of the "Representatives" of the people of the
+United States. The hypothesis was trying to become a fact. The South had
+passed the infamous Gag-Law, which a symbolical man from New Hampshire
+had presented, though it originated with others.[16] By that law the
+mouth of the North was completely stopped in Congress, so that not one
+word could be said about the matter of slavery.
+
+The North was quite willing to have it stopped, for it did not care to
+speak against slavery, and the gag did not stop the mouth of the
+Northern purse. You may take away from the North its honor, if you can
+find it; may take away its rights; may imprison its free citizens in the
+jails of Louisiana and the Carolinas; yes, may invade the "Sacred soil
+of the North," and kidnap a man out of Boston itself, within sight of
+Faneuil Hall, and the North will not complain; will bear it with that
+patient shrug, waiting for yet further indignities. Only when the
+Northern purse is touched, is there an uproar. If the postmaster demands
+silver for letters, there is instant alarm; the repeal of a tariff
+rouses the feelings, and an embargo once drove the indignant North to
+the perilous edge of rebellion! Mr. Adams loved his dollars as well as
+most New England men; he looked out for their income as well; guarded as
+carefully against their outgo; though conscientiously upright in all his
+dealings, kind and hospitable, he has never been proved generous, and
+generosity is the commonest virtue of the North; is said to have been
+"close," if not mean. He loved his dollars as well as most men, but he
+loved justice more; honor more; freedom more; the Unalienable Rights of
+man far more.
+
+He looked on the Constitution as an instrument for the defence of the
+Rights of man. The government was to act as the people had told how.
+The Federal government was not sovereign; the State government was not
+sovereign;[17] neither was a court of ultimate appeal;--but the People
+was sovereign; had the right of Eminent Domain over Congress and the
+Constitution, and making that, had set limits to the government. He
+guarded therefore against all violation of the Constitution, as a wrong
+done to the people; he would not overstep its limits in a bad cause; not
+even in a good one. Did Mr. Jefferson obtain Louisiana by a confessed
+violation of the Constitution, Mr. Adams would oppose the purchase of
+Louisiana, and was one of the six senators who voted against it. Making
+laws for that Territory, he wished to extend the trial by jury to all
+criminal prosecutions, while the law limited that form of trial to
+capital offences. Before that Territory had a representative in
+Congress, the American government wished to collect a revenue there. Mr.
+Adams opposed that too. It was "assuming a dangerous power;" it was
+government without the consent of the governed, and therefore an unjust
+government. "All exercise of human authority must be under the
+limitation of right and wrong." All other power is despotic, and "in
+defiance of the laws of nature and of God."[18]
+
+This love of freedom led him to hate and oppose the tyranny of the
+strong over the weak, to hate it most in its worst form; to hate
+American Slavery, doubtless the most infamous form of that tyranny now
+known amongst the nations of Christendom, and perhaps the most
+disgraceful thing on earth. Mr. Adams called slavery a vessel of
+dishonor so base that it could not be named in the Constitution with
+decency. In 1805, he wished to lay a duty on the importation of slaves,
+and was one of five senators who voted to that effect. He saw the power
+of this institution--the power of money and the power of votes which it
+gives to a few men. He saw how dangerous it was to the Union; to
+American liberty, to the cause of man. He saw that it trod three
+millions of men down to the dust, counting souls but as cattle. He hated
+nothing as he hated this; fought against nothing so manfully. It was the
+lion in the pathway of freedom, which frightened almost all the
+politicians of the North and the East and the West, so that they forsook
+that path; a lion whose roar could wellnigh silence the forum and the
+bar, the pulpit and the press; a lion who rent the Constitution,
+trampled under foot the Declaration of Independence, and tore the Bible
+to pieces. Mr. Adams was ready to rouse up this lion, and then to beard
+him in his den. Hating slavery, of course he opposed whatever went to
+strengthen its power; opposed Mr. Atherton's Gag-law; opposed the
+annexation of Texas; opposed the Mexican war; and, wonderful to tell,
+actually voted against it, and never took back his vote.
+
+When Secretary of State, this same feeling led him to oppose conceding
+to the British the right of searching American vessels supposed to be
+concerned in the slave-trade, and when Representative to oppose the
+repeal of the law giving "protection" to American sailors. It appeared
+also in private intercourse with men. No matter what was a man's
+condition, Mr. Adams treated him as an equal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This devotion to freedom and the unalienable rights of man, was the most
+important work of his life. Compared with some other political men, he
+seems inconsistent, because he now opposes one evil, then its opposite
+evil. But his general course is in this direction, and, when viewed in
+respect to this idea, seems more consistent than that of Mr. Webster, or
+Calhoun, or Clay, when measured by any great principle. This appears in
+his earlier life. In 1802, he became a member of the Massachusetts
+Senate. The majority of the General Court were federalists. It was a
+time of intense political excitement, the second year of Mr. Jefferson's
+administration. The custom is well known--to take the whole of the
+Governor's Council from the party which has a majority in the General
+Court. On the 27th of May, 1802, Mr. Adams stood up for the rights of
+the minority. He wanted some anti-federalists in the Council of
+Governor Strong, and as Senator threw his first vote to secure that
+object. Such was the first legislative action of John Quincy Adams. In
+the House of Representatives, in 1831, the first thing he did was to
+present fifteen petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District
+of Columbia, though, from constitutional scruples, opposed to granting
+the petitions. The last public act of his life was this:--The question
+was before the House on giving medals to the men distinguished in the
+Mexican war; the minority opposing it wanted more time for debate; the
+previous question was moved, Mr. Adams voted for the last time,--voted
+"No," with unusual emphasis; the great loud No of a man going home to
+God full of "The unalienable right of resistance to oppression," its
+emphatic word on his dying lips. There were the beginning, the middle,
+and the end, all three in the same spirit, all in favor of mankind; a
+remarkable unity of action in his political drama.
+
+Somebody once asked him, What are the recognized principles of politics?
+Mr. Adams answered that there were none: the recognized precepts are bad
+ones, and so not principles. But, continued the inquirer, is not this a
+good one--To seek "The greatest good of the greatest number?" No, said
+he, that is the worst of all, for it looks specious while it is ruinous.
+What shall become of the minority, in that case? This is the only
+principle,--"To seek the greatest good of all."
+
+I do not say there were no exceptions to this devotion to freedom in a
+long life; there are some passages in his history which it is impossible
+to justify, and hard to excuse. In early life he was evidently ambitious
+of place, and rank, and political power. I must confess, it seems to me,
+at some times, he was not scrupulous enough about the means of attaining
+that place and power. He has been much censured for his vote in favor of
+the Embargo, in 1807. His vote, howsoever unwise, may easily have been
+an honest vote. To an impartial spectator at this day, perhaps it will
+be evidently so. His defence of it I cannot think an honest defence, for
+in that he mentions arguments as impelling him to his vote which could
+scarcely have been present to his mind at the time, and, if they were
+his arguments then, were certainly kept in silence--they did not appear
+in the debate,[19] they were not referred to in the President's
+message.[20]
+
+I am not to praise Mr. Adams simply because he is dead; what is wrong
+before is wrong after death. It is no merit to die; shall we tell lies
+about him because he is dead? No, the Egyptian people scrutinized and
+judged their kings after death--much more should we our fellow-citizens,
+intrusted with power to serve the State. "A lavish and undistinguishing
+eulogium is not praise." I know what coals of terrible fire lie under my
+feet, as I speak of this matter, and how thin and light is the coat of
+ashes deposited there in forty years; how easily they are blown away at
+the slightest breath of "Hartford Convention," or the "Embargo," and the
+old flame of political animosity blazes forth anew, while the hostile
+forms of "federalists" and "democrats" come back to light. I would not
+disquiet those awful shades, nor bring them up again. But a word must be
+said. The story of the embargo is well known: the President sent his
+message to the Senate recommending it, and accompanied with several
+documents. The message was read and assigned to a committee; the
+ordinary rule of business was suspended; the bill was reported by the
+committee; drafted, debated, engrossed, and completely passed through
+all its stages, the whole on the same day, in secret session, and in
+about four hours! Yet it was a bill that involved the whole commerce of
+the country, and prostrated that commerce, seriously affecting the
+welfare of hundreds of thousands of men. Eight hundred thousand tons of
+shipping were doomed to lie idle and rot in port. The message came on
+Friday. Some of the Senators wanted yet further information and more
+time for debate, at least for consideration,--till Monday. It could not
+be! Till Saturday, then. No; the bill must pass now, no man sleeping on
+that question. Mr. Adams was the most zealous for passing the bill. In
+that "debate," if such it can be called, while opposing a postponement
+for further information and reflection, he said, "The President has
+recommended the measure on his high responsibility; I would _not
+consider_, I would _not deliberate_; I would _act_. Doubtless the
+_President possesses such further information as will justify the
+measure_!"[21] To my mind, that is the worst act of his public life; I
+cannot justify it. I wish I could find some reasonable excuse for it.
+What had become of the "sovereignty of the people," the "unalienable
+right of resistance to oppression?" Would _not consider_; would _not
+deliberate_; would _act_ without doing either; leave it all to the "high
+responsibility" of the President, with a "doubtless" he has "further
+information" to justify the measure! It was a shame to say so; it would
+have disgraced a Senator in St. Petersburg. Why not have the "further
+information" laid before the Senate? What would Mr. Adams have said, if
+President Jackson, Tyler, or Polk, had sent such a message, and some
+Senator or Representative had counselled submissive action, without
+considering, without deliberation? With what appalling metaphors would
+he describe such a departure from the first duty of a statesman; how
+would the tempestuous eloquence of that old patriot shake the Hall of
+Congress till it rung again, and the nation looked up with indignation
+in its face! It is well known what Mr. Adams said in 1834, when Mr.
+Polk, in the House of Representatives, seemed over-laudatory of the
+President: "I shall never be disposed to interfere with any member who
+shall rise on this floor and pronounce a panegyric upon the chief
+magistrate.
+
+    'No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
+    And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
+    Where thrift may follow fawning.'"
+
+Yet the future of Mr. Polk was not so obvious in 1834, as the reward of
+Mr. Adams in 1808.
+
+This act is particularly glaring in Mr. Adams. The North often sends men
+to Washington who might have done it without any great inconsistency;
+men, too, not so remarkable for infirmity in the head, as for that less
+pardonable weakness in the knees and the neck; men that bend to power
+"right or wrong." Mr. Adams was not afflicted with that weakness, and so
+the more to be censured for this palpable betrayal of a trust so
+important. I wish I could find some excuse for it. He was forty years
+old; not very old, but old enough to know better. His defence made the
+matter worse. The Massachusetts Legislature disapproved of his conduct;
+chose another man to succeed him in the Senate. Then Mr. Adams resigned
+his seat, and soon after was sent minister to Russia, as he himself
+subsequently declared,[22] "in consequence of the support he had for
+years given to the measures of Mr. Jefferson's administration against
+Great Britain." But his father said of that mission of his son,
+"Aristides is banished because he is too just."[23] It is easy to judge
+of the temper of the times, when such words as those of the father
+could be said on such an occasion, and that by a man who had been
+President of the United States! When a famine occurs, disease appears in
+the most hideous forms; men go back to temporary barbarism. In times of
+political strife, such diseases appear of the intellectual and moral
+powers. No man who did not live in those times can fully understand the
+obliquity of mind and moral depravity which then displayed themselves
+amongst those otherwise without reproach. Says Mr. Adams himself,
+referring to that period, "Imagination in her wildest vagaries can
+scarcely conceive the transformation of temper, the obliquities of
+intellect, the perversions of moral principle, effected by junctures of
+nigh and general excitement." However, it must be confessed that this,
+though not the only instance of injustice, is the only case of servile
+compliance with the Executive to be found in the whole life of the man.
+It was a grievous fault, but grievously did he answer it; and if a long
+life of unfaltering resistance to every attempt at the assumption of
+power is fit atonement, then the expiation was abundantly made.
+
+About the same time, Mr. Adams was chairman of a committee of the
+Senate, appointed to consider the case of a Senator from Ohio. His
+conduct, on that occasion, has been the theme of violent attack, and
+defence as violent. To the calm spectator, at this day, his conduct
+seems unjustifiable, inconsistent with the counsels of justice, which,
+though moving with her "Pace of snail," looks always towards the right,
+and will not move out of her track, though the heavens fall.
+
+While Mr. Adams was President, Hayti became free; but he did not express
+any desire that the United States should acknowledge her independence,
+and receive her minister at Washington,--an African plenipotentiary. In
+his message,[24] he says, "There are circumstances that have hitherto
+forbidden the acknowledgment," and mentions "additional reasons for
+withholding that acknowledgment." In the instructions to the American
+functionary, sent to the celebrated Congress of Panama, it is said, the
+President "is not prepared now to say that Hayti ought to be recognized
+as an independent sovereign power;" he "does not think it would be
+proper at this time to recognize it as a new State." He was unwilling to
+consent to the independence of Cuba, for fear of an insurrection of her
+slaves, and the effect at home. The duty of the United States would be
+"To defend themselves against the contagion of such near and dangerous
+examples," that would "constrain them ... to employ all means necessary
+to their security." That is, the President would be constrained to put
+down the blacks in Cuba, who were exercising "The unalienable right of
+resistance to oppression," for fear the blacks in the United States
+would discover that they also were men, and had "Unalienable rights!"
+Had he forgotten the famous words, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience
+to God?" The defence of such language on such an occasion is, that Mr.
+Adams's eyes were not yet open to the evil of slavery. That is a good
+defence, if true. To me it seems a true defence. Even great men do not
+see every thing. In 1800, Fisher Ames, while delivering the eulogy on
+General Washington, censured even the British government, because, "In
+the wilds of Africa, it obstructed the commerce in slaves!" No man is so
+wise as mankind. It must be confessed that Mr. Adams, while Secretary of
+State, and again, while President, showed no hostility to the
+institution of slavery. His influence all went the other way. He would
+repress the freedom of the blacks, in the West Indies, lest American
+slavery should be disturbed, and its fetters broke; he would not
+acknowledge the independence of Hayti, he would urge Spain to make peace
+with her descendants, for the same reason--"not for those new
+republics," but lest the negroes in Cuba and Porto Rico should secure
+their freedom. He negotiated with England, and she paid the United
+States more than a million of dollars[25] for the fugitive slaves who
+took refuge under her flag during the late war. Mr. Adams had no
+scruples about receiving the money during his administration. An attempt
+was repeatedly made by his secretary, Mr. Clay, through Mr. Gallatin,
+and then through Mr. Barbour, to induce England to restore the "fugitive
+slaves who had taken refuge in the Canadian provinces," who, escaping
+from the area of freedom, seek the shelter of the British crown.[26]
+Nay, he negotiated a treaty with Mexico, which bound her to deliver up
+fugitive slaves, escaping from the United States--a treaty which the
+Mexican Congress refused to ratify! Should a great man have known
+better? Great men are not always wise. Afterwards, public attention was
+called to the matter; humble men gave lofty counsel; Mr. Adams used
+different language, and recommended different measures. But long before
+that, on the 7th of December, 1804, Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the
+Senate of the United States, offered a resolution, for the purpose of
+amending the Constitution, so as to apportion representatives, and
+direct taxes among the States, according to their free inhabitants.
+
+But there are other things in Mr. Adams's course and conduct, which
+deserve the censure of a good man. One was, the attempt to justify the
+conduct of England, in her late war with China, when she forced her
+opium upon the barbarians with the bayonet. To make out his case, he
+contended that "In the celestial empire ... the patriarchal system of
+Sir Robert Filmer, flourished in all its glory," and the Chinese claimed
+superior dignity over all others; they refused to hold equal and
+reciprocal commercial intercourse with other nations, and "It is time
+this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and the first
+principles of the laws of nations, should cease."[27] It is true, the
+Chinese were "barbarians;" true, the English carried thither the Bible
+and Christianity, at least their own Christianity. But, even by the law
+of nations, letting alone the law of nature, the barbarians had a right
+to repel both Bible and Christianity, when they came in a contraband
+shape--that of opium and cannon balls. To justify this outrage of the
+strong against the weak, he quite forgets his old antipathy to England,
+his devotion to human freedom, and the sovereignty of the people,
+calling the cause of England "a righteous cause."
+
+He defended the American claim to the whole of Oregon, up to 54° 40´.
+He did not so much undertake to make out a title to either, by the law
+of nature or of nations, but cut the matter short, and claimed the whole
+of Oregon, on the strength of the first chapter of Genesis. This was the
+argument: God gave mankind dominion over all the earth;[28] between
+Christian nations, the command of the Creator lays the foundation of all
+titles to land, of titles to territory, of titles to jurisdiction. Then
+in the Psalms,[29] God gives the "uttermost part of the earth for a
+possession" to the Messiah, as the representative of all mankind, who
+held the uttermost parts of the earth in chief. But the Pope, as head of
+the visible church, was the representative of Christ, and so, holding
+under him, had the right to give to any king or prelate, authority to
+subdue barbarous nations, possess their territory, and convert them to
+Christianity. In 1493, the Pope, in virtue of the above right, gave the
+American continent to the Spanish monarchs, who, in time, sold their
+title to the people of the United States. That title may be defective,
+as the Pope may not be the representative of Christ, and so the passage
+in the Psalms will not help the American claim, but then the United
+States will hold under the first clause in the Testament of God, that
+is, in Genesis. The claim of Great Britain is not valid, for she does
+not want the land for the purpose specified in that clause of the
+Testament, to "Replenish the earth and subdue it." She wants it, "That
+she may keep it open as a hunting-ground," while the United States want
+it, that it may grow into a great nation, and become a free and
+sovereign republic.[30]
+
+This strange hypothesis, it seems, lay at the bottom of his defence of
+the British in their invasion of China. It would have led him, if
+consistent, to claim also the greater part of Mexico. But, as he did not
+publicly declare his opinion on that matter, no more need be said
+concerning it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such was the most prominent idea in his history; such the departures
+from it. Let us look at other events in his life. While President, the
+most important object of his administration was the promotion of
+internal improvements, especially the internal communication between the
+States. For this purpose the government lent its aid in the construction
+of roads and canals, and a little more than four millions of dollars
+were devoted to this work in his administration. On the 4th of July,
+1828, he helped break ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio canal,
+thinking it an important event in his life. He then said there were
+three great steps in the progress of America. The first was the
+Declaration of Independence and the achievement thereof; the second, the
+union of the whole country under the Constitution; but the third was
+more arduous than both of the others: "It is," said he, "the adaptation
+of the powers, physical, moral, and intellectual, of the whole Union, to
+the improvement of its own condition; of its _moral_ and _political_
+condition, by wise and liberal institutions; by the cultivation of the
+understanding and the heart; by academies, schools, and learned
+institutions; by the pursuit and patronage of learning and the arts; of
+its _physical_ condition, by associated labor to improve the bounties
+and supply the deficiencies of nature; to stem the torrent in its
+course; to level the mountain with the plain; to disarm and fetter the
+raging surge of the ocean."[31] He faithfully adhered to these words in
+his administration.
+
+He was careful never to exceed the powers which the Constitution
+prescribed for him. He thought the acquisition of Louisiana was
+"accomplished by a flagrant violation of the Constitution,"[32] and
+himself guarded against such violations. He revered the God of Limits,
+who, in the Roman mythology, refused to give way or remove, even for
+Jupiter himself. No man was ever more conscientious on that ground. To
+him the Constitution meant something; his oath to keep it meant
+something.
+
+No great political event occurred in his administration; the questions
+which now vex the country had not arisen. There was no quarrel between
+freedom and slavery; no man in Congress ventured to denounce slavery as
+a crime; the African slave-trade was thought wrong, not the slavery
+which caused it. Party lines, obliterated under Mr. Monroe's
+administration, were viewed and marked with a good deal of care and
+exactness; but the old lines could not be wholly restored. Mr. Adams was
+not the President of a section of the country; not the President of a
+party, but of the nation. He favored no special interest of a class, to
+the injury of another class. He did not reward his friends, nor punish
+his foes; the party of the spoils, patent or latent at all times, got no
+spoils from him. He never debauched his country by the removal and
+appointment of officers. Had he done otherwise, done as all his
+successors have done, used his actual power to promote his own ambition,
+no doubt he might have been reëlected. But he could not stoop to manage
+men in that way. No doubt he desired a reëlection, and saw the method
+and means to effect that, but conscience said, "It is not right." He
+forbore, lost his election, and gained--we shall soon see what he
+gained.
+
+On the 19th of July, 1826, at a public dinner at Edgefield Court-house,
+South Carolina, Mr. McDuffie said, "Mr. Adams came into power upon
+principles utterly subversive of the republican system; substituting the
+worst species of aristocracy, that of speculating politicians and
+office-hunters, in the place of a sound and wholesome republican
+democracy." When Mr. Adams retired from office, he could remember, with
+the virtuous Athenian, that no man had put on mourning for him because
+unjustly deprived of his post. Was an office-holder or an office-wanter
+a political friend of Mr. Adams, that did not help him; a foe, that did
+not hinder. He looked only to the man's ability and integrity. I wish it
+was no praise to say these things; but it is praise I dare not apply to
+any other man since Washington. Mr. Adams once said, "There is no
+official act of the chief magistrate, however momentous, or however
+minute, but it should be traceable to a dictate of duty, pointing to the
+welfare of the people." That was his executive creed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a public servant, he had many qualities seldom united in the same
+person. He was simple, and unostentatious; he had none of the airs of a
+great man; seemed humble, modest, and retiring; caring much for the
+substance of manhood, he let the show take care of itself. He carried
+the simplicity of a plain New England man into the President's house,
+spending little in its decorations--about one fourth, it is said, of the
+amount of his successor. In his housekeeping, public or private, there
+was only one thing much to be boasted of and remarked upon: strange to
+say, that was the master of the house. He was never eclipsed by his own
+brass and mahogany. He had what are called democratic habits, and served
+himself in preference to being served by others. He treated all that
+were about him with a marked deference and courtesy, carrying his
+respect for human rights into the minutest details of common life.
+
+He was a model of diligence, though not, perhaps, very systematic. His
+State papers, prepared while he was Minister, Secretary, or Member of
+Congress, his numerous orations and speeches, though not always
+distinguished for that orderly arrangement of parts which is instinctive
+with minds of a high philosophical character, are yet astonishing for
+their number, and the wide learning they display. He was well acquainted
+with the classic and most modern languages; at home in their literature.
+He was surprisingly familiar with modern history; perhaps no political
+man was so thoroughly acquainted with the political history of America,
+and that of Christian Europe for the last two hundred years. He was
+widely read and profoundly skilled in all that relates to diplomacy, and
+to international law. He was fond of belles-lettres, and commented on
+Shakspeare more like a professor than a layman in that department. Few
+theologians in America, it is said, were so widely read in their
+peculiar lore as he. He had read much, remembered much, understood much.
+However, he seems to have paid little attention to physical science, and
+perhaps less to metaphysical. His speeches and his conversation, though
+neither brilliant, nor rich in ideas, astonished young men with an
+affluence of learning, which seemed marvellous in one all his life
+devoted to practical affairs. But this is a trifle: to achieve that,
+nothing is needed but health, diligence, memory, and a long life. Mr.
+Adams had all these requisites.
+
+He had higher qualities: he loved his country, perhaps no man more so;
+he had patriotism in an heroic degree, yet was not thereby blinded to
+humanity. He thought it a vital principle of human society, that each
+nation should contribute to the happiness of all; and, therefore, that
+no nation should "regulate its conduct by the exclusive or even the
+paramount consideration of its own interest."[33] Yet he loved his
+country, his whole country, and when she was in the wrong he told her
+so, because he loved her. This, said he, would be a good sentiment: "Our
+country! May she be always successful; but, whether successful or not,
+may she be always in the right." He saw the faults of America, saw the
+corruption of the American government. He did not make gain by this in
+private, but set an honest face against it.
+
+He was a conscientious man. This peculiarity is strongly marked in most
+of his life. He respected the limit between right and wrong. He did not
+think it unworthy of a statesman to refer to moral principles, to the
+absolutely right. I do not mean to say, that in his whole life there was
+no departure from the strict rule of duty. I have mentioned already some
+examples, but kept one more for this place: he pursued persons with a
+certain vindictiveness of spirit. I will not revive again the old
+quarrels, nor dig up his hard words, long ago consigned to oblivion; it
+would be unjust to the living. He was what is called a good hater. If he
+loved an idea, he seemed to hate the man who opposed it. He was not
+content with replying; he must also retort, though it manifestly
+weakened the force of the reply. In his attacks on persons he was
+sometimes unjust, violent, sharp, and vindictive; sometimes cruel, and
+even barbarous. Did he ever forgive an enemy? Every opponent was a foe,
+and he thrashed his foes with an iron hoof and winnowed them with a
+storm. The most awful specimens of invective which the language affords
+can be found in his words--bitter, revengeful, and unrelenting. I am
+sorry to say these things; it hurts my feelings to say them, yours not
+less to hear them. But it is not our fault they are true; it would be
+mine, if, knowing they were true, I did not on this occasion point them
+out in warning words. Mr. Adams says that Roger Williams was
+conscientious and contentious; it is equally true of himself. Perhaps
+Mr. Adams had little humor, but certainly a giant's wit; he used it
+tyrannously and like a giant. Wit has its place in debate; in
+controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive. After
+one has beaten the single barley-corn of good sense out of a whole
+wagon-load of chaff, the easiest way to be rid of the rubbish is to burn
+it up with the lightning of wit; the danger is, that the burning should
+begin before the separation is made; that the fire consume the good and
+bad indifferently. When argument is edged and pointed with wit, it is
+doubly effective; but when that edge is jagged with ill-will, poisoned,
+too, with personal spleen, then it becomes a weapon unworthy of a man.
+Sometimes Mr. Adams used his wit as fairly as his wisdom; and bags of
+wind, on which Hercules might have stamped and beaten a twelvemonth, but
+in vain--at a single puncture from that keen wit gave up their ghost and
+flattened into nothing; a vanity to all men, but a vexation of spirit to
+him who had blown them so full of his own soul. But sometimes, yes,
+often, Mr. Adams's wit performs a different part: it sits as a judge,
+unjust and unforgiving, "often deciding wrong, and when right from
+wrong motives." It was the small dagger with which he smote the fallen
+foe. It is a poor praise for a famous man, churchman, or statesman, to
+beat a blackguard with his own weapons. It must be confessed, that in
+controversy, Mr. Adams's arrows were sharp and deftly delivered; but
+they were often barbed, and sometimes poisoned.
+
+True, he encountered more political opposition than any man in the
+nation. For more than forty years he has never been without bitter and
+unrelenting enemies, public and private. No man in America, perhaps,
+ever had such provocations; surely, none had ever such opportunities to
+reply without retorting. How much better would it have been, if, at the
+end of that long life and fifty years' war, he could say he had never
+wasted a shot; had never sinned with his lips, nor once feathered his
+public arrow with private spleen! Wise as he was, and old, he never
+learned that for undeserved calumny, for personal insult and abuse,
+there is one answer, Christian, manly, and irrefutable--the dignity of
+silence. A just man can afford to wait till the storm of abuse shall
+spend its rage and vanish under the rainbow, which itself furnishes and
+leaves behind. The retorting speech of such a man may be silvern or
+iron; his silence, victorious and golden.
+
+It is easy to censure Mr. Adams for such intemperance of speech and
+persecution of persons; unfortunately, too easy to furnish other
+examples of both. We know what he spoke--God only what he repressed.
+Who knows out of how deep a fulness of indignation such torrents gush?
+Tried by the standard of other men, his fellow politicians of America
+and Europe, he was no worse than they, only abler.[34] The mouse and the
+fox have as great a proportionate anger as the lion, though the one is
+ridiculous and the other terrific. Mr. Adams must be tried by his own
+standard, the rule of right, the standard of conscience and of
+Christianity; then surely he did wrong. For such a man the vulgarity of
+the offence is no excuse.
+
+With this and the other exceptions he appears a remarkably conscientious
+man in his public life. He may often have erred, as all men, without
+violating his own sense of right.
+
+While he was President he would not consent to any "public manifestation
+of honors personal to himself." He would not accept a present, for his
+Bible taught him what experience continually enforces, that a gift
+blinds the eyes of wise men and perverts their judgment. While at St.
+Petersburg, the Russian Minister of the Interior, then an old man, felt
+uneasy on account of the presents accepted during his official service,
+and, calculating the value of all gifts received, returned it to the
+imperial treasury. This fact made an impression on Mr. Adams, and led
+to a resolution which he faithfully kept. When a bookseller sent him a
+costly Bible, he kept the book, but paid its full value. No bribes, no
+pensions in any form, ever soiled justice in his hands. He would never
+be indebted to any body of men, lest they might afterwards sway him from
+the right path.
+
+Because he was a conscientious man he would never be the servant of a
+party, and never was. It was of great advantage to him that he was
+absent while the two chief parties were forming in the United States. He
+came into the Massachusetts Legislature as a federalist, but some
+anti-federalists also voted for him. His first vote showed he was not
+limited by the common principles of a party. He was chosen to the Senate
+of the United States, not by a party vote. At first he acted mainly with
+the federalists, though not always voting with his colleague; but in
+1807 acted with the administration in the matter of the Embargo. This
+was the eventful crisis of his life; this change in his politics, while
+it gave him station and political power, yet brought upon him the
+indignation of his former friends; it has never been forgotten nor
+forgiven. Be the outward occasion and inward motive what they may, this
+led to the sundering of friendships long cherished and deservedly dear;
+it produced the most bitter experience of his life. Political men would
+naturally undertake to judge his counsel by its probable and obvious
+consequences, the favor of the Executive, rather than attribute it to
+any latent motive of patriotism in his heart.
+
+While at the head of the nation he would not be the President of a
+party, but of the people; when he became a representative in Congress he
+was not the delegate of a party, but of justice and the eternal right,
+giving his constituents an assurance that he would hold himself in
+allegiance to no party, national or political. He has often been accused
+of hatred to the South; I can find no trace of it. "I entered Congress,"
+says he, "without one sentiment of discrimination between the North and
+South." At first he acted with Mr. Jackson, to arrest the progress of
+nullification, for the democracy of South Carolina was putting in
+practice what the federalists of New England have so often been alleged
+to have held in theory, and condemned on that allegation. Here he was
+consistent. In 1834, he approved the spirit of the same President in
+demanding justice of France; but afterwards he did not hesitate to
+oppose, and perhaps abuse him.
+
+He had a high reverence for religion; none of our public men more. He
+aimed to be a Christian man. Signs of this have often been sought in his
+habits of church-going, of reading the Bible; they may be found rather
+in the general rectitude of his life, public and private, and in the
+high motives which swayed him, in his opposition to slavery, in the
+self-denial which cost him his reëlection. In his public acts he seems
+animated by the thought that he stood in the presence of God. Though
+rather unphilosophical in his theology, resting to a great degree on the
+authority of tradition and the letter, and attaching much value to forms
+and times, he yet saw the peculiar excellence of Christianity,--that it
+recognized "Love as the paramount and transcendent law of human nature."
+I do not say that his life indicates the attainment of a complete
+religious repose, but that he earnestly and continually labored to
+achieve that. You shall find few statesmen, few men, who act with a more
+continual and obvious reference to religion as a motive, as a guide, as
+a comfort. He was, however, no sectarian. His devotion to freedom
+appeared, where it seldom appears, in his notions about religion. He
+thought for himself, and had a theology of his own, rather
+old-fashioned, it is true, and not very philosophical or consistent, it
+may be, and in that he was not very singular, but he allowed others to
+think also for themselves, and have a theology of their own. Mr. Adams
+was a Unitarian. It is no great merit to be a Unitarian, or a Calvinist,
+or a Catholic, perhaps no more merit to be one than the other. But he
+was not ashamed of his belief when Unitarianism was little, despised,
+mocked at, and called "Infidelity" on all sides. When the Unitarian
+church at Washington, a small and feeble body, met for worship in an
+upper room--not large, but obscure, over a public bathing-house--John
+Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State and expecting to be President, came
+regularly to worship with them. It was not fashionable; it was hardly
+respectable, for the Unitarians were not then, as now, numerous and
+rich: but he went and worshipped. It was no merit to think with any
+sect, it was a great merit to dare be true to his convictions. In his
+theology, as in politics, he feared not to stand in a minority. If there
+ever was an American who loved the praise of God more than the praise of
+men, I believe Mr. Adams was one.
+
+His devotion to freedom, his love of his country, his conscientiousness,
+his religion, are four things strong and noticeable in his character.
+You shall look long amongst our famous men before you find his equal in
+these things.[35]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Somebody says, no man ever used all his intellectual faculties as far
+as possible. If any man is an exception to this rule, it is Mr. Adams.
+He was temperate and diligent; industrious almost to a fault, though not
+orderly or systematic. His diplomatic letters, his orations, his reports
+and speeches, all indicate wide learning, the fruit of the most
+remarkable diligence. The attainments of a well-bred scholar are not
+often found in the American Congress, or the President's house. Yet he
+never gives proof that he had the mind of a great man. In his special
+department of politics he does not appear as a master. He has no great
+ideas with which to solve the riddles of commerce and finance; has done
+little to settle the commercial problems of the world,--for that work
+there is needed not only a retrospective acquaintance with the habits
+and history of men, but the foresight which comes from a knowledge of
+the nature of things and of man. His chief intellectual excellence seems
+to have been memory; his great moral merit, a conscientious and firm
+honesty; his practical strength lay in his diligence. His counsels seem
+almost always to have come from a knowledge of human history, seldom to
+have been prompted by a knowledge of the nature of man. Hence he was a
+critic of the past, or an administrator of the present, rather than a
+prophetic guide for the future. He had many facts and precedents, but
+few ideas. Few examples of great political foresight can be quoted from
+his life; and therein, to his honor be it spoken, his heart seems to
+have out-travelled his head. The public affairs of the United States
+seem generally to be conducted by many men of moderate abilities, rather
+than by a few men of great genius for politics.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Adams wrote much. Some of his works are remarkable for their beauty,
+for the graceful proportions of their style, and the felicity of their
+decoration. Such are his celebrated Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory,
+which are sufficiently learned and sagacious, not very philosophical,
+but written in an agreeable style, and at the present day not wholly
+without value. His review of the works of Fisher Ames, I speak only of
+the rhetoric, is, perhaps, the finest of his compositions. Some of his
+productions are disorderly, ill-compacted, without "joints or
+contexture," and homely to a fault: this oration is a growth out of a
+central thought, marked by an internal harmony; that, a composition, a
+piece of carpentry distinguished by only an outward symmetry of members;
+others are neither growth nor composition, only a mass of materials
+huddled and lumped together. Most of his later productions, with the
+exception of his congressional speeches, are hard, cold, and unfinished
+performances, with little order in the thoughts, and less beauty in the
+expression. His extemporaneous speeches have more of both; they are
+better finished than his studied orations. He could judge and speak
+with fury, though he wrote with phlegm. His illustrations are usually
+drawn from literature, not from nature or human life; his language is
+commonly cold, derived from the Roman stream which has been filtered
+through books, rather than from the deep and original well of our Saxon
+home. His published letters are compact, written in a cold style,
+without playfulness or wit, with no elegance, and though mostly business
+letters, they are not remarkable for strength or distinctness. His
+diligence appears in verse as well as prose. He wrote much that rhymed
+tolerably; little that was poetical. The same absence of nature, the
+same coldness and lack of inspiration, mark his poetry and prose. But in
+all that he wrote, with the exceptions mentioned above, though you miss
+the genial warmth, the lofty thought, the mind that attracts, embraces,
+warms, and inspires the reader, you find always a spirit of humanity, of
+justice, and love to God.
+
+Mr. Adams was seldom eloquent. Eloquence is no great gift. It has its
+place among subordinate powers, not among the chief. Alas for the
+statesman or preacher who has only that to save the State withal!
+Washington had none of it, yet how he ruled the land! No man in America
+has ever had a political influence so wide and permanent as Mr.
+Jefferson; yet he was a very indifferent writer, and never made a speech
+of any value. The acts of Washington, the ideas of Jefferson, made
+eloquence superfluous. True, it has its value: if a man have at command
+the electricity of truth, justice, love, the sentiments and great ideas
+thereof, it is a good thing to be able with Olympian hand to condense
+that electric fire into bolted eloquence; to thunder and lighten in the
+sky. But if a man have that electric truth, it matters little whether it
+is Moses that speaks, or only Aaron; whether or not Paul's bodily
+presence be weak and his speech contemptible: it is Moses' thought which
+thunders and lightens out of Sinai; it is Paul's idea that is powerful
+and builds up the church. Of true eloquence, the best thoughts put in
+the best words, and uttered in the best form, Mr. Adams had little, and
+that appeared mainly in the latter part of his life. Hundreds have more.
+What passes for eloquence is common in America, where the public mouth
+is always a-going. His early orations are poor in their substance and
+faulty in their form. His ability as an orator developed late; no proofs
+of it appear before he entered the House of Representatives, at a good
+old age. In his manner of speaking there was little dignity and no
+grace, though sometimes there was a terrible energy and fire. He was
+often a powerful speaker--by his facts and figures, by his knowledge,
+his fame, his age, and his position, but most of all by his independent
+character. He spoke worthily of great men, of Madison or Lafayette,
+kindling with his theme, and laying aside all littleness of a party.
+However, he was most earnest and most eloquent not when he stood up the
+champion of a neglected truth, not when he dwelt on great men now
+venerable to us all, but when he gathered his strength to attack a foe.
+Incensed, his sarcasm was terrific; colossal vanity aspiring to be a
+Ghenghis Khan, at the touch of that Ithuriel spear shrank to the
+dimensions of Tom Thumb. His invective is his masterpiece of oratoric
+skill. It is sad to say this, and to remember, that the greatest works
+of ancient or of modern rhetoric, from the thundering Philippics of
+Demosthenes down to the sarcastic and crazy rattle of Lord Brougham, are
+all of the same character, are efforts against a personal foe! Men find
+hitherto the ablest acts and speech in the same cause,--not positive and
+creating, but critical and combative,--in war.
+
+If Mr. Adams had died in 1829, he would have been remembered for awhile
+as a learned man; as an able diplomatist, who had served his country
+faithfully at home and abroad; as a President spotless and
+incorruptible, but not as a very important personage in American
+history. His mark would have been faint and soon effaced from the sands
+of time. But the last period of his life was the noblest. He had worn
+all the official honors which the nation could bestow; he sought the
+greater honor of serving that nation, who had now no added boon to give.
+All that he had done as Minister abroad, as Senator, as Secretary, and
+President, is little compared with what he did in the House of
+Representatives; and while he stood there, with nothing to hope, with
+nothing to fear, the hand of Justice wrote his name high up on the walls
+of his country. It was surprising to see at his first attendance there,
+men who, while he was President, had been the loudest to call out
+"Coalition, Bargain, Intrigue, Corruption," come forward and express the
+involuntary confidence they felt in his wisdom and integrity, and their
+fear, actual though baseless, that his withdrawal from the Committee on
+Manufactures would "endanger the very Union itself."[36] Great questions
+soon came up: nullification was speedily disposed of; the Bank and the
+tariff got ended or compromised, but slavery lay in the consciousness of
+the nation, like the one dear but appalling sin in a man's heart. Some
+wished to be rid of it, northern men and southern men. It would come up;
+to justify that, or excuse it, the American sentiment and idea must be
+denied and rejected utterly; the South, who had long known the charms of
+Bathsheba, was ready for her sake to make way with Uriah himself. To
+remove that monstrous evil, gradually but totally, and restore unity to
+the nation, would require a greater change than the adoption of the
+Constitution. To keep slavery out of sight, yet in existence,
+unjustified, unexcused, unrepented of, a contradiction in the national
+consciousness, a political and deadly sin, the sin against the Holy
+Spirit of American Liberty, known but not confessed, the public secret
+of the people--that would lead to suppressing petitions, suppressing
+debate in Congress and out of Congress, to silencing the pulpit, the
+press, and the people.
+
+Under these circumstances, Mr. Adams went to Congress, an old man, well
+known on both sides the water, the presidential laurels on his brow,
+independent and fearless, expecting no reward from men for services
+however great. In respect to the subject of slavery, he had no ideas in
+advance of the nation; he was far behind the foremost men. He
+"deprecated all discussion of slavery or its abolition, in the House,
+and gave no countenance to petitions for the abolition of slavery in the
+District of Columbia or the territories." However, he acquired new ideas
+as he went on, and became the congressional leader in the great movement
+of the American mind towards universal freedom.
+
+Here he stood as the champion of human rights; here he fought, and with
+all his might. In 1836, by the celebrated resolution, forbidding debate
+on the subject of slavery, the South drove the North to the wall, nailed
+it there into shameful silence. A "Northern man with Southern
+principles," before entering the President's chair, declared, that if
+Congress should pass a law to abolish slavery in the District of
+Columbia, he would exercise his veto to prevent the law.[37] Mr. Adams
+stood up manfully, sometimes almost alone, and contended for freedom of
+speech. Did obstinate men of the North send petitions relative to
+slavery, asking for its abolition in the District or elsewhere? Mr.
+Adams was ready to present the petitions. Did women petition? It made no
+difference with him. Did slaves petition? He stood up there to defend
+their right to be heard. The South had overcome many an obstacle, but
+that one fearless soul would not bend, and could not be broken. Spite of
+rules of order, he contrived to bring the matter perpetually before
+Congress, and sometimes to read the most offensive parts of the
+petitions. When Arkansas was made a State, he endeavored to abolish
+slavery in its domain; he sought to establish international relations
+with Hayti, and to secure the right of suffrage for the colored citizens
+of the District of Columbia. The laws which forbid blacks to vote in the
+Northern States he held "in utter abhorrence."
+
+He saw from afar the plots of southern politicians, plots for extending
+the area of slavery, for narrowing the area of freedom, and exposed
+those plots. You all remember the tumult it excited when he rose in his
+place holding a petition from slaves; that the American Congress was
+thrown into long and disgraceful confusion. You cannot have forgotten
+the uproar which followed his presenting a petition to dissolve the
+Union![38] I know few speeches more noble and manly than his on the
+right of petition,--occasioned by that celebrated attempt to stifle
+debate, and on the annexation of Texas. Some proposed to censure him,
+some clamored, "expel him," some cried out, "burn the petitions!" and
+"him with them," screamed yet others. Some threatened to have him
+indicted by the grand jury of the district, "or be made amenable to
+_another tribunal_," hoping to see "an incendiary brought to condign
+punishment." "My life on it," said a southern legislator, "if he
+presents that petition from slaves, we shall yet see him within the
+walls of the penitentiary." Some in secret threatened to assassinate him
+in the streets. They mistook their man; with justice on his side he did
+"not fear all the grand juries in the universe." He would not curl nor
+cringe, but snorted his defiance in their very face. In front of
+ridicule, of desertion, obloquy, rage, and brutal threats, stood up that
+old man, bald and audacious, and the chafed rock of Cohasset stands not
+firmer mid the yesty waves, nor more triumphant spurns back into the
+ocean's face the broken billows of the storm. That New England knee bent
+only before his God. That unpretending man--the whole power of the
+nation could not move him from his post.
+
+Men threatened to increase the slave power. Said one of the champions of
+slavery with prophetic speech, but fatal as Cassandra's in the classic
+tale, Americans "would come up in thousands to plant the lone star of
+the Texan banner on the Mexican capital.... The boundless wealth of
+captured towns and rifled churches, and a lazy, vicious, and luxurious
+priesthood, would soon enable Texas to pay her soldiery and redeem her
+State debt, and push her victorious arms to the very shores of the
+Pacific. And would not all this extend the bounds of slavery? Yes, the
+result would be, that before another quarter of a century the extension
+of slavery would not stop short of the Western ocean." Against this
+danger Mr. Adams armed himself, and fought in the holiest cause--the
+cause of human rights.
+
+I know few things in modern times so grand as that old man standing
+there in the House of Representatives, the compeer of Washington, a man
+who had borne himself proudly in kings' courts, early doing service in
+high places, where honor may be won; a man who had filled the highest
+office in any nation's gift; a President's son, himself a President,
+standing there the champion of the neediest of the oppressed: the
+conquering cause pleased others; him only, the cause of the conquered.
+Had he once been servile to the hands that wielded power? No thunderbolt
+can scare him now! Did he once make a treaty and bind Mexico to bewray
+the wandering fugitive who took his life in his hand and fled from the
+talons of the American eagle? Now he would go to the stake sooner than
+tolerate such a deed! When he went to the Supreme Court, after an
+absence of thirty years, and arose to defend a body of friendless
+negroes torn from their home and most unjustly held in thrall; when he
+asked the judges to excuse him at once both for the trembling faults of
+age and the inexperience of youth, the man having labored so long
+elsewhere that he had forgotten the rules of court; when he summed up
+the conclusion of the whole matter, and brought before those judicial
+but yet moistening eyes the great men whom he had once met there--Chase,
+Cushing, Martin, Livingston, and Marshall himself; and while he
+remembered them that were "gone, gone, all gone," remembered also the
+Eternal Justice that is never gone,--why the sight was sublime. It was
+not an old patrician of Rome who had been consul, dictator, coming out
+of his honored retirement at the Senate's call, to stand in the forum to
+levy new armies, marshal them to victory afresh, and gain thereby new
+laurels for his brow;--but it was a plain citizen of America, who had
+held an office far greater than that of consul, king, or dictator, his
+hand reddened by no man's blood, expecting no honors, but coming in the
+name of Justice to plead for the slave, for the poor barbarian negro of
+Africa, for Cinque and Grabbo, for their deeds comparing them to
+Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose classic memory made each bosom thrill.
+That was worth all his honors,--it was worth while to live fourscore
+years for that.
+
+When he stood in the House of Representatives, the champion of the
+rights of a minority, of the rights of man, he stood colossal. Frederick
+the Great seems doubly so, when, single-handed, "that son of the Dukes
+of Brandenburg" contended against Austria, France, England, Russia, kept
+them all at bay, divided by his skill, and conquered by his might.
+Surely he seems great, when measured merely by his deeds. But, in
+comparison, Frederick the Great seems Frederick the little: for Adams
+fought not for a kingdom, nor for fame, but for Justice and the Eternal
+Right; fought, too, with weapons tempered in a heavenly stream![39]
+
+He had his reward. Who ever missed it? From mythological Cain, who slew
+his brother, down to Judas Iscariot, and Aaron Burr; from Jesus of
+Nazareth, down to the least man that dies or lives--who ever lost his
+reward? None. No; not one. Within the wicked heart there dwells the
+avenger, with unseen hands, to adjust the cord, to poison the fatal
+bowl. In the impenetrable citadel of a good man's consciousness, unseen
+by mortal eyes, there stands the palladium of justice, radiant with
+celestial light; mortal hands may make and mar,--this they can mar not,
+no more than they can make. Things about the man can others build up or
+destroy; but no foe, no tyrant, no assassin, can ever steal the man out
+of the man. Who would not have the consciousness of being right, even of
+trying to be right, though affronted by a whole world, rather than
+conscious of being wrong, and hollow, and false, have all the honors of
+a nation on his head? Of late years, no party stood up for Mr. Adams,
+"The madman of Massachusetts," as they called him, on the floor of
+Congress; but he knew that he had, and in his old age, done one
+work,--he had contended for the unalienable rights of man, done it
+faithfully. The government of God is invisible, His justice the more
+certain,--and by that Mr. Adams had his abundant reward.
+
+But he had his poorer and outward rewards, negative and positive. For
+his zeal in behalf of freedom he was called "a monarchist in disguise,"
+"an alien to the true interests of his country," "a traitor." A
+slaveholder from Kentucky published to his constituents that he "was
+sincerely desirous to check that man, for if he could be removed from
+the councils of the nation, or silenced upon the exasperating subject to
+which he had devoted himself, none other, I believe, could be found
+hardy enough or bad enough to fill his place." It was worth something to
+have an enemy speak such praise as that: but the slaveholder was wrong
+in his conjecture; the North has yet other sons not less hardy, not more
+likely to be silenced. Still more praise of a similar sort:--at a fourth
+of July dinner at Walterborough, in South Carolina, this sentiment was
+proposed and responded to with nine cheers: "May we never want a
+democrat to trip up the heels of a federalist, or a hangman to prepare a
+halter for John Quincy Adams." Considering what he had done and whence
+those rewards proceeded, that was honor enough for a yet greater man.
+
+Let me turn to things more grateful. Mr. Adams, through lack of genial
+qualities, had few personal friends, yet from good men throughout the
+North there went up a hearty thanksgiving for his manly independence,
+and prayers for his success. Brave men forgot their old prejudices,
+forgot the "Embargo," forgot the "Hartford Convention," forgot all the
+hard things which he had ever said, forgot his words in the Senate,
+forgot their disappointments, and said--"For this our hearts shall honor
+thee, thou brave old man!" In 1843, when, for the first time, he visited
+the West, to assist at the foundation of a scientific institution, all
+the West rose up to do him reverence. He did not go out to seek honors,
+they came to seek him. 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 honor
+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!
+
+You all remember the last time he was at any public meeting in this
+city. A man had been kidnapped in Boston, kidnapped at noon-day, "on the
+high road between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy," and carried off to be a
+slave! New England hands had seized their brother, sold him into bondage
+for ever, and his children after him. In the presence of slavery, as of
+arms, the laws are silent,--not always men. Then it appears who are men,
+who not! A meeting was called to talk the matter over, in a plain way,
+and look in one another's faces. Who was fit to preside in such a case?
+That old man sat in the chair in Faneuil Hall; above him was the image
+of his father, and his own; around him were Hancock and the other
+Adams,--Washington, greatest of all; before him were the men and women
+of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave;
+the roof of the old Cradle of Liberty spanned over them all. Forty years
+before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting
+called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently
+impressed by the British from an American ship of war, the unlucky
+Chesapeake; some of you remember that event. Now, an old man, clothed
+with half a century of honors, he sits in the same hall, to preside over
+a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave; a greater
+outrage--alas, not done by a hostile, not by an alien hand! One was the
+first meeting of citizens he ever presided over, the other was the last;
+both for the same object--the defence of the Eternal Right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But I would not weary you. His death was noble; fit ending for such a
+life. He was an old man, the last that had held a diplomatic office
+under Washington. He had uttered his oracles; had done his work. The
+highest honors of the nation he had worthily worn; but, as his townsmen
+tell us,--caring little for the President, and much for the man,--that
+was very little in comparison with his character. The good and ill of
+the human cup he had tasted, and plentifully, too, as son, husband,
+father. He had borne his testimony for freedom and the rights of
+mankind; he had stood in Congress almost alone; with a few gallant men
+had gone down to the battlefield, and if victory escaped him, it was
+because night came on.
+
+He saw others enter the field in good heart, to stand in the imminent
+deadly breach; he lived long enough for his own welfare, for his own
+ambition; long enough to see the seal broken,--and then, this aged
+Simeon, joyful in the consolation, bowed his head and went home in
+peace. His feet were not hurt with fetters; he died with his armor on;
+died like a Senator in the capitol of the nation; died like an American,
+in the service of his country; died like a Christian, full of
+immortality; died like a man, fearless and free!
+
+You will ask, What was the secret of his strength? Whence did he gain
+such power to stand erect where others so often cringed and crouched low
+to the ground? It is plain to see: he looked beyond time, beyond men;
+looked to the eternal God, and fearing Him forgot all other fear. Some
+of his failings he knew to be such, and struggled with them though he
+did not overcome. A man, not over-modest, once asked him what he most of
+all lamented in his life, and he replied, "My impetuous temper and
+vituperative speech; that I have not always returned good for evil, but
+in the madness of my blood have said things that I am ashamed of before
+my God!" As the world goes, it needed some greatness to say that.
+
+When he was a boy, his mother, a still woman, and capable, deep-hearted,
+and pious, took great pains with his culture; most of all with his
+religious culture. When, at the age of ten, he was about to leave home
+for years of absence in another land, she took him aside to warn him of
+temptations which he could not then understand. She bade him remember
+religion and his God--his secret, silent prayer. Often in his day there
+came the earthquake of party strife; the fire, the storm, and the
+whirlwind of passion; he listened--and God was not there; but there
+came, too, the remembrance of his mother's whispered words; God came in
+that memory, and earthquake and storm, the fire and the whirlwind were
+powerless, at last, before that still small voice. Beautifully did she
+write to her boy of ten, "Great learning and superior abilities will be
+of little value ... unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are
+added to them. Remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all
+your words and your actions." "Dear as you are to me," says this more
+than Spartan, this Christian mother, "Dear as you are to me, I would
+much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have
+crossed, or that any untimely death cross you in your infant years,
+than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child. Let your
+observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of
+domination and power--the parents of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism.
+May you be led to an imitation of that disinterested patriotism and that
+noble love of your country, which will teach you to despise wealth,
+titles, pomp, and equipage, as mere external advantages, which cannot
+add to the internal excellence of your mind, or compensate for the want
+of integrity and virtue." She tells him in a letter, that her father, a
+plain New England clergyman, of Braintree, who had just died, "left you
+a legacy more valuable than gold or silver; he left you his blessing,
+and his prayers that you might become a useful citizen, a guardian of
+the laws, liberty, and religion of your country.... Lay this bequest up
+in your memory and practise upon it; believe me, you will find it a
+treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy."
+
+If a child have such a mother, there is no wonder why he stood fearless,
+and bore a charmed life which no opposition could tame down. I wonder
+more that one so born and by such a mother bred, could ever once bend a
+servile knee; could ever indulge that fierce and dreadful hate; could
+ever stoop to sully those hands which hers had joined in prayer. It ill
+accords with teachings like her own. I wonder that he could ever have
+refused to "deliberate." Religion is a quality that makes a man
+independent; disappointment will not render such an one sour, nor
+oppression drive him mad, nor elevation bewilder; power will not dazzle,
+nor gold corrupt; no threat can silence and no fear subdue.
+
+There are men enough born with greater abilities than Mr. Adams, men
+enough in New England, in all the walks of man. But how many are there
+in political life who use their gifts so diligently, with such
+conscience, such fearless deference to God?--nay, tell us one. I have
+not spared his faults; I am no eulogist, to paint a man with
+undiscriminating praise. Let his follies warn us, while his virtues
+guide. But look on all his faults, and then compare him with our famous
+men of the North or the South; with the great whigs or the great
+democrats. Ask which was the purest man, the most patriotic, the most
+honest; which did his nation the smallest harm and the greatest good;
+which for his country and his kind denied himself the most. Shall I
+examine their lives, public and private, strip them bare and lay them
+down beside his life, and ask which, after all, has the least of blemish
+and the most of beauty? Nay, that is not for me to do or to attempt.
+
+In one thing he surpassed most men,--he grew more liberal the more he
+grew old, ripening and mellowing, too, with age. After he was seventy
+years old, he welcomed new ideas, kept his mind vigorous, and never
+fell into that crabbed admiration of past times and buried institutions,
+which is the palsy of so many a man, and which makes old age nothing but
+a pity, and gray hairs provocative of tears. This is the more remarkable
+in a man of his habitual reverence for the past, in one who judged
+oftener by the history than by the nature of man.
+
+Times will come when men shall look to that vacant seat. But the thunder
+is silent, the lightning gone; other men must take his place and fill it
+as they can. Let us not mourn that he has gone from us; let us remember
+what was evil in him, but only to be warned of ambition, of party
+strife, to love more that large charity which forgives an enemy, and,
+through good and ill, contends for mankind. Let us be thankful for the
+good he has said and done, be guided by it and blessed. There is a
+certain affluence of intellectual power granted to some men, which
+provokes admiration for a time, let the man of myriad gifts use his
+talent as he may. Such merely cubic greatness of mind is matter of
+astonishment rather than a fit subject for esteem and praise. Of that,
+Mr. Adams had little, as so many of his contemporaries had more. In him
+what most commands respect is, his independence, his love of justice, of
+his country and his kind. No son of New England has been ever so
+distinguished in political life. But it is no great thing to be
+President of the United States; some men it only makes ridiculous. A
+worm on a steeple's top is nothing but a worm, no more able to fly than
+while creeping in congenial mud; a mountain needs no steeple to lift its
+head and show the world what is great and high. The world obeys its
+great men, stand where they may.
+
+After all, this must be the greatest praise of Mr. Adams: In private he
+corrupted no man nor woman; as a politician he never debauched the
+public morals of his country, nor used public power for any private end;
+in public and private he lived clean and above board; he taught a
+fearless love of truth and the right, both by word and deed. I wish I
+could add, that was a small praise. But as the times go, as our famous
+men are, it is a very great fame, and there are few competitors for such
+renown; I must leave him alone in that glory. Doubtless, as he looked
+back on his long career, his whole life, motives as well as actions,
+must have seemed covered with imperfections. I will seek no further to
+disclose his merits, or "draw his frailties from their dead abode."
+
+He has passed on, where superior gifts and opportunities avail not, nor
+his long life, nor his high station, nor his wide spread fame; where
+enemies cease from troubling, and the flattering tongue also is still.
+Wealth, honor, fame, forsake him at the grave's mouth. It is only the
+living soul, sullied or clean, which the last angel bears off in his
+arms to that world where many that seem first shall be last, and the
+last first; but where justice shall be lovingly done to the great man
+full of power and wisdom who rules the State, and the feeblest slave
+whom oppression chains down in ignorance and vice--done by the
+all-seeing Father of both President and slave, who loves both with equal
+love. The venerable man is gone home. He shall have his praise. But who
+shall speak it worthily? Mean men and little, who shrank from him in
+life, who never shared what was manliest in the man, but mocked at his
+living nobleness, shall they come forward and with mealy mouths, to sing
+his requiem, forgetting that his eulogy is their own ban? Some will
+rejoice at his death; there is one man the less to fear, and they who
+trembled at his life may well be glad when the earth has covered up the
+son she bore. Strange men will meet with mutual solace at his tomb,
+wondering that their common foe is dead, and they are met! The Herods
+and Pilates of contending parties may be made friends above his grave,
+and clasping hands may fancy that their union is safer than before; but
+there will come a day after to-day! Let us leave him to his rest.
+
+The slave has lost a champion who gained new ardor and new strength the
+longer he fought; America has lost a man who loved her with his heart;
+Religion has lost a supporter; Freedom an unfailing friend, and Mankind
+a noble vindicator of our unalienable rights.
+
+It is not long since he was here in our own streets; three winter months
+have scantly flown: he set out for his toil--but went home to his rest.
+His labors are over. No man now threatens to assassinate; none to expel;
+none even to censure. The theatrical thunder of Congress, noisy but
+harmless, has ended as it ought, in honest tears. South Carolina need
+ask no more a halter for that one northern neck she could not bend nor
+break. The tears of his country are dropped upon his urn; the muse of
+history shall write thereon, in letters not to be effaced, THE ONE GREAT
+MAN SINCE WASHINGTON, WHOM AMERICA HAD NO CAUSE TO FEAR.
+
+To-day that venerable form lies in the Capitol,--the disenchanted dust.
+All is silent. But his undying soul, could we deem it still hovering
+o'er its native soil, bound to take leave yet lingering still, and loath
+to part, that would bid us love our country, love man, love justice,
+freedom, right, and above all, love God. To-morrow that venerable dust
+starts once more to join the dear presence of father and mother, to
+mingle his ashes with their ashes, as their lives once mingled, and
+their souls again. Let his native State communicate her last sad
+sacrament, and give him now, it is all she can, a little earth for
+charity.
+
+But what shall we say as the dust returns?
+
+    "Where slavery's minions cower
+    Before the servile power,
+      He bore their ban;
+    And like the aged oak,
+    That braved the lightning's stroke,
+    When thunders round it broke,
+      Stood up a man.
+
+    "Nay, when they stormed aloud,
+    And round him like a cloud,
+      Came thick and black,--
+    He single-handed strove,
+    And like Olympian Jove,
+    With his own thunder drove
+      The phalanx back.
+
+    "Not from the bloody field,
+    Borne on his battered shield,
+      By foes o'ercome;--
+    But from a sterner fight,
+    In the defence of Right,
+    Clothed with a conqueror's might,
+      We hail him home.
+
+    "His life in labors spent,
+    That 'Old man eloquent'
+      Now rests for aye;--
+    His dust the tomb may claim;--
+    His spirit's quenchless flame,
+    His 'venerable name,'[40]
+      Pass not away."[41]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] See _Social Compact_, etc. Providence, 1848, p. 31, _et al._
+
+[13] See _Address at Washington_, 4th of July, 1821. Second Edition,
+Cambridge, _passim_.
+
+[14] Reference is made to his _speech in the House of Representatives_,
+May 8th and 9th, 1840. (Boston, 1840.) It is a little remarkable, that
+the false principle of the common law, on which Mr. Adams was
+commenting, as laid down by Blackstone, is corrected by a writer, M.
+Pothier, who rests on the civil law for his authority. See pp. 6-8, and
+20, 21.
+
+[15] _Answer to Paine's Rights of Man_ (London, 1793), originally
+published in the Columbian Centinel. The London Edition bears the name
+of _John Adams_ on the title-page.
+
+[16] Mr. Atherton.
+
+[17] See _Oration at Quincy_, 1831, p. 12, _et seq._ (Boston, 1831.)
+
+[18] The _Social Compact_, etc., etc. (Providence, 1842). p. 24.
+
+[19] See Pickering's _Letter to Governor Sullivan, on the Embargo_.
+Boston, 1808. John Quincy Adams's _Letter to the Hon. H. G. Otis_, etc.
+Boston, 1808. Pickering's _Interesting Correspondence_, 1808. _Review of
+the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William
+Cunningham_, etc. 1824. But see, also, Mr. Adams's "Appendix" to the
+above letter, published _sixteen_ years after the vote on the embargo.
+Baltimore, 1824. Mr. Pickering's _Brief Remarks on the Appendix_.
+August, 1824.
+
+[20] Reference is here made to British "_Orders in Council_" of Nov.
+22d, 1807. They were not officially made known to the American Congress
+till Feb. 7th, 1808. They were, however, published in the National
+Intelligencer, the morning on which the Message was sent to the Senate,
+Dec. 18th, 1807, but were not mentioned in that document, nor in the
+debate.
+
+[21] I copy this from the first letter of Mr. Pickering. Mr. Adams wrote
+a letter (to H. G. Otis) in reply to this of Mr. Pickering, but said
+nothing respecting the words charged upon him; but in 1824, in an
+appendix to that letter, he denies that he expressed the "sentiment"
+which Mr. Pickering charged him with. But he _does not deny the words
+themselves_. They rest on the authority of Mr. Pickering, his colleague
+in the Senate, a strong party man, it is true, perhaps not much disposed
+to conciliation, but a man of most unquestionable veracity. The
+"sentiment" speaks for itself.
+
+[22] Adams's _Remarks in the House of Representatives_, Jan. 5, 1846.
+
+[23] _Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William
+Cunningham, Esq._ Boston, 1823, Letter xliii. p. 150.
+
+[24] March 15th, 1826.
+
+[25] See Mr. Adams's _Message_, Dec. 2, 1828. The exact sum was
+$1,197,422.18.
+
+[26] See Mr. Clay's Letter to Mr. A. H. Everett, April 27th, 1825; to
+Mr. Middleton, respecting the intervention of the Emperor of Russia, May
+10th, and Dec. 26th, 1825; to Mr. Gallatin, May 10th, and June 19th,
+1826, and Feb. 24th, 1827. _Executive Documents_, Second Session of the
+20th Congress, Vol. I.
+
+[27] Report of Mr. Adams's _Lecture on the Chinese War_, in the Boston
+Atlas, for Dec. 4th and 5th, 1841.
+
+[28] Genesis i. 26-28.
+
+[29] Psalms ii. 6-8.
+
+[30] See Mr. Adams's _Speech on Oregon_, Feb. 9th, 1846. Arguments
+somewhat akin to this, may be found also in the oration delivered at
+Newburyport, before cited.
+
+[31] _Address on breaking ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal._
+
+[32] _Jubilee of the Constitution_, p. 99.
+
+[33] _Lecture on China._
+
+[34] See his defence of this in his _Address to his Constituents at
+Braintree_, Sept. 17th, 1842. Boston, 1842, p. 56, _et seq._
+
+[35] In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known words of
+Tacitus (Annal VI. 39), _Par negotiis neque supra_,--applying them to a
+distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire whence they
+came. Mr. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be adequately
+translated in less than seven words in English. The lady replied that
+they might be well translated in five--_Equal to, not above, duty_, but
+better in three--JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
+
+[36] _Remarks_ of Mr. Cambreleng.
+
+[37] Mr. Van Buren.
+
+[38] See the _Debates of the House_, January 23d and following, 1837; or
+Mr. Adams's own account of the matter in his _Letters to his
+Constituents_, etc. (Boston, 1837.) See, too, his _Series of Speeches on
+the Right of Petition and the Annexation of Texas_, January 14th and
+following, 1838. (Printed in a pamphlet. Washington, 1838.)
+
+[39] "Acer et indomitus, quo spes, quoque ira vocasset, Ferre manum, et
+nunquam temerando parcere ferro; Successus urgere suos; instare favori
+Numinis; impellens quiequid sibi summa petenti Obstaret, gaudensque viam
+fecisse ruina."
+
+[40] _Clarum et venerabile nomen._
+
+[41] The above lines are from the pen of the Rev. John Pierpont.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE
+THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, APRIL 6, 1848.
+
+
+MR. CHAIRMAN,--The Gentleman before me[42] has made an allusion to Rome.
+Let me also turn to that same city. Underneath the Rome of the Emperors,
+there was another Rome; not seen by the sun, known only to a few men.
+Above, in the sunlight, stood Rome of the Cæsars, with her markets and
+her armies, her theatres, her temples, and her palaces, glorious and of
+marble. A million men went through her brazen gates. The imperial city,
+she stood there, beautiful and admired, the queen of nations. But
+underneath all that, in caverns of the earth, in the tombs of dead men,
+in quarries whence the upper city had been slowly hewn, there was
+another population, another Rome, with other thoughts; yes, a devout
+body of men, who swore not by the public altars; men whose prayers were
+forbidden; their worship disallowed, their ideas prohibited, their very
+lives illegal. Time passed on; and gradually Rome of the Pagans
+disappeared, and Rome of the Christians sat there in her place, on the
+Seven Hills, and stretched out her sceptre over the nations.
+
+So underneath the laws and the institutions of each modern nation,
+underneath the monarchy and the republic, there is another and unseen
+State, with sentiments not yet become popular, and with ideas not yet
+confirmed in actions, not organized into institutions, ideas scarcely
+legal, certainly not respectable. Slowly from its depths comes up this
+ideal State, the State of the Future; and slowly to the eternal deep
+sinks down the actual State, the State of the Present. But sometimes an
+earthquake of the nations degrades of a sudden the actual; and speedily
+starts up the ideal Kingdom of the Future. Such a thing has just come to
+pass. In France, within five-and-forty days, a new State has arisen from
+underneath the old. Men, whose words were suppressed, and their ideas
+reckoned illegal but two months ago, now hold the sceptre of
+five-and-thirty millions of grateful citizens, hold it in clean and
+powerful hands. A great revolution has taken place; one which will
+produce effects that we cannot foresee. It is itself the greatest act of
+this century. God only knows what it will lead to. We are here to
+express the sympathy of republicans for a new republic. We are here to
+rejoice over the rising hopes of a new State, not to exult over the
+fallen fortunes of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe has done much which we
+may thank him for. He has kept mainly at peace the fiercest nation of
+the world; has kept the peace of Europe for seventeen years. Let us
+thank him for that. He has consolidated the French nation, helped to
+give them a new unity of thought and unity of action, which they had not
+before. Perhaps he did not intend all this. Since he has brought it
+about, let us thank him for it, even if his conduct transcended his
+intention. But, most of all, I would thank this "Citizen King" for
+another thing. His greatest lesson is his last. He has shown that
+five-and-thirty millions of Frenchmen, in this nineteenth century, are
+only to be ruled by Justice and the Eternal Law of Right. We have seen
+this crafty king, often wise and always cunning, driven from his throne.
+He was the richest man in Europe, and the embodiment of the idea of
+modern wealth. He had an army the best disciplined, probably, in the
+world, and, as he thought, completely in his power. He had a Chamber of
+Peers of his own appointment; a Chamber of Deputies almost of his own
+election. He ruled a nation that contained three hundred thousand
+office-holders, appointed by himself, and only two hundred and forty
+thousand voters! Who sat so safe as the citizen king on his throne,
+surrounded by republican institutions! So confident was he, as the
+journals tell, that he bade a friend stop a day or two, "and see how I
+will put down the people!" For once, this shrewd calculator reckoned
+without his host.
+
+Well, we have seen this man, this citizen monarch, who married his
+children only to kings, rush from his place; his peers and his deputies
+were unavailing; his office-holders could not sustain him; his army
+"fraternized with the people;" and he, forgetful of his own children,
+ignominiously is hustled out of the kingdom, in a street cab, with
+nothing but a five-franc piece in his pocket. For the lesson thus
+taught, let us thank him most of all.
+
+Men tell us it is too soon to rejoice: "Perhaps the Revolution will not
+hold;" "it will not last;" "the kings of Europe will put it down." When
+a sound, healthy child is born, the friends of the family congratulate
+the parents then; they do not wait till the child has grown up, and got
+a beard. Now this is a live child; it is well born in both senses, come
+of good parentage, and gives signs of a good constitution. Let us
+rejoice at its birth, and not wait to see if it will grow up. Let us now
+baptize it in the crystal fountain of our own Hope.
+
+In a great revolution, there are always two things to be looked at,
+namely, the actions, and the ideas which produce the actions. The
+actions I will say little of; you have all read of them in the
+newspapers. Some of the actions were bad. It is not true that all at
+once the French have become angels. There are low and base men, who
+swarm in the lanes and alleys of Paris; for that great city also is like
+all capitals, girt about with a belt of misery, of vice and of crime,
+eating into her painful loins. It was a bad thing to sack the Tuileries;
+to burn bridges, and chateaux, and railroad stations. Property is under
+the insurance of mankind, and the human race must pay in public for
+private depredations. It was a bad thing to kill men; the human race
+cannot make up that loss; only suffer and be penitent. I am sorry for
+these bad actions; but I am not surprised at them. You cannot burn down
+the poor dwelling of a widow in Boston, but some miserable man will
+steal pot or pan, in the confusion of the fire. How much more should we
+expect pillage and violence in the earthquake which throws down a king!
+
+I have said enough of the actions; but there was one deed too symbolical
+to be passed by. In the garden of the Tuileries, before the great gate
+of the palace, there stands a statue of Spartacus, a colossal bronze,
+his broken chain in the left hand, his Roman sword in the right.
+Spartacus was a Roman gladiator. He broke his chains; gathered about him
+other gladiators, fugitive slaves, and assembled an army. He and his
+comrades fought for freedom; they cut off four consular armies sent
+against them; at last the hero fell amid a heap of men, slain by his own
+well-practised hand. When the people took the old and emblematic French
+throne, and burned it solemnly with emblematic fire, they stripped off
+some of the crimson trappings of the royal seat, made a tiara thereof,
+and bound it on the gladiator's brazen head! But red is the color of
+revolution, the color of blood; the unconscious gladiator was an image
+too savage for new France. So they hid the Roman sword in his hand, and
+wreathed it all over with a chaplet of flowers!
+
+Let us say a word of the ideas. Three ideas filled the mind of the
+nation: the idea of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Three noble words.
+Liberty meant liberty of all. So, at one word, they set free the slaves,
+and, if my friend's ciphers are correct, at once three hundred thousand
+souls rise up from the ground disenthralled, free men. That is a great
+act. A population as large as the whole family of our sober sister
+Connecticut, all at once find their chains drop off, and they are free:
+not beasts, but men. This may not hold. Our Declaration of Independence
+was not the Confederation of '78--still less was it the Constitution of
+'87. The French may be as false as the Americans to their idea of
+liberty. At any rate, it is a good beginning. Let us rejoice at that.
+
+Equality means that all are equal before the law; equal in rights,
+however unequal in mights. So all titles of nobility come at once to the
+ground. The royal family is like the family of our Presidents. The
+Chamber of Peers is abolished. Universal suffrage is decreed; all men
+over twenty-one are voters. Men here in America say, "The French are not
+ready for that." No doubt the king thought so. At any rate, he was not
+ready for it. But it is not a thing altogether unknown in France. It has
+been tried several times before. The French Constitution was accepted by
+the whole people in 1800; Napoleon was made Consul by the whole people;
+made Emperor by the whole people. Even in 1815, the "acte additionelle"
+to the "Charte" was accepted by the whole people. To decree universal
+suffrage was the most natural thing in the world. Those two ideas,
+liberty and equality, have long been American ideas; they were never
+American facts. America sought liberty only for the whites. Our fathers
+thought not of universal suffrage.
+
+But France has not only attempted to make our ideas into facts; she has
+advanced an idea not hinted at in the American Declaration; the idea of
+Fraternity. By this she means human brotherhood. This points not merely
+to a political, but to a social revolution. It is not easy for us to
+understand how a government can effect this. Here, all comes from the
+people, and the people have to take care of the government, meaning
+thereby the men in official power; have to furnish them with ideas, and
+tell them what application to make thereof. There all comes from the
+government. So the new provisional government of France must be one that
+can lead the nation; have ideas in advance of the nation. Accordingly,
+it proposes many plans which with us could never have come from any
+party in power. Here, the government is only the servant of the people.
+There, it aims to be the father and teacher thereof; a patriarchal
+government with Christian thoughts and feelings. But as an eloquent man
+is to come after me, whose special aim is to develop the idea of human
+brotherhood into social institutions, I will not dwell on this, save to
+mention an act of the provisional authorities. They have abolished the
+punishment of death for all political offences. You remember the
+guillotine, the massacres of September, the drowning in the Loire and
+the Seine, the dreadful butchery in the name of the law.
+
+Put this new decree side by side with the old, and you see why
+Spartacus, though crowned by a revolution, bears peaceful blossoms in
+his hand.
+
+But let us hasten on; time would fail me to speak of the cause or point
+out the effect of this movement of the people. Only a word concerning
+the objections made to it. Some say, "It is only an extempore affair.
+Men drunk with new power are telling their fancies, and trying in their
+heat to make laws thereof." It is not so. The ideas I have hinted at
+have been long known and deeply cherished by the best minds in France.
+Last autumn, M. Lamartine, in his own newspaper, for the deputy for
+Macon is an editor, published the "Programme and confession of his
+political faith."[43]
+
+Others say, "The whole thing seems rash." Well, so it does; so does any
+good thing seem rash to all except the man who does it, and such as
+would do it if he did not. What is rash to one is not to another. It is
+dangerous for an old man to run, fatal for him to leap, while his
+grandson jumps over wall and ditch without hurt. The American Revolution
+was a rash act; the English Revolution a rash act; the Protestant
+Reformation was a rash act. Was it safe to withstand the Revolution? Did
+the king of the French find it so? Yet others say, "The leaders are
+unknown," "Lamartine, you might as well put any man in the street at the
+head of the nation." But when the American Revolution begun, who, in
+England, had ever heard of John Hancock, President of the Congress? To
+the men who knew him, John Hancock was a country trader, the richest man
+in a town of ten thousand inhabitants: That did not sound very great at
+London. Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and all the
+other men, what did the world know of them? Only that they had been
+christened with Hebrew names. Why, George Washington was only, as Gen.
+Braddock called him, "A young Buckskin." But the world heard of these
+men afterwards. Let us leave the French statesmen to make to the future
+what report of themselves they can! Let me tell a story of Dupont de
+l'Eure, the head of the government at this moment. He was one of the
+movers of the Revolution of 1830. He dined with the citizen king, once,
+in some council. At the table, he and the king differed; the king
+affirmed, and Dupont denied. Said the king, "Do you tell me I lie?" Said
+Dupont, "When the king says yes, and Dupont de l'Eure replies no, France
+will know which to believe!" The king said, "Yes, we will put the people
+down;" Dupont said, "No, you shall not put the people down;" and now
+France knows which to believe.
+
+Again, say others yet, "War may come; royalty may come back, despotism
+may come back. Other kings will interpose, and put down a republic."
+Other kings interpose to put down the French! Perhaps they will. They
+tried it in 1793, but did not like the experiment very well. They will
+be well off if they do not find it necessary to put down a republic a
+little nearer at hand; their anti-revolutionary work may begin at home.
+War followed the American Revolution. It cost money, it cost men. But
+if we calculate the value of American ideas, they are worth what they
+cost. Even the French Revolution, with all its carnage, robbery and
+butchery, is worth what it cost. But it is possible that war will not
+come. From a foreign war, France has little to fear. There seems little
+danger that it will come at all. What monarchy will dare fight
+republican France? Internal trouble may indeed come. It is to be
+expected that the new republic will make many a misstep. But is it
+likely that all the old tragedies will be enacted again? Surely not; the
+burnt child dreads the fire. Besides, the France of '48 is not the
+France of '89. There is no triple despotism weighing on the nation's
+neck, a trinity of despotic powers--the throne, the nobility, the
+church. The king has fled; the nobles have ceased to be; the church
+seems republican. There is no hatred between class and class, as before.
+The men of '89 sought freedom for the middle class, not for all classes,
+neither for the high, nor for the low. Religion pervades the church and
+the people, as never before. Better ideas prevail. It is not the gospel
+of Jean Jaques, and the scoffing negations of Voltaire, that are now
+proclaimed to the people; but the broad maxims of Christian men; the
+words of human brotherhood. The men of terror knew no weapon but the
+sword; the provisional government casts the sword from its hands, and
+will not shed blood for political crimes.
+
+Still, troubles may come; war may come from without, and, worse still,
+from within; the republic may end. But if it lasts only a day, let us
+rejoice in that day. Suppose it is only the dream of the nation; it is
+worth while to dream of liberty, of equality, of fraternity; and to
+dream that we are awake, and trying to make them all into institutions
+and common life. What is only a dream now, will be a fact at last.
+
+Next Sunday is the election day of France; six millions of voters are to
+choose nine hundred representatives! Shall not the prayers of all
+Christian hearts go up with them on that day, a great deep prayer for
+their success? The other day, the birthday of Washington, the calm,
+noiseless spirit of death came to release the soul of the patriarch of
+American statesmen. While his sun was slowly sinking in the western sky,
+the life-star of a new nation was visibly rising there, far off in the
+east. A pagan might be pardoned for the thought, that the intrepid soul
+of that old man foresaw the peril, and, slowly quitting its hold of the
+worn-out body, went thither to kindle anew the flames of liberty he
+fanned so often here. That is but a pagan thought. This is a Christian
+thought: The same God who formed the world for man's abode, presides
+also in the movements of mankind, and directs their voluntary march.
+See how this earth has been brought to her present firm and settled
+state. By storm and earthquake, continent has been rent from continent;
+oceans have swept over the mountains, and the scars of ancient war still
+mark our parent's venerable face. So is it in the growth of human
+Society: it is the child of pain; revolutions have rocked its cradle,
+war and violence rudely nursed it into hardy life. Good institutions,
+how painfully, how slowly have they come!
+
+    "Slowly as spreads the green of earth
+      O'er the receding ocean's bed,
+    Dim as the distant stars come forth,
+      Uncertain as a vision slow,
+    Has been the old world's toiling pace,
+    Ere she can give fair freedom place."
+
+Let us welcome the green spot, when it begins to spread; let us shout as
+the sterile sea of barbarism goes back; let us rejoice in the vision of
+good things to come; let us welcome the distant and rising orb, for it
+is the Bethlehem star of a great nation, and they who behold it may well
+say--"Peace on earth, and good-will to men."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[42] Mr. Wendell Phillips.
+
+[43] See the _Courier des Etats Unis_, for Nov. 24, 1847, which contains
+passages from M. Lamartine's programme, which set forth all the schemes
+that the provisional government had afterwards tried to carry out.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION,
+MAY 31, 1848.
+
+
+The design of the Abolitionists is this,--to remove and destroy the
+institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed,
+ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions.
+
+What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this, That all men are
+created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those
+rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of
+human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another's
+rights; of course, no man may use me for his good, and not my own good
+also; of course, there can be no ownership of man by man; of course, no
+slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious
+doctrines that follow from it.
+
+Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into the minds of the
+people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.
+
+It seems a very easy matter to get it there. The idea is nothing new;
+all the world knows it. Talk with men, democrats and whigs, they will
+say they like freedom in the abstract, they hate slavery in the
+abstract. But you find that somehow they like slavery in the concrete,
+and dislike abolitionism when it tries to set free the slave. Slavery is
+the affair of the whole people; not Congress, but the nation, made
+slavery; made it national, constitutional. Not Congress, but the voters,
+must unmake slavery; make it un-constitutional, un-national. They say
+Congress cannot do it. Well, perhaps it is so; but they that make can
+break. If the people made slavery, they can unmake it.
+
+You talk with the people; the idea of freedom is there. They tell you
+they believe the Declaration of Independence--that all men are created
+equal. But somehow they contrive to believe that negroes now in bondage
+are an exception to the rule, and so they tell us that slavery must not
+be meddled with, that we must respect the compromises of the
+Constitution. So we see that respect for the Constitution overrides
+respect for the inalienable rights of three millions of negro men.
+
+Now, to move men, it is necessary to know two things--first, What they
+think, and next, Why they think it. Let us look a little at both.
+
+In New England, men over twenty-one years old may be divided into two
+classes. First, the men that vote, and secondly, the men that choose the
+Governor. The voters in Massachusetts are some hundred and twenty
+thousand; the men that choose the Governor, who tell the people how to
+vote, whom to vote for, what laws to make, what to forbid, what policy
+to pursue--they are not very numerous. You may take one hundred men out
+of Boston, and fifty men from the other large towns in the State--and if
+you could get them to be silent till next December, and give no counsel
+on political affairs, the people would not know what to do. The
+democrats would not know what to do, nor the whigs. We are a very
+democratic people, and suffrage is almost universal; but it is a very
+few men who tell us how to vote, who make all the most important laws.
+Do I err in estimating the number at one hundred and fifty? I do not
+like to exaggerate--suppose there are six hundred men, three hundred in
+each party; that six hundred manage the political action of the State,
+in ordinary times.
+
+I need not stop to ask what the rest of the people think about freedom
+and slavery. What do the men who control our politics think thereof? I
+answer, They are not opposed to slavery; to the slavery of three
+millions of men. They may not like slavery in the abstract, or they may
+like it, I do not pretend to judge; but slavery in the concrete, at the
+South, they do like; opposition to that slavery, in the mildest form,
+or the sternest, they do hate.
+
+That is a serious charge to bring against the prominent rulers of the
+State. Let me call your attention to a few facts which prove it. Look at
+the men we send to Congress. There are thirty-one New England men in
+Congress. By the most liberal construction you can only make out five
+anti-slavery men in the whole number. Who ever heard of an anti-slavery
+Governor of Massachusetts in this century? Men know what they are about
+when they select candidates for election. Do the voters always know what
+they are about when they choose them?
+
+Then these men always are in favor of a pro-slavery President. The
+President must be a slaveholder. There have been fifteen presidential
+elections. Men from the free States have filled the chair twelve years,
+or three terms; men from the slave States forty-four years, or eleven
+terms. During one term, the chair was filled by an amphibious
+presidency, by General Harrison, who was nothing but a concrete
+availability, and John Tyler, who was--John Tyler. They called him an
+accident; but there are no accidents in politics. A slaveholder presides
+over the United States forty-eight years out of sixty! Do those men who
+control the politics of New England not like it? It is no such thing.
+They love to have it so. We have just seen the democratic party, or
+their leaders, nominate General Cass for their candidate--and General
+Cass is a northern man; but on that account is he any the less a
+pro-slavery man? He did oppose the South once, but it was in pressing a
+war with England. Everybody knows General Cass, and I need say no more
+about him. But the northern whigs have their leaders--are they
+anti-slavery men? Not a whit more. Next week you will see them nominate,
+not the great Eastern whig, though he is no opponent of slavery, only an
+Expounder and Defender of the Constitution; not the great Western whig,
+the Compromiser, though steeped to the lips in slavery; no, they will
+nominate General Taylor, a man who lives a little further south, and is
+at this moment dyed a little more scarlet with the sin of slavery.
+
+But go a step further as to the proof. Those men who control the
+politics of Massachusetts, or New England, or the whole North, they have
+never opposed the aggressive movements of the slave power. The
+annexation of Texas, did they oppose that? No, they were glad of it.
+True, some earnest men came up here in Faneuil Hall, and passed
+resolutions, which did no good whatever, because it was well known that
+the real controllers of our politics thought the other way. Then
+followed the Mexican war. It was a war for slavery, and they knew it;
+they like it now--that is, if a man's likings can be found out by his
+doings, not his occasional and exceptional deeds, but his regular and
+constant actions. They knew that there would be a war against the
+currency, a war against the tariff, or a war against Mexico. They chose
+the latter. They knew what they were about.
+
+The same thing is shown by the character of the Press. No "respectable"
+paper is opposed to slavery; no whig paper, no democratic paper. You
+would as soon expect a Catholic newspaper to oppose the Pope and his
+church, for the slave power is the Pope of America, though not exactly a
+pious Pope. The churches show the same thing; they also are in the main
+pro-slavery, at least not anti-slavery. There are some forty
+denominations or sects in New England. Mr. President, is one of these
+anti-slavery? Not one! The land is full of ministers, respectable men,
+educated men--are they opposed to slavery? I do not know a single man,
+eminent in any sect, who is also eminent in his opposition to slavery.
+There was one such man, Dr. Channing; but just as he became eminent in
+the cause of freedom, he lost power in his own church, lost caste in his
+own little sect; and though men are now glad to make sectarian capital
+out of his reputation after he is dead, when he lived, they cursed him
+by their gods! Then, too, all the most prominent men of New England
+fraternize with slavery. Massachusetts received such an insult from
+South Carolina as no State ever before received from another State in
+this Union; an affront which no nation would dare offer another, without
+grinding its sword first. And what does Massachusetts do? She
+does--nothing. But her foremost man goes off there, "The schoolmaster
+that gives no lessons,"[44] to accept the hospitality of the South, to
+take the chivalry of South Carolina by the hand; the Defender of the
+Constitution fraternizes with the State which violates the Constitution,
+and imprisons his own constituents on account of the color of their
+skin.
+
+Put all these things together, and they show that the men who control
+the politics of Massachusetts, of all New England, do not oppose or
+dislike slavery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much for what they think; and now for the Why they think so.
+
+First, there is the general indifference to what is absolutely right.
+Men think little of it. The Anglo-Saxon race, on both sides of the
+water, have always felt the instinct of freedom, and often contended
+stoutly enough for their own rights. But they never cared much for the
+rights of other men. The slaves are at a distance from us, and so the
+wrong of this institution is not brought home to men's feelings as if it
+were our own wrong.
+
+Then the pecuniary interests of the North are supposed to be connected
+with slavery, so that the North would lose dollars if the South lost
+slaves. No doubt this is a mistake; still, it is an opinion currently
+held. The North wants a market for its fabrics, freight for its ships.
+The South affords it; and, as men think, better than if she had
+manufactures and ships of her own, both of which she could have, were
+there no slaves. All this seems to be a mistake. Freedom, I think, can
+be shown to be the interest of both North and South.
+
+Yet another reason is found in devotion to the interests of a party.
+Tell a whig he could make whig capital out of anti-slavery, he would
+turn abolitionist in a moment, if he believed you. Tell a democrat that
+he can make capital out of abolition, and he also will come over to your
+side. But the fact is, each party knows it would gain nothing for its
+political purposes by standing out for the rights of man. The time will
+come, and sooner too than some men think, when it will be for the
+interest of a party to favor abolition; but that time is not yet. It
+does seem strange, that while you can find men who will practise a good
+deal of self-denial for their sect or their party, lending, and hoping
+nothing in return, you so rarely find a man who will compromise even his
+popularity for the sake of mankind.
+
+Then again, there is the fear of change. Men who control our politics
+seem to have little confidence in man, little in truth, little in
+justice, and the eternal right. Therefore, while it is never out of
+season to do something for the tariff, for the moneyed interests of men,
+they think it is never in time to do much for the great work of
+elevating mankind itself. They have no confidence in the people, and
+take little pains to make the people worthy of confidence. So any change
+which gives a more liberal government to a people, which gives freedom
+to the slave, they look on with distrust, if not alarm. In 1830, when
+the French expelled the despotic king who encumbered their throne, what
+said Massachusetts, what said New England, in honor of the deed?
+Nothing. Your old men? Nothing. Your young men? Not a word. What did
+they care for the freedom of thirty millions of men? They were looking
+at their imports and exports. In 1838, when England set free eight
+hundred thousand men in a day, what did Massachusetts say about that?
+What had New England to say? Not a word in its favor from these
+political leaders of the land. Nay, they thought the experiment was
+dangerous, and ever since that it is with great reluctance you can get
+them to confess that the scheme works well. In 1848, when France again
+expels her king, and all the royalty in the kingdom is carted off in a
+one-horse cab--when the broadest principles of human government are laid
+down, and a great nation sets about the difficult task of moving out of
+her old political house, and into a new one, without tearing down the
+old, without butchering men in the process of removal,--why, what has
+Boston to say to that? What have the political leaders of Massachusetts,
+of New England, to say? They have nothing to say for liberty; they are
+sorry the experiment was made; they are afraid the French will not want
+so much cotton; they have no confidence in man, and fear every change.
+
+Such are their opinions, to judge by what they do; such the reasons
+thereof, judging by what they say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But now how can we change this, and get the idea of freedom into men's
+minds? Something can be done by the gradual elevation of men, by schools
+and churches, by the press. The churches and colleges of New England
+have not directly aided us in the work of abolishing slavery. No doubt
+by their direct action they have retarded that work, and that a good
+deal. But indirectly they have done much to hasten the work. They have
+helped educate men; helped make men moral, in a general way; and now
+this moral power can be turned to this special business, though the
+churches say, "No, you shall not." I see before me a good and an earnest
+man,[45] who, not opening his mouth in public against slavery, has yet
+done a great service in this way: he has educated the teachers of the
+Commonwealth, has taught them to love freedom, to love justice, to love
+man and God. That is what I call sowing the seeds of anti-slavery. The
+honored and excellent Secretary of Education,[46] who has just gone to
+stand in the place of a famous man, and I hope to fill it nobly, has
+done much in this way. I wish in his reports on education he had exposed
+the wrong which is done here in Boston, by putting all the colored
+children in one school, by shutting them out of the Latin School and the
+English High School. I wish he had done that duty, which plainly belongs
+to him to do. But without touching that, he has yet done, indirectly, a
+great work towards the abolition of slavery. He has sown the seeds of
+education wide spread over the State. One day these seeds will come up;
+come up men, men that will both vote and choose the Governor; men that
+will love right and justice; will see the iniquity of American slavery,
+and sweep it off the continent, cost what it may cost, spite of all
+compromises of the Constitution, and all compromisers. I look on that as
+certain. But that is slow work, this waiting for a general morality to
+do a special act. It is going without dinner till the wheat is grown for
+your bread.
+
+So we want direct and immediate action upon the people themselves. The
+idea must be set directly before them, with all its sanctions displayed,
+and its obligations made known. This can be done in part by the pulpit.
+Dr. Channing shows how much one man can do, standing on that eminence.
+You all know how much he did do. I am sorry that he came so late, sorry
+that he did not do more, but thankful for what he did do. However, you
+cannot rely on the pulpit to do much. The pulpit represents the average
+goodness and piety; not eminent goodness and piety. It is unfair to call
+ordinary men to do extraordinary works. I do not concur in all the hard
+things that are said about the clergy, perhaps it is because I am one of
+them; but I do not expect a great deal from them. It is hard to call a
+class of men all at once to rise above all other classes of men, and
+teach a degree of virtue which they do not understand. But you may call
+them to be true to their own consciences.
+
+So the pulpit is not to be relied on for much aid. If all the ministers
+of New England were abolitionists, with the same zeal that they are
+Protestants, Universalists, Methodists, Calvinists, or Unitarians, no
+doubt the whole State would soon be an anti-slavery State, and the day
+of emancipation would be wonderfully hastened. But that we are not to
+look for.
+
+Much can be done by lecturers, who shall go to the people and address
+them, not as whigs or democrats, not as sectarians, but as men, and in
+the name of man and God present the actual condition of the slaves, and
+show the duty of the North and the South, of the nation, in regard to
+this matter. For this business, we want money and men, the two sinews of
+war; money to pay the men, men to earn the money. They must appeal to
+the people in their primary capacity, simply as men.
+
+Much also may be done by the press. How much may be done by these two
+means, and that in a few years, these men[47] can tell; all the North
+and South can tell. Men of the most diverse modes of thought can work
+together in this cause. Here on my right is Mr. Phillips, an
+old-fashioned Calvinist, who believes all the five points of Calvinism.
+I am rather a new-fashioned Unitarian, and believe only one of the five
+points, the one Mr. Phillips has proved--the perseverance of the saints;
+but we get along without any quarrel by the way.
+
+Some men will try political action. The action of the people, of the
+nation, must be political action. It may be constitutional, it may be
+un-constitutional. I see not why men need quarrel about that. Let not
+him that voteth, condemn him that voteth not; nor let not him that
+voteth not, condemn him that voteth, but let every man be faithful to
+his own convictions.
+
+It is said, the abolitionists waste time and wind in denunciation. It is
+partly true. I make no doubt it inspires the slaveholder's heart to see
+division amongst his foes. I ought to say his friends, for such we are.
+He thinks the day of justice is deferred, while the ministers thereof
+contend. I do not believe a revolution is to be baptized with
+rose-water. I do not believe a great work is to be done without great
+passions. It is not to be supposed that the Leviathan of American
+Slavery will allow himself to be drawn out of the mire in which he has
+made his nest, and grown fat and strong, without some violence and
+floundering. When we have caught him fairly, he will put his feet into
+the mud to hold on by; he will reach out and catch hold of every thing
+that will hold him. He has caught hold of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. He
+will catch hold of General Cass and General Taylor. He will die, though
+slowly, and die hard. Still it is a pity that men who essay to pull him
+out, should waste their strength in bickerings with one another, or in
+needless denunciation of the leviathan's friends. Call slaveholding,
+slaveholding; let us tell all the evils which arise from it, if we can
+find language terrible enough; let us show up the duplicity of the
+nation, the folly of our wise men, the littleness of our great men, the
+baseness of our honorable men, if need be; but all that with no unkind
+feelings toward any one. Virtue never appears so lovely as when
+destroying sin, she loves the sinner, and seeks to save him. Absence of
+love is absence of the strongest power. See how much Mr. Adams lost of
+his influence, how much he wasted of his strength, by the violence with
+which he pursued persons. I am glad to acknowledge the great services he
+performed. He wished to have every man stand on the right side of the
+anti-slavery line; but I believe there were some men whom he would like
+to have put there with a pitch-fork. On the other hand, Dr. Channing
+never lost a moment by attacking a personal foe; and see what he gained
+by it! However, I must say this, that no great revolution of opinion and
+practice was ever brought about before with so little violence, waste of
+force, and denunciation. Consider the greatness of the work: it is to
+restore three millions to liberty; a work, in comparison with which the
+American Revolution was a little thing. Yet consider the violence, the
+denunciation, the persecution, and the long years of war, which that
+Revolution cost. I do not wonder that abolitionists are sometimes
+violent; I only deplore it. Remembering the provocation, I wonder they
+are not more so and more often. The prize is to be run for, "not without
+dust and heat."
+
+Working in this way, we are sure to succeed. The idea is an eternal
+truth. It will find its way into the public mind, for there is that
+sympathy between man and the truth, that he cannot live without it and
+be blessed. What allies we have on our side! True, the cupidity, the
+tyranny, the fear and the atheism of the land are against us. But all
+the nobleness, all the honor, all the morality, all the religion, are on
+our side. I was sorry to hear it said, that the religion of the land
+opposed us. It is not true. Religion never opposed any good work. I know
+what my friend meant, and I wish he had said it, calling things by their
+right names. It is the irreligion of the land that favors slavery; it is
+the idolatry of gold; it is our atheism. Of speculative atheism there is
+not much; you see how much of the practical!
+
+We are certain of success; the spirit of the age is on our side. See how
+the old nations shake their tyrants out of the land. See how every
+steamer brings us good tidings of good things; and do you believe
+America can keep her slaves? It is idle to think so. So all we want is
+time. On our side are Truth, Justice, and the Eternal Right. Yes, on our
+side is religion, the religion of Christ; on our side are the hopes of
+mankind, and the great power of God.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] This was a sentiment offered at a public dinner given by the
+citizens of Charleston, S. C., to Hon. Daniel Webster.
+
+[45] Rev. Cyrus Pierce, Teacher of the Normal School at Newton.
+
+[46] Hon. Horace Mann.
+
+[47] Messrs. Garrison, Phillips and Quincy.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY AND THE ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR.
+DECEMBER, 1848.
+
+
+The people of the United States have just chosen an officer, who, for
+the next four years, will have more power than any monarch of Europe;
+yet three years ago he was scarcely known out of the army in Florida,
+and even now has appeared only in the character of a successful general.
+His supporters at the North intend, by means of his election, to change
+the entire commercial policy of the country, and perhaps, also, its
+financial policy; they contemplate, or profess to contemplate, a great
+change. Yet the election has been effected without tumult or noise; not
+a soldier has drawn his bayonet; scarcely has a constable needed his
+official rod to keep order withal. In Europe, at the same time, the
+beginning of a change in the national dynasty or the national policy is
+only attempted by violence, by soldiers with arms ready for fight, by
+battle and murder. One day or another, men will be wise enough to see
+the cause of this difference, and insular statesmen in England, who now
+sneer at the new government in America, may learn that democracy has at
+least one quality--that of respecting law and order, and may live to see
+ours the oldest government in the whole Caucasian race.
+
+Since the election is now over, it is worth while to look a moment at
+the politics and political parties of the country, that we may gain
+wisdom for the future, and perhaps hope; at any rate, may see the actual
+condition of things. Each political party is based on an Idea, which
+corresponds to a Truth, or an Interest. It commonly happens that the
+idea is represented as an interest, and the interest as an idea, before
+either becomes the foundation of a large party. Now when a new idea is
+introduced to any party, or applied to any institution, if it be only
+auxiliary to the old doctrines incarnated therein, a regular growth and
+new development take place; but when the new idea is hostile to the old,
+the development takes place under the form of a revolution, and that
+will be greater or less in proportion to the difference between the new
+idea and the old doctrine; in proportion to their relative strength and
+value. As Aristotle said of seditions, a revolution comes on slight
+occasions, but not of slight causes;[48] the occasion may be obvious
+and obviously trivial, but the cause obscure and great. The occasion of
+the French Revolution of 1848 was afforded by the attempt of the king to
+prevent a certain public dinner: he had a legal right to prevent it. The
+cause of the Revolution was a little different; but some men in America
+and England, at first, scarcely looked beyond the occasion, and, taking
+that for the cause, thought the Frenchmen fools to make so much ado
+about a trifle, and that they had better eat their _soupe maigre_ at
+home, and let their victuals stop their mouths. The occasion of the
+American Revolution may be found in the Stamp-Act, or the Sugar-Act, the
+Writs of Assistance, or the Boston Port-Bill; some men, even now, see no
+further, and logically conclude the colonists made a mistake, because
+for a dozen years they were far worse off than before the "Rebellion,"
+and have never been so lightly taxed since. Such men do not see the
+cause of the Revolution, which was not an unwillingness to pay taxes,
+but a determination to govern themselves.
+
+At the present day it is plain that a revolution, neither slow nor
+silent, is taking place in the political parties of America. The
+occasion thereof is the nomination of a man for the presidency who has
+no political or civil experience, but who has three qualities that are
+important in the eyes of the leading men who have supported and pushed
+him forward: one is, that he is an eminent slaveholder, whose interests
+and accordingly whose ideas are identical with those of the
+slaveholders; the next, that he is not hostile to the doctrines of
+northern manufacturers respecting a protective tariff; and the third,
+that he is an eminent and very successful military commander. The last
+is an accidental quality, and it is not to be supposed that the
+intelligent and influential men at the North and South who have promoted
+his election, value him any more on that account, or think that mere
+military success fits him for his high office, and enables him to settle
+the complicated difficulties of a modern State. They must know better;
+but they must have known that many men of little intelligence are so
+taken with military glory that they will ask for no more in their hero;
+it was foreseen, also, that honest and intelligent men of all parties
+would give him their vote because he had never been mixed up with the
+intrigues of political life. Thus "far-sighted" politicians of the North
+and South saw that he might be fairly elected, and then might serve the
+purposes of the slaveholder, or the manufacturer of the North. The
+military success of General Taylor, an accidental merit, was only the
+occasion of his nomination by the whigs; his substantial merit was found
+in the fact, that he was supposed, or known, to be favorable to the
+"peculiar institution" of the South, and the protective policy of the
+manufacturers at the North: this was the cause of his formal nomination
+by the Whig Convention of Philadelphia, and his real nomination by
+members of the whig party at Washington. The men of property at the
+South wanted an extension of slavery; the men of property at the North,
+a high protective tariff; and it was thought General Taylor could serve
+both purposes, and promote the interests of the North and South.
+
+Such is the occasion of the revolution in political parties: the cause
+is the introduction of a new idea into these parties entirely hostile to
+some of their former doctrines. In the electioneering contest, the new
+idea was represented by the words "Free Soil." For present practice it
+takes a negative form: "No more Slave States, no more Slave Territory,"
+is the motto. But these words and this motto do not adequately represent
+the idea, only so much thereof as has been needful in the present
+crisis.
+
+Before now there has been much in the political history of America to
+provoke the resentment of the North. England has been ruled by various
+dynasties; the American chair has been chiefly occupied by the Southern
+House, the Dynasty of Slaveholders: now and then a member of the
+Northern House has sat on that seat, but commonly it has been a
+"Northern man with Southern principles," never a man with mind to see
+the great idea of America, and will to carry it out in action. Still the
+spirit of liberty has not died out of the North; the attempt to put an
+eighth slaveholder in the chair of "The model republic," gave occasion
+for that spirit to act again.
+
+The new idea is not hostile to the distinctive doctrine of either
+political party; neither to free trade, nor to protection; so it makes
+no revolution in respect to them: it is neutral, and leaves both as it
+found them. It is not hostile to the general theory of the American
+State, so it makes no revolution there; this idea is assumed as
+self-evident, in the Declaration of Independence. It is not inimical to
+the theory of the Constitution of the United States, as set forth in the
+preamble thereto, where the design of the Constitution is declared to be
+"To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
+tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
+welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
+posterity."
+
+There are clauses in the Constitution, which are exceptions to this
+theory, and hostile to the design mentioned above; to such, this idea
+will one day prove itself utterly at variance, as it is now plainly
+hostile to one part of the practice of the American government, and that
+of both the parties.
+
+We have had several political parties since the Revolution: the
+federalists, and anti-federalists,--the latter shading off into
+republicans, democrats, and loco focos; the former tapering into modern
+whigs, in which guise some of their fathers would scarcely recognize the
+family type. We have had a protective party and an anti-protective
+party; once there was a free-trade party, which no longer appears in
+politics. There has been a National Bank party, which seems to have gone
+to the realm of things lost on earth. In the rise and fall of these
+parties, several dramas, tragic and comic, have been performed on the
+American boards, where "One man in his time plays many parts," and stout
+representatives of the Hartford Convention find themselves on the same
+side with worshippers of the Gerrymander, and shouting the same cry. It
+is kindly ordered that memory should be so short, and brass so common.
+None of the old parties is likely to return; the living have buried the
+dead. "We are all federalists," said Mr. Jefferson, "we are all
+democrats," and truly, so far as old questions are concerned. It is well
+known that the present representatives of the old federal party, have
+abjured the commercial theory of their predecessors; and the men who
+were "Jacobins" at the beginning of the century, curse the new French
+Revolution by their gods. At the presidential election of 1840, there
+were but two parties in the field--democrats and whigs. As they both
+survive, it is well to see what interests or what ideas they represent.
+
+They differ accidentally in the possession and the desire of power; in
+the fact that the former took the initiative, in annexing Texas, and in
+making the Mexican war, while the latter only pretended to oppose
+either, but zealously and continually coöperated in both. Then, again,
+the democratic party sustains the sub-treasury system, insisting that
+the government shall not interfere with banking, shall keep its own
+deposits, and give and take only specie in its business with the people.
+The whig party, if we understand it, has not of late developed any
+distinctive doctrine, on the subject of money and financial operations,
+but only complained of the action of the sub-treasury; yet, as it
+sustained the late Bank of the United States, and appropriately followed
+as chief mourner at the funeral thereof, uttering dreadful lamentations
+and prophecies which time has not seen fit to accomplish, it still keeps
+up a show of differing from the democrats on this matter. These are only
+accidental or historical differences, which do not practically affect
+the politics of the nation to any great degree.
+
+The substantial difference between the two is this: The whigs desire a
+tariff of duties which shall directly and intentionally protect American
+industry, or, as we understand it, shall directly and intentionally
+protect manufacturing industry, while the commercial and agricultural
+interests are to be protected indirectly, not as if they were valuable
+in themselves, but were a collateral security to the manufacturing
+interest: a special protection is desired for the great manufactures,
+which are usually conducted by large capitalists--such as the
+manufacture of wool, iron, and cotton. On the other hand, the democrats
+disclaim all direct protection of any special interest, but, by raising
+the national revenue from the imports of the nation, actually afford a
+protection to the articles of domestic origin to the extent of the
+national revenue, and much more. That is the substantial difference
+between the two parties--one which has been much insisted on at the late
+election, especially at the North.
+
+Is this difference of any practical importance at the present moment?
+There are two methods of raising the revenue of a country: first, by
+direct taxation,--a direct tax on the person, a direct tax on the
+property; second, by indirect taxation. To a simple-minded man direct
+taxation seems the only just and equal mode of collecting the public
+revenue: thereby, the rich man pays in proportion to his much, the poor
+to his little. This is so just and obvious, that it is the only method
+resorted to, in towns of the North, for raising their revenue. But while
+it requires very little common sense and virtue to appreciate this plan
+in a town, it seems to require a good deal to endure it in a nation. The
+four direct taxes levied by the American government since 1787 have been
+imperfectly collected, and only with great difficulty and long delay. To
+avoid this difficulty, the government resorts to various indirect modes
+of taxation, and collects the greater part of its revenue from the
+imports which reach our shores. In this way a man's national tax is not
+directly in proportion to his wealth, but directly in proportion to his
+consumption of imported goods, or directly to that of domestic goods,
+whose price is enhanced by the duties laid on the foreign article. So it
+may happen that an Irish laborer, with a dozen children, pays a larger
+national tax than a millionnaire who sees fit to live in a miserly
+style. Besides, no one knows when he pays or what. At first it seems as
+if the indirect mode of taxation made the burden light, but in the end
+it does not always prove so. The remote effect thereof is sometimes
+remarkable. The tax of one per cent, levied in Massachusetts on articles
+sold by auction, has produced some results not at all anticipated.
+
+Now since neither party ventures to suggest direct taxation, the actual
+question between the two is not between free trade and protection, but
+only between a protective and a revenue tariff. So the real and
+practical question between them is this: Shall there be a high tariff or
+a low one? At first sight a man not in favor of free trade might think
+the present tariff gave sufficient protection to those great
+manufactures of wool, cotton, and iron, and as much as was reasonable.
+But the present duty is perhaps scarcely adequate to meet the expenses
+of the nation, for with new territory new expenses must come; there is a
+large debt to be discharged, its interest to be paid; large sums will be
+demanded as pensions for the soldiers. Since these things are so, it is
+but reasonable to conclude that, under the administration of the whigs
+or democrats, a pretty high tariff of duties will continue for some
+years to come. So the great and substantial difference between the two
+parties ceases to be of any great and substantial importance.
+
+In the mean time another party rises up, representing neither of these
+interests; without developing any peculiar views relative to trade or
+finance, it proclaims the doctrine that there must be no more slave
+territory, and no more slave States. This doctrine is of great practical
+importance, and one in which the free soil party differs substantially
+from both the other parties. The idea on which the party rests is not
+new; it does not appear that the men who framed the Constitution, or the
+people who accepted it, ever contemplated the extension of slavery
+beyond the limits of the United States at that time; had such a
+proposition been then made, it would have been indignantly rejected by
+both. The principle of the Wilmot Proviso boasts the same origin as the
+Declaration of Independence. The state of feeling at the North
+occasioned by the Missouri Compromise is well known, but after that
+there was no political party opposed to slavery. No President has been
+hostile to it; no Cabinet; no Congress. In 1805, Mr. Pickering, a
+Senator from Massachusetts, brought forward his bill for amending the
+Constitution, so that slaves should not form part of the basis of
+representation; but it fell to the ground, not to be lifted up by his
+successors for years to come. The refusal of John Quincy Adams, while
+President, to recognize the independence of Hayti, and his efforts to
+favor the slave power, excited no remark. In 1844, for the first time
+the anti-slavery votes began seriously to affect the presidential
+election. At that time the whigs had nominated Mr. Clay as their
+candidate, a man of great powers, of popular manners, the friend of
+northern industry, but still more the friend of southern slavery, and
+more directly identified with that than any man in so high a latitude.
+The result of the anti-slavery votes is well known. The bitterest
+reproaches have been heaped on the men who voted against him as the
+incarnation of the slave power; the annexation of Texas, though
+accomplished by a whig senate, and the Mexican war, though only sixteen
+members of Congress voted against it, have both been laid to their
+charge; and some have even affected to wonder that men conscientiously
+opposed to slavery could not forget their principle for the sake of
+their party, and put a most decided slaveholder, who had treated not
+only them but their cause with scorn and contempt, in the highest place
+of power.
+
+The whig party renewed its attempt to place a slaveholder in the
+President's chair, at a time when all Europe was rising to end for ever
+the tyranny of man. General Taylor was particularly obnoxious to the
+anti-slavery men. He is a slaveholder, holding one or two hundred men in
+bondage, and enlarging that number by recent purchases; he employs them
+in the worst kind of slave labor, the manufacture of sugar; he leaves
+them to the mercy of overseers, the dregs and refuse of mankind; he has
+just returned from a war undertaken for the extension of slavery; he is
+a southern man with southern interests, and opinions favorable to
+slavery, and is uniformly represented by his supporters at the South, as
+decidedly opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, and in favor of the extension
+of slavery. We know this has been denied at the North; but the testimony
+of the South settles the question. The convention of democrats in South
+Carolina, when they also nominated him, said well, "His interests are
+our interests:... we know that on this great, paramount, and leading
+question of the rights of the South [to extend slavery over the new
+territory], he is for us and he is with us." Said a newspaper in his own
+State, "General Taylor is from birth, association, and conviction,
+identified with the South and her institutions, being one of the most
+extensive slaveholders in Louisiana, and supported by the slaveholding
+interest; is opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, and in favor of procuring
+the privilege to the owners of slaves to remove with them to newly
+acquired territory."
+
+The southerners evidently thought the crisis an important one. The
+following is from the distinguished whig senator, Mr. Berrien.
+
+     "I consider it the most important Presidential election,
+     especially to southern men, which has occurred since the
+     foundation of the government.
+
+     "We have great and important interests at stake. If we fail
+     to sustain them now, we may be forced too soon to decide
+     whether we will remain in the Union, at the mercy of a band
+     of fanatics or political jugglers, or reluctantly retire
+     from it for the preservation of our domestic institutions,
+     and all our rights as freemen. If we are united, we can
+     sustain them; if we divide on the old party issues, we must
+     be victims.
+
+     "With a heart devoted to their interests on this great
+     question, and without respect to party, I implore my
+     fellow-citizens of Georgia, whig and democratic, to forget
+     for the time their party divisions: to know each other only
+     as southern men: to act upon the truism uttered by Mr.
+     Calhoun, that on this vital question,--the preservation of
+     our domestic institutions,--the southern man who is furthest
+     from us, is nearer to us than any northern man can be; that
+     General Taylor is identified with us, in feeling and
+     interest, was born in a slaveholding State, educated in a
+     slaveholding State, is himself a slaveholder; that his slave
+     property constitutes the means of support to himself and
+     family; that he cannot desert us without sacrificing his
+     interest, his principle, the habits and feelings of his
+     life; and that with him, therefore, our institutions are
+     safe. I beseech them, therefore, from the love which they
+     bear to our noble State, to rally under the banner of
+     Zachary Taylor, and, with one united voice, to send him by
+     acclamation to the executive chair."
+
+All this has been carefully kept from the sight of the people at the
+North.
+
+There have always been men in America, who were opposed to the extension
+and the very existence of slavery. In 1787, the best and the most
+celebrated statesmen were publicly active on the side of freedom. Some
+thought slavery a sin, others a mistake, but nearly all in the
+Convention thought it an error. South Carolina and Georgia were the only
+States thoroughly devoted to slavery at that time. They threatened to
+withdraw from the Union, if it were not sufficiently respected in the
+new Constitution. If the other States had said, "You may go, soon as you
+like, for hitherto you have been only a curse to us, and done little but
+brag," it would have been better for us all. However, partly for the
+sake of keeping the peace, and still more for the purpose of making
+money by certain concessions of the South, the North granted the
+southern demands. After the adoption of the Constitution, the
+anti-slavery spirit cooled down; other matters occupied the public mind.
+The long disasters of Europe; the alarm of the English party, who feared
+their sons should be "conscripts in the armies of Napoleon," and the
+violence of the French party, who were ready to compromise the dignity
+of the nation, and add new elements to the confusion in Europe; the
+subsequent conflict with England, and then the efforts to restore the
+national character, and improve our material condition,--these occupied
+the thought of the nation, till the Missouri Compromise again disturbed
+the public mind. But that was soon forgotten; little was said about
+slavery. In the eighteenth century, it was discussed in the colleges and
+newspapers, even in the pulpits of the North; but, in the first quarter
+of the nineteenth, little was heard of it. Manufactures got established
+at the North, and protected by duties; at the South, cotton was
+cultivated with profit, and a heavy duty protected the slave-grown sugar
+of Louisiana. The pecuniary interests of North and South became closely
+connected, and both seemed dependent on the peaceable continuance of
+slavery. Little was said against it, little thought, and nothing done.
+Southern masters voluntarily brought their slaves to New England, and
+took them back, no one offering the African the conventional shelter of
+the law, not to speak of the natural shelter of justice. We well
+remember the complaint made somewhat later, when a Judge decided that a
+slave, brought here by his master's consent, became, from that moment,
+free!
+
+But where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. There rose up one
+man who would not compromise, nor be silent,--who would be heard.[49] He
+spoke of the evil, spoke of the sin--for all true reforms are bottomed
+on religion, and while they seem adverse to many interests, yet
+represent the idea of the Eternal. He found a few others, a very few,
+and began the anti-slavery movement. The "platform" of the new party was
+not an interest, but an idea--that "All men are created equal, and
+endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Every truth
+is also a fact; this was a fact of human consciousness, and a truth of
+necessity.
+
+The time has not come to write the history of the abolitionists,--other
+deeds must come before words; but we cannot forbear quoting the
+testimony of one witness, as to the state of anti-slavery feeling in New
+England in 1831. It is the late Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, a former mayor
+of Boston, who speaks in his recent letter.
+
+     "The first information received by me, of a disposition to
+     agitate this subject in our State, was from the Governors of
+     Virginia and Georgia, severally remonstrating against an
+     incendiary newspaper, published in Boston, and, as they
+     alleged, thrown broadcast among their plantations, inciting
+     to insurrection and its horrid results. It appeared, on
+     inquiry, that no member of the city government [of Boston]
+     had ever heard of the publication. Some time afterwards it
+     was reported to me by the city officers, that they had
+     ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was
+     an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and
+     his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all
+     colors. This information.... I communicated to the
+     above-named governors, with an assurance of my belief that
+     the new fanaticism had not made, nor was likely to make,
+     proselytes among the respectable classes of our people."
+
+Such was the state of things in 1831. Anti-slavery had "an obscure
+hole" for its head-quarters; the one agitator, who had filled the two
+doughty Governors of Virginia and Georgia with uncomfortable
+forebodings, had a "negro boy" "for his only visible auxiliary," and
+none of the respectable men of Boston had heard of the hole, of the
+agitator, of the negro boy, or even of the agitation. One thing must be
+true: either the man and the boy were pretty vigorous, or else there was
+a great truth in that obscure hole; for, in spite of the governors and
+the mayors, spite of the many able men in the South and the North,
+spite, also, of the wealth and respectability of the whole land, it is a
+plain case that the abolitionists have shaken the nation, and their idea
+is the idea of the time; and the party which shall warmly welcome that
+is destined before long to override all the other parties.
+
+One thing must be said of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement. They
+asked for nothing but justice; not justice for themselves--they were not
+Socratic enough to ask that,--but only justice for the slave; and to
+obtain that, they forsook all that human hearts most love. It is rather
+a cheap courage that fought at Monterey and Palo Alto, a bravery that
+can be bought for eight dollars a month; the patriotism which hurras for
+"our side," which makes speeches at Faneuil Hall, nay, which carries
+torch-lights in a procession, is not the very loftiest kind of
+patriotism; even the man who stands up at the stake, and in one brief
+hour of agony anticipates the long torment of disease, does not endure
+the hardest, but only the most obvious kind of martyrdom. But when a
+man, for conscience' sake, leaves a calling that would insure him bread
+and respectability; when he abjures the opinions which give him the
+esteem of honorable men; when, for the sake of truth and justice, he
+devotes himself to liberating the most abused and despised class of men,
+solely because they are men and brothers; when he thus steps forth in
+front of the world, and encounters poverty and neglect, the scorn, the
+loathing, and the contempt of mankind--why, there is something not very
+common in that. There was once a Man who had not where to lay his head,
+who was born in "an obscure hole," and had not even a negro boy for his
+"auxiliary;" who all his life lived with most obscure persons--eating
+and drinking with publicans and sinners; who found no favor with mayors
+or governors, and yet has had some influence on the history of the
+world. When intelligent men mock at small beginnings, it is surprising
+they cannot remember that the greatest institutions have had their times
+which tried men's souls, and that they who have done all the noblest and
+best work of mankind, sometimes forgot self-interest in looking at a
+great truth; and though they had not always even a negro boy to help
+them, or an obscure hole to lay their heads in, yet found the might of
+the universe was on the side of right, and themselves workers with God!
+
+The abolitionists did not aim to found a political party; they set forth
+an idea. If they had set up the interest of the whigs or the democrats,
+the manufacturers or the merchants, they might have formed a party and
+had a high place in it, with money, ease, social rank and a great name
+in the party--newspapers. Some of them had political talents, ideas more
+than enough, the power of organizing men, the skill to manage them, and
+a genius for eloquence. With such talents, it demands not a little
+manliness to keep out of politics and in the truth.
+
+To found a political party there is no need of a great moral idea: the
+whig party has had none such this long time; the democratic party
+pretends to none and acts on none; each represents an interest which can
+be estimated in dollars; neither seems to see that behind questions of
+political economy there is a question of political morality, and the
+welfare of the nation depends on the answer we shall give! So long as
+the abolitionists had nothing but an idea, and but few men had that,
+there was no inducement for the common run of politicians to join them;
+they could make nothing by it, so nothing of it. The guardians of
+education, the trustees of the popular religion, did not like to invest
+in such funds. But still the idea went on, spite of the most entire,
+the most bitter, the most heartless and unrelenting opposition ever
+known in America. No men were ever hated as the abolitionists; political
+parties have joined to despise, and sectarian churches to curse them.
+Yet the idea has gone on, till now all that is most pious in the sects,
+most patriotic in the parties, all that is most Christian in modern
+philanthropy, is on its side. It has some representative in almost every
+family, save here and there one whose God is mammon alone, where the
+parents are antediluvian and the children born old and conservative,
+with no faculty but memory to bind them to mankind. It has its spokesmen
+in the House and the Senate. The tide rises and swells, and the compact
+wall of the whig party, the tall ramparts of the democrats, are
+beginning to "cave in."
+
+As the idea has gained ground, men have begun to see that an interest is
+connected with it, and begun to look after that. One thing the North
+knows well--the art of calculation, and of ciphering. So it begins to
+ask questions as to the positive and comparative influence of the slave
+power on the country. Who fought the Revolution? Why the North,
+furnishing the money and the men, Massachusetts alone sending fourteen
+thousand soldiers more than all the present slave States. Who pays the
+national taxes? The North, for the slaves pay but a trifle. Who owns the
+greater part of the property, the mills, the shops, the ships? The
+North. Who writes the books--the histories, poems, philosophies, works
+of science, even the sermons and commentaries on the Bible? Still the
+North. Who sends their children to school and college? The North. Who
+builds the churches, who founds the Bible societies, Education
+societies, Missionary societies, the thousand-and-one institutions for
+making men better and better off? Why the North. In a word, who is it
+that in seventy years has made the nation great, rich, and famous for
+her ideas and their success all over the world? The answer is, still the
+North, the North.
+
+Well, says the calculator, but who has the offices of the nation? The
+South. Who has filled the Presidential chair forty-eight years out of
+sixty? Nobody but slaveholders. Who has held the chief posts of honor?
+The South. Who occupy the chief offices in the army and navy? The South.
+Who increases the cost of the post-office and pays so little of its
+expense?[50] The South. Who is most blustering and disposed to quarrel?
+The South. Who made the Mexican war? The South. Who sets at nought the
+Constitution? The South. Who would bring the greatest peril in case of
+war with a strong enemy? Why the South, the South. But what is the South
+most noted for abroad? For her three million slaves; and the North? for
+her wealth, freedom, education, religion!
+
+Then the calculator begins to remember past times--opens the
+account-books and turns back to old charges: five slaves count the same
+as three freemen, and the three million slaves, which at home are
+nothing but property, entitle their owners to as many representatives in
+Congress as are now sent by all the one million eight hundred thousand
+freemen who make the entire population of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
+Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, and have created a vast amount of
+property worth more than all the slave States put together! Then the
+North must deliver up the fugitive slaves, and Ohio must play the
+traitor, the kidnapper, the bloodhound, for Kentucky! The South wanted
+to make two slave States out of Florida, and will out of Texas; she
+makes slavery perpetual in both; she is always bragging as if she made
+the Revolution, while she only laid the Embargo, and began the late war
+with England,--but that is going further back than is needful. The South
+imprisons our colored sailors in her ports, contrary to justice, and
+even contrary to the Constitution. She drove our commissioners out of
+South Carolina and Louisiana, when they were sent to look into the
+matter and legally seek for redress. She affronts the world with a most
+odious despotism, and tried to make the English return her runaway
+slaves, making the nation a reproach before the world; she insists on
+kidnapping men even in Boston; she declares that we shall not abolish
+slavery in the capital of the Union; that she will extend it in spite of
+us from sea to sea. She annexed Texas for a slave-pasture, and then made
+the Mexican war to enlarge that pasture, but the North must pay for it;
+she treads the Constitution under her feet, the North under her feet,
+justice and the unalienable rights of man under her feet.
+
+The North has charged all these items and many more; now they are
+brought up for settlement, and, if not cancelled, will not be forgot
+till the Muse of History gives up the ghost; some Northern men have the
+American sentiment, and the American idea, put the man before the
+dollar, counting man the substance, property the accident. The sentiment
+and idea of liberty are bottomed on Christianity, as that on human
+nature; they are quite sure to prevail; the spirit of the nation is on
+their side--the spirit of the age and the everlasting right.
+
+It is instructive to see how the political parties have hitherto kept
+clear of anti-slavery. It is "no part of the whig doctrine;" the
+democrats abhor it. Mr. Webster, it is true, once claimed the Wilmot
+Proviso as his thunder, but he cannot wield it, and so it slips out of
+his hands, and runs round to the chair of his brother senator from New
+Hampshire.[51] No leading politician in America has ever been a leader
+against slavery. Even Mr. Adams only went as he was pushed. True, among
+the whigs there are Giddings, Palfrey, Tuck, Mann, Root, and Julian;
+among the democrats there is Hale--and a few others; but what are they
+among so many? The members of the family of Truth are unpopular, they
+make excellent servants but hard masters, while the members of the
+family of Interest are all respectable, and are the best company in the
+world; their livery is attractive; their motto, "The almighty dollar,"
+is a passport everywhere. Now it happens that some of the more advanced
+members of the family of Truth fight their way into "good society," and
+make matrimonial alliances with some of the poor relations of the family
+of Interest. Straightway they become respectable; the church publishes
+the banns; the marriage is solemnized in the most Christian form; the
+attorney declares it legal. So the gospel and law are satisfied, Truth
+and Interest made one, and many persons after this alliance may be seen
+in the company of Truth who before knew not of her existence.
+
+The free soil party has grown out of the anti-slavery movement. It will
+have no more slave territory, but does not touch slavery in the States,
+or between them, and says nothing against the compromises of the
+Constitution; the time has not come for that. The party has been
+organized in haste, and is composed, as are all parties, of most
+discordant materials, some of its members seeming hardly familiar with
+the idea; some are not yet emancipated from old prejudices, old methods
+of action, and old interests; but the greater part seem hostile to
+slavery in all its forms. The immediate triumph of this new party is not
+to be looked for; not desirable. In Massachusetts they have gained large
+numbers in a very short period, and under every disadvantage. What their
+future history is to be, we will not now attempt to conjecture; but this
+is plain, that they cannot remain long in their present position; either
+they will go back, and, after due penance, receive political absolution
+from the church of the whigs, or the democrats,--and this seems
+impossible,--or else they must go forward where the idea of justice
+impels them. One day the motto "No more slave territory" will give place
+to this, "No slavery in America." The revolution in ideas is not over
+till that is done, nor the corresponding revolution in deeds while a
+single slave remains in America. A man who studies the great movements
+of mankind feels sure that that day is not far off; that no combination
+of northern and southern interest, no declamation, no violence, no love
+of money, no party zeal, no fraud and no lies, no compromise, can long
+put off the time. Bad passions will ere long league with the holiest
+love of right, and that wickedness may be put down with the strong hand
+which might easily be ended at little cost and without any violence,
+even of speech. One day the democratic party of the North will remember
+the grievances which they have suffered from the South, and, if they
+embrace the idea of freedom, no constitutional scruple will long hold
+them from destroying the "peculiar institution." What slavery is in the
+middle of the nineteenth century is quite plain; what it will be at the
+beginning of the twentieth it is not difficult to foresee. The slave
+power has gained a great victory: one more such will cost its life.
+South Carolina did not forget her usual craft in voting for a northern
+man that was devoted to slavery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now speak briefly of the conduct of the election. It has been
+attended, at least in New England, with more intellectual action than
+any election that I remember, and with less violence, denunciation, and
+vulgar appeals to low passions and sordid interest. Massachusetts has
+shown herself worthy of her best days; the free soil vote may be looked
+on with pride, by men who conscientiously cast their ballot the other
+way. Men of ability and integrity have been active on both sides, and
+able speeches have been made, while the vulgarity that marked the
+"Harrison campaign" has not been repeated.
+
+In this contest the democratic party made a good confession, and "owned
+up" to the full extent of their conduct. They stated the question at
+issue, fairly, clearly, and entirely; the point could not be mistaken.
+The Baltimore Convention dealt honestly in declaring the political
+opinions of the party; the opinions of their candidate on the great
+party questions, and the subject of slavery, were made known with
+exemplary clearness and fidelity. The party did not fight in the dark;
+they had no dislike to holding slaves, and they pretended none. In all
+parts of the land they went before the people with the same doctrines
+and the same arguments; everywhere they "repudiated" the Wilmot Proviso.
+This gave them an advantage over a party with a different policy. They
+had a platform of doctrines; they knew what it was; the party stood on
+the platform; the candidate stood on it.
+
+The whig party have conducted differently; they did not publish their
+confession of faith. We know what was the whig platform in 1840 and in
+1844. But what is it in 1848? Particular men may publish their opinions,
+but the doctrines of the party are "not communicated to the public." For
+once in the history of America there was a whig convention which passed
+no "Resolutions;" it was the Convention at Philadelphia. But on one
+point, of the greatest importance too, it expressed the opinions of the
+whigs: it rejected the Wilmot Proviso, and Mr. Webster's thunder, which
+had fallen harmless and without lightning from his hands, was "kicked
+out of the meeting!" As the party had no platform, so their candidate
+had no political opinions. "What!" says one, "Choose a President who
+does not declare his opinions,--then it must be because they are
+perfectly well known!" Not at all: General Taylor is raw in politics,
+and has not taken his first "drill!" "Then he must be a man of such
+great political and moral ability, that his will may take the place of
+reason!" Not at all: he is known only as a successful soldier, and his
+reputation is scarcely three years old. Mr. Webster declared his
+nomination "not fit to be made," and nobody has any authentic statement
+of his political opinions; perhaps not even General Taylor himself.
+
+In the electioneering campaign there has been a certain duplicity in the
+supporters of General Taylor: at the North it was maintained that he was
+not opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, while at the South quite uniformly
+the opposite was maintained. This duplicity had the appearance of
+dishonesty. In New England the whigs did not meet the facts and
+arguments of the free soil party; in the beginning of the campaign the
+attempt was made, but was afterwards comparatively abandoned; the
+matter of slavery was left out of the case, and the old question of the
+sub-treasury and the tariff was brought up again, and a stranger would
+have thought, from some whig newspapers, that that was the only question
+of any importance. Few men were prepared to see a man of the ability and
+experience of Mr. Webster in his electioneering speeches pass wholly
+over the subject of slavery. The nation is presently to decide whether
+slavery is to extend over the new territory or not; even in a commercial
+and financial point of view, this is far more important than the
+question of banks and tariffs; but when its importance is estimated by
+its relation to freedom, right, human welfare in general,--we beg the
+pardon of American politicians for speaking of such things,--one is
+amazed to find the whig party of the opinion that it is more important
+to restore the tariff of 1842 than to prohibit slavery in a country as
+large as the thirteen States which fought the Revolution! It might have
+been expected of little, ephemeral men--minute politicians, who are the
+pest of the State,--but when at such a crisis a great man rises,[52]
+amid a sea of upturned faces, to instruct the lesser men, and forgets
+right, forgets freedom, forgets man, and forgets God, talking only of
+the tariff and of banks, why a stranger is amazed, till he remembers
+the peculiar relation of the great man to the moneyed men,--that he is
+their attorney, retained, paid, and pensioned to do the work of men
+whose interest it is to keep the question of slavery out of sight. If
+General Cavaignac had received a pension from the manufacturers of Lyons
+and of Lisle, to the amount of half a million of francs, should we be
+surprised if he forgot the needy millions of the land? Nay, only if he
+did not forget them!
+
+It was a little hardy to ask the anti-slavery men to vote for General
+Taylor; it was like asking the members of a temperance society to choose
+an eminent distiller for president of their association. Still, we know
+that honest anti-slavery men did honestly vote for him. We know nothing
+to impeach the political integrity of General Taylor; the simple fact
+that he is a slaveholder, seems reason enough why he should not be
+President of a nation who believe that "All men are created equal, and
+endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Men will be
+astonished in the next century to learn that the "model republic," had
+such an affection for slaveholders. Here is a remarkable document, which
+we think should be preserved:
+
+     DEED OF SALE.
+
+     "JOHN HAGARD, SR. TO ZACHARIAH TAYLOR.
+
+     "_Received for Record, 18th Feb., 1843._
+
+     "_This Indenture_, made this twenty-first day of April,
+     eighteen hundred and forty-two, between John Hagard, Sr., of
+     the City of New Orleans, State of Louisiana, of one part,
+     and Zachariah Taylor, of the other part, _Witnesseth_, that
+     the said John Hagard, Sr., for and in consideration of the
+     sum of _Ninety-Five Thousand Dollars_ to him in hand paid,
+     and secured to be paid, as hereafter stated by the said
+     Zachariah Taylor, at and before the sealing and delivering
+     of these presents, has this day bargained, sold, and
+     delivered, conveyed, and confirmed, and by these Presents
+     does bargain, sell, deliver, and confirm unto the said
+     Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and assigns, forever, all that
+     plantation and tract of land:...
+
+     "ALSO, all the following Slaves--Nelson, Milley, Peldea,
+     Mason, Willis, Rachel, Caroline, Lucinda, Ramdall, Wirman,
+     Carson, Little Ann, Winna, Jane, Tom, Sally, Gracia, Big
+     Jane, Louisa, Maria, Charles, Barnard, Mira, Sally, Carson,
+     Paul, Sansford, Mansfield, Harry Oden, Harry Horley, Carter,
+     Henrietta, Ben, Charlotte, Wood, Dick, Harrietta, Clarissa,
+     Ben, Anthony, Jacob, Hamby, Jim, Gabriel, Emeline, Armstead,
+     George, Wilson, Cherry, Peggy, Walker, Jane, Wallace,
+     Bartlett, Martha, Letitia, Barbara, Matilda, Lucy, John,
+     Sarah, Bigg Ann, Allen, Tom, George, John, Dick, Fielding,
+     Nelson, or Isom, Winna, Shellod, Lidney, Little Cherry,
+     Puck, Sam, Hannah or Anna, Mary, Ellen, Henrietta, and two
+     small children:--Also, all the Horses, Mules, Cattle, Hogs,
+     Farming Utensils, and Tools, now on said
+     Plantation--together with all and singular, the
+     hereditaments, appurtenances, privileges, and advantages
+     unto the said Land and Slaves belonging or appertaining. _To
+     have and to hold_ the said Plantation and tract of Land and
+     Slaves, and other property above described, unto the said
+     Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and assigns, for ever, and to
+     his and to their only proper use, benefits, and behoof, for
+     ever. And the said John Hagard, Sr., for himself, his heirs,
+     executors, and administrators, does covenant, promise, and
+     agree to and with said Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and
+     assigns, that the aforesaid Plantation and tract of Land and
+     Slaves, and other property, with the appurtenances, unto the
+     said Zachariah Taylor, his heirs, and assigns against the
+     claim or claims of all persons whomsoever claiming or to
+     claim the same, or any part or parcel thereof, shall and
+     will warrant, and by these Presents for ever defend.
+
+     "_In Testimony Whereof_, the said John Hagard, Sr., has
+     hereunto set his hand and seal, the day and year first above
+     written."
+
+If this document had been discovered among some Egyptian papyri, with
+the date 1848 before Christ, it would have been remarkable as a sign of
+the times. In a republic, nearly four thousand years later, it has a
+meaning which some future historian will appreciate.
+
+The free soil party have been plain and explicit as the democrats; they
+published their creed in the celebrated Buffalo platform. The questions
+of sub-treasury and tariff are set aside; "No more slave territory" is
+the watchword. In part they represent an interest, for slavery is an
+injury to the North in many ways, and to a certain extent puts the North
+into the hands of the South; but chiefly an idea. Nobody thought they
+would elect their candidate, whosoever he might be; they could only
+arrest public attention and call men to the great questions at issue,
+and so, perhaps, prevent the evil which the South was bent on
+accomplishing. This they have done, and done well. The result has been
+highly gratifying. It was pleasant and encouraging to see men ready to
+sacrifice their old party attachments and their private interests,
+oftentimes, for the sake of a moral principle. I do not mean to say
+that there was no moral principle in the other parties--I know better.
+But it seems to me that the free soilers committed a great error in
+selecting Mr. Van Buren as their candidate. True, he is a man of
+ability, who has held the highest offices and acquitted himself
+honorably in all; but he had been the "Northern man, with Southern
+principles;" had shown a degree of subserviency to the South, which was
+remarkable, if not singular or strange: his promise, made and repeated
+in the most solemn manner, to veto any act of Congress, abolishing
+slavery in the capital, was an insult to the country, and a disgrace to
+himself. He had a general reputation for instability, and want of
+political firmness. It is true, he had opposed the annexation of Texas,
+and lost his nomination in 1844 by that act; but it is also true that he
+advised his party to vote for Mr. Polk, who was notoriously in favor of
+annexation. His nomination, I must confess, was unfortunate; the Buffalo
+Convention seems to have looked at his availability more than his
+fitness, and, in their contest for a principle, began by making a
+compromise of that very principle itself. It was thought he could
+"carry" the State of New York; and so a man who was not a fair
+representative of the idea, was set up. It was a bad beginning. It is
+better to be defeated a thousand times, rather than seem to succeed by a
+compromise of the principle contended for. Still, enough has been done,
+to show the nation that the dollar is not almighty; that the South is
+not always to insult the North, and rule the land, annexing, plundering,
+and making slaves when she will; that the North has men who will not
+abandon the great sentiment of freedom, which is the boast of the nation
+and the age.
+
+General Taylor is elected by a large popular vote; some voted for him on
+account of his splendid military success; some because he is a
+slaveholder, and true to the interests of the slave power; some because
+he is a "Good whig," and wants a high tariff of duties. But we think
+there are men who gave him their support, because he has never been
+concerned in the intrigues of a party, is indebted to none for past
+favors, is pledged to none, bribed by none, and intimidated by none;
+because he seems to be an honest man, with a certain rustic
+intelligence; a plain blunt man, that loves his country and mankind. We
+hope this was a large class. If he is such a man, he will enter upon his
+office under favorable auspices, and with the best wishes of all good
+men.
+
+But what shall the free soil party do next? they cannot go
+back,--conscience waves behind them her glittering wings and bids them
+on; they cannot stand still, for as yet their measures and their
+watchword do not fully represent their idea. They must go forward, as
+the early abolitionists went, with this for their motto: "No slavery in
+America." "He that would lead men, must walk but one step before them;"
+says somebody. Well, but he must think many steps before them, or they
+will presently tread him under their feet. The present success of the
+idea is doubtful; the interests of the South will demand the extension
+of slavery;[53] the interests of the party now coming into power, will
+demand their peculiar boon. So another compromise is to be feared, and
+the extension of slavery yet further West. But the ultimate triumph of
+the genius of freedom is certain. In Europe, it shakes the earth with
+mighty tread; thrones fall before its conquering feet. While in the
+eastern continent, kings, armies, emperors, are impotent before that
+power, shall a hundred thousand slaveholders stay it here with a bit of
+parchment?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] [Greek: Greek: Gignontai men oun hai staseis ou peri mikrôn all' ek
+mikrôn, stasiazousi de peri megalôn.]--Aristotle's _Polit._, Lib. V.
+Chap. 4, § 1.
+
+[49] William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+[50] The following table shows the facts of the case:--
+
+Cost of post-office in slave States for
+the year ending July 1st, 1847,              $1,318,541
+
+Receipts from post-office,                      624,380
+
+Cost of post-office in free States for the
+year ending July 1st, 1847,                  $1,038,219
+
+Receipts from post-office,                    1,459,631
+
+So the Southern post-office cost the nation $694,161, and the Northern
+post-office paid the nation $421,412, making a difference of $1,115,573
+against the South.
+
+[51] Mr. John P. Hale.
+
+[52] Hon. Daniel Webster.
+
+[53] The following extract, from the _Charleston Mercury_, shows the
+feeling of the South. "Pursuant to a call, a meeting of the citizens of
+Orangeburg District was held to-day, 6th November, in the court-house,
+which was well filled on the occasion.... Gen. D. F. Jamison then rose,
+and moved the appointment of a committee of twenty-five, to take into
+consideration the continued agitation by Congress of the question of
+slavery;... the committee, through their chairman, Gen. Jamison, made
+the following report:--
+
+"The time has arrived when the slaveholding States of the confederacy
+must take decided action upon the continued attacks of the North against
+their domestic institutions, or submit in silence to that humiliating
+position in the opinions of mankind, that longer acquiescence must
+inevitably reduce them to.... The agitation of the subject of slavery
+commenced in the fanatical murmurings of a few scattered abolitionists,
+to whom it was a long time confined; but now it has swelled into a
+torrent of popular opinion at the North; it has invaded the fireside and
+the church, the press and the halls of legislation; it has seized upon
+the deliberations of Congress, and at this moment is sapping the
+foundations, and about to overthrow the fairest political structure that
+the ingenuity of man has ever devised.
+
+"The overt efforts of abolitionism were confined for a long period to
+annoying applications to Congress, under color of the pretended right of
+petition; it has since directed the whole weight of its malign influence
+against the annexation of Texas, and had wellnigh cost to the country
+the loss of that important province; but emboldened by success and the
+inaction of the South, in an unjust and selfish spirit of national
+agrarianism it would now appropriate the whole public domain. It might
+well have been supposed that the undisturbed possession of the whole of
+Oregon Territory would have satisfied the non-slaveholding States. This
+they now hold, by the incorporation of the ordinance of 1787 into the
+bill of the last session for establishing a territorial government for
+Oregon. That provision, however, was not sustained by them from any
+apprehension that the territory could ever be settled from the States of
+the South, but it was intended as a gratuitous insult to the southern
+people, and a malignant and unjustifiable attack upon the institution of
+slavery.
+
+"We are called upon to give up the whole public domain to the fanatical
+cravings of abolitionism, and the unholy lust of political power. A
+territory, acquired by the whole country for the use of all, where
+treasure has been squandered like chaff, and southern blood poured out
+like water, is sought to be appropriated by one section, because the
+other chooses to adhere to an institution held not only under the
+guaranties that brought this confederacy into existence, but under the
+highest sanction of Heaven. Should we quietly fold our hands under this
+assumption on the part of the non-slaveholding States, the fate of the
+South is sealed, the institution of slavery is gone, and its existence
+is but a question of time.... Your committee are unwilling to anticipate
+what will be the result of the combined wisdom and joint action of the
+southern portion of the confederacy on this question; but as an
+initiatory step to a concert of action on the part of the people of
+South Carolina, they respectfully recommend, for the adoption of this
+meeting, the following resolutions:--
+
+"_Resolved_, That the continued agitation of the question of slavery, by
+the people of the non-slaveholding States, by their legislatures, and by
+their representatives in Congress, exhibits not only a want of national
+courtesy, which should always exist between kindred States, but is a
+palpable violation of good faith towards the slaveholding States, who
+adopted the present Constitution 'in order to form a more perfect
+union.'
+
+"_Resolved_, That while we acquiesce in adopting the boundary between
+the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States, known as the Missouri
+Compromise line, we will not submit to any further restriction upon the
+rights of any southern man to carry his property and his institutions
+into territory acquired by southern treasure and by southern blood.
+
+"_Resolved_, That should the Wilmot Proviso, or any other restriction,
+be applied by Congress to the territories of the United States, south of
+36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, we recommend to our representative in
+Congress, as the decided opinion of this portion of his district, to
+leave his seat in that body, and return home.
+
+"_Resolved_, That we respectfully suggest to both houses of the
+legislature of South Carolina, to adopt a similar recommendation as to
+our senators in Congress from this State.
+
+"_Resolved_, That upon the return home of our senators and
+representatives in Congress, the legislature of South Carolina should be
+forthwith assembled to adopt such measures as the exigency may demand.
+
+"The resolutions were then submitted, _seriatim_, and, together with the
+report, were unanimously adopted."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional
+Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3), by Theodore Parker
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, SERMONS (2/3) ***
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional
+Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3), by Theodore Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
+
+Author: Theodore Parker
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2010 [EBook #34637]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, SERMONS (2/3) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>SPEECHES, ADDRESSES,<br />
+
+AND<br />
+
+OCCASIONAL SERMONS,</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>THEODORE PARKER,</h2>
+
+<h4>MINISTER OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN BOSTON.</h4>
+
+<h3>IN THREE VOLUMES.</h3>
+
+<h3>VOL. II.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">
+
+BOSTON:<br />
+HORACE B. FULLER,<br />
+(<span class="smcap">Successor to Walker, Fuller, and Company</span>,)<br />
+245, WASHINGTON STREET.<br />
+<br />
+1867.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by<br />
+THEODORE PARKER,<br />
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court<br />
+of the District of Massachusetts.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.</h2>
+
+<p>I.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">A Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston.</span>&mdash;Preached<br />
+at the Melodeon, on Sunday, February 18, 1849       <span class="tocnum">PAGE <a href="#Page_1">1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+II.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Some Thoughts on the Most Christian Use of the<br />
+Sunday.</span>&mdash;A Sermon preached at the Melodeon, on Sunday,<br />
+January 30, 1848                                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_56'>56</a></span><br />
+<br />
+III.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Sermon of Immortal Life.</span>&mdash;Preached at the Melodeon<br />
+on Sunday, September 20, 1846                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Public Education of the People.</span>&mdash;An Address<br />
+delivered before the Onondaga Teachers' Institute at Syracuse,<br />
+New York, October 4, 1849                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_139'>139</a></span><br />
+<br />
+V.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Political Destination of America, and the<br />
+Signs of the Times.</span>&mdash;An Address delivered before<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span>several literary Societies in 1848                               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_198'>198</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of John<br />
+Quincy Adams.</span>&mdash;Delivered at the Melodeon, on Sunday,<br />
+March 5, 1848                                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_252'>252</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Speech at a Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery<br />
+Society, to Celebrate the Abolition of<br />
+Slavery by the French Republic</span>, April 6, 1848               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_331'>331</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">A Speech at Faneuil Hall, before the New England<br />
+Anti-Slavery Convention</span>, May 31, 1848                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_344'>344</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IX.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Some Thoughts on the Free Soil Party, and the<br />
+Election of General Taylor</span>, December, 1848                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_360'>360</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.&mdash;PREACHED AT THE
+MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1849.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<h4>MATTHEW VIII. 20.</h4>
+
+<h4>
+By their fruits ye shall know them.
+</h4>
+
+
+<p>Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I
+ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I
+use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition
+of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of
+piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all
+manly excellence, and was the condition of all noble, manly development;
+that love of truth, love of justice, love of love, were respectively the
+condition of intellectual, moral, and affectional development, and that
+they were also respectively the intellectual, moral, and affectional
+forms of piety; that the love of God as the Infinite Father, the
+totality of truth, justice, and love was the general condition of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+total development of man's spiritual powers. But I showed, that
+sometimes this piety, intellectual, moral, affectional or total, did not
+arrive at self-consciousness; the man only unconsciously loving the
+Infinite in one or all these modes, and in such cases the man was a
+loser by frustrating his piety, and allowing it to stop in the truncated
+form of unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Now what is in you will appear out of you; if piety be there in any of
+these forms, in either mode, it will come out; if not there, its fruits
+cannot appear. You may reason forward or backward: if you know piety
+exists, you may foretell its appearance; if you find fruits thereof, you
+may reason back and be sure of its existence. Piety is love of God as
+God, and as we only love what we are like, and in that degree, so it is
+also a likeness to God. Now it is a general doctrine in Christendom that
+divinity must manifest itself; and, in assuming the highest form of
+manifestation known to us, divinity becomes humanity. However, that
+doctrine is commonly taught in the specific and not generic form, and is
+enforced by an historical and concrete example, but not by way of a
+universal thesis. It appears thus: The Christ was God; as such He must
+manifest himself; the form of manifestation was that of a complete and
+perfect man. I reject the concrete example, but accept the universal
+doctrine on which the special dogma of the Trinity is erected. From that
+I deduce this as a general rule: If you follow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> the law of your nature,
+and are simple and true to that, as much of godhead as there is in you,
+so much of manhood will come out of you, and, as much of manhood comes
+out of you, so much of godhead was there within you; as much subjective
+divinity, so much objective humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the case, the demands you can make on a man for manliness
+must depend for their answer on the amount of piety on deposit in his
+character; so it becomes important to know the condition of this town in
+respect of piety, for if this be not right in the above sense, nothing
+else is right; or, to speak more clerically, "Unless the Lord keep the
+city, the watchman waketh but in vain," and unless piety be developed or
+a-developing in men, it is vain for the minister to sit up late of a
+Saturday night to concoct his sermon, and to rise up early of a Sunday
+morning to preach the same; he fights but as one that beateth the air,
+and spends his strength for that which is nought. They are in the right,
+therefore, who first of all things demand piety: so let us see what
+signs or proof we have, and of what amount of piety in Boston.</p>
+
+<p>To determine this, we must have some test by which to judge of the
+quality, distinguishing piety from impiety, and some standard whereby to
+measure the quantity thereof; for though you may know what piety is in
+you, I what is in me, and God what is in both and in all the rest of us,
+it is plain that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> can only judge of the existence of piety in other
+men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in
+some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard
+measure.</p>
+
+<p>Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides
+alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal
+unlike: each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and
+standard measure. Let me say a word of each.</p>
+
+<p>I. Some contend for what I call the conventional standard; that is, the
+manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these
+forms there are three modes or degrees: namely, first, the form of
+bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain
+doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without
+proof, but because they are taught with authority; and third, a passive
+acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance
+thereof.</p>
+
+<p>II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of
+piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes
+of action.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is plain, that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear
+very different when tested by one or the other of these standards. It
+may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds
+the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> blue and bounding, may
+leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this
+importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is
+but fair to try it by both standards.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its
+manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the
+outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general
+ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the
+Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies
+the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the
+unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a
+State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then
+the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in
+any one State, would vary with the health of the judge. However, to do
+what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it is plain, that,
+estimated by any ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small.
+There is, as men often say, "A general decline of piety;" that is a
+common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter
+worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the
+complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. The disease
+which is thus lamented is said to be acute, but is proved to be chronic
+also; only it would seem, from the lamentations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> of some modern
+Jeremiahs, that the decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the
+more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became.</p>
+
+<p>Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view,
+let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come
+nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The
+majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant
+Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a "Great awakening," but
+a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great
+decline of religion&mdash;a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that
+modern philosophy, the physics of Galileo and Newton, the metaphysics of
+Descartes and of Kant, mark another decline of religion&mdash;a decline of
+piety in the philosophical form; that all the modern democracy of the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marks a yet further decline of
+religion&mdash;a decline of piety in the political form; that all the modern
+secular societies, for removing the evils of men and their sins, mark a
+yet fourth decline of religion&mdash;a decline of piety in the philanthropic
+form. Certainly, when measured by the medi&aelig;val standard of Catholicism,
+these mark four great declensions of piety, for, in all four, the old
+principle of subordination to an external and personal authority is set
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical
+establishments are breaking down; other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> establishments are a-building
+up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the
+last of the Popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great
+schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no
+longer Roman. The old forms of piety, such as service in Latin, the
+withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the
+ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood&mdash;all these are protested
+against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works
+greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail
+that the Virgin Mary appeared on the nineteenth of September, 1846, to
+two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such things to
+Ronge and Wessenberg? Neither the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous
+mother, avails aught against this untoward generation, charm they never
+so wisely. The decline of piety goes on. By the new Constitution of
+France, all forms of religion are equal; the Catholic and the
+Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under the
+broad shield of the law. Even Spain, the fortress walled and moated
+about, whither the spirit of the middle ages retired and shut herself up
+long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with
+unfeminine queens and nuns&mdash;even Spain fails with the general failure.
+British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into
+woollen mills. Monks and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> nuns forget their beads in some new
+handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy
+with serving, careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not
+cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long
+unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas,
+making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the
+Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of
+St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright,
+Watt, and Fulton,&mdash;the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom.
+It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on
+the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs
+which is Solomon's, that get printed there: but fiery novels of Eugene
+Sue, and George Sand; and so extremes meet.</p>
+
+<p>Protestant establishments share the same peril. A new sect of
+Protestants rises up in Germany, who dissent as much from the letter and
+spirit of Protestantism, as the Protestants from Catholicism; men that
+will not believe the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of the
+Trinity, the depravity of man, the eternity of future punishment, nor
+justification by faith&mdash;a justification before God, for mere belief
+before men. The new spirit gets possession of new men, who cannot be
+written down, nor even howled down. Excommunication or abuse does no
+good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> on such men as Bauer, Strauss, and Schwegler; and it answers none
+of their questions. It seems pretty clear, that in all the north of
+Germany, within twenty years, there will be entire freedom of worship,
+for all sects, Protestant and Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>In England, Protestantism has done its work less faithfully than in
+Germany. The Protestant spirit of England came here two hundred years
+ago, so that new and Protestant England is on the west of the ocean; in
+England, an established church lies there still, an iceberg in the
+national garden. But even there, the decline of the ecclesiastical form
+of piety is apparent: the new bishops must not sit in the House of
+Lords, till the old ones die out, for the number of lords spiritual must
+not increase, though the temporal may; the new attempt, at Oxford and
+elsewhere, to restore the Middle Ages, will not prosper. Bring back all
+the old rites and forms into Leeds and Manchester; teach men the
+theology of Thomas Aquinas, or of St. Bernard; bid them adore the
+uplifted wafer, as the very God, men who toil all day with iron mills,
+who ride in steam-drawn coaches, and talk by lightning in a whisper,
+from the Irk to the Thames,&mdash;they will not consent to the philosophy or
+the theology of the Middle Ages, nor be satisfied with the old forms of
+piety, which, though too elevated for their fathers in the time of
+Elizabeth, are yet too low for them, at least too antiquated. Dissenters
+have got into the House of Commons;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> the test-act is repealed, and a man
+can be a captain in the army, or a postmaster in a village, without
+first taking the Lord's Supper, after the fashion of the Church of
+England. Some men demand the abandonment of tithes, the entire
+separation of Church and State, the return to "The voluntary principle"
+in religion. "The battering ram which levelled old Sarum," and other
+boroughs as corrupt, now beats on the church, and the "Church is in
+danger." Men complain of the decline of piety in England. An intelligent
+and very serious writer, not long ago, lamenting this decline, in proof
+thereof, relates, that formerly men began their last wills, "In the name
+of God, Amen;" and headed bills of lading with, "Shipped in good order,
+by the grace of God;" that indictments for capital crimes charged the
+culprit with committing felony, "At the instigation of the devil," and
+now, he complains, these forms have gone out of use.</p>
+
+<p>In America, in New England, in Boston, when measured by that standard,
+the same decline of piety is apparent. It is often said that our
+material condition is better than our moral; that in advance of our
+spiritual condition. There is a common clerical complaint of a certain
+thinness in the churches; men do not give their bodily attendance, as
+once they did; they are ready enough to attend lectures, two or three in
+a week, no matter how scientific and abstract, or how little connected
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> their daily work, yet they cannot come to the church without
+teasing beforehand, nor keep awake while there. It is said the minister
+is not respected as formerly. True, a man of power is respected, heard,
+sought, and followed, but it is for his power, for his words of grace
+and truth, not for his place in a pulpit; he may have more influence as
+a man, but less as a clergyman. Ministers lament a prevalent disbelief
+of their venerable doctrines; that there is a concealed skepticism in
+regard to them, often not concealed. This, also, is a well-founded
+complaint; the well-known dogmas of theology were never in worse repute;
+there was never so large a portion of the community in New England who
+were doubtful of the Trinity, of eternal damnation, of total depravity,
+of the atonement, of the Godhead of Jesus, of the miracles of the New
+Testament, and of the truth of every word of the Bible. A complaint is
+made, that the rites and forms which are sometimes called "the
+ordinances of religion," are neglected; that few men join the church,
+and though the old hedge is broken down before the altar, yet the number
+of communicants diminishes, and it is no longer able-headed men, the
+leaders of society, who come; that the ordinances seem haggard and
+ghastly to young men, who cannot feed their hungry souls on such a thin
+pittance of spiritual aliment as these afford; that the children are not
+baptized. These things are so; so in Europe, Catholic and Protestant; so
+in America, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> in Boston. Notwithstanding the well-founded complaint
+that our modern churches are too costly for the times, we do not build
+temples which bear so high a proportion to our wealth as the early
+churches of Boston; the attendance at meeting does not increase as the
+population; the ministers are not prominent, as in the days of Wilson,
+of Cotton, and of Norton; their education is not now in the same
+proportion to the general culture of the times. Harvard College,
+dedicated to "Christ and the Church," designed at first chiefly for the
+education of the clergy, graduates few ministers; theological literature
+no longer overawes all other. The number of church members was never so
+small in proportion to the voters as now; the number of Protestant
+births never so much exceeded the number of Protestant baptisms. Young
+men of superior ability and superior education have little affection for
+the ministry; take little interest in the welfare of the church. Nay,
+youths descended from a wealthy family seldom look that way. It is poor
+men's sons, men of obscure family, who fill the pulpits; often,
+likewise, men of slender ability, eked out with an education
+proportionately scant. The most active members of the churches are
+similar in position, ability, and culture. These are undeniable facts.
+They are not peculiar to New England. You find them wherever the
+voluntary principle is resorted to. In England, in Catholic countries,
+you find the old historic names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> in the Established Church; there is no
+lack of aristocratic blood in clerical veins; but there and everywhere
+the church seems falling astern of all other craft which can keep the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>Since these things are so, men who have only the conventional standard
+wherewith to measure the amount of piety, only that test to prove its
+existence by, think we are rapidly going to decay; that the tabernacle
+is fallen down, and no man rises to set it up. They complain that Zion
+is in distress; theological newspapers lament that there are no revivals
+to report; that "The Lord has withheld His arm," and does not "pour out
+His Spirit upon the churches." Ghastly meetings are held by men with
+sincere and noble heart, but saddened face; speeches are made which seem
+a groan of linked wailings long drawn out. Men mourn at the infidelity
+of the times, at the coldness of some, at the deadness of others. All
+the sects complain of this, yet each loves to attribute the deadness of
+the rival sects to their special theology; it is Unitarianism which is
+choking the Unitarians, say their foes, and the Unitarians know how to
+retort after the same fashion. The less enlightened put the blame of
+this misfortune on the good God who has somehow "withheld His hand," or
+omitted to "pour out His Spirit,"&mdash;the people perishing for want of the
+open vision. Others put the blame on mankind; some on "poor human
+nature," which is not what might have been expected,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> not perceiving
+that if the fault be there it is not for us to remedy, and if God made
+man a bramble-bush, that no wailing will make him bear figs. Yet others
+refer this condition to the use made of human nature, which certainly is
+a more philosophical way of looking at the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is one sect which has done great service in former days, which
+is, I think, still doing something to enlighten and liberalize the land,
+and, I trust, will yet do more, more even than it consciously intends.
+The name of Unitarian is deservedly dear to many of us, who yet will not
+be shackled by any denominational fetters. This sect has always been
+remarkable for a certain gentlemanly reserve about all that pertained to
+the inward part of religion; other faults it might have, but it did not
+incur the reproach of excessive enthusiasm, or a spirituality too
+sublimated and transcendental for daily use. This sect has long been a
+speckled bird among the denominations, each of which has pecked at her,
+or at least cawed with most unmelodious croak against this new-fledged
+sect. It was said the Unitarians had "denied the Lord that bought them;"
+that theirs was the church of unbelief&mdash;not the church of Christ, but of
+No-Christ; that they had a Bible of their own, and a thin, poor Bible,
+too; that their ways were ways of destruction; "Touch not, taste not,
+handle not," was to be written on their doctrines; that they had not
+even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> the grace of lukewarmness, but were moral and stone-cold; that
+they looked fair on the side turned towards man, but on the Godward side
+it was a blank wall with no gate, nor window, nor loop-hole, nor eyelet
+for the Holy Ghost to come through; that their prayers were only a show
+of devotion to cover up the hard rock of the flinty heart, or the frozen
+ground of morality. Their faith, it was said, was only a conviction
+after the case was proven by unimpeachable evidence, and good for
+nothing; while belief without evidence, or against proof, seems to be
+the right ecclesiastical talisman.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time the Unitarian sect did not grumble unduly, but set
+itself to promote the cultivation of reason and apply that to religion;
+to cultivate morality and apply it to life; and to demand the most
+entire personal freedom for all men in all matters pertaining to
+religion. Hence came its merits; they were very great merits, too, and
+not at all the merits of the times, held in common with the other sects.
+I need not dwell on this, and the good works of Unitarianism, in this
+the most Unitarian city in the world; but as a general thing the
+Unitarians, it seems to me, did neglect the culture of piety; and of
+course their morality, while it lasted, would be unsatisfactory, and in
+time would wither and dry up because it had no deepness of earth to grow
+out of. The Unitarians, as a general thing, began outside, and sought to
+work inward, proceeding from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> special to the general, by what might
+be called the inductive mode of religious culture; that was the form
+adopted in pulpits, and in families so far as there was any religious
+education attempted in private. That is not the method of nature, where
+all growth is the development of a living germ, which by an inward power
+appropriates the outward things it needs, and grows thereby. Hence came
+the defects of Unitarianism, and they were certainly very great defects;
+but they came almost unavoidably from the circumstances of the times.
+The sensational philosophy was the only philosophy that prevailed; the
+Orthodox sects had always rejected a part of that philosophy, not in the
+name of science, but of piety, and they supplied its place not with a
+better philosophy, but with tradition, speaking with an authority which
+claimed to be above human nature. It was not in the name of reason that
+they rejected a false philosophy, but in the name of religion often
+denounced all philosophy and the reason which demanded it. The
+Unitarians rejected that portion of Orthodoxy, became more consistent
+sensationalists, and arrived at results which we know. Now it is easy to
+see their error; not difficult to avoid it; but forty or fifty years ago
+it was almost impossible not to fall into this mistake. Sometimes it
+seems as if the Unitarians were half conscious of this defect, and so
+dared not be original, but borrowed Orthodox weapons, or continued to
+use Trinitarian phrases<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> long after they had blunted those weapons of
+their point, and emptied the phrases of their former sense. In the
+controversy between the Orthodox and Unitarians, neither party was
+wholly right: the Unitarians had reason to charge the Orthodox with
+debasing man's nature, and representing God as not only unworthy, but
+unjust, and somewhat odious; the Trinitarians were mainly right in
+charging us with want of conscious piety, with beginning to work at the
+wrong end; but at the same time it must be remembered, that, in
+proportion to their numbers, the Unitarians have furnished far more
+philanthropists and reformers than any of the other sects. It is time to
+confess this on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time the Unitarian sect did not complain much of the decline
+of piety; it did not care to have an organization, loving personal
+freedom too well for that, and it had not much denominational feeling;
+indeed, its members were kept together, not so much by an agreement and
+unity of opinion among themselves, as by a unity of opposition from
+without; it was not the hooks on their shields that held the legion
+together with even front, but the pressure of hostile shields crowded
+upon them from all sides. They did not believe in spasmodic action; if a
+body was dead, they gave it burial, without trying to galvanize it into
+momentary life, not worth the spark it cost; they knew that a small
+cloud may make a good many flashes in the dark, but that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> many
+lightnings cannot make light. They stood apart from the violent efforts
+of other churches to get converts. The converts they got commonly
+adhered to their faith, and in this respect differed a good deal from
+those whom "Revivals" brought into other churches; with whom
+Christianity sprung up in a night, and in a night also perished. Some
+years ago, when this city was visited and ravaged by Revivals, the
+Unitarians kept within doors, gave warning of the danger, and suffered
+less harm and loss from that tornado than any of the sects. Unitarianism
+seems, in this city, to have done its original work; so the company is
+breaking up by degrees, and the men are going off, to engage in other
+business, to weed other old fields, or to break up new land, each man
+following his own sense of duty, and for himself determining whether to
+go or stay. But at the same time, an attempt is made to keep the company
+together; to cultivate a denominational feeling; to put hooks and
+staples on the shields which no longer offer that formidable and even
+front; to teach all trumpets to give the same sectarian bray, all voices
+to utter the same war-cry. The attempt does not succeed; the ranks are
+disordered, the trumpets give an uncertain sound, and the soldiers do
+not prepare themselves for denominational battle; nay, it often happens
+that the camp lacks the two sinews of war&mdash;both money, and men. Hence
+the denominational view of religious affairs has undergone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> a change; I
+make no doubt a real and sincere change, though I know this has been
+denied, and the change thought only official. The men I refer to are
+sincere and devout men; some of them quite above the suspicion of mere
+official conduct. This sect is now the loudest in its wailing; these
+Christian Jeremiahs tell us that we do not realize spiritual things,
+that we are all dead men, that there is no health in us. These cold
+Unitarian Thomases crowd unwontedly together in public to bewail the
+spiritual weather, the dearth of piety in Boston, the "General decline
+of religion" in New England. Church unto church raises the Macedonian
+cry, "Come over and help us!" The opinion seems general that piety is in
+a poor way, and must have watchers, the strongest medicine, and nursing
+quite unusual, or it will soon be all over, and Unitarianism will give
+up the ghost. Various causes have I heard assigned for the malady; some
+think that there has been over-much preaching of philosophy, though
+perhaps there is not evidence to convict any one man in particular of
+the offence; that philosophy is the dog in the manger, who keeps the
+hungry Unitarian flock from their spiritual hay, and cut-straw, which
+are yet of not the smallest use to him. But look never so sharp, and you
+do not find this dangerous beast in the neighborhood of the fold. Others
+think that there has been also an excess of moral preaching, against the
+prevalent sins of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> nation, I suppose&mdash;but few individuals seem
+liable to conviction on that charge. Yet others think this decline comes
+from the fact that the terrors have not been duly and sufficiently
+administered from the pulpit; that while Catholics and Methodists thrive
+under such influences, the Unitarian widows are neglected in the weekly
+ministration of terror and of threat; that there has not been so much an
+excess of lightning in the form of philosophy or morality, but only a
+lack of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>This temporary movement among the Unitarians of Boston is natural; in
+some respects it is what our fathers would have called "judicial." The
+Unitarians have been cold, have looked more at the outward
+manifestations of goodness than at the inward spirit of piety which was
+to make the manifestations; they have not had an excess of philosophy,
+or of morality, but a defect of piety. They have been more respectable
+than pious. They have not always quite rightly appreciated the
+enthusiasm of sterner and more austere sects; not always done justice to
+the inwardness of religion those sects sought to promote. When their
+churches get a little thin, and their denominational affairs a little
+disturbed, it is quite natural these Unitarians should look after the
+cause and pass over to lamentations at the present state of things;
+while looking at the community from the new point of view, it is quite
+natural that they should suppose piety on the decline, and religion
+dying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> out. Yes, in general it is plain that, if men have no eyes but
+conventional eyes, no spirit but that of the ecclesiastical order they
+serve in, and of the denomination they belong to, it is natural for them
+to think that because piety does not flow in the old ecclesiastical
+channel, it does not flow anywhere, and there is none at all to run.
+Thus it is easy to explain the complaint of the Catholics at the great
+defection of the most enlightened nations of Europe; the lamentation of
+the Protestants at the heresy of the most enlightened portion of their
+sect; and the Unitarian wail over the general decline of piety in the
+city of Boston. Some men can only judge the present age by the
+conventional standard of the past, and as the old form of piety does not
+appear, they must conclude there is no piety.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let us now recur to the other or natural standard, and look at the
+manifestation of piety in the form of morality. Last Sunday I spoke of
+our moral condition; and it appeared that morals were in a low state
+here when compared with the ideal morals of Christianity. Now as the
+outward deed is but the manifestation of the inward life, and objective
+humanity the index of subjective divinity, so the low state of morals
+proves a low state of piety; if the heart of this town was right towards
+God, then would its hand also be right towards man. I am one of those
+who for long years have lamented the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> want of vital piety in this
+people. We not only do not realize spiritual things, but we do not make
+them our ideals. I see proofs of this want of piety in the low morals of
+trade, of the public press; in poverty, intemperance, and crime; in the
+vices and social wrongs touched on the last Sunday. I judge the tree by
+its fruit. But it is not on this ground that the ecclesiastical
+complaint is based. Men who make so much ado about the absence of piety,
+do not appeal for proof thereof to the great vices and prominent sins of
+the times; they see no sign of that in our trade and our politics; in
+the misery that festers in putrid lanes, one day to breed a pestilence,
+which it were even cheaper to hinder now, than cure at a later time;
+nobody mentions as proof the Mexican War, the political dishonesty of
+officers, the rapacity of office-seekers, the servility of men who will
+tamely suffer the most sacred rights of three millions of men to be
+trodden into the dust. Matters which concern millions of men came up
+before your Congress; the great Senator of Massachusetts loitered away
+the time of the session here in Boston, managing a lawsuit for a few
+thousand dollars, and no fault was publicly found with such neglect of
+public duty; but men see no lack of piety indicated by this fact, and
+others like it; they find signs of that lack in empty pews, in a
+deserted communion-table, in the fact that children, though brought up
+to reverence truth and justice, to love man and to love God,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> are not
+baptized with water; or in the fact that Unitarianism or Trinitarianism
+is on the decline! How many wailings have we all heard or read, because
+the Puritan churches of Boston have not kept the faith of their grim
+founders; what lamentations at the rising up of a sect which refuses the
+doctrine of the Trinity, or at the appearance of a few men who,
+neglecting the common props of Christianity, rest it, for its basis, on
+the nature of man and the nature of God: though almost all the eminent
+philanthropy of the day is connected with these men, yet they are still
+called "Infidel," and reviled on all hands!</p>
+
+<p>The state of things mentioned in the last sermon does indicate a want of
+piety, a deep and a great want. I do not see signs of that in the debt
+and decay of churches, in absence from meetings, in doubt of theological
+dogmas, in neglect of forms and ceremonies which once were of great
+value; but I do see it in the low morals of trade, of the press; in the
+popular vices. On a national scale I see it in the depravity of
+political parties, in the wicked war we have just fought, in the slavery
+we still tolerate and support. Yes, as I look on the churches of this
+city, I see a want of piety in the midst of us. If eminent piety were in
+them, and allowed to follow its natural bent, it would come out of them
+in the form of eminent humanity; they would lead in the philanthropies
+of this day, where they hardly follow. In this condition of the churches
+I see a most signal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> proof of the low estate of piety; they do not
+manifest a love of truth, which is the piety of the intellect; nor a
+love of justice, which is the piety of the moral sense; nor a love of
+love, which is the piety of the affections; nor a love of God as the
+Infinite Father of all men, which is the total piety of the whole soul.
+For lack of this internal divinity there is a lack of external humanity.
+Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? This is what I complain
+of, what I mourn over.</p>
+
+<p>The clergymen of this city are most of them sincere men, I doubt not;
+some of them men of a superior culture; many of them laborious men;
+most, perhaps all of them, deeply interested in the welfare of the
+churches, and the promotion of piety. But how many of them are marked
+and known for their philanthropy, distinguished for their zeal in
+putting down any of the major sins of our day, zealous in any work of
+reform? I fear I can count them all on the fingers of a single hand; yet
+there are enough to bewail the departure of monastic forms, and of the
+theology which led men in the dimness of a darker age, but cannot shine
+in the rising light of this. I find no fault with these men; I blame
+them not; it is their profession which so blinds their eyes. They are as
+wise and as valiant as the churches let them be. What sect in all this
+land ever cared about temperance, education, peace betwixt nations, or
+even the freedom of all men in our own, so much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> as this sect cares for
+the baptizing of children with water, and that for the baptizing of men;
+this for the doctrine of the Trinity, and all for the infallibility of
+the Bible? Do you ask the sects to engage in the work of extirpating
+concrete wrong? It is in vain; each reformer tries it&mdash;the mild sects
+answer, "I pray thee have me excused;" the sterner sects reply with
+awful speech. A distinguished theological journal of another city thinks
+the philanthropies of this day are hostile to piety, and declares that
+true spiritual Christianity never prevails where men think slavery is a
+sin. A distinguished minister of a highly respectable sect declares the
+temperance societies unchristian, and even atheistical. He reasons thus:
+The church is an instrument appointed by God and Christ, to overcome all
+forms of wrong, intemperance among the rest; to neglect this instrument
+and devise another, a temperance society, to wit, is to abandon the
+institutions of God and Christ, and so it is unchristian and
+atheistical. In other words, here is intemperance, a stone of stumbling,
+and a rock of offence, in our way; there is an old wooden beetle, which
+has done great service of old time, and is said to have been made by
+God's own hand; men smite therewith the stone or smite it not; still it
+lies there a stone of stumbling and a stone of shame; other men
+approach, and with a sledge-hammer of well-tempered steel smite the
+rock, and break off piece after piece, smoothing the rough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+impracticable way; they call on men to come to their aid, with such
+weapons as they will. But our minister bids them beware; the beetle is
+"of the Lord," the iron which breaks the rock in pieces is an
+unchristian and atheistical instrument. Yet was this minister an
+earnest, a pious, and a self-denying man, who sincerely sought the good
+of men. He had been taught to know no piety but in the church's form. I
+would not do dishonor to the churches; they have done great service,
+they still do much; I would only ask them to be worthy of their
+Christian name. They educate men a little, and allow them to approach
+emancipation, but never to be free and go alone.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I see much to complain of in the condition of piety; yet nothing to be
+alarmed at. When I look back, it seems worse still, far worse. There has
+not been "A decline of piety" in Boston of late years. Religion is not
+sick. Last Sunday, I spoke of the great progress made in morality within
+fifty years; I said it was an immense progress within two hundred years.
+Now, there cannot be such a progress in the outward manifestation
+without a corresponding and previous development of the inward
+principle. Morality cannot grow without piety more than an oak without
+water, earth, sun, and air. Let me go back one hundred years; see what a
+difference between the religious aspect of things then and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> now!
+certainly there has been a great growth in spirituality since that day.
+I am not to judge men's hearts; I may take their outward lives as the
+test and measure of their inward piety. Will you say the outward life
+never completely comes up to that? It does so as completely now as then.
+Compare the toleration of these times with those; compare the
+intelligence of the community; the temperance, sobriety, chastity,
+virtue in general. Look at what is now done in a municipal way by towns
+and States for mankind; see the better provision made for the poor, for
+the deaf, the dumb, the blind, for the insane, even for the idiot; see
+what is done for the education of the people&mdash;in schools, academies,
+colleges, and by public lectures; what is done for the criminal to
+prevent the growth of crime. See what an amelioration of the penal laws;
+how men are saved and restored to society, who had once been wholly
+lost. See what is done by philanthropy still more eminent, which the
+town and State have not yet overtaken and enacted into law; by the
+various societies for reform&mdash;those for temperance, for peace, for the
+discipline of prisons, for the discharged convicts, for freeing the
+slave. See this Anti-slavery party, which, in twenty years, has become
+so powerful throughout all the Northern States, so strong that it cannot
+be howled down, and men begin to find it hardly safe to howl over it; a
+party which only waits the time to lift up its million arms, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> hurl
+the hateful institution of slavery out of the land! All these humane
+movements come from a divine piety in the soul of man. A tree which
+bears such fruits is not a dead tree; is not wholly to be despaired of;
+is not yet in a "decline," and past all hope of recovery. Is the age
+wanting in piety, which makes such efforts as these? Yes, you will say,
+because it does no more. I agree to this, but it is rich in piety
+compared to other times. Ours is an age of faith; not of mere belief in
+the commandments of men, but of faith in the nature of man and the
+commandments of God.</p>
+
+<p>This prevailing and contagious complaint about the decline of religion
+is not one of the new things of our time. In the beginning of the last
+century, Dr. Colman, first minister of the church in Brattle street,
+lamented in small capitals over the general decline of piety:&mdash;"The
+venerable name of religion and of the church is made a sham pretence for
+the worst of villanies, for uncharitableness and unnatural oppression of
+the pious and the peaceable;" "the perilous times are come, wherein men
+are lovers only of their own selves." "Ah, calamitous day," says he,
+"into which we are fallen, and into which the sins of our infatuated age
+have brought us!" He looks back to the founders of New England; they
+"were rich in faith, and heirs of a better world," "men of whom the
+world was not worthy;" "they laid in a stock of prayers for us which
+have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> brought down many blessings on us already." Samuel Willard
+bewailed "the checkered state of the gospel church;" it was "in every
+respect a gloomy day, and covered with thick clouds."</p>
+
+<p>We retire yet further back, to the end of the seventeenth century; a
+hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, Dr. Increase Mather, not only in
+his own pulpit, but also at "the great and Thursday lecture," lamented
+over "the degeneracy and departing glory of New England." He complained
+that there was a neglect of the Sabbath, of the ordinances, and of
+family worship; he groaned at the lax discipline of the churches, and
+looked, says another, "as fearfully on the growing charity as on the
+growing vices of the age." He called the existing generation "an
+unconverted generation." "Atheism and profaneness," says he, "have come
+to a prodigious height;" "God will visit" for these things; "God is
+about to open the windows of heaven, and pour down the cataracts of His
+wrath ere this generation ... is passed away." If a comet appeared in
+the sky, it was to admonish men of the visitation, and make "the haughty
+daughters of Zion reform their pride of apparel." "The world is full of
+unbelief" (that is, in the malignant aspect and disastrous influence of
+comets), "but there is an awful Scripture for them that do profanely
+condemn such signal works!"</p>
+
+<p>One of the present and well-known indications of the decline of piety,
+that is often thought a modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> luxury, and ridiculously denounced in
+the pulpit, which has done its part in fostering the enjoyment, was
+practised to an extent that alarmed the prim shepherds of the New
+England flock in earlier days. The same Dr. Mather preached a series of
+sermons "tending to promote the power of godliness," and concludes the
+whole with a discourse "Of sleeping at sermons," and says: "To sleep in
+the public worship of God is a thing too frequently and easily
+practised; it is a great and a dangerous evil." "Sleeping at a sermon is
+a greater sin than speaking an idle word. Therefore, if men must be
+called to account for idle words, much more for this!" "Gospel sermons
+are among the most precious talents which any in this world have
+conferred upon them. But what a sad account will be given concerning
+those sermons which have been slept away! As light as thou makest of it
+now, it may be conscience will roar for it upon a death-bed!" "Verily,
+there is many a soul that will find this to be a dismal thought at the
+day of judgment, when he shall remember so many sermons I might have
+heard for my everlasting benefit, but I slighted and slept them all
+away. Therefore consider, if men allow themselves in this evil their
+souls are in danger to perish." "It is true that a godly man may be
+subject unto this as well as unto other infirmities; but he doth not
+allow himself therein." "The name of the glorious God is greatly
+prophaned by this inadvertency."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> "The support of the evangelical
+ministry is ... discouraged." He thought the character of the pulpit was
+not sufficient explanation of this phenomenon, and adds, in his
+supernatural way, "Satan is the external cause of this evil;" "he had
+rather have men wakeful at any time than at sermon time." The good man
+mentions, by way of example, a man who "had not slept a wink at a sermon
+for more than twenty years together," and also, but by way of warning,
+the unlucky youth in the Acts who slept at Paul's long sermon, and fell
+out of the window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding
+something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did
+so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them to death." "The
+holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not
+punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it."
+"Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks forever and
+ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to
+have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending dayes of
+eternity." Other men denounced their "Wo to sleepy sinners," and issued
+their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Mather thought there was "A deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be
+much in mourning and humiliation that God's bottle may be filled with
+tears." He thought piety was going out because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> surplices were coming
+in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like
+the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical
+instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy
+fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-slavery societies are
+to many of their sons&mdash;an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic!"
+The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that
+"all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at
+once." Inoculation for the smallpox was as vehemently and ably opposed
+as the modern attempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to
+the machinations of men than to the all-wise providence of God."</p>
+
+<p>"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical
+historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the
+primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers;
+a change in the tenor of the divine dispensation towards this country
+was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our
+pease fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with
+multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become
+epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our
+inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable ruins." "The
+serious people throughout the land were awakened by these intimations of
+divine displeasure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> to inquire into the causes and matters of the
+controversie." Accordingly, 1679, a synod was convened at Boston, to
+"inquire into the causes of the Lord's controversie with his New England
+people," who determined the matter.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A little later, in 1690, the General Court considered the subject anew,
+and declared, that "A corruption of manners, attended with inexcusable
+degeneracies and apostacies ... is the cause of the controversie." We
+"are now arriving at such an extremity, that the axe is laid to the root
+of the trees, and we are in eminent danger of perishing, if a speedy
+reformation of our provoking evils prevent it not." In 1702, Cotton
+Mather complains that "Our manifold indispositions to recover the dying
+power of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Godliness, were successive calamities, under all of which, our
+apostacies from that Godliness, have rather proceeded than abated." "The
+old spirit of New England has been sensibly going out of the world, as
+the old saints in whom it was have gone; and, instead thereof, the
+spirit of the world, with a lamentable neglect of strict piety, has
+crept in upon the rising generation."</p>
+
+<p>You go back to the time of the founders and fathers of the colony, and
+it is no better. In 1667, Mr. Wilson, who had "A singular gift in the
+practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that "God would
+judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their
+contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and
+sloth," and before that he said, "People rise up as Corah, against their
+ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the
+church,... I think God is provoked by it. Another sin I take to be the
+making light ... of the authority of the Synods." John Norton, whose
+piety was said to be "Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled,
+after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the
+blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New
+England, who "Liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before
+he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while
+he was under the roof, mourned at "The condition of the churches;" and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President
+of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to
+"Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the
+professors of religion falling into."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In 1641, such was the condition
+of piety in Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man,
+because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was
+appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal
+in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The
+church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a
+minister, one hundred and fifty years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> ago, "before the dragon cast
+forth several floods to devour it; but not the least of these floods was
+one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what
+alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the
+country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to
+seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first
+mother, they soon hooked in the husbands also." So, in 1637, the Synod
+of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman
+was duly convicted of holding "About thirty monstrous opinions," and
+subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The
+synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation and emptying of private
+passions," condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony,
+as erroneous, and decided to "Refer doubts to be resolved by the great
+God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "The dark and distracted
+condition of the churches of New England."</p>
+
+<p>"The good old times," when piety was in a thriving state, and the
+churches successful and contented, lay as far behind the "Famous Johns,"
+as it now does behind their successors in office and lamentation. Then,
+as now, the complaint had the same foundation: ministers and other good
+men could not see that new piety will not be put into the old forms,
+neither the old forms of thought, nor the old forms of action. In the
+days of Wilson, Cotton, and Norton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> there was a gradual growth of
+piety; in the days of the Mathers, of Colman, and Willard, and from that
+time to this, there has been a steady improvement of the community, in
+intellectual, moral, and religious culture. Some men could not see the
+progress two hundred years ago, because they believed in no piety,
+except as it was manifested in their conventional forms. It is so now.
+Mankind advances by the irresistible law of God, under the guidance of a
+few men of large discourse, who look before and after, but amid the
+wailing of many who think each advance is a retreat, and every stride a
+stumble.</p>
+
+<p>Now-a-days nobody complains at "The ungodly custom of wearing long
+hair;" no dandy is dealt with by the church, for his dress; the weakest
+brother is not offended by "Regular singing,"&mdash;so it be regular,&mdash;"by
+organs and the like;" nobody laments at "The reading of Scripture
+lessons," or "The use of the Lord's Prayer" in public religious
+services, or is offended, because a clergyman makes a prayer at a
+funeral, and solemnizes a marriage,&mdash;though these are "prelatical
+customs," and were detested by our fathers. Yet, other things, now as
+much dreaded, and thought "of a bad and dangerous tendency," will one
+day prove themselves as innocent, though now as much mourned over. Many
+an old doctrine will fade out, and though some think a star has fallen
+out of heaven, a new truth will rise up and take its place. It is to be
+expected that ministers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> will often complain of "The general decay of
+religion." The position of a clergyman, fortunate in many things, is
+unhappy in this: he seldom sees the result of his labors, except in the
+conventional form mentioned above. The lawyer, the doctor, the merchant
+and mechanic, the statesman and the farmer, all have visible and
+palpable results of their work, while the minister can only see that he
+has baptized men, and admitted them to his church; the visible and
+quotable tokens of his success, are a large audience, respectable and
+attentive, a thriving Sunday school, or a considerable body of
+communicants. If these signs fail, or become less than formerly, he
+thinks he has labored in vain; that piety is on the decline, for it is
+only by this form that he commonly tests and measures piety itself.
+Hence, a sincere and earnest minister, with the limitations which he so
+easily gets from his profession and social position, is always prone to
+think ill of the times, to undervalue the new wine which refuses to be
+kept in the old bottles, but rends them asunder; hence he bewails the
+decline of religion, and looks longingly back to the days of his
+fathers.</p>
+
+<p>But you will ask, Why does not a minister demand piety in its natural
+form? Blame him not; unconsciously he fulfils his contract, and does
+what he is taught, ordained, and paid for doing. It is safe for a
+minister to demand piety of his parish, in the conventional form; not
+safe to demand it in the form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> of morality&mdash;eminent piety, in the form
+of philanthropy: it would be an innovation; it would "Hurt men's
+feelings;" it might disturb some branches of business; at the North, it
+would interfere with the liquor-trade; at the South, with the
+slave-trade; everywhere it would demand what many men do not like to
+give. If a man asks piety in the form of bodily attendance at church, on
+the only idle day in the week, when business and amusement must be
+refrained from; in the form of belief in doctrines which are commonly
+accepted by the denomination, and compliance with its forms,&mdash;that is
+customary; it hurts nobody's feelings; it does not disturb the
+liquor-trade, nor the slave-trade; it interferes with nothing, not even
+with respectable sleep in a comfortable pew. A minister, like others
+loves to be surrounded by able and respectable men; he seeks, therefore,
+a congregation of such. If he is himself an able man, it is well; but
+there are few in any calling, whom we designate as able. Our weak man
+cannot instruct his parishioners; he soon learns this, and ceases to
+give them counsel on matters of importance. They would not suffer it,
+for the larger includes the less, not the less the larger. He is not
+strong by nature; their position overlooks and commands his. He must
+speak and give some counsel; he wisely limits himself to things of but
+little practical interest, and his parishioners are not offended: "That
+is my sentiment exactly," says the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> worldly man in the church,
+"Religion is too pure to be mixed up with the practical business of the
+street." The original and effectual preaching in such cases, is not from
+the pulpit down upon the pews, but from the pews up to the pulpit, which
+only echoes, consciously or otherwise, but does not speak.</p>
+
+<p>In a solar system, the central sun, not barely powerful from its
+position, is the most weighty body; heavier than all the rest put
+together; so with even swing they all revolve about it. Our little
+ministerial sun was ambitious of being amongst large satellites; he is
+there, but the law of gravitation amongst men is as certain as in
+matter; he cannot poise and swing the system; he is not the sun thereof,
+not even a primary planet, only a little satellite revolving with many
+nutations round some primary, in an orbit that is oblique, complicated,
+and difficult to calculate; now waxing in a "Revival," now waning in a
+"Decline of piety," now totally eclipsed by his primary that comes
+between him and the light which lighteth every man. Put one of the cold
+thin moons of Saturn into the centre of the solar system,&mdash;would the
+universe revolve about that little dot? Loyal matter with irresistible
+fealty gravitates towards the sun, and wheels around the balance-point
+of the world's weight, be it where it may, called by whatever name.</p>
+
+<p>While ministers insist unduly on the conventional manifestation of
+piety, it is not a thing unheard of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> for a layman to resolve to go to
+heaven by the ecclesiastical road, yet omit resolving to be a good man
+before he gets there. Such a man finds the ordinary forms of piety very
+convenient, and not at all burdensome; they do not interfere with his
+daily practice of injustice and meanness of soul; they seem a substitute
+for real and manly goodness; they offer a royal road to saintship here
+and heaven hereafter. Is the man in arrears with virtue, having long
+practised wickedness and become insolvent? This form is a new bankrupt
+law of the spirit, he pays off his old debts in the ecclesiastical
+currency&mdash;a pennyworth of form for a pound of substantial goodness. This
+bankrupt sinner, cleared by the ecclesiastical chancery, is a solvent
+saint; he exhorts at meetings, strains at every gnat, and mourns over
+"The general decay of piety," and teaches other men the way in which
+they should go&mdash;to the same end.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So morning insects that in muck begun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the evening sun."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I honor the founders of New England; they were pious men&mdash;their lives
+proved it; but domineered over by false opinions in theology, they put
+their piety into very unnatural and perverted forms. They had ideas
+which transcended their age; they came here to make those ideas into
+institutions. That they had great faults, bigotry, intolerance, and
+superstition, is now generally conceded. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> picked men, "wheat
+sifted out of three kingdoms," to plant a new world withal. They have
+left their mark very deep and very distinct in this town, which was
+their prayer and their pride. It may seem unjust to ourselves to compare
+a whole community like our own with such a company as filled Boston in
+the first half century of its existence,&mdash;men selected for their
+spiritual hardihood; but here and now, in the midst of Boston, are men
+quite as eminent for piety who as far transcend this age, as the
+Puritans and the pilgrims surpassed their time. The Puritan put his
+religion into the ecclesiastical form; not into the form of the Roman or
+the English Church, but into a new one of his own. His descendant,
+inheriting his father's faith in God, and stern self-denial, but
+sometimes without his bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, with
+little fear but with more love of God, and consequently with more love
+of man, puts his piety into a new form. It is not the form of the old
+Church; the Church of the Puritans is to him often what the Church of
+the Pope and the prelates was to his ungentle sire. He puts his piety
+into the form of goodness; eminent piety becomes philanthropy, and takes
+the shape of reform. In such men, in many of their followers, I see the
+same trust in God, the same scorn of compromising right and truth, the
+same unfaltering allegiance to the eternal Father, which shone in the
+pilgrims who founded this new world, which fired the reformers of the
+Church; yes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> which burned in the hearts of Paul and John. Piety has not
+failed and gone out; each age has its own forms thereof; the old and
+passing can never understand the new, nor can they consent to decrease
+with the increase of the new. Once, men put their piety into a church,
+Catholic or Protestant; they made creeds and believed them; they devised
+rites and symbols, which helped their faith. It was well; but we cannot
+believe those creeds, nor be aided by such symbols and such rites. Why
+pretend to drag a weighty crutch about because it helped your father
+once, wandering alone and in the dark, sounding on his dim and perilous
+way? Once earthen roads were the best we knew, and horses' feet had
+shoes of swiftness; now we need not, out of reverence, refuse the iron
+road, the chariot and the steed of flame; nor out of irreverence need we
+spurn the path our fathers trod; sorely bested and hunted after,
+tear-bedewed and travel-stained, they journeyed there, passing on to
+their God. If the mother that bore us were never so rude, and to our
+eyes might seem never so graceless now, still she was our mother, and
+without her we should not have been born. Wives and children may men
+have, and manifold; each has but one mother. The great institution we
+call the Christian Church has been the mother of us all; and though in
+her own dotage she deny our piety, and call us infidel, far be it from
+me to withhold the richly earned respect. Behind a decent veil, then,
+let us hide our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> mother's weakness, and ourselves pass on. Once piety
+built up a theocracy, and men say it was divine; now piety, everywhere
+in Christendom, builds up democracies; it is a diviner work.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The piety of this age must manifest itself in Morality, and appear in a
+church where the priests are men of active mind and active hand; men of
+ideas, who commune with God and man through faith and works, finding no
+truth is hostile to their creed, no goodness foreign to their litany, no
+piety discordant with their psalm. The man who once would have built a
+convent and been its rigorous chief, now founds a temperance society,
+contends against war, toils for the pauper, the criminal, the madman,
+and the slave, for men bereft of senses and of sense. The synod of Dort
+and of Cambridge, the assembly of divines at Westminster, did what they
+could with what piety they had; they put it into decrees and platforms,
+into catechisms and creeds. But the various conventions for reform put
+their piety into resolves and then into philanthropic works. I do not
+believe there has ever been an age when piety bore so large a place in
+the whole being of New England as at this day, or attendance on
+church-forms so small a part. The attempts made and making for a better
+education of the people, the lectures on science and literature
+abundantly attended in this town, the increased fondness for reading,
+the better class of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> books which are read&mdash;all these indicate an
+increased love of truth, the intellectual part of piety; societies for
+reform and for charity show an increase of the moral and affectional
+parts of piety; the better, the lovelier idea of God which all sects are
+embracing, is a sign of increased love of God. Thus all parts of piety
+are proving their existence by their work. The very absence from the
+churches, the disbelief of the old sour theologies, the very neglect of
+outward forms and ceremonies of religion, the decline of the ministry
+itself, under the present circumstances, shows an increase of piety. The
+baby-clothes were well and wide for the baby; now, the fact that he
+cannot get them on, shows plainly that he has outgrown them, is a boy
+and no longer a baby.</p>
+
+<p>Once Piety fled to the Church as the only sanctuary in the waste wide
+world, and was fondly welcomed there, fed and fostered. When power fled
+off from the Church&mdash;"Wilt thou also go away?" said she; "Lord," said
+Piety, "to whom shall we go? Thou only hast the words of everlasting
+life." Once convents and cathedrals were what the world needed as
+shelter for this fair child of God; then she dwelt in the grim edifice
+that our fathers built, and for a time counted herself "lodged in a
+lodging where good things are." Now is she grown able to wander forth
+fearless and free, lodging where the night overtakes her, and doing what
+her hands find to do, not unattended by the Providence which hitherto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+has watched over and blessed her. I respect piety in the Hebrew saints,
+prophets, and bards, who spoke the fiery speech, or sung their sweet and
+soul-inspiring psalm:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Out from the heart of Nature rolled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The burdens of the Bible old."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I honor piety among the saints of Greece, clad in the form of
+philanthropy and art, speaking still in dramas, in philosophies, and
+song, and in the temple and the statue too:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Not from a vain and shallow thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His awful Jove young Phidias brought."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I admire at the piety of the Middle Ages, which founded the monastic
+tribes of men, which wrote the theologies, scholastic and mystic both,
+still speaking to the mind of men, or in poetic legends insinuated
+truth; which built that heroic architecture, overmastering therewith the
+sense and soul of man:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The passive master lent his hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the vast Soul that o'er him planned:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the same Power that reared the shrine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestrode the tribes that knelt therein."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the piety which I find now, in this age, here in our own land, I
+respect, honor, and admire yet more; I find it in the form of moral
+life; that is the piety I love, piety in her own loveliness. Would I
+could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> find poetic strains as fit to sing of her&mdash;but yet such</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But is, when unadorned, adorned the most."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Let me do no dishonor to other days, to Hebrew or to Grecian saints.
+Unlike and hostile though they were, they jointly fed my soul in
+earliest days. I would not underrate the medi&aelig;val saints, whose words
+and works have been my study in a manlier age; yet I love best the fair
+and vigorous piety of our own day. It is beautiful, amid the strong,
+rank life of the nineteenth century, amid the steam-mills and the
+telegraphs which talk by lightning, amid the far-reaching enterprises of
+our time, and 'mid the fierce democracies, it is beautiful to find this
+fragrant piety growing up in unwonted forms, in places where men say no
+seed of heaven can lodge and germinate. So in a June meadow, when a boy,
+and looking for the cranberries of another year, faded and tasteless,
+amid the pale but coarse rank grass, and discontented that I found them
+not, so I have seen the crimson arethusa or the cymbidium shedding an
+unexpected loveliness o'er all the watery soil and all the pale and
+coarse rank grass, a prophecy of summer near at hand. So in October,
+when the fields are brown with frost, the blue and fringed gentian meets
+your eye, filling with thankful tears.</p>
+
+<p>There is no decline of piety, but an increase of it;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> a good deal has
+been done in two hundred years, in one hundred years, yes, in fifty
+years. Let us admit, with thankfulness of heart, that piety is in
+greater proportion to all our activity now than ever before: but then
+compare ourselves with the ideal of human nature, our piety with the
+ideal piety, and we must confess that we are little and very low. Boston
+is the most active city in the world, the most enterprising. In no place
+is it so easy to obtain men's ears and their purses for any good word
+and work. But think of the evils we know of and tolerate; think of an
+ideal Christian city, then think of Boston; of a Christian man, aye of
+Christ himself, and then think of you and me, and we are filled with
+shame. If there were a true, manly piety in this town, in due proportion
+to our numbers, wealth, and enterprise, how long would the vices of this
+city last? How long would men complain of a dead body of divinity and a
+dead church, and a ministry that was dead? How long would intemperance
+continue, and pauperism, in Boston; how long slavery in this land?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Last Sunday, in the name of the poor, I asked you for your charity.
+To-day I ask for dearer alms: I ask you to contribute your piety. It
+will help the town more than the little money all of us can give. Your
+money will soon be spent; it feeds one man once; we cannot give it
+twice, though the blessing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> thereof may linger long in the hand which
+gave. Few of us can give much money to the poor; some of us none at all.
+This we can all give: the inspiration of a man with a man's piety in his
+heart, living it out in a man's life. Your money may be ill spent, your
+charity misapplied, but your piety never. After all, there is nothing
+you can give which men will so readily take and so long remember as
+this. Mothers can give it to their daughters and their sons; men, after
+spending thereof profusely at home, can coin their inexhausted store
+into industry, patience, integrity, temperance, justice, humanity, a
+practical love of man. A thousand years ago, it was easy to excuse men
+if they chiefly showed religion in the conventional pattern of the
+church. Forms then were helps, and the nun has been mother to much of
+the charity of our times. It is easy to excuse our fathers for their
+superstitious reverence for rites and forms. But now, in an age which
+has its eyes a little open, a practical and a handy age, we are without
+excuse if our piety appears not in a manly life, our faith in works. To
+give this piety to cheer and bless mankind, you must have it first, be
+cheered and blessed thereby yourself. Have it, then, in your own way;
+put it into your own form. Do men tell you, "This is a degenerate age,"
+and "Religion is dying out?" tell them that when those stars have faded
+out of the sky from very age, when other stars have come up to take
+their place, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> they too have grown dim and hollow-eyed and old, that
+religion will still live in man's heart, the primal, everlasting light
+of all our being. Do they tell you that you must put piety into their
+forms; put it there if it be your place; if not, in your place. Let men
+see the divinity that is in you by the humanity that comes out from you.
+If they will not see it, cannot, God can and will. Take courage from the
+past, not its counsel; fear not now to be a man. You may find a new Eden
+where you go, a river of God in it, and a tree of life, an angel to
+guard it; not the warning angel to repel, but the guiding angel to
+welcome and to bless.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was four years yesterday since I first came here to speak to you; I
+came hesitatingly, reluctant, with much diffidence as to my power to do
+what it seemed to me was demanded. I did not come merely to pull down,
+but to build up, though it is plain much theological error must be
+demolished before any great reform of man's condition can be brought
+about. I came not to contend against any man, or sect, or party, but to
+speak a word for truth and religion in the name of man and God. I was in
+bondage to no sect; you in bondage to none. When a boy I learned that
+there is but one religion though many theologies. I have found it in
+Christians and in Jews, in Quakers and in Catholics. I hope we are all
+ready to honor what is good in each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> sect, and in rejecting its evil not
+to forget our love and wisdom in our zeal.</p>
+
+<p>When I came I certainly did not expect to become a popular man, or
+acceptable to many. I had done much which in all countries brings odium
+on a man, though perhaps less in Boston than in any other part of the
+world. I had rejected the popular theology of Christendom. I had exposed
+the low morals of society, had complained of the want of piety in its
+natural form. I had fatally offended the sect, small in numbers, but
+respectable for intelligence and goodness, in which I was brought up. I
+came to look at the signs of the times from an independent point of
+view, and to speak on the most important of all themes. I thought a
+house much smaller than this would be much too large for us. I knew
+there would be fit audience; I thought it would be few, and the few
+would soon have heard enough and go their ways.</p>
+
+<p>I know I have some advantages above most clergymen: I am responsible to
+no sect; no sect feels responsible for me; I have rejoiced at good
+things which I have seen in all sects; the doctrines which I try to
+teach do not rest on tradition, on miracles, or on any man's authority;
+only on the nature of man. I seek to preach the natural laws of man. I
+appeal to history for illustration, not for authority. I have no fear of
+philosophy. I am willing to look a doubt fairly in the face, and think
+reason is sacred as conscience,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> affection, or the religious faculty in
+man. I see a profound piety in modern science. I have aimed to set forth
+absolute religion, the ideal religion of human nature, free piety, free
+goodness, free thought. I call that Christianity, after the greatest man
+of the world, one who himself taught it; but I know that this was never
+the Christianity of the churches, in any age. I have endeavored to teach
+this religion and apply it to the needs of this time. These things
+certainly give me some advantages over most other ministers. Of the
+disadvantages which are personal to myself, I need not speak in public,
+but some which come from my position, ought to be noticed with a word.
+The walls of this house, the associations connected with it, furnish
+little help to devotion; we must rely on ourselves wholly for that.
+Other clergymen, by their occasional exchanges, can present their
+hearers with an agreeable variety in substance and in form. A single
+man, often heard, becomes wearisome and unprofitable, for "No man can
+feed us always." This I feel to be a great disadvantage which I labor
+under. Your kindness and affectionate indulgence make me feel it all the
+more. But one man cannot be twenty men.</p>
+
+<p>When I came here I knew I should hurt men's feelings. My theology would
+prove more offensive and radical than men thought; the freedom of speech
+which men liked at a distance would not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> pleasing when near at hand;
+my doctrines of morality I knew could not be pleasing to all men; not to
+all good men. I saw by your looks that in my abstractions I did not go
+too far for your sympathy, or too fast for your following. I soon found
+that my highest thought and most pious sentiment were most warmly
+welcomed as such; but when I came to put abstract thought and mystical
+piety into concrete goodness, and translate what you had accepted as
+Christian faith into daily life; when I came to apply piety to trade,
+politics, life in general, I knew that I should hurt men's feelings. It
+could not be otherwise. Yet I have had a most patient and faithful
+hearing. One thing I must do in my preaching: I must be in earnest. I
+cannot stand here before you and before God, attempting to teach piety
+and goodness, and not feel the fire and show the fire. The greater the
+wrong, the more popular, the more must I oppose it, and with the
+clearer, abler speech. It is not necessary for me to be popular, to be
+acceptable, even to be loved. It is necessary that I should tell the
+truth. But let that pass. You come hither week after week, it is now
+year after year that you come, to listen to one humble man. Do you get
+poor in your souls? Does your religion become poor and low? Are you
+getting less in the qualities of a man? If so, then leave me, to empty
+seats, to cold and voiceless walls; go elsewhere, and feed your souls
+with a wise passiveness, or an activity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> wiser yet. Such is your duty;
+let no affection for me hinder you from performing it. The same
+theology, the same form suits not all men. But if it is not so, if I do
+you good, if you grow in mind and conscience, heart and soul, then I ask
+one thing&mdash;Let your piety become natural life, your divinity become
+humanity.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The Synod declared: "That God hath a controversie with his
+New England people is undeniable." "There are visible manifest evils,
+which without doubt the Lord is provoked by." 1. "A great and visible
+decay of the power of Godliness amongst many professors in these
+churches." 2. "Pride doth abound in New England. Many have offended God
+by strange apparel." 3. "Church fellowship and other divine institutions
+are grossly neglected." "Quakers are false worshippers," "and
+Anabaptists ... do no better than set up an Altar against the Lord's
+Altar." 4. "The holy and glorious name of God hath been polluted;"
+"because of swearing the land mourns." "It is a frequent thing for men
+to sit in prayer-time ... and to give way to their own sloth and
+sleepiness." "We read of but one man in Scripture that slept at a
+sermon, and that sin had like to have cost him his life." 5. "There is
+much Sabbath-breaking; since there are multitudes that do profanely
+absent themselves from the public worship of God,... walking abroad and
+travelling ... being a common practice on the Sabbath Day." "Worldly
+unsuitable discourses are very common upon the Lord's Day." "This brings
+wrath, fires, and other judgments upon a professing people." 6. "As to
+what concerns families and Government thereof, there is much amiss."
+"Children and servants ... are not kept in due subjection." "This is a
+sin which brings great judgments, as we see in Eli's and David's
+family." 7. "Inordinate passions, sinful heats and hatreds, and that
+amongst church members." 8. "There is much intemperance:" "it is a
+common practice for town-dwellers, yea, and church members, to frequent
+public houses, and there to misspend precious time." 9. "There is much
+want of truth amongst men." "The Lord is not wont to suffer such an
+iniquity to pass unpunished." 10. "Inordinate affection unto the world."
+"There hath been in many professors an insatiable desire after land and
+worldly accommodations; yea, so as to forsake churches and ordinances,
+and to live like heathen, only so that they might have elbow-room in the
+world. Farms and merchandisings have been preferred before the things of
+God." "Such iniquity causeth war to be in the gate, and cities to be
+burned up." "When Lot did forsake the land of Canaan and the church
+which was in Abraham's family, that so he might have better worldly
+accommodations in Sodom, God fired him out of all." "There are some
+traders that sell their goods at excessive rates; day-laborers and
+mechanics are unreasonable in their demands." 11. "There hath been
+opposition to the work of reformation." 12. "A public spirit is greatly
+wanting in the most of men." 13. "There are sins against the gospel,
+whereby the Lord has been provoked." "Christ is not prized and embraced
+in all his offices and ordinances as ought to be."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In 1646, Mr. Samuel Symonds wrote to Governor Winthrop, as
+follows: "I will also mention the text preached upon at our last fast,
+and the propositions raised thereupon, because it was so seasonable to
+New England's condition. Jeremiah 30:17; For I will restore health to
+thee, and heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord; because they called
+thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom noe man careth for.
+</p><p>
+"1. Prop. That sick tymes doe passe over Zion.
+</p><p>
+"2. That sad and bitter neglect is the portion, aggravation and
+affliction of Zion in the tyme of his sicknesse and wounds, but
+especially in the neglect of those that doe neglect it, and yet,
+notwithstanding, doe acknowledge it to be Zion.
+</p><p>
+"3. That the season of penitent Zion's passion, is the season of God's
+compassion.
+</p><p>
+"This sermon tended much to the settling of Godly minds here in God's
+way, and to raise their spirits, and, as I conceive, hath suitable
+effects."</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+<h2>II.</h2>
+
+<h3>SOME THOUGHTS ON THE MOST CHRISTIAN USE OF THE SUNDAY.&mdash;A SERMON
+PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 1848.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<h4>MARK II. 27.</h4>
+
+<h4>The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.</h4>
+
+
+<p>From past ages we have received many valuable institutions, that have
+grown out of the transient wants or the permanent nature of man. Amongst
+these are two which have done a great service in promoting the
+civilization of mankind, which still continue amongst us. I speak now of
+the institution of Sunday, and that of preaching. By the one, a seventh
+part of the time is separated from the common pursuits of life, in order
+that it may be devoted to bodily relaxation, and to the culture of the
+spiritual powers of man; by the other, a large body of men, in most
+countries the best educated class, are devoted to the cultivation of
+these spiritual powers. Such at least is the theory of those two
+institutions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> be their effect in practice what it may. This morning,
+let us look at one of them, and so I invite your attention to some
+thoughts relative to the Sunday&mdash;to the most Christian and profitable
+use of that day.</p>
+
+<p>There is a stricter party of Christians amongst us, who speak out their
+opinions concerning the Sunday; this comprises what are commonly called
+the more "evangelical" sects. There is a party less strict in many
+particulars, comprising what are commonly called the more "liberal"
+sects. They have hitherto been comparatively silent on this theme. Their
+opinions about the Sunday have not usually been so plainly spoken out,
+but have been made apparent by their actions, by occasional and passing
+words, rather than by full, distinct, and emphatic declarations. The
+stricter party, of late years, have been growing a little more strict;
+the party less strict likewise advance in the opposite direction.
+Recently, a call has been published by a few men, for a convention to
+consult and take some steps towards the less rigid course, for the
+purpose, as I understand it, of making the Sunday even more valuable
+than it is now. I take it for granted that both parties desire to make
+the best possible use of the Sunday&mdash;the use most conducive to the
+highest interests of mankind; that they desire this equally. There are
+good men on both sides, the more and the less strict; pious men, in the
+best sense of that word, may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> found on both sides. There is no need
+of imputing bad motives to either party in order to explain the
+difference between the two.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the aspect of the two parties in the field, looking opposite
+ways, but at one another. It seems likely that there will be a quarrel,
+and, as is usual in such cases, hard words on each side, hard thoughts
+and unkind feelings on both sides. Before the quarrel begins, and our
+eyes are blinded by the dust of controversy; before our blood is fired,
+and we become wholly incapable of judgment&mdash;let us look coolly at the
+matter, and ask, Do we need any change in respect to the observance of
+the Sunday? Are the present opinions respecting the origin, nature, and
+original design of that institution just and true? Is the present mode
+of observing it the most profitable that can be devised? The inquiry is
+one of great importance.</p>
+
+<p>To answer these questions, it is necessary to go back a little into the
+history of the Hebrew Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. However, it is
+not needful to go much into detail, or consume this precious hour in a
+learned discussion on antiquarian matters which concern none but
+scholars.</p>
+
+<p>With the Hebrews the actual observance of Saturday&mdash;the Sabbath&mdash;as a
+day rest, seems to be of pretty late origin. The first mention of it in
+authentic Hebrew history, as actually observed, occurs about two hundred
+years after Samuel, and about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> six hundred after Moses&mdash;a little less
+than nine hundred before Christ. The passage is found in 2 Kings 4: 23;
+a child had died, as the narrative relates&mdash;the mother wished to send
+for Elisha, "the man of God." Her husband objects, saying, "Wherefore
+wilt thou go to him to-day? it is neither new moon nor Sabbath." This
+connection with the new moon is significant. In the earlier historical
+books of Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and the first of
+Kings, there is no mention of the Sabbath, not the least allusion to it.</p>
+
+<p>This seems to have been the origin of its observance:&mdash;The worship of
+one God, with the distinctive name Jehovah, gradually got established in
+the Hebrew nation; for this they seem largely indebted to Moses.
+Gradually this worship of Jehovah became connected with a body of
+priests, who were regularly organized at length, and claimed descent
+from Levi&mdash;some of them from Aaron, his celebrated descendant, the elder
+brother of Moses. The rise of the Levitical priesthood is remarkable,
+and easily traced in the Old Testament. Some books are entirely
+destitute of a Levitical spirit, such as Genesis and Judges; others are
+filled with it, as Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the books of Chronicles.
+With the priesthood it seems there came the observance of certain days
+for religious or festal purposes&mdash;New Moon days, Full Moon days, and the
+like. These seem to have been derived from the nations about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> them, with
+whom the moon&mdash;deified as Astarte, the Queen and Mother of Heaven, and
+under other names&mdash;was long an object of worship. The observance of
+those days points back to the period when Fetichism, the worship of
+Nature, was the prominent form of religion. With the other days of
+religious observance came the seventh day, called the Sabbath. No one
+knows its true historical origin. The statement respecting its origin,
+in the fourth commandment, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, can
+hardly be accepted as literally true by any one in this century. No
+scientific man, in the present stage of philosophic inquiry, will
+believe that God created the universe in six days, and then rested on
+the seventh. Did other nations observe this day before the Hebrews; was
+it also connected with some Fetichistic form of worship; what was the
+historical event which led to the selection of that day in special? This
+it is easy to ask, but perhaps not possible to answer. These are curious
+questions; they are of little practical importance to us at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>After the Hebrew institutions of religion got fixed&mdash;the worship of
+Jehovah, the Levitical priesthood, and the peculiar forms of
+sacrifice&mdash;it became common to refer their origin back to the time of
+Moses, who lived fourteen or fifteen hundred years before Christ. Since
+few memorials from his age have come down to us, it is plain we can know
+little of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> him. But from the impression which his character left on his
+nation, and through them on the whole world; from the myths so early
+connected with his name, it seems pretty clear that he was one of the
+greatest and most extraordinary men that ever lived. Mankind seldom tell
+great things of little men. It is difficult to say what share he had in
+making the laws of the Hebrew nation which are commonly referred to
+him,&mdash;and, as it is popularly taught, revealed to him directly by
+Jehovah. Perhaps we are not safe in referring to him even the whole of
+the ten commandments; surely not in any one of their present forms.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>
+Was the Sabbath observed as a day of rest before Moses? Was its
+observance enforced by him? Was it even known to him? These questions
+are not easily answered. This is only certain: from the time of Moses to
+that of Jehoram, a period of about six hundred years, there is no
+historical mention of its observance, not the least allusion to it. Yet
+we have documents which treat of that period,&mdash;the books of Joshua,
+Judges, Samuel, and the Kings,&mdash;some of them historical documents, which
+go into the minute detail of the national peculiarities, and were
+evidently written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> with a good deal of concern for strict integrity and
+truth; they refer to the national rite of circumcision. Now, if the
+Sabbath had been observed during that period, it is difficult to believe
+it would have received no passing notice in those historical books. But
+not only is there no mention of it therein, none even in the times of
+David and Solomon, who favored the priesthood so strongly; but in the
+book of Chronicles, the most Levitical book in the Bible, at a date more
+than two hundred years later than the time of Jehoram, it is distinctly
+declared that the Sabbath had not been kept for nearly five hundred
+years.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> But even if this statement is true, which is scarcely
+probable, it is plain from the frequent mention of the Sabbath in the
+writings of the latter part of that period&mdash;Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
+others&mdash;that the institution was one well known and highly regarded by
+religious men. After the return from the Babylonian exile, it seems to
+have been kept with considerable rigor; this we learn from the book of
+Nehemiah.</p>
+
+<p>The Hebrew law, as it is contained in the Pentateuch, is a singular
+mixture of conflicting statutes, evidently belonging to different ages,
+many of them wholly unsuitable to the condition of the people when the
+laws are alleged to have been given. However, they are all referred back
+to the time of Moses in the Pentateuch itself, and by the popular
+theology<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> at the present day. In the law the command is given to keep
+the seventh day as a day of rest, and that command is referred
+distinctly to Jehovah himself. The reason is given for choosing that
+day:&mdash;"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the
+seventh day he rested and was refreshed;" the Sabbath, therefore, was to
+be kept in commemoration of the fact, that after Jehovah had spent the
+week in creating the world, "he rested and was refreshed." It was to be
+a day of rest for master and slave, for man and beast. A special
+sacrifice was offered on that day, in addition to the usual ceremonies,
+but no provision was made for the religious instruction of the people.
+The Sabbath was what its Hebrew name implies, a rest from all labor. The
+law, in general terms, forbade all work; but, not content with that, it
+descends to minute details, specifically prohibiting by statute the
+gathering or preparation of food on the Sabbath, even of food to be
+consumed on that day itself; the lighting of a fire, or the removal from
+one's place; and, by a decision where the statute did not apply, forbade
+the gathering of sticks of wood. The punishment for violating the
+Sabbath in general, or in any one of these particulars, was death:
+"Whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death." However, amusement
+was not prohibited, nor eating and drinking, only work. The command,
+"Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day," at a later<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> period,
+was liberally interpreted, and a man was allowed to go two thousand
+cubits, a Sabbath-day's journey.</p>
+
+<p>Long after the time of Moses, some of the Hebrews returned from exile
+amongst a more civilized and refined people. It seems probable that only
+the stricter portion returned and established themselves in the land of
+their fathers. Nehemiah, their leader, enforced the observance of the
+Sabbath with a strictness and rigor of which earlier times afford no
+evidence. But the nation was not content with making it a day of
+idleness. They established synagogues, where the people freely assembled
+on the Sabbath and other public days, for religious instruction, and
+thus founded an excellent institution which has shown itself fruitful of
+good results. So far as I know, that is the earliest instance on record
+of provision being made for the regular religious instruction of the
+whole people. Experience has shown its value, and now all the most
+highly civilized nations of the earth have established similar
+institutions. However, in the synagogues the business of religious
+instruction was not at all in the hands of the priests, but in those of
+the people, acting in their primary character without regard to
+Levitical establishments. A priest, as such, is never an instructor of
+the people; he is to go through his ritual, not beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to learn from the New Testament what were the current
+opinions about the Sabbath in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> time of Christ. It was unlawful to
+gather a head of wheat on the Sabbath, as a man walked through the
+fields; it was unlawful to cure a sick man, though that cure could be
+effected by a touch or a word; unlawful for a man to walk home and carry
+the light cushion on which he had lain. What was unlawful was reckoned
+wicked also; for what is a crime in the eyes of the priest, he commonly
+pretends is likewise a sin before the eyes of God. Yet it was not
+unlawful to eat, drink, and be merry on the Sabbath; nor to lift a sheep
+out of the ditch; nor to quarrel with a man who came to deliver mankind
+from their worst enemies. It was lawful to perform the rite of
+circumcision on the Sabbath, but unlawful to cure a man of any sickness.
+Jesus once placed these two, the allowing of that ritual mutilation and
+the prohibition of the humane act of curing the sick on the Sabbath, in
+ridiculous contrast. In the fourth gospel he goes further, and actually
+denies the alleged ground for the original institution of the Sabbath;
+he denies that God had ever ceased from his work, or rested: "My father
+worketh hitherto."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> However, in effecting these cures he committed a
+capital offence; the Pharisees so regarded it, and took measures to
+insure his punishment. It does not appear that they were illegal
+measures. It is probable they took regular and legal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> means to bring him
+to condign punishment as a Sabbath-breaker. He escaped by flight.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the Sabbath with the Hebrews, such the recorded opinion of
+Jesus concerning it. There were also other days in which labor was
+forbidden, but with them we have nothing to do at present. Jesus taught
+piety and goodness without the Hebrew limitations; of course, then, the
+new wine of Christianity could not be put into the old bottles of the
+Jews. Their fast days and Sabbath days, their rites and forms, were not
+for him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Now, not long after the death of Christ, his followers became gradually
+divided into two parties. First, there were the Jewish Christians; that
+was the oldest portion, the old school of Christians. They are mentioned
+in ecclesiastical history as the Ebionites, Nazarines, and under yet
+other names. Peter and James were the great men in that division of the
+early Christians. Matthew, and the author of the Gospel according to the
+Hebrews, were their evangelists. The church at Jerusalem was their
+strong-hold. They kept the whole Hebrew law; all its burdensome ritual,
+its circumcision and its sacrifices, its new-moon days and its full-moon
+days, Sabbath, fasts, and feasts; the first fifteen bishops of the
+church at Jerusalem were circumcised Jews. It seems to me they
+misunderstood Jesus fatally; counting him nothing but the Messiah of the
+Old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> Testament, and Christianity, therefore, nothing but Judaism
+brightened up and restored to its original purity.</p>
+
+<p>I have often mentioned how strongly Matthew, taking him for the author
+of the first gospel, favors this way of thinking. He represents Jesus as
+commanding his disciples to observe all the Mosaic law, as the Pharisees
+interpreted that law,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> though such a command is utterly inconsistent
+with the general spirit of Christ's teachings, and even with his plain
+declaration, as preserved in other parts of the same gospel. It is
+worthy of note, that this command is peculiar to Matthew. But there is
+another instance of the same Jewish tendency, though not so obvious at
+first sight. Matthew represents Jesus as saying, "The Son of man," that
+is, the Messiah, "is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Accordingly, he is
+competent to expound the law correctly, and determine what is lawful to
+do on that day. In Matthew, therefore, Jesus, in his character of
+Messiah, is represented as giving a judicial opinion, and ruling that it
+"is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Now, Mark and Luke represent
+it a little different. In Mark, Jesus himself declares that "The Sabbath
+was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Matthew entirely omits
+that remarkable saying. According to Mark, Jesus declares in general
+terms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> that man is of more consequence than the observance of the
+Sabbath, while Matthew only considers that the Messiah is "Lord of the
+Sabbath day." The cause of this diversity is quite plain. Matthew was a
+Jewish Christian, and thought Christianity was nothing but restored
+Judaism.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The other party may be called liberal Christians, though they must not
+be confounded with the party which now bears that name. They were the
+new school of the early Christians. They rejected the Hebrew law, so far
+as it did not rest on human nature, and considered that Christianity was
+a new thing; Christ, not a mere Jew, but a universal man, who had thrown
+down the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles. All the old,
+artificial distinctions, therefore, were done away with at once. Paul
+was the head of the liberal party among the primitive Christians. He was
+considered a heretic; and though he was more efficient than any of the
+other early preachers of Christianity, yet the author of the Apocalypse
+thought him not worthy of a place in the foundation of the new
+Jerusalem, which rests on the twelve apostles.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The fourth gospel with
+peculiarities of its own, is written wholly in the interest of this
+party; James is not mentioned in it at all, and Peter plays but quite a
+subordinate part, and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> thrown into the shade by John. The disciples
+are spoken of as often misunderstanding their great Teacher. These
+peculiarities cannot be considered as accidental; they are monuments of
+the controversy then going on between the two parties. Paul stood in
+direct opposition to the Jewish Christians. This is plain from the
+epistle to the Galatians, in which the heads of the rival sects appear
+very unlike the description given of them in the book of Acts. The
+observance of Jewish sacred days was one of the subjects of controversy.
+Let us look only at the matter of the Sabbath, as it came in question
+between the two parties. Paul exalts Christ far above the Messianic
+predictions of the Old Testament, calling him an image of the invisible
+God, and declaring that all the fulness of divinity dwells in him, and
+adds, that he had annulled the old Hebrew law. "Therefore," says Paul,
+"let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day,
+or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Here he distinctly states the
+issue between the two Christian sects. Elsewhere he speaks of the Jewish
+party, as men that "would pervert the gospel of Christ," by teaching
+that a man was "justified by the works of the law;" that is, by a minute
+observance of the Hebrew ritual.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Paul rejects the authority of the
+Old Testament. The law of Moses was but a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> schoolmaster's servant, to
+bring us to Christ; man had come to Christ, and needed that servant no
+longer; the law was a taskmaster and guardian set over man in his
+minority, now he had come of age, and was free; the law was a shadow of
+good things, and they had come; it was a law of sin and death, which no
+man could bear, and now the law of the spirit of life, as revealed by
+Jesus Christ, had made men free from the law of sin and death. Such was
+the work of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Thus sweeping off
+the authority of the old law in general, he proceeds to particulars: he
+rejects circumcision, and the offering of sacrifices; rejects the
+distinction of nations as Jew and Gentile; the distinction of meats as
+clean and unclean, and all distinction of days, as holy and not holy. If
+one man thought one day holier than another day; if another man thought
+all days equally holy, he would have each man true to his conviction,
+but not seek to impose that conviction on his brothers. Such was Paul's
+opinion of "The law of Moses;" such, of the Sabbath; the Christians were
+not "subject to ordinances."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let us come now to the common practice of the early Christians. The
+apostles went about and preached Christianity, as they severally
+understood it. They spoke as they found opportunity; on the Sabbath to
+the Jews in the synagogues, and on other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> days, as they found time and
+hearers. It does not appear from the New Testament, that they limited
+themselves to any particular day; they were missionaries, some of them
+remained but a little while in a place, making the most of their time.
+It seems that the early Christians, who lived in large towns, met every
+day for religious purposes. But as that would be found inconvenient, one
+day came to be regarded as the regular time of their meetings. The
+Jewish Christians observed the Sabbath with pharisaic rigor, while the
+liberal Christians neglected it. But both parties of Christians
+observed, at length, the first day of the week as a peculiar day. No one
+knows when this observance of the Sunday began; it is difficult to find
+proof in the New Testament, that the apostles regarded it as a peculiar
+day; it seems plain that Paul did not. But it is certain that in the
+second century after Jesus, the Christians in general did so regard it,
+and perhaps all of them.</p>
+
+<p>Why was the Sunday chosen as the regular day for religious meeting? It
+was regarded as the day on which Jesus rose from the dead; and,
+following the mythical account in Genesis, it was the day on which God
+began the creation, and actually created the light. Here there were two
+reasons for the selection of that day; both are frequently mentioned by
+the early Christian writers. Sunday, therefore, was to them a symbol of
+the new creation, and of the light that had come into the world. The
+liberal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Christians, in separating from the Jewish Sabbath, would
+naturally exalt the new religious day. Athanasius, I think, is the first
+who ascribes a divine origin to the institution of Sunday. He says, "The
+Lord changed this day from the Sabbath to the Sunday;" but Athanasius
+lived three centuries after Christ, and seems to have known little about
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>The officers and the order of services in the churches on the Sunday
+seem derived from the usages of the Jewish synagogues. The Sunday was
+thus observed: the people came together in the morning; the exercises
+consisted of readings from the Old Testament and such writings of the
+Christians as the assembly saw fit to have read to them. In respect to
+these writings there was a wide difference in the different churches,
+some accepting more and others less. The overseer, or bishop, made an
+address, perhaps an exposition of the passage of Scripture. Prayers were
+said and hymns chanted; the Lord's supper was celebrated. The form no
+doubt differed, and widely, too, in different places. It was not the
+form of servitude but the spirit of freedom, they observed. But all
+these things were done, likewise, on other days; the Lord's supper could
+be celebrated on any day, and is on every day by the Catholic church,
+even now; for the Catholics have been true to the early practices in
+more points than the Protestants are willing to admit. In some places it
+is certain there was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> "communion" every day. Sunday was regarded holy
+by the early Christians, just as certain festivals are regarded holy by
+the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and the Lutherans, at this day; as the
+New Englanders regard Thanksgiving day as holy. Other days, likewise,
+were regarded as holy; were used in the same manner as the Sunday. Such
+days were observed in honor of particular events in the life of Jesus,
+or in honor of saints and martyrs, or they were days consecrated by
+older festivals belonging to the more ancient forms of religion. In the
+Catholic church such days are still numerous. It is only the Puritans
+who have completely rejected them, and they have been obliged to
+substitute new ones in their place. However, there was one peculiarity
+of the Sunday which distinguished it from most or all other days. It was
+a day of religious rejoicing. On other days the Christians knelt in
+prayer; on the Sunday they stood up on joyful feet, for light had come
+into the world. Sunday was a day of gladness and rejoicing. The early
+Christians had many fasts; they were commonly held on Wednesdays and
+Fridays, often on Saturday also, the more completely to get rid of the
+Jewish superstition which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there must
+be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is
+strictly forbidden in the "canons of the apostles;" a clergyman must be
+degraded and a layman excommunicated, for the offence. Says St.
+Ignatius,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> in the second century, if the epistle be genuine, "Every
+lover of Christ feasts on the Lord's day." "We deem it wicked," says
+Tertullian in the third century, "to fast on the Sunday, or to pray on
+our knees." "Oh," says St. Jerome, "that we could fast on the Sunday, as
+Paul did and they that were with him." St. Ambrose says, the "Manichees
+were damned for fasting on the Lord's day." At this day the Catholic
+church allows no fast on Sunday, save the Sunday before the crucifixion;
+even Lent ceases on that day.</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that labor ceased on Sunday, in the earliest age of
+Christianity. But when Sunday became the regular and most important day
+for holding religious meetings, less labor must of course be performed
+on that day. At length it became common in some places to abstain from
+ordinary work on the Sunday. It is not easy to say how early this was
+brought about. But after Christianity had become "respectable," and
+found its way to the ranks of the wealthy, cultivated and powerful, laws
+got enacted in its favor. Now, the Romans, like all other ancient
+nations, had certain festal days in which it was not thought proper to
+labor unless work was pressing. It was disreputable to continue common
+labor on such days without an urgent reason; they were pretty numerous
+in the Roman calendar. Courts did not sit on those days; no public
+business was transacted. They were observed as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Christmas and the more
+important saints' days in Catholic countries; as Thanksgiving day and
+the Fourth of July with us. In the year three hundred and twenty-one,
+Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, placed Sunday among
+their ferial days. This was perhaps the first legislative action
+concerning the day. The statute forbids labor in towns, but expressly
+excludes all prohibition of field-labor in the country.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> About three
+hundred and sixty-six or seven, the Council of Laodicea decreed that
+Christians "ought not to Judaize and be idle on the Sabbath, but to work
+on that day; especially observing the Lord's day, and if it is possible,
+as Christians, resting from labor." Afterwards the Emperor Theodosius
+forbade certain public games on Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and the
+whole time from Easter to Pentecost. Justinian likewise forbade
+theatrical exhibitions, races in the circus, and the fights of wild
+beasts, on Sunday, under severe penalties. This was done in order that
+the religious services of the Christians might not be disturbed. By his
+laws the Sunday continued to be a day in which public business was not
+to be transacted. But the Christmas days, the fifteen days of Easter,
+and numerous other days previously observed by Christians or pagans,
+were put in the same class by the law. All this it seems was done from
+no superstitious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> notions respecting those days, but for the sake of
+public utility and convenience. However, the rigor of the Jewish
+Sabbatical laws was by no means followed. Labors of love, <i>opera
+caritatis</i>, were considered as suitable business for those days. The
+very statute of Theodosius recommended the emancipation of slaves on
+Sunday. All impediments to their liberation were removed on that day,
+and though judicial proceedings in all other matters were forbidden on
+Sunday, an exception was expressly made in favor of emancipating slaves.
+This statute was preserved in the code of Justinian.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> All these laws
+go to show that there were similar customs previously established among
+the Christians, without the aid of legislation.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of the sixth century the Council of Orleans forbade
+labor in the fields, though it did not forbid travelling with cattle and
+oxen, the preparation of food, or any work necessary to the cleanliness
+of the house or the person&mdash;declaring that rigors of that sort belong
+more to a Jewish than to a Christian observance of the day. That, I
+think, is the earliest ecclesiastical decree which has come down to us
+forbidding field-labor in the country; a decree unknown till five
+hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ. But before that, in the
+year three hundred and thirteen, the Council of Elvira in Spain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+decreed, that if any one in a city absented himself three Sundays
+consecutively from the church, he should be suspended from communion for
+a short time. Such a regulation, however, was founded purely on
+considerations of public utility. Many church establishments have
+thought it necessary to protect themselves from desertion by similar
+penal laws.</p>
+
+<p>In Catholic countries, at the present day, the morning of Sunday is
+appropriated to public worship, the people flocking to church. But the
+afternoon and evening are devoted to society, to amusement of various
+kinds. Nothing appears sombre, but every thing has a festive air; even
+the theatres are open. Sunday is like Christmas, or a Thanksgiving day
+in Boston, only the festive demonstrations are more public. It is so in
+the Protestant countries on the continent of Europe. Work is suspended,
+public and private, except what is necessary for the observance of the
+day; public lectures are suspended; public libraries closed; but
+galleries of paintings and statues are thrown open and crowded; the
+public walks are thronged. In Southern Germany, and, doubtless,
+elsewhere, young men and women have I seen in summer, of a Sunday
+afternoon, dancing on the green, the clergyman, Protestant or Catholic,
+looking on and enjoying the cheerfulness of the young people. Americans
+think their mode of keeping Sunday is unholy; they, that ours is Jewish
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> pharisaical. In Paris, sometimes, courses of scientific lectures
+are delivered after the hours of religious services, to men who are busy
+during the week with other cares, and who gladly take the hours of their
+only leisure day to gain a little intellectual instruction.</p>
+
+<p>When England was a Catholic country, Catholic notions of Sunday of
+course prevailed. Labor was suspended; there was service in the
+churches, and afterwards there were sports for the people, but they were
+attended with quarrelling, noise, uproar, and continual drunkenness. It
+was so after the Reformation. In the time of Elizabeth, the laws forbade
+labor except in time of harvest, when it was thought right to work, if
+need were, and "save the thing that God hath sent." Some of the
+Protestants wished to reform those disorders, and convert the Sunday to
+a higher use. The government, and sometimes the superior clergy, for a
+long time interfered to prevent the reform, often to protect the abuse.
+The "Book of Sports," appointed to be read in churches, is well known to
+us from the just indignation with which it filled our fathers.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is plain, that in England, before the Reformation, the Sunday
+was not appropriated to its highest use; not to the highest interests of
+mankind; no, not to the highest concerns, which the people, at that
+time, were capable of appreciating. The attempts, made then and
+subsequently, by government,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> to enforce the observance of the day, for
+purposes not the highest, led to a fearful reaction; that to other and
+counter reactions. The ill consequences of those movements have not yet
+ceased on either side of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The Puritans represented the spirit of reaction against ecclesiastical
+and other abuses of their time, and the age before them. Let me do these
+men no injustice. I honor the heroic virtues of our fathers not less
+because I see their faults; see the cause of their faults, and the
+occasion which demanded such masculine and terrible virtues as the
+Puritans unquestionably possessed. I speak only of their doctrine of the
+Sunday. They were driven from one extreme to the other, for oppression
+makes wise men mad. They took mainly the notions of the Sabbath, which
+belong to the later portions of the Old Testament; they interpreted them
+with the most pharisaical rigor, and then applied them to the Sunday.
+Did they find no warrant for that rigor in the New Testament? they found
+enough in the Old; enough in their own character, and their consequent
+notions of God. They thus introduced a set of ideas respecting the
+Sunday, which the Christian church had never known before, and rigidly
+enforced an observance thereof utterly foreign both to the letter and
+spirit of the New Testament. They made Sunday a terrible day; a day of
+fear, and of fasting, and of trembling under the terrors of the Lord.
+They even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> called it by the Hebrew name&mdash;the Sabbath. The Catholics had
+said it was not safe to trust the Scriptures in the hands of the people,
+for an inspired Word needed an expositor also inspired. The abuse which
+the Puritans made of the Bible by their notions of the Sunday, seemed a
+fulfilment of the Catholic prophecy. But the Catholics did not see what
+is plain to all men now&mdash;that this very abuse of Sunday and Scripture
+was only the reaction against other abuses, ancient, venerated, and
+enforced by the Catholic church itself.</p>
+
+<p>Every sect has some institution which is the symbol of its religious
+consciousness, though not devised for that purpose. With the early
+Christians, it was their love-feasts and communion; with the Catholics,
+it is their gorgeous ritual with its ancient date and divine
+pretensions&mdash;a ritual so imposing to many; with the Quakers, who scorn
+all that is symbolic, the symbol equally appears in the plain dress and
+the plain speech, the broad brim, and <i>thee</i> and <i>thou</i>. With the
+Puritans, this symbol was the Sabbath, not the Sunday. Their Sabbath was
+like themselves, austere, inflexible as their "divine decrees;" not
+human and of man, but Hebrew and of the Jews, stern, cold, and sad.</p>
+
+<p>The Puritans were possessed with the sentiment of fear before God; they
+had ideas analogous to that sentiment, and wrought out actions akin to
+those ideas. They brought to America their ideas and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> sentiments. Behold
+the effect of their actions. Let us walk reverently backward, with
+averted eyes to cover up their folly, their shame, and their sin, as
+they could not walk to conceal the folly of their progenitors. The
+Puritans are the fathers of New England and her descendant States; the
+fathers of the American idea; of most things in America that are good;
+surely, of most that is best. They seem made on purpose for their work
+of conquering a wilderness and founding a State. It is not with gentle
+hands, not with the dalliance of effeminate fingers, that such a task is
+done. The work required energy the most masculine, in heart, head, and
+hands. None but the Puritans could have done such a work. They could
+fast as no men; none could work like them; none preach; none pray; none
+could fight as they fought. They have left a most precious inheritance
+to men who have the same greatness of soul, but have fallen on happier
+times. Yet this inheritance is fatal to mere imitators, who will go on
+planting of vineyards, where the first planter fell intoxicated with the
+fruit of his own toil. This inheritance is dangerous to men who will be
+no wiser than their ancestors. Let us honor the good deeds of our
+fathers; and not eat, but reverently bury their honored bones.</p>
+
+<p>The Puritans represented the natural reaction of mankind against old
+institutions that were absurd or tyrannical. The Catholic church had
+multiplied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> feast days to an extreme, and taken unnecessary pains to
+promote fun and frolic. The Puritans would have none of the saints' days
+in their calendar; thought sport was wicked; cut down Maypoles, and
+punished a man who kept Christmas after the old fashion. The Catholic
+church had neglected her golden opportunities for giving the people
+moral and religious instruction; had quite too much neglected
+public prayer and preaching, but relied mainly on sensuous
+instruments&mdash;architecture, painting, music. In revenge, the Puritan had
+a meeting-house as plain as boards could make it; tore the pictures to
+pieces; thought an organ "was not of God," and had sermons long and
+numerous, and prayers full of earnestness, zeal, piety, and faith, in
+short, possessed of all desirable things except an end. Did the
+Catholics forbid the people the Bible, emphatically the book of the
+people&mdash;the Puritan would read no other book; called his children Hebrew
+names, and re&euml;nacted "the laws of God" in the Old Testament, "until we
+can make better." Did Henry and Elizabeth underrate the people and
+overvalue the monarchy, nature had her vengeance for that abuse, and the
+Puritan taught the world that kings, also, had a joint in their necks.</p>
+
+<p>The Puritans went to the extreme in many things: in their contempt for
+amusements, for what was graceful in man or beautiful in woman; in their
+scorn of art, of elegant literature, even of music; in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> their general
+condemnation of the past, from which they would preserve little
+excepting what was Hebrew, which, of course, they over-honored as much
+as they undervalued all the rest. In their notions respecting the Sunday
+they went to the same extreme. The general reason is obvious. They
+wished to avoid old abuses, and thought they were not out of the water
+till they were in the fire. But there was a special reason, also: the
+English are the most empirical of all nations. They love a fact more
+than an idea, and often cling to an historical precedent rather than
+obey a great truth which transcends all precedents. The national
+tendency to external things, perhaps, helped lead them to these peculiar
+notions of the Sabbath. The precedent they found in "The chosen people,"
+and established, as they thought, by God himself.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The ideas of the Puritans respecting the Sunday are still cherished in
+the popular theology of New England. There is one party in our churches
+possessed of many excellences, which has always had the merit of
+speaking out fully what it thinks and feels. At this day that party
+still represents the Puritanic opinions about the Sunday, though a
+little modified. They teach that God created the world in six days, and
+rested the seventh; that he commanded mankind, also, to rest on that
+day; commanded a man to be stoned to death for picking up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> sticks of a
+Saturday; that by divine authority the first day of the week was
+substituted for the seventh, and therefore that it is the religious duty
+of all men to rest from work on that day, for the Hebrew law of the
+Sabbath is binding on Christians for ever. It is maintained that
+abstinence from work on Sunday is as much a religious duty as abstinence
+from theft or hatred; that the day must be exclusively devoted to
+religion, in the technical sense of that word, to public or private
+worship, to religious reading, thought, or conversation. To attend
+church on that day is thought to be a good in itself, though it should
+lead to no further good, and therefore a duty as imperative as the duty
+of loving man and God. The preacher may not edify, still the duty of
+attending to his ministration of the word remains the same; for the
+attendance is a good in itself. It is taught that work, that amusement,
+common conversation, the reading of a book not technically religious, is
+a sin, just as clearly a sin as theft or hatred, though perhaps not so
+great. Writing a letter, even, is denounced as a sin, though the letter
+be written for the purpose of arresting the progress of a war, and
+securing life and freedom to millions of men.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is very plain that such ideas are not consistent with the truth.
+In the language of the church, they are a heresy. As we learn the facts
+of the case we must give up such ideas concerning the Sunday. It is like
+any other day. Christianity knows no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> classes of days, as holy or
+profane; all days are the Lord's days, all time holy time.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But then comes the other question, What is the best use to be made of
+the day; the use most conducive to the highest interests of mankind?
+Will it be most profitable to "give up the Sunday," to use it as the
+Catholics do, as the Puritans did, or to adopt some other method? To
+answer these questions fairly, let us look and see the effects of the
+present notions about the Sunday, and the stricter mode of observing it
+here in New England. The experience of two hundred years is worth
+looking at. Let us look at the good effects first.</p>
+
+<p>The good and evil of any age are commonly bound so closely together,
+that in plucking up the tares, there is danger lest the wheat also be
+uprooted, at least trodden down. In America, especially in New England,
+every thing is intense, with of course a tendency to extravagance, to
+fanaticism. Look at some of the most obvious signs of that intensity. No
+conservatism in the world is so bigoted as American conservatism; no
+democracy so intense. Nowhere else can you find such thorough-going
+defenders of the existing state of things, social, ecclesiastical,
+civil; such defenders of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery,
+and war; nowhere such radical enemies to the existing state of things;
+such foes of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> and war. No
+"Revivals of religion" are like the American; none of old were like
+these. See how the American soldiers fight; how the American men will
+work. Puritanism was intense enough in England; in the New World it was
+yet more so. Our fathers were intense Calvinists; more Calvinistic than
+Calvin&mdash;they became Hopkinsian. They hated the Pope; kings and bishops
+were their aversion. They feared God. Did they love him&mdash;love him as
+much? They had an intense religious activity, but they had another
+intensity. It is better that we should say it, rather than men who do
+not honor them. That intensity of action, when turned towards material
+things, or, as they called them, "carnal things," needed some powerful
+check. It was found in their bigotry and superstition. In such an age as
+theirs, when the Reformation broke down all the ordinary restraints of
+society, and rent asunder the golden ties which bound man to the past;
+when the Anglican church ended in fire, and the English monarchy in
+blood; when men full of piety thanked God for the fire and the
+bloodshed, and felt the wrongs of a thousand years driving them almost
+to madness&mdash;what was there to keep such men within bounds, and restrain
+them from the wildest license and unbridled anarchy? Nothing but
+superstition; nothing short of fear of hell. They broke down the
+monarchy; they trod the church under their feet. She who had once been
+counted as the queen and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> mother of society, was now to be regarded only
+as the Apocalyptical woman in scarlet, the mother of abominations, bride
+of the devil, and queen of hell. The Old Testament wrought on the minds
+of these men like a charm, to stimulate and to soothe. "One day," said
+they, "is made holy by God; in it shall no work be done by man or beast,
+or thing inanimate. On that day all must attend church as an act of
+religion." Here, then, was a bar extending across the stream of
+worldliness, filling one seventh part of its channel, wide and deep, and
+wonderfully interrupting its whelming tide. I admire the divine skill
+which compounds the gases in the air; which balances centripetal and
+centrifugal forces into harmonious proportions,&mdash;those fair ellipses in
+the unseen air; but still more marvellous is that same skill, diviner
+now, which compounds the folly and the wisdom of mankind; balances
+centripetal and centrifugal forces here, stilling the noise of kings and
+the tumult of the people, making their wrath to serve him, and the
+remnant thereof restraining forever.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday, master and man, the slave stolen from the wilderness, the
+servant&mdash;a Christian man bought from some Christian conqueror,&mdash;must
+cease from their work. Did the covetous, the cruel, the strong, oppress
+the weak for six days, the Sabbath said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but
+no further." The servant was free from his master, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> the weary was at
+rest. The plough stood still in the furrow; the sheaf lay neglected in
+the field; the horse and the ox enjoyed their master's Sabbath of rest,
+all heedless of the divine decrees, of election or reprobation, yet not
+the less watched over by that dear Providence which numbered the hairs
+of the head, and overruled the falling of a sparrow for the sparrow's
+good. All must attend church, master and man, rich and poor, oppressor
+and oppressed. Good things and great things got read out of the Bible,
+it was the book of the people, the New Testament, written much of it in
+the interest of all mankind, with special emphasis laid on the rights of
+the weak and the duties of the strong. Good things got said in sermon
+and in prayer. The speakers must think, the hearers think, as well as
+tremble. Begin to think in a circle narrow as a lady's ring, or the
+Assembly's Catechism, you will think out; for thought, like all
+movement, tends to the right line. Calvinism has always bred thinkers,
+and when barbarism was the first danger was perhaps the only thing which
+could do it. Calvinism, too, has always shown itself in favor of popular
+liberty to a certain degree, and though it stops far short of the mark,
+yet goes far beyond the Catholic or Episcopalian.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday, thus enforced by superstition, has yet been the education-day of
+New England; the national school-time for the culture of man's highest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+powers; therein have the clergy been our educators, and done a vast
+service which mankind will not soon forget. It was good seed they sowed
+on this soil of the New World; the harvest is proof of that. They
+builded wiser than they knew. Their unconscious hands constructed the
+thought of God. Even their superstition and bigotry did much to preserve
+church and clergy to us; much also to educate and develop the highest
+powers of man. But for that superstition we might have seen the same
+anarchy, the same unbridled license in the seventeenth century, which we
+saw in the eighteenth, as a consequence of a similar revolution, a
+similar reaction; only it would have been carried out with the intensity
+of that most masculine and earnest race of men. How much further English
+atrocities would have gone than the French did go; how long it would
+have taken mankind, by their proper motion, to reascend from a fall so
+adverse and so low, I cannot tell. I see what saved them from the
+plunge.</p>
+
+<p>True, the Sunday was not what it should be, more than the week;
+preaching was not what it should be, more than practice. But without
+that Sunday, and without that preaching, New England would have been a
+quite different land; America another nation altogether; the world by no
+means so far advanced as now. New England with her descendants has
+always been the superior portion of America. I flatter no man's
+prejudice, but speak a plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> truth. She is superior in intelligence, in
+morality&mdash;that is too plain for proof. The prime cause of that
+superiority must be sought in the character of the fathers of New
+England; but a secondary and most powerful cause is to be found also in
+those two institutions&mdash;Sunday and preaching. Why is it that all great
+movements, from the American Revolution down to anti-slavery, have begun
+here? Why is it that education societies, missionary societies, Bible
+societies, and all the movements for the advance of mankind, begin here?
+Why, it is no more an accident than the rising of the tide. Find much of
+the cause in the superior character, and therefore in the superior aims
+of the forefathers, much also will be found due to this&mdash;Once in the
+week they paused from all work; they thought of their God, who had
+delivered them from the iron house and yoke of bondage; they listened to
+the words of able men, exhorting them to justice, piety, and a heavenly
+walk with God; they trembled at fear of hell; they rejoiced at hope of
+heaven. The church&mdash;no, the "meeting-house"&mdash;was the common property of
+all; the minister the common friend. The slave looked up to him; the
+chief magistrate dared not look down on him. For more than a hundred
+years the ablest men of New England went into the pulpit. No talent was
+thought too great, no learning too rich and profound, no genius too holy
+and divine, for the work of teaching men their highest duty, and
+helping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> to their highest bliss. He was the minister to all. There was
+not then a church for the rich, and a chapel for the poor; the rich and
+the poor met together, for one God was the maker of them all&mdash;their
+Father too; they had one Gospel, one Redeemer,&mdash;their Brother not less
+than their God; they journeyed toward the same heaven, which had but one
+entrance for great and little; they prayed all the same prayer. The
+effect of this socialism of religion is seldom noticed; so we walk on
+moist earth, not thinking that we tread on the thunder-cloud and the
+lightning. But it is not in human nature for men of intense religious
+activity to meet in the same church, sing the same psalm, pray the same
+prayer, partake the same elements of communion, and not be touched with
+compassion&mdash;each for all, and all for each. The same causes which built
+up religion in New England, built up democracy along with it. Is it not
+easy to see the cause which made the rich men of New England the most
+benevolent of rich men; gave them their character for generosity and
+public spirit&mdash;yes, for eminent humanity? The acorn is not more
+obviously the parent of the oak than those two institutions of New
+England the parent of such masculine virtues as distinguish her sons.</p>
+
+<p>Regarded merely as a day of rest from labor, the Sunday has been of
+great value to us. Considering the intense character of the nation, our
+tendency to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> material things, and our restless love of work, it seems as
+if a Moses of the nineteenth century, legislating for us, would enact
+two rest-days in the week, rather than one. It is a good thing that a
+man once a week pauses from his work, arrays himself in clean garments,
+and is at rest.</p>
+
+<p>Regarded in its other aspects, Sunday has aided the intellectual culture
+of the people to a degree not often appreciated. To many a man, yes, to
+most men, it is their only reading day, and they will read "secular"
+books, spite of the clerical admonition. Many a poor boy in New England,
+who has toiled all the week, and would gladly have studied all the
+night, did not obstinate Nature forbid, has studied stealthily all
+Sunday, not Jeremiah and the prophets, but Homer and the mathematics,
+and risen at length to eminence amongst cultivated men;&mdash;he has to thank
+the Sunday for the beginnings of that manly growth.</p>
+
+<p>The moral and religious effect of the day is yet more important. One
+seventh part of the time was to be devoted to moral and religious
+culture. The clergy watched diligently over Sunday, as their own day.
+Work was then the accident; religion was the business. Every thing with
+us becomes earnest; Sunday as earnest as the week. It must not be spent
+idly. Perhaps no body of clergymen, for two hundred years, on the whole,
+were ever so wakeful and active as the American. They also are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> earnest
+and full of intensity, especially in the more serious sects. I think I
+am not very superstitious; not often inclined to lean on my father's
+staff rather than walk on my own feet; not over-much accustomed to take
+things on trust because they have been trusted to all along: but I must
+confess that I see a vast amount of good achieved by the aid of these
+two institutions, the Sunday and preaching, which could not have been
+done without them. I know I have my prejudices; I love the Sunday; a
+professional bias may warp me aside, for I am a preacher&mdash;the pulpit is
+my joy and my throne. Judge you how far my profession and my prejudice
+have led me astray in estimating the value of the Sunday, its preaching,
+and the good they have achieved for us in New England. I know what
+superstition, what bigotry, has been connected with both; I know it has
+kept grim and terrible guard about these institutions. I look upon that
+superstition and bigotry, as on the old New England guns which were
+fought with in the Indian wars, the French wars, and the
+Revolution;&mdash;things that did service when men knew not how to defend
+what they valued most with better tools and more Christian. I look on
+both with the same melancholy veneration, but honor them the more that
+now they are old, battered, unfit for use and covered with rust; I would
+respectfully hang them up, superstition and the musket, side by side;
+honorable, but harmless, with their muzzles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> down, and pray God it might
+never be my lot to handle such ungodly weapons, though in a cause never
+so humane and holy.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let us look a little at the ill effects of these notions of the Sunday
+and the observance which they led to. It is thought an act of religion
+to attend church and give a mere bodily presence there. Hence the
+minister often relies on this circumstance to bring his audience
+together; preaches sermons on the duty of going to church, while
+ingenuous boys blush for his weakness, and ask, "Were it not better to
+rely on your goodness, your piety, your wisdom; on your superior ability
+to teach men, even on your eloquence, rather than tell them it is an act
+of religion to come and hear you, when both they and you are painfully
+conscious that they are thereby made no wiser, no better, nor more
+Christian?" This notion is a dangerous one for a clergyman. It flatters
+his pride and encourages his sloth. It blinds him to his own defects,
+and leads him to attribute his empty benches to the perverseness of
+human nature and the carnal heart, which a few snow-flakes can frighten
+from his church, while a storm will not keep them from a lecture on
+science or literature. No doubt it is a man's duty to seek all
+opportunities of becoming wiser and better. So far as church-going helps
+that work, so far it is a duty. But to count it in itself, irrespective
+of its consequences, an act of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> religion, is to commit a dangerous
+error, which has proved fatal to many a man's growth in goodness and
+piety. Let us look to the end, not merely at the means.</p>
+
+<p>This notion has also a bad effect on the hearers. It is thought an act
+of religion to attend church, whether you are edified or not by sermon,
+by psalm, or prayer; an act of religion, though you could more
+profitably spend the time in your own closet at home, or with your own
+thoughts in the fields. Of course, then, he who attends once a day is
+thought a Christian to a certain degree; if twice, more so; if thrice,
+why that denotes an additional amount of growth in grace. In this way
+the day is often spent in a continual round of meetings. Sermon follows
+sermon; prayer treads upon the footsteps of prayer; psalm effaces psalm,
+till morning, afternoon, evening, all are gone. The Sunday is ended and
+over; the man is tired&mdash;but has he been profited and made better
+thereby? The sermons and the prayers have cancelled one another, been
+heard and forgot. They were too numerous to remember or produce their
+effect. So on a summer's lake, as the winds loiter and then pass by,
+ripple follows ripple, and wave succeeds to wave, yet the next day the
+wind has ceased and the unstable water bears no trace left there by all
+the blowings of the former day, but bares its incontinent bosom to the
+frailest and most fleeting clouds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another ill effect follows from regarding attendance at church as an act
+of religion in itself:&mdash;It is forgotten that a man cannot teach what he
+does not know. If you have more manhood than I, more religion; if you
+are the more humane and the more divine, it is idle for me to try and
+teach you divinity and humanity; idle in you to make believe you are
+taught. The less must learn of the greater, not the greater directly of
+the less. It is too often forgotten by the preacher that his hearers may
+be capable of teaching him; that he cannot fill them out of an
+emptiness, but a fulness. Hence, it comes to pass that no one, how
+advanced soever, is allowed to graduate, so to say, from the church.
+Perhaps it may do a great man, mature in Christianity, good to sit down
+with his fellows and hear a little man talk who knows nothing of
+religion; it may increase his sympathy with mankind. It can hardly be an
+act of religion to such a man so advanced in his goodness and piety;
+perhaps not the best use he could make of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>The current opinion hinders social tendencies. A man must not meet with
+his friend and neighbor, or if he does, he must talk with bated breath,
+with ghostly countenance, and of a ghostly theme. From this abuse of the
+Sunday comes much of the cold and unsocial character which strangers
+charge us with. As things now go, there are many who have no opportunity
+for social intercourse except the hours<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> of the Sunday. Then it is
+forbidden them. So they suffer and lose much of the charm of life;
+become ungenial, unsocial, stiff, and hard, and cold.</p>
+
+<p>This notion hinders men, also, from intellectual culture. They must read
+no book but one professedly religious. Such works are commonly poor and
+dull; written mainly by men of little ability, of little breadth of
+view; not written in the interest of mankind, but only of a sect&mdash;the
+Calvinists or Unitarians. A good man groans when he looks over the
+immense piles of sectarian books written with good motives, and read
+with the most devout of intentions, but which produce their best effect
+when they lead only to sleep. Yet it is commonly taught that it is
+religion to spend a part of Sunday in reading such works, in listening,
+or in trying to listen, or in affecting to try and listen, to the most
+watery sermons, while it is wicked to read some "secular" book,
+philosophy, history, poem, or tale, which expands the mind and warms the
+heart. Our poor but wisdom-seeking boy must read his Homer only by
+stealth. There are many men who have no time for intellectual pursuits,
+none for reading, except on Sunday. It is cruel to tell them they shall
+read none but sectarian books or listen only to sectarian words.</p>
+
+<p>But there are other evils yet. These notions and the corresponding
+practice tend to make religion external, consisting in obedience to
+form, in compliance with custom; while religion is and can be only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+piety and goodness, love to God and love to man. To keep the Sunday
+idle, to attend church, is not being religious. It is easy to do that;
+easy to stop there, and then to look at real, manly saints, who live in
+the odor of sanctity, whose sentiment is a prayer, their deeds religion,
+and their whole life a perpetual communion with God, and say, "Infidel!
+Unbeliever."</p>
+
+<p>Then, as one day is devoted to religion, it is thought that is enough;
+that religion has no more business in the world than the world in
+religion. So division is made of the territory of mortal life, in which
+partition worldliness has six days, while poor religion has only the
+Sunday, and content with her own limits, feels no salient wish to absorb
+or annex the week! It is painful to see this abuse of an institution so
+noble. No commonness of its occurrence renders it less painful. It is
+painful to be told that men of the most scrupulous sects on Sunday, are
+in the week the least scrupulous of men.</p>
+
+<p>But even in religious matters it is thought all things which pertain
+directly to the religious welfare of men are not proper to be discussed
+on Sunday. One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery,
+against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the
+gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on
+eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of
+mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the
+time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith
+to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education,
+temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not
+Christian, to do that of a Sunday! Yet wonderful to say, it is not
+thought very wicked to hold a political caucus on Sunday for the merest
+party purposes; not wicked at all to work all day at the navy-yards in
+fitting out vessels, if they are only vessels of war; not at all wicked
+to toil all Sunday, if it is only in aiming to kill men in regular
+battle. Theological newspapers can expend their cheap censure on a
+member of Congress for writing a letter on Sunday, yet have no word of
+fault to find with the order which sets hundreds to work on Sunday in
+preparing armaments of war; not a word against the war which sets men to
+butcher their Christian brothers on the day which Christians celebrate
+as the anniversary of Christ's triumph over death! These things show
+that we have not yet arrived at the most profitable and Christian mode
+of using the Sunday; and when I consider these abuses I wonder not that
+the cry of "Infidel" is met by the unchristian taunt, yet more deserved
+and biting, "Thou hypocrite!" I wonder not that some men say, "Let us
+away with the Sunday altogether; and if we have no place for rest, we
+will have none for hypocrisy."</p>
+
+<p>The efforts honestly made by good and honest men, to Judaize the day
+still more; to revive the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> sterner features of ancient worship; to put a
+yoke on us which neither we nor our fathers could bear; to transform the
+Christian Sunday into the Jewish Sabbath, must lead to a reaction. Abuse
+on one side will be met by abuse on the other; despotic asceticism by
+license; Judaism by heathenism. Superstition is the mother of denial.
+Men will scorn the Sunday; abuse its timely rest. Its hours that may be
+devoted to man's highest interests will be prostituted to low aims, and
+worldliness make an unbroken sweep from one end of the month to the
+other; and then it will take years of toil before mankind can get back
+and secure the blessings now placed within an easy reach. I put it to
+you, men whose heads time has crowned with white, or sprinkled with a
+sober gray, if you would deem it salutary to enforce on your
+grandchildren the Sabbath austerities which your parents imposed on you?
+In your youth was the Sunday a welcome day; a genial day; or only
+wearisome and sour? Was religion, dressed in her Sabbath dress, a
+welcome guest; was she lovely and to be desired? Your faces answer. Let
+us profit by your experience.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>How can we make the Sunday yet more valuable? If we abandon the
+superstitious notions respecting its origin and original design, the
+evils that have hitherto hindered its use will soon perish of
+themselves. They all grow out of that root. If men are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> not driven into
+a reaction by pretensions for the Sunday which facts will not warrant;
+if unreasonable austerities are not forced upon them in the name of the
+law, and the name of God; there is no danger in our day that men will
+abandon an institution which already has done so much service to
+mankind. Let Sunday and preaching stand on their own merits, and they
+will encounter no more opposition than the common school and the
+work-days of the week. Then men will be ready enough to appropriate the
+Sunday to the highest objects they know and can appreciate. Tell men the
+Sunday is made for man, and they will use it for its highest use. Tell
+them man is made for it, and they will war on it as a tyrant. I should
+be sorry to see the Sunday devoted to common work; sorry to hear the
+clatter of a mill, or the rattle of the wheels of business on that day.
+I look with pain on men engaged needlessly in work on that day; not with
+the pain of wounded superstition, but a deeper regret. I would not water
+my garden with perfumes when common water was at hand. We shall always
+have work enough in America; hand-work, and head-work, for common
+purposes. There is danger that we shall not have enough of rest, of
+intellectual cultivation, of refinement, of social intercourse; that our
+time shall be too much devoted to the lower interests of life, to the
+means of living and not the end.</p>
+
+<p>I would not consider it an act of religion to attend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> church: only a
+good thing to go there when the way of improvement leads through it;
+when you are made wiser and better by being there. I am pained to see a
+man spend the whole of a Sunday in going to church,&mdash;and forgetting
+himself in getting acquainted with the words of the preachers. I think
+most intelligent hearers, and most intelligent and Christian preachers,
+will confess that two sermons are better than three, and one is better
+than two. One need only look at the afternoon face of a congregation in
+the city, to be satisfied of this. If one half the day were devoted to
+public worship, the other half might be free for private studies of men
+at home, for private devotion, for social relaxation, for intercourse
+with one's own family and friends. Then Sunday afternoon and evening
+would afford an excellent opportunity for meetings for the promotion of
+the great humane movements of the day, which some would think not
+evangelical enough to be treated of in the morning. Would it be
+inconsistent with the great purposes of the day, inconsistent with
+Christianity, to have lectures on science, literature, and similar
+subjects delivered then? I do not believe the Catholic custom of
+spending the Sunday afternoon in England, before the Reformation, was a
+good one. It diverted men from the higher end to the lower. I cannot
+think that here and now we need amusement so much as society,
+instruction, refinement, and devotion. Yet it seems to me unwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> to
+restrain the innocent sports of children of a Sunday, to the same degree
+that our fathers did; to make Sunday to them a day of gloom and sadness.
+Thoughtful parents are now much troubled in this matter; they cannot
+enforce the old discipline, so disastrous to themselves; they fear to
+trust their own sense of what is right;&mdash;so, perhaps, get the ill of
+both schemes, and the good of neither. There are in Boston about thirty
+thousand Catholics, twenty-five thousand of them, probably, too ignorant
+to read with pleasure or profit any book. At home, amusement formed a
+part of their Sunday service; it was a part of their religion to make a
+festive use of Sunday afternoon. What shall they do? Is it Christian in
+us by statute to interdict them from their recreation? With the
+exception of children and these most ignorant persons, it does not
+appear that there is any class amongst us who need any part of the
+Sunday for sport.</p>
+
+<p>I am not one of those who wish "to give up the Sunday;" indeed there are
+few such men amongst us; I would make it yet more useful and profitable.
+I would remove from it the superstition and the bigotry which have so
+long been connected with it; I would use it freely, as a Christian not
+enslaved by the letter of Judaism, but made free by an obedience to the
+law of the spirit of life. I would use the Sunday for religion in the
+wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for
+humanity, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it
+by impudent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the
+other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can
+make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ
+it for all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into
+libertinism.</p>
+
+<p>The Sunday is made for man, as are all other days; not man for the
+Sunday. Let us use it, then, not consuming its hours in a Jewish
+observance; not devote it to the lower necessities of life, but the
+higher; not squander it in idleness, sloth, frivolity, or sleep; let us
+use it for the body's rest, for the mind's culture, for head and heart
+and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Men and women, you have received the Sunday from your fathers, as a day
+to be devoted to the highest interests of man. It has done great service
+for them and for you. But it has come down accompanied with superstition
+which robs it of half its value. It is easy for you to make the day far
+more profitable to yourselves than it ever was to your fathers; easy to
+divest it of all bigotry, to free it from all oldness of the letter;
+easy to leave it for your children an institution which shall bless them
+for ages yet to come: or it is easy to bind on their necks unnatural
+restraints; to impose on their conscience and understanding absurdities
+which at last they must repel with scorn and contempt. It is in your
+hands to make the Sunday Jewish or Christian.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> These celebrated commandments have come down to us in three
+distinct forms; namely, in Exodus xx., in Exodus xxxiv., and in Deut. v.
+The differences between these several codes are quite remarkable and
+significant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> 2 Chron. 36:21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> John 5:1-18, and 7:19-24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Matthew 23:1-3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Rev. 21:14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Coloss. 2:16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Galat. 1:5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Justinian, <i>Cod.</i> Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Cod.</i>, Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 2. See also, l. 3 and 11.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2>III.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.&mdash;PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY,
+SEPTEMBER 20, 1846.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<h4>WISDOM OF SOLOMON III. 1, 4.</h4>
+
+<h4>The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God: their hope is full
+of immortality.</h4>
+
+
+<p>It is the belief of mankind that we shall all live forever. This is not
+a doctrine of Christianity alone. It belongs to the human race. You may
+find nations so rude that they live houseless, in caverns of the earth;
+nations that have no letters, not knowing the use of bows and arrows,
+fire or even clothes, but no nation without a belief in immortal life.
+The form of that belief is often grotesque and absurd; the mode of proof
+ridiculous; the expectations of what the future life is to be are often
+childish and silly. But notwithstanding all that, the fact still
+remains, the belief that the soul of a man never dies.</p>
+
+<p>How did mankind come by this opinion? "By a miraculous revelation," says
+one. But according to the common theory of miraculous revelations, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+race could not have obtained it in this way, for according to that
+theory the heathen had no such revelations; yet we find this doctrine
+the settled belief of the whole heathen world. The Greeks and Romans
+believed it long before Christ; the Chaldees, with no pretence to
+miraculous inspiration, taught the idea of immortality; while the Jews,
+spite of their alleged revelations, rested only in the dim sentiment
+thereof.</p>
+
+<p>It was not arrived at by reasoning. It requires a good deal of hard
+thinking to reason out and prove this matter. Yet you find this belief
+among nations not capable as yet of that art of thinking and to that
+degree, nations who never tried to prove it, and yet believe it as
+confidently as we. The human race did not sit down and think it out;
+never waited till they could prove it by logic and metaphysics; did not
+delay their belief till a miraculous revelation came to confirm it. It
+came to mankind by intuition; by instinctive belief, the belief which
+comes unavoidably from the nature of man. In this same way came the
+belief in God; the love of man; the sentiment of justice. Men could see,
+and knew they could see, before they proved it; before they had theories
+of vision; without waiting for a miraculous revelation to come and tell
+them they had eyes, and might see if they would look. Some faculties of
+the body act spontaneously at first&mdash;so others of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Immortality is a fact of man's nature, so it is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> part of the universe,
+just as the sun is a fact in the heavens and a part of the universe.
+Both are writings from God's hand; each therefore a revelation from Him,
+and of Him; only not miraculous, but natural, regular, normal. Yet each
+is just as much a revelation from Him as if the great Soul of all had
+spoken in English speech to one of us and said, "There is a sun there in
+the heavens, and thou shalt live for ever." Yes, the fact is more
+certain than such speech would make it, for this fact speaks always&mdash;a
+perpetual revelation, and no words can make it more certain.</p>
+
+<p>As a man attains consciousness of himself, he attains consciousness of
+his immortality. At first he asks proof no more of his eternal existence
+than of his present life; instinctively he believes both. Nay, he does
+not separate the two; this life is one link in that golden and electric
+chain of immortality; the next life another and more bright, but in the
+same chain. Immortality is what philosophers call an ontological fact;
+it belongs essentially to the being of man, just as the eye is a
+physiological fact and belongs to the body of man. To my mind this is
+the great proof of immortality: the fact that it is written in human
+nature; written there so plain that the rudest nations have not failed
+to find it, to know it; written just as much as form is written on the
+circle, and extension on matter in general. It comes to our
+consciousness as naturally as the notions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> of time and space. We feel it
+as a desire; we feel it as a fact. What is thus in man is writ there of
+God who writes no lies. To suppose that this universal desire has no
+corresponding gratification, is to represent Him, not as the father of
+all but as only a deceiver. I feel the longing after immortality, a
+desire essential to my nature, deep as the foundation of my being; I
+find the same desire in all men. I feel conscious of immortality; that I
+am not to die; no, never to die, though often to change. I cannot
+believe this desire and consciousness are felt only to mislead, to
+beguile, to deceive me. I know God is my father, and the father of the
+nations. Can the Almighty deceive his children? For my own part, I can
+conceive of nothing which shall make me more certain of my immortality.
+I ask no argument from learned lips. No miracle could make me more sure;
+no, not if the sheeted dead burst cerement and shroud, and rising forth
+from their honored tombs stood here before me, the disenchanted dust
+once more enchanted with that fiery life; no, not if the souls of all my
+sires since time began came thronging round, and with miraculous speech
+told me they lived and I should also live. I could only say, "I knew all
+this before, why waste your heavenly speech!" I have now indubitable
+certainty of eternal life. Death removing me to the next state, can give
+me infallible certainty.</p>
+
+<p>But there are men who doubt of immortality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> They say they are conscious
+of the want, not of the fact. They need a proof. The exception here
+proves the rule. You do not doubt your personal and conscious existence
+now; you ask no proof of that; you would laugh at me should I try to
+convince you that you are alive and self-conscious. Yet one of the
+leaders of modern philosophy wanted a proof of his as a basis for his
+science, and said,&mdash;"I am because I think." But his thought required
+proof as much as his being; yes, logically more, for being is the ground
+of thinking, not thinking of being. At this day there are sound men who
+deny the existence of this outward world, declaring it only a
+dreamworld. This ground, they say, and yonder sun have being but in
+fancy, like the sun and ground you perchance dreamed of last night whose
+being was only a being-dreamed. These are exceptional men, and help
+prove the common rule, that man trusts his senses and believes an
+outward world. Yet such are more common amongst philosophers than men
+who doubt of their immortal life. You cannot easily reason those men out
+of their philosophy and into their senses, nor by your own philosophy
+perhaps convince them that there is an outward world.</p>
+
+<p>I think few of you came to your belief in everlasting life through
+reasoning. Your belief grew out of your general state of mind and heart.
+You could not help it. Perhaps few of you ever sat down and weighed the
+arguments for and against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> it, and so made up your mind. Perhaps those
+who have the firmest consciousness of the fact are least familiar with
+the arguments which confirm that consciousness. If a man disbelieves it,
+if he denies it, his opinion is not often to be changed immediately or
+directly by argument. His special conviction has grown out of his
+general state of mind and heart, and is only to be removed by a change
+in his whole philosophy. I am not honoring men for their belief, nor
+blaming men who doubt or deny. I do not believe any one ever willingly
+doubted this; ever purposely reasoned himself into the denial thereof.
+Men doubt because they cannot help it; not because they will, but must.</p>
+
+<p>There are a great many things true which no man as yet can prove true;
+some things so true that nothing can make them plainer, or more plainly
+true. I think it is so with this doctrine, and therefore, for myself,
+ask no argument. With my views of man, of God, of the relation between
+the two, I want no proof, satisfied with my own consciousness of
+immortality. Yet there are arguments which are fair, logical, just,
+which satisfy the mind, and may, perhaps, help persuade some men who
+doubt, if such men there are amongst you. I think that immortality is a
+fact of consciousness; a fact given in the constitution of man:
+therefore a matter of sentiment. But it requires thought to pick it out
+from amongst the other facts of consciousness. Though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> at first merely a
+feeling, a matter of sentiment, on examination it becomes an idea&mdash;a
+matter of thought. It will bear being looked at in the sharpest and
+dryest light of logic. Truth never flinches before reason. It is so with
+our consciousness of God; that is an ontological fact, a fact given in
+the nature of man. At first it is a feeling, a matter of sentiment. By
+thought we abstract this fact from other facts; we find an idea of God.
+That is a matter of philosophy, and the analyzing mind legitimates the
+idea and at length demonstrates the existence of God, which we first
+learned without analysis, and by intuition. A great deal has been
+written to prove the existence of God, and that by the ablest men; yet I
+cannot believe that any one was ever reasoned directly into a belief in
+God, by all those able men, nor directly out of it by all the skeptics
+and scoffers. Indirectly such works affect men, change their philosophy
+and modes of thought, and so help them to one or the other conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of immortality, like the idea of God, in a certain sense, is
+born in us, and fast as we come to consciousness of ourselves we come to
+consciousness of God, and of ourselves as immortal. The higher we
+advance in wisdom, goodness, piety, the larger place do God and
+immortality hold in our experience and inward life. I think that is the
+regular and natural process of a man's development. Doubt of either
+seems to me an exception, an irregularity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Causes that remove the doubt
+must be general more than special.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>However, in order to have a basis of thought and reasoning, as well as
+of intuition and reason, let me mention some of the arguments for
+everlasting life.</p>
+
+<p>I. The first is drawn from the general belief of mankind. The greatest
+philosophers and the most profound and persuasive religious teachers of
+the whole world have taught this. That is an important fact, for these
+men represent the consciousness of mankind in the highest development it
+has yet reached, and in such points are the truest representatives of
+man. What is more, the human race believes it, not merely as a thing
+given by miraculous revelation, not as a matter proven by science, not
+as a thing of tradition resting on some man's authority, but believes it
+instinctively, not knowing and not asking why, or how; believes it as a
+fact of consciousness. Now in a matter of this sort the opinion of the
+human race is worth considering. I do not value very much the opinion of
+a priesthood in Rome or Judea, or elsewhere on this point, or any other,
+for they may have designs adverse to the truth. But the general
+sentiment of the human race in a matter like this is of the greatest
+importance. This general sentiment of mankind is a quite different thing
+from public opinion, which favors freedom in one country and slavery in
+another; this sentiment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> of mankind relates to what is a matter of
+feeling with most men. It is only a few thinkers that have made it a
+matter of thought. The opinion of mankind, so far as we know, has not
+changed on this point for four thousand years. Since the dawn of
+history, man's belief in immortality has continually been developing and
+getting deeper fixed.</p>
+
+<p>Still more, this belief is very dear to mankind. Let me prove that. If
+it were true that one human soul was immortal and yet was to be
+eternally damned, getting only more clotted with crime and deeper bit by
+agony as the ages went slowly by, then immortality were a curse, not to
+that man only, but to all mankind&mdash;for no amount of happiness, merited
+or undeserved, could ever atone or make up for the horrid wrong done to
+that one most miserable man. Who of you is there that could relish
+Heaven, or even bear it for a moment, knowing that a brother was doomed
+to smart with ever greatening agony, while year on year, and age on age,
+the endless chain of eternity continued to coil round the flying wheels
+of hell? I say the thought of one such man would fill even Heaven with
+misery, and the best man of men would scorn the joys of everlasting
+bliss, would spurn at Heaven and say, "Give me my brother's place; for
+me there is no Heaven while he is there!" Now it has been popularly
+taught, that not one man alone, but the vast majority of all mankind,
+are thus to be condemned; immortal only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> to be everlastingly wretched.
+That is the popular doctrine now in this land. It has been so taught in
+the Christian churches these sixteen centuries and more&mdash;taught in the
+name of Christ! Such an immortality would be a curse to men, to every
+man; as much so to the "saved" as to the "lost;" for who would willingly
+stay in Heaven, and on such terms? Surely not he who wept with weeping
+men! Yet in spite of this vile doctrine drawn over the world to come,
+mankind religiously believes that each shall live for ever. This shows
+how strong is the instinct which can lift up such a foul and hateful
+doctrine and still live on. Tell me not that scoffers and critics shall
+take away man's faith in endless life: it has stood a harder test than
+can ever come again.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>II. The next argument is drawn from the nature of man.</p>
+
+<p>1. All men desire to be immortal. This desire is instinctive, natural,
+universal. In God's world such a desire implies the satisfaction thereof
+equally natural and universal. It cannot be that God has given man this
+universal desire of immortality, this belief in it, and yet made it all
+a mockery. Man loves truth; tells it; rests only in it; how much more
+God who is the trueness of truth. Bodily senses imply their objects&mdash;the
+eye light, the ear sound; the touch, the taste, the smell, things
+relative thereto.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> Spiritual senses likewise foretell their object,&mdash;are
+silent prophecies of endless life. The love of justice, beauty, truth,
+of man and God, points to realities unseen as yet. We are ever hungering
+after noblest things, and what we feed on makes us hunger more. The
+senses are satisfied, but the soul never.</p>
+
+<p>2. Then, too, while this composite body unavoidably decays, this simple
+soul which is my life decays not. Reason, the affections, all the powers
+that make the man, decay not. True, the organs by which they act become
+impaired. But there is no cause for thinking that love, conscience,
+reason, will, ever become weaker in man; but cause for thinking that all
+these continually become more strong. Was the mind of Newton gone when
+his frame, long over-tasked, refused its wonted work?</p>
+
+<p>3. Here on earth, every thing in its place and time matures. The acorn
+and the chestnut, things natural to this climate, ripen every year. A
+longer season would make them no better nor bigger. It is so with our
+body&mdash;that, under proper conditions, becomes mature. It is so with all
+the things of earth. But man is not fully grown as the acorn and the
+chestnut; never gets mature. Take the best man and the greatest&mdash;all his
+faculties are not developed, fully grown and matured. He is not complete
+in the qualities of a man; nay, often half his qualities lie all unused.
+Shall we conclude these are never to obtain development and do their
+work? The analogy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> of nature tells us that man, the new-born plant, is
+but removed by death to another soil, where he shall grow complete and
+become mature.</p>
+
+<p>4. Then, too, each other thing under its proper conditions not only
+ripens but is perfect also after its kind. Each clover-seed is perfect
+as a star. Every lion, as a general rule, is a common representation of
+all lionhood; the ideal of his race made real in him, a thousand years
+of life would not make him more. But where is the Adamitic man; the type
+and representative of his race, who makes actual its idea? Even Jesus
+bids you not call him good; no man has all the manhood of mankind. Yes,
+there are rudiments of greatness in us all, but abortive, incomplete,
+and stopped in embryo. Now all these elements of manhood point as
+directly to another state as the unfinished walls of yonder rising
+church intimate that the work is not complete, that the artist here
+intends a roof, a window there, here a tower, and over all a
+heaven-piercing spire. All men are abortions, our failure pointing to
+the real success. Nay, we are all waiting to be born, our whole nature
+looking to another world, and dimly presaging what that world shall be.
+Death, however we misname him, seasonable or out of time, is the
+birth-angel, that alone.</p>
+
+<p>5. Besides, the presence of injustice, of wrong, points the same way.
+The fact that one man goes out of this life in childhood, in manhood, at
+any time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> before the natural measure of his days is full; the fact that
+any one is by circumstances made wretched; that he is hindered from his
+proper growth and has not here his natural due&mdash;all intimates to me his
+future life. I know that God is just. I know His justice too shall make
+all things right, for He must have the power, the wish, the will
+therefor, to speak in human speech. I see the injustice in this city,
+its pauperism, suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by
+no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemisphere to balance
+this; another life, wherein justice shall come to all and for all. Else
+God were unjust; and an unjust God to me is no God at all, but a
+wretched chimera which my soul rejects with scorn. I see the autumn
+prefigured in the spring. The flowers of May-day foretold the harvest,
+its rosy apples and its yellow ears of corn. As the bud now lying cold
+and close upon the bark of every tree throughout our northern clime is a
+silent prophecy of yet another spring and other summers, and harvests
+too; so this instinctive love of justice scantly budding here and nipped
+by adverse fate, silently but clearly tells of a kingdom of heaven. I
+take some miserable child here in this city, squalid in dress and look,
+ignorant and wicked too as most men judge of vagrant vice, made so by
+circumstances over which that child had no control; I turn off with a
+shudder at the public wrong we have done and still are doing; but in
+that child I see proof of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> another world, yes, Heaven glittering from
+behind those saddened eyes. I know that child has a man's nature in him,
+perhaps a Channing's trusting piety; perhaps a Newton's mind; has surely
+rudiments of more than these; for what were Channing, Newton, both of
+them, but embryo men? I turn off with a shudder at the public wrong, but
+a faith in God's justice, in that child's eternal life, which nothing
+can ever shake.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>III. A third argument is drawn from the nature of God. He, as the
+infinite, the unconditioned, the absolute, is all-powerful, all-wise,
+all-good. Therefore he must wish the best of all possible things; must
+know the best of all possible things; must will the best of all possible
+things, and so bring it to pass. Life is a possible thing; eternal life
+is possible. Neither implies a contradiction; yes, to me they seem
+necessary, more than possible. Now, then, as life, serene and happy
+life, is better than non-existence, so immortality is better than
+perpetual death. God must know that, wish that, will that, and so bring
+that about. Man, therefore, must be immortal. This argument is brief
+indeed, but I see not how it can be withstood.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that one of you doubts of eternal life. If any does, I
+know not if these thoughts will ever affect his doubt. Still, I think
+each argument is powerful; to one that thinks, reasons, balances,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> and
+then decides, exceeding powerful. All put together form a mass of
+argument which, as it seems to me, no logic can resist. Yet I beg you to
+understand that I do not rest immortality on any reasoning of mine, but
+on reason itself; not on these logical arguments, but on man's
+consciousness, and the instinctive belief which is common to the human
+race. I believed my immortality before I proved it; believed it just as
+strongly then as now. Nay, could some doubter rise, and, to my thinking,
+vanquish all these arguments, I should still hold fast my native faith,
+nor fear the doubter's arms. The simple consciousness of men is stronger
+than all forms of proof. Still, if men want arguments&mdash;why, there they
+are.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The belief in immortality is one thing; the special form thereof, the
+definite notion of the future life, another and quite different. The
+popular doctrine in our churches I think is this: That this body which
+we lay in the dust shall one day be raised again, the living soul joined
+on anew, and both together live the eternal life. But where is the soul
+all this time, between our death-day and our day of rising? Some say it
+sleeps unconscious, dead all this time; others, that it is in Heaven
+now, or else in hell; others, in a strange and transient home, imperfect
+in its joy or woe, waiting the final day and more complete account. It
+seems to me this notion is absurd and impossible: absurd in its doctrine
+relative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> to the present condition of departed souls; impossible in what
+it teaches of the resurrection of this body. If my soul is to claim the
+body again, which shall it be, the body I was born into, or that I died
+out of? If I live to the common age of men, changing my body as I must,
+and dying daily, then I have worn some eight or ten bodies. So at the
+last, which body shall claim my soul, for the ten had her? The soul
+herself may claim them all. But to make the matter still more intricate,
+there is in the earth but a certain portion of matter out of which human
+bodies can be made. Considering all the millions of men now living, the
+myriads of millions that have been before, it is plain, I think, that
+all the matter suitable for human bodies has been lived over many times.
+So if the world were to end to-day, instead of each old man having ten
+bodies from which to choose the one that fits him best, there would be
+ten men, all clamoring for each body! Shall I then have a handful of my
+former dust, and that alone? That is not the resurrection of my former
+body. This whole doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh seems to me
+impossible and absurd.</p>
+
+<p>I know men refer this, as many other things no better, to Jesus. I find
+no satisfactory evidence that he taught the resurrection of the body;
+there is some evidence that he did not. I know it was the doctrine of
+the Pharisees of his time, of Paul, the early Christians, and more or
+less of the Christian churches to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> this day. In Christ's time in Judea,
+there were the Sadducees, who taught the eternal death of men; the
+Pharisees who taught the resurrection of the flesh and its reunion with
+the soul; the Essenes, who taught the immortality of the soul, but
+rejected the resurrection of the body. Paul was a Pharisee, and in his
+letters taught the resurrection of the dead, the belief of the
+Pharisees. From him it has come down to us, and in the creed of many
+churches it is still written, "I believe in the resurrection of the
+flesh." Many doubted this in early times, but the council of Nice
+declared all men accursed who dared to doubt the resurrection of the
+flesh. I mention this as absurd and impossible, because it is still, I
+fear, the popular belief, and lest some should confound the doctrine of
+immortality with this tenet of the Pharisees. Let it be remembered the
+immortality of the soul is one thing, the resurrection of the body
+another and quite different.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>What is this future life? what can we know of it besides its existence?
+Some men speak as if they knew the way around Heaven as around the wards
+of their native city. What we can know in detail is cautiously to be
+inferred from the nature of man and the nature of God. I will modestly
+set down what seems to me.</p>
+
+<p>It must be a conscious state. Man is by his nature conscious; yes,
+self-conscious. He is progressive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> in his self-consciousness. I cannot
+think a removal out of the body destroys this consciousness; rather that
+it enhances and intensifies this. Yet consciousness in the next life
+must differ as much from consciousness here as the ripe peach differs
+from the blossom, or the bud, or the bark, or the earthly materials out
+of which it grew. The child is no limit to the man, nor my consciousness
+now to what I may be, must be hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>It must be a social state. Our nature is social; our joys social. For
+our progress here, our happiness, we depend on one another. Must it not
+be so there? It must be an advance upon our nature and condition here.
+All the analogy of nature teaches that. Things advance from small to
+great; from base to beautiful. 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. Yet some rude man, tired with his
+work, lies down beneath a tree, his head upon his swarthy arm, and sleep
+shuts, one by one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> these five scant portals of the soul, and what an
+artist is he made at once! How brave a sky he paints above him, with
+what golden garniture of clouds set off; what flowers and trees, what
+men and women does he not create, and moving in celestial scenes! What
+years of history does he condense in one short minute, and when he
+wakes, shakes off the purple drapery of his dream as if it were but
+worthless dust and girds him for his work anew! What other powers there
+are shut up in men less known than this artistic phantasy; powers of
+seeing the distant, recalling the past, predicting the future, feeling
+at once the character of men&mdash;of this we know little, only by rare
+glimpses at the unwonted side of things. But yet we know enough to guess
+there are strange wonders there waiting to be revealed.</p>
+
+<p>What form our conscious, social, and increased activity shall take, we
+know not. We know of that no more than before our birth we knew of this
+world, of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch, or the things which
+they reveal. We are not born into that world, have not its senses yet.
+This we know, that the same God, all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, rules
+there and then, as here and now. Who cannot trust him to do right and
+best for all? For my own part, I feel no wish to know how or where, or
+what I shall be hereafter. I know it will be right for my truest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+welfare; for the good of all. I am satisfied with this trust.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the next life must be a state of retribution. Thither we carry
+nothing but ourselves, our naked selves. Our fortune we leave behind us;
+our honors and rank return to such as gave; even our reputation, the
+good or ill men thought we were, clings to us no more. We go thither
+without our staff or scrip; nothing but the man we are. Yet that man is
+the result of all life's daily work; it is the one thing which we have
+brought to pass. I cannot believe men who have voluntarily lived mean,
+little, vulgar and selfish lives, will go out of this and into that,
+great, noble, generous, good, and holy. Can the practical saint and the
+practical hypocrite enter on the same course of being together? I know
+the sufferings of bad men here, the wrong they do their nature, and what
+comes of that wrong. I think that suffering is the best part of sin, the
+medicine to heal it with. What men suffer here from their wrong-doing is
+its natural consequence; but all that suffering is a mercy, designed to
+make them better. Every thing in this world is adapted to promote the
+welfare of God's creatures. Must it not be so in the next? How many men
+seem wicked from our point of view, who are not so from their own; how
+many become infamous through no fault of theirs; the victims of
+circumstances, born into crime, of low<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> and corrupt parents, whom former
+circumstances made corrupt! Such men cannot be sinners before God. Here
+they suffer from the tyranny of appetites they never were taught to
+subdue; they have not the joy of a cultivated mind. The children of the
+wild Indian are capable of the same cultivation as children here; yet
+they are savages. Is it always to be so? Is God to be partial in
+granting the favors of another life? I cannot believe it. I doubt not
+that many a soul rises up from the dungeon and the gallows, yes, from
+dens of infamy amongst men, clean and beautiful before God. Christ, says
+the Gospel, assured the penitent thief of sharing heaven with him&mdash;and
+that day. Many seem inferior to me, who in God's sight must be far
+before me; men who now seem too low to learn of me here, may be too high
+to teach me there.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot think the future world is to be feared, even by the worst of
+men. I had rather die a sinner than live one. Doubtless justice is there
+to be done; that may seem stern and severe. But remember God's justice
+is not like a man's; it is not vengeance, but mercy; not poison, but
+medicine. To me it seems tuition more than chastisement. God is not the
+Jailer of the Universe, but the Shepherd of the people; not the Hangman
+of mankind, but their Physician; yes, our Father. I cannot fear Him as I
+fear men. I cannot fail to love. I abhor sin, I loathe and nauseate
+thereat; most of all at my own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> I can plead for others and extenuate
+their guilt, perhaps they for mine; not I for my own. I know God's
+justice will overtake me, giving me what I have paid for. But I do not,
+cannot fear it. I know His justice is love; that if I suffer, it is for
+my everlasting joy. I think this is a natural state of mind. I do not
+find that men ever dread the future life, or turn pale on their
+death-bed at thought of God's vengeance, except when a priesthood has
+frightened them to that. The world's literature, which is the world's
+confession, proves what I say. In Greece, in classic days, when there
+was no caste of priests, the belief in immortality was current and
+strong. But in all her varied literature I do not remember a man dying,
+yet afraid of God's vengeance. The rude Indian of our native land did
+not fear to meet the Great Spirit, face to face. I have sat by the
+bedside of wicked men, and while death was dealing with my brother, I
+have watched the tide slow ebbing from the shore, but I have known no
+one afraid to go. Say what we will, there is nothing stronger and deeper
+in men than confidence in God, a solemn trust that He will do us good.
+Even the worst man thinks God his Father; and is he not? Tell me not of
+God's vengeance, punishing men for his own glory! There is no such
+thing. Talk not to me of endless hell, where men must suffer for
+suffering's sake, be damned for an eternity of woe. I tell you there is
+no such thing, nor can there ever be. Does not even the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> hireling
+shepherd, when a single lamb has gone astray, leave the ninety and nine
+safe in their fold, go forth some stormy night and seek the wanderer,
+rejoicing to bring home the lost one on his shoulders? And shall God
+forget His child, his frailest or most stubborn child; leave him in
+endless misery, a prey to insatiate Sin, that grim, bloodthirsty wolf,
+prowling about the human fold? I tell you No; not God. Why, this
+eccentric earth forsakes the sun awhile, careering fast and far away,
+but that attractive power prevails at length, and the returning globe
+comes rounding home again. Does a mortal mother desert her son, wicked,
+corrupt and loathsome though he be? If so, the wiser world cries, Shame!
+But she does not. When her child becomes loathsome and hateful to the
+world, drunk with wickedness, and when the wicked world puts him away
+out of its sight, strangling him to death, that mother forgets not her
+child. She had his earliest kiss from lips all innocent of coming ill,
+and she will have his last. Yes, she will press his cold and stiffened
+form to her own bosom; the bosom that bore and fed the innocent babe
+yearns yet with mortal longing for the murdered murderer. Infamous to
+the world, his very dust is sacred dust to her. She braves the world's
+reproach, buries her son, piously hoping, that as their lives once
+mingled, so their ashes shall. The world, cruel and forgetful oft,
+honors the mother in its deepest heart. Do you tell me that culprit's
+mother loves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> her son more than God can love him? Then go and worship
+her. I know that when father and mother both forsake me, in the
+extremity of my sin, I know my God loves on. Oh yes, ye sons of men,
+Indian and Greek, ye are right to trust your God. Do priests and their
+churches say No!&mdash;bid them go and be silent forever. No grain of dust
+gets lost from off this dusty globe; and shall God lose a man from off
+this sphere of souls? Believe it not.</p>
+
+<p>I know that suffering follows sin, lasting long as the sin. I thank God
+it is so; that God's own angel stands there to warn back the erring
+Balaams, wandering towards woe. But God, who sends the rain, the dew,
+the sun, on me as on a better man, will, at last, I doubt it not, make
+us all pure, all just, all good, and so, at last, all happy. This
+follows from the nature of God himself, for the All-good must wish the
+welfare of His child; the All-wise know how to achieve that welfare; the
+All-powerful bring it to pass. Tell me He wishes not the eternal welfare
+of all men, then I say, That is not the God of the universe. I own not
+that as God. Nay, I tell you it is not God you speak of, but some
+heathen fancy, smoking up from your unhuman heart. I would ask the worst
+of mothers, Did you forsake your child because he went astray, and
+mocked your word? "Oh no," she says; "he was but a child, he knew no
+better, and I led him right, corrected him for his good, not mine!" Are
+we not all children before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> God; the wisest, oldest, wickedest, God's
+child! I am sure He will never forsake me, how wicked soever I become. I
+know that he is love; love, too, that never fails. I expect to suffer
+for each conscious, wilful wrong; I wish, I hope, I long to suffer for
+it. I am wronged if I do not; what I do not outgrow, live over and
+forget here, I hope to expiate there. I fear a sin; not to outgrow a
+sin.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A man who has lived here a manly life, must enter the next under the
+most favorable circumstances. I do not mean a man of mere negative
+goodness, starting in the road of old custom, with his wheels deep in
+the ruts, not having life enough to go aside, but a positively good man,
+one bravely good. He has lived heaven here, and must enter higher up
+than a really wicked man, or a slothful one, or one but negatively good.
+He can go from earth to heaven, as from one room to another, pass
+gradually, as from winter to spring. To such an one, no revolution
+appears needed. The next life, it seems, must be a continual progress,
+the improvement of old powers, the disclosure or accession of new ones.
+What nobler reach of thought, what profounder insight, what more
+heavenly imagination, what greater power of conscience, faith and love,
+will bless us there and then, it were vain to calculate, it is far
+beyond our span. You see men now, whose souls are one with God, and so
+His will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> works through them as the magnetic fire runs on along the
+unimpeding line. What happiness they have, it is they alone can say. How
+much greater must it be there; not even they can tell. Here the body
+helps us to some things. Through these five small loop-holes the world
+looks in. How much more does the body hinder us from seeing? Through the
+sickly body yet other worlds look in. He who has seen only the daylight,
+knows nothing of that heaven of stars, which all night long hang
+overhead their lamps of gold. When death has dusted off this body from
+me, who will dream for me the new powers I shall possess? It were vain
+to try. Time shall reveal it all.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot believe that any state in Heaven is a final state, only a
+condition of progress. The bud opens into the blossom, the flower
+matures into the fruit. The salvation of to-day is not blessedness
+enough for to-morrow. Here we are first babes of earth, with a few
+senses, and those imperfect, helpless and ignorant; then children of
+earth; then youths; then men, armed with reason, conscience, affection,
+piety, and go on enlarging these without end. So methinks it must be
+there, that we shall be first babes of Heaven, then children, next
+youths, and so go on growing, advancing and advancing&mdash;our being only a
+becoming more and more, with no possibility of ever reaching the end. If
+this be true, then there must be a continual increase of being.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> So, in
+some future age, the time will come, when each one of us shall have more
+mind, and heart, and soul, than Christ on earth; more than all men now
+on earth have ever had; yes, more than they and all the souls of men now
+passed to Heaven;&mdash;shall have, each one of us, more being than they all
+have had, and so more truth, more soul, more faith, more rest and bliss
+of life.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Do men of the next world look in upon this? Are they present with us,
+conscious of our deeds or thoughts? Who knows? Who can say aye or no?
+The unborn know nothing of the life on earth; yet the born of earth know
+somewhat of them, and make ready for their coming. Who knows but men
+born to heaven are waiting for your birth to come&mdash;have gone to prepare
+a place for us? All that is fancy, and not fact; it is not philosophy,
+but poetry; no more. Of this we may be sure, that what is best will be;
+what best for saint or sinner; what most conducive to their real good.
+That is no poetry, but unavoidable truth, which all mankind may well
+believe.</p>
+
+<p>There are many who never attained their true stature here, yet without
+blameworthiness of theirs; men cheated of their growth. Many a Milton
+walks on his silent way, and goes down at last, not singing and unsung.
+How many a possible Newton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> or Descartes has dug the sewers of a city,
+and dies, giving no sign of the wealthy soul he bore!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Chill penury repressed his noble rage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And froze the genial current of the soul."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What if the best of you had been born slaves in North Carolina, or among
+savages at New Zealand; nay, in some of the filthy cellars of Boston,
+and turned friendless into the streets; what might you have become?
+Surely not what you are; yet, before God, you might, perhaps, be more
+deserving, and, at death, go to a far higher place. What is so terribly
+wrong here, must be righted there. It cannot be that God will thrust a
+man out of Heaven, because his mother was a savage, a slave, a pauper,
+or a criminal. It is men's impiety which does so here, not Heaven's
+justice there! How the wrong shall be righted I know not, care not now
+to know; of the fact I ask no further certainty. Many that are last
+shall be first. It may be that the pirate, in heaven, having outgrown
+his earthly sins, shall teach justice to the judge who hanged him here.
+They who were oppressed and trampled on, kept down, dwarfed, stinted and
+emaciate in soul, must have justice done them there, and will doubtless
+stand higher in Heaven than we, who, having many talents, used them
+poorly, or hid them idle in the dirt, knowing our Father's will, yet
+heeding not. It was Jesus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> that said, Many shall come from the east and
+the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, and men, calling
+themselves saints, be thrust out.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Shall we remember the deeds of the former life; this man that he picked
+rags out of the mud in the streets, and another that he ruled nations?
+Who can tell; nay, who need care to ask? Such a remembrance seems not
+needed for retribution's sake. The oak remembers not each leaf it ever
+bore, though each helped to form the oak, its branch and bole. How much
+has gone from our bodies! we know not how it came or went! How much of
+our past life is gone from our memory, yet its result lives in our
+character! The saddler remembers not every stitch he took while an
+apprentice, yet each stitch helped form the saddle.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Shall we know our friends again? For my own part I cannot doubt it;
+least of all when I drop a tear over their recent dust. Death does not
+separate them from us here. Can life in heaven do it? They live in our
+remembrance; memory rakes in the ashes of the dead, and the virtues of
+the departed flame up anew, enlightening the dim cold walls of our
+consciousness. Much of our joy is social here; we only half enjoy an
+undivided good. God made mankind, but sundered that into men, that they
+might help one another. Must it not be so there,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> and we be with our
+real friends? Man loves to think it; yet to trust is wiser than to
+prophesy. But the girl who went from us a little one may be as parent to
+her father when he comes, and the man who left us have far outgrown our
+dream of an angel when we meet again. I cannot doubt that many a man who
+not long ago left his body here, now far surpasses the radiant manliness
+which Jesus won and wore; yes, is far better, greater, too, than many
+poorly conceive of God.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There are times when we think little of a future life. In a period of
+success, serene and healthy life; the day's good is good enough for that
+day. But there comes a time when this day's good is not enough; its ill
+too great to bear. When death comes down and wrenches off a friend from
+our side; wife, child, brother, father, a dear one taken; this life is
+not enough. Oh, no, not to the coldest, coarsest, and most sensual man.
+I put it to you, to the most heartless of you all, or the most cold and
+doubting&mdash;When you lay down in the earth your mother, sister, wife, or
+child, remembering that you shall see their face no more, is life
+enough? Do you not reach out your arms for heaven, for immortality, and
+feel you cannot die? When I see men at a feast, or busy in the street, I
+do not think of their eternal life; perhaps feel not my own. But when
+the stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> remorseless, I
+feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall
+cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place, the man to his own.
+It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven.
+I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me. I ask no risen dust to
+teach me immortality. I am conscious of eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>But there are worse hours than these: seasons bitterer than death,
+sorrows that lie a latent poison in the heart, slowly sapping the
+foundations of our peace. There are hours when the best life seems a
+sheer failure to the man who lived it, his wisdom folly, his genius
+impotence, his best deed poor and small; when he wonders why he was
+suffered to be born; when all the sorrows of the world seem poured upon
+him; when he stands in a populous loneliness, and though weak, can only
+lean in upon himself. In such hour he feels the insufficiency of this
+life. It is only his cradle-time, he counts himself just born; all
+honors, wealth and fame are but baubles in his baby hand; his deep
+philosophy but nursery rhymes. Yet he feels the immortal fire burning in
+his heart. He stretches his hands out from the swaddling-clothes of
+flesh, reaching after the topmost star, which he sees, or dreams he
+sees, and longs to go alone. Still worse, the consciousness of sin comes
+over him; he feels that he has insulted himself. All about him seems
+little; himself little, yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> clamoring to be great. Then we feel our
+immortality; through the gairish light of day we see a star or two
+beyond. The soul within us feels her wings, contending to be born,
+impatient for the sky, and wrestles with the earthly worm that folds us
+in.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Mysterious Night! when our first Parent knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This glorious canopy of light and blue?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hesperus with the host of heaven came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And lo, Creation widened in man's view.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its day and night. Its
+flowers and its fruits are dear to me. I would not wilfully lose sight
+of a departing cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star; or in a
+purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws too of matter seem more
+wonderful the more I study them, in the whirling eddies of the dust, in
+the curious shells of former life buried by thousands in a grain of
+chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light above my head. Even the ugly
+becomes beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> when truly seen. I see the jewel in the bunchy toad.
+The more I live, the more I love this lovely world; feel more its Author
+in each little thing; in all that is great. But yet I feel my
+immortality the more. In childhood the consciousness of immortal life
+buds forth feeble, though full of promise. In the man it unfolds its
+fragrant petals, his most celestial flower, to mature its seed
+throughout eternity. The prospect of that everlasting life, the perfect
+justice yet to come, the infinite progress before us, cheer and comfort
+the heart. Sad and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not be
+so forever. The light of heaven breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow,
+sin; the sombre clouds which overhung the east, grown purple now, tell
+us the dawn of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by that, smile
+in the new-born glow; we are beguiled of our sadness before we are
+aware. The certainty of this provokes us to patience, it forbids us to
+be slothfully sorrowful. It calls us to be up and doing. The thought
+that all will at last be right with the slave, the poor, the weak, and
+the wicked, inspires us with zeal to work for them here, and make it all
+right for them even now.</p>
+
+<p>There is small merit in being willing to die; it seems almost sinful in
+a good man to wish it when the world needs him here so much. It is weak
+and unmanly to be always looking and sighing voluptuously for that. But
+it is of great comfort to have in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> your soul a sure trust in
+immortality; of great value here and now to anticipate time and live
+to-day the eternal life. That we may all do. The joys of heaven will
+begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven and do its duties.
+That may begin to-day. It is everlasting life to know God, to have His
+Spirit dwelling in you, yourself at one with Him. Try that and prove its
+worth. Justice, usefulness, wisdom, religion, love, are the best things
+we hope for in Heaven. Try them on&mdash;they will fit you here not less
+becomingly. They are the best things of earth. Think no outlay of
+goodness and piety too great. You will find your reward begin here. As
+much goodness and piety, so much Heaven. Men will not pay you&mdash;God will;
+pay you now; pay you hereafter and for ever.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.&mdash;AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE
+ONONDAGA TEACHERS' INSTITUTE, AT SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 4, 1849.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Education is the developing and furnishing of the faculties of man. To
+educate the people is one of the functions of the State. It is generally
+allowed in the free States of America, that the community owes each
+child born into it a chance for education, intellectual, moral, and
+religious. Hence the child has a just and recognized claim on the
+community for the means of this education, which is to be afforded him,
+not as a charity, but as a right.</p>
+
+<p>The fact indicates the progress mankind has made in not many years. Once
+the state only took charge of the military education of the people; not
+at all of their intellectual, moral, or religious culture. They received
+their military discipline, not for the special and personal advantage of
+the individuals, Thomas and Oliver, but for the benefit of the state.
+They received it, not because they were men claiming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> it in virtue of
+their manhood, but as subjects of the state, because their military
+training was needful for the state, or for its rulers who took the name
+thereof. Then the only culture which the community took public pains to
+bestow on its members, was training them to destroy. The few, destined
+to command, learned the science of destruction, and the kindred science
+of defence; the many, doomed to obey, learned only the art to destroy,
+and the kindred art of defence.</p>
+
+<p>The ablest men of the nation were sought out for military teachers,
+giving practical lessons of the science and the art; they were covered
+with honor and loaded with gold. The wealth of the people and their
+highest science went to this work. Institutions were founded to promote
+this education, and carefully watched over by the state, for it was
+thought the Commonwealth depended on disciplined valor. The soldier was
+thought to be the type of the state, the archetype of man; accordingly
+the highest spiritual function of the state was the production of
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Most of the civilized nations have passed through that stage of their
+development: though the few or the many are still taught the science or
+the art of war in all countries called Christian, there is yet a class
+of men for whom the state furnishes the means of education that is not
+military; means of education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> which the individuals of that class could
+not provide for themselves. This provision is made at the cost of the
+state; that is, at the cost of every man in the state, for what the
+public pays, you pay and I pay, rich or poor, willingly and consciously,
+or otherwise. This class of men is different in different countries, and
+their education is modified to suit the form of government and the idea
+of the state. In Rome the state provides for the public education of
+priests. Rome is an ecclesiastical state; her government is a
+Theocracy&mdash;a government of all the people, but by the priests, for the
+sake of the priests, and in the name of God. Place in the church is
+power, bringing honor and wealth; no place out of the church is of much
+value. The offices are filled by priests, the chief magistrate is a
+priest, supposed to derive his power and right to rule, not
+democratically, from the people, or royally, by inheritance,&mdash;for in
+theory the priest is as if he had no father, as theoretically he has no
+child,&mdash;but theocratically from God.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome the priesthood is thought to be the flower of the state. The
+most important spiritual function of the state, therefore, is the
+production of priests; accordingly the greatest pains are taken with
+their education. Institutions are founded at the public cost, to make
+priests out of men; these institutions are the favorites of government,
+well ordered, well watched over, well attended, and richly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> honored.
+Institutions for the education of the people are of small account, ill
+endowed, watched over but poorly, thinly attended, and not honored at
+all. The people are designed to be subjects of the church, and as little
+culture is needed for that, though much to make them citizens thereof,
+so little is given.</p>
+
+<p>As there are institutions for the education of the priests, so there is
+a class of men devoted to that work; able men, well disciplined,
+sometimes men born with genius, and always men furnished with the
+accomplishments of sacerdotal and scientific art; very able men, very
+well disciplined, the most learned and accomplished men in the land.
+These men are well paid and abundantly honored, for on their
+faithfulness the power of the priesthood, and so the welfare of the
+state, is thought to depend. Without the allurement of wealth and
+honors, these able men would not come to this work; and without the help
+of their ability, the priests could not be well educated. Hence their
+power would decline; the class, tonsured and consecrated but not
+instructed, would fall into contempt; the theocracy would end. So the
+educators of the priests are held in honor, surrounded by baits for
+vulgar eyes; but the public educators of the people, chiefly women or
+ignorant men, are held in small esteem. The very buildings destined to
+the education of the priests are conspicuous and stately; the colleges
+of the Jesuits, the Propaganda, the seminaries for the education of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+priests, the monasteries for training the more wealthy and <i>regular</i>
+clergy, are great establishments, provided with libraries, and furnished
+with all the apparatus needful for their important work. But the
+school-houses for the people are small and mean buildings, ill made, ill
+furnished, and designed for a work thought to be of little moment. All
+this is in strict harmony with the idea of the theocracy, where the
+priesthood is mighty and the people are subjects of the Church; where
+the effort of the state is toward producing a priest.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In England the state takes charge of the education of another class, the
+nobility and gentry; that is, of young men of ancient and historical
+families, the nobility, and young men of fortune, the gentry. England is
+an oligarchical state; her government an aristocracy, the government of
+all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the
+name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a
+noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There,
+nobility is the blossom of the state; aristocratic birth brings wealth,
+office, and their consequent social distinction. Political offices are
+chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king,
+the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and
+the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of
+birth. He is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> not merely noble but royal; his right to rule is not at
+all derived from the people, but from his birth. Thus he has the two
+essentials of aristocratic influence, birth and wealth, not merely in
+the heroic degree, but in the supreme degree.</p>
+
+<p>As the state is an aristocracy, its most important spiritual function is
+the production of aristocrats; each noble family transmits the full
+power of its blood only to a single person&mdash;the oldest son; of the
+highest form, the royal, only one is supposed to be born in a
+generation, only one who receives and transmits in full the blood royal.</p>
+
+<p>As the nobility are the blossom of the state, great pains must be taken
+with the education of those persons born of patrician or wealthy
+families. As England is not merely a military or ecclesiastical state,
+though partaking largely of both, but commercial, agricultural and
+productive in many ways; as she holds a very prominent place in the
+politics of the world, so there must be a good general education
+provided for these persons; otherwise their power would decline, the
+nobility and gentry sink into contempt, and the government pass into
+other hands,&mdash;for though a man may be born to rank and wealth, he is not
+born to knowledge, nor to practical skill. Hence institutions are
+founded for the education of the aristocratic class: Oxford and
+Cambridge, "those twins of learning," with their preparatories and
+help-meets.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The design of these institutions is to educate the young men of family
+and fortune. The aim in their academic culture is not as in Pagan Rome,
+a military state, to make soldiers, nor as in Christian Rome, to turn
+out priests; it is not, as in the German universities, to furnish the
+world with scholars and philosophers, men of letters and science, but to
+mature and furnish the gentleman, in the technical sense of that word, a
+person conventionally fitted to do the work of a complicated
+aristocratic state, to fill with honor its various offices, military,
+political, ecclesiastical or social, and enjoy the dignity which comes
+thereof. These universities furnish the individual who resorts thither
+with opportunities not otherwise to be had; they are purchased at the
+cost of the state, at the cost of each man in the state. The alumnus at
+Oxford pays his term-bills, indeed, but the amount thereof is a trifle
+compared to the actual cost of his residence there; mankind pays the
+residue.</p>
+
+<p>These institutions are continually watched over by the state, which is
+the official guardian of aristocratic education; they are occasionally
+assisted by grants from the public treasury, though they are chiefly
+endowed by the voluntary gifts of individual men. But these private
+gifts, like the public grants, come from the earnings of the whole
+nation. They are well endowed, superintended well, and richly honored;
+their chancellors and vice-chancellors are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> men of distinguished social
+rank; they have their representatives in Parliament; able men are sought
+out for teachers, professors, heads of houses; men of good ability, of
+masterly education, and the accomplishments of a finished gentleman;
+they are well paid, and copiously rewarded with honors and social
+distinction. Gentility favors these institutions; nobility watches over
+them, and royalty smiles upon them. In this threefold sunlight, no
+wonder that they thrive. The buildings at their service are among the
+most costly and elegant in the land; large museums are attached to them,
+and immense libraries; every printer in England, at his own cost, must
+give a copy of each book he publishes to Cambridge and Oxford. What
+wealth can buy, or artistic genius can create, is there devoted to the
+culture of this powerful class.</p>
+
+<p>But while the nobility and gentry are reckoned the flower of the state,
+the common people are only the leaves, and therefore thought of small
+importance in the political botany of the nation. Their education is
+amazingly neglected; is mainly left to the accidental piety of private
+Christians, to the transient charity of philanthropic men, or the
+"enlightened self-interest" of mechanics and small-traders, who now and
+then found institutions for the education of some small fraction of the
+multitude. But such institutions are little favored by the government,
+or the spirit of the dominant class; gentility does not frequent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> them,
+nor nobility help them, nor royalty watch over to foster and to bless.
+The Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's
+money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to
+spare for the education of her people. No honor attends the educators of
+the people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are
+erected for their use; no great libraries got ready at the public
+charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and
+collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge; at the magnificence of
+public edifices in London, new or ancient&mdash;the House of Parliament, the
+Bank, the palaces of royal and noble men, the splendor of the
+churches&mdash;but you ask, where are the school-houses for the people? You
+go to Bridewell and Newgate for the answer. All this is consistent with
+the idea of an aristocracy. The gentleman is the type of the state; and
+the effort of the state is towards producing him. The people require
+only education enough to become the servants of the gentleman, and seem
+not to be valued for their own sake, but only as they furnish pabulum
+for the flower of the oligarchy.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome and England, great sums have been given by wealthy men, and by
+the state itself, to furnish the means of a theocratic or aristocratic
+education to a certain class; and to produce the national priests, and
+the national gentlemen. There public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> education is the privilege of a
+few, but bought at the cost of the many; for the plough-boy in
+Yorkshire, who has not culture enough to read the petition for daily
+bread in the Lord's Prayer, helps pay the salary of the Master of
+Trinity, and the swine-herd in the Roman Campagna, who knows nothing of
+religion, except what he learns at Christmas and Easter, by seeing the
+Pope carried on men's shoulders into St. Peter's, helps support the
+Propaganda and the Roman College. The privileged classes are to receive
+an education under the eye of the state, which considers itself bound to
+furnish them the means of a public education, partly at the individual's
+cost, chiefly at the cost of the public. The amount of education depends
+on three things:&mdash;on the educational attainments of the human race; on
+the wealth and tranquillity of the special nation, enabling it to avail
+itself of that general attainment; and on the natural powers and
+industry of the particular individual in the nation. Such is the
+solidarity of mankind that the development of the individual thus
+depends on that of the race, and the education of a priest in Rome or a
+gentleman in England is the resultant of these three forces,&mdash;the
+attainment of mankind, the power of the nation, and the private
+character and conduct of the man himself. Each of these three is a
+variable and not a constant quantity. So the amount of education which a
+man can receive at Oxford or at Rome fluctuates and depends on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+state of the nation and of the world; but as the attainments of mankind
+have much increased within a few years, as the wealth of England has
+increased, and her tranquillity become more secure, you see how easy it
+becomes for the state to offer each gentleman an amount of education
+which it would have been quite impossible to furnish in the time of the
+Yorks and the Lancasters.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In America things are quite other and different. I speak of the Free
+States of the North; the Slave States have the worst features of an
+oligarchy combined with a theocratic pride of caste, which generates
+continual unkindness; there the idea of the state is found inconsistent
+with the general and public education of the people; it is as much so in
+South Carolina as in England or Rome; even more so, for the public and
+general culture of all is only dangerous to a theocracy or aristocracy
+while it is directly fatal to slavery. In England, and still more in
+Catholic Rome, the churches&mdash;themselves a wonderful museum of
+curiosities, and open all the day to all persons&mdash;form an important
+element for the education of the most neglected class. But slavery and
+education of the people are incommensurable quantities. No amount of
+violence can be their common measure. The republic, where master and
+slave were equally educated, would soon be a red-republic. The
+slave-master knows this, and accordingly puts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> education to the ban, and
+glories in keeping three million barbarians in the land, and, of course,
+suffers the necessary degradation which comes thereof. But in the free
+states of the North the government is not a theocracy, or an
+aristocracy; the state, in theory is not for the few, nor even for the
+majority, but for all; classes are not recognized, and therefore not
+protected in any privilege. The government is a democracy, the
+government of all, by all, for all, and in the name of all. A man is
+born to all the rights of mankind; all are born to them, so all are
+equal. Therefore, what the state pays for, not only comes at the cost of
+all, but must be for the use and benefit of all. Accordingly, as a
+theocracy demands the education of priests, and an aristocracy that of
+the nobility and the gentry, so a democracy demands the education of
+all. The aim must be, not to make priests and gentlemen of a few, a
+privileged class, but to make men of all; that is, to give a normal and
+healthy development of their intellectual, moral, affectional and
+religious faculties, to furnish and instruct them with the most
+important elementary knowledge, to extend this development and
+furnishing of the faculties as far as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Institutions must be founded for this purpose&mdash;to educate all, rich and
+poor, men well-born with good abilities, men ill-born with slender
+natural powers. In New England, these institutions have long since been
+founded at the public cost, and watched over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> with paternal care, as the
+ark of our covenant, the palladium of our nation. It has been recognized
+as a theory, and practised on as a fact, that all the property in the
+land is held by the state for the public education of the people, as it
+is for their defence; that property is amenable to education as to
+military defence.</p>
+
+<p>In a democracy there are two reasons why this theory and practice
+prevail. One is a political reason. It is for the advantage of the
+state; for each man that keeps out of the jail and the poor-house,
+becomes a voter at one-and-twenty; he may have some office of trust and
+honor; the highest office is open before him. As so much depends on his
+voting wisely, he must have a chance to qualify himself for his right of
+electing and of being elected. It is as necessary now in a democracy,
+and as much demanded by the idea thereof, that all should be thus
+qualified by education, as it once was in a military state, that all
+should be bred up soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>The other is a philosophical reason. It is for the advantage of the
+individual himself, irrespective of the state. The man is a man, an
+integer, and the state is for him; as well as a fraction of the state,
+and he for it. He has a man's rights; and, however inferior in might to
+any other man, born of parentage how humble soever, to no wealth at all,
+with a body never so feeble, he is yet a man, and so equal in rights to
+any other man born of a famous line,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> rich and able; of course he has a
+right to a chance for the best culture which the educational attainment
+of mankind, and the circumstances of the nation render possible to any
+man; to so much thereof as he has the inborn power and the voluntary
+industry to acquire. This conclusion is getting acted on in New England,
+and there are schools for the dumb and the blind, even for the idiot and
+the convict.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, as the idea of our government demands the education of all,
+the amount of education must depend on the same three variables
+mentioned before; it must be as good as it is possible for them to
+afford. The democratic state has never done its political and
+educational duty, until it affords every man a chance to obtain the
+greatest amount of education which the attainment of mankind renders it
+possible for the nation, in its actual circumstances, to command, and
+the man's nature and disposition render it possible for him to take.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at the matter politically, from the point of view of the State,
+each man must have education enough to exercise his rights of electing
+and being elected. It is not easy to fix the limits of the amount; it is
+also a variable continually increasing. Looking at the matter
+philosophically, from the point of view of the individual, there is no
+limit but the attainment of the race and the individual's capacity for
+development and growth. Only a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> men will master all which the
+circumstances of the nation and the world render attainable; some will
+come short for lack of power, others for lack of inclination. Make
+education as accessible as it can now be made, as attractive as the
+teachers of this age can render it, the majority will still get along
+with the smallest amount that is possible or reputable. Only a few will
+strive for the most they can get. There will be many a thousand farmers,
+traders, and mechanics in their various callings, manual and
+intellectual, to a single philosopher. This also is as it should be, and
+corresponds with the nature of man and his function on the earth. Still
+all have the natural right to the means of education to this extent, by
+fulfilling its condition.</p>
+
+<p>To accomplish this work, the democratic education of the whole people,
+with the aim of making them men, we want public institutions founded by
+the people, paid for by the public money; institutions well endowed,
+well attended, watched over well, and proportionably honored; we want
+teachers, able men, well disciplined, well paid, and honored in
+proportion to their work. It is a good thing to educate the privileged
+classes, priests in a theocracy, and gentlemen in an aristocracy. Though
+they are few in number, it is a great work; the servants thereof are not
+too well paid, nor too much held in esteem in England, nor in Rome, nor
+too well furnished with apparatus. But the public education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> of a whole
+people is a greater work, far more difficult, and should be attended
+with corresponding honor, and watched over even more carefully by the
+state.</p>
+
+<p>After the grown men of any country have provided for their own physical
+wants, and insured the needful physical comforts, their most important
+business is to educate themselves still further, and train up the rising
+generation to their own level. It is important to leave behind us
+cultivated lands, houses and shops, railroads and mills, but more
+important to leave behind us men grown, men that are men; such are the
+seed of material wealth,&mdash;not it of them. The highest use of material
+wealth is its educational function.</p>
+
+<p>Now the attainments of the human race increase with each generation; the
+four leading nations of Christendom, England, France, Germany, and the
+United States, within a hundred years, have apparently, at the least,
+doubled their spiritual attainments; in the free states of America,
+there is a constant and rapid increase of wealth, far beyond the
+simultaneous increase of numbers; so not only does the educational
+achievement of mankind become greater each age, but the power of the
+state to afford each man a better chance for a better education,
+greatens continually, the educational ability of the state enlarging as
+those two factors get augmented. The generation now grown up, is,
+therefore,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> able and bound to get a better culture than their fathers,
+and leave to their own children a chance still greater.</p>
+
+<p>Each child of genius, in the nineteenth century, is born at the foot of
+the ladder of learning, as completely as the first child, with the same
+bodily and spiritual nakedness; though of the most civilized race, with
+six, or sixty thousands of years behind him, he must begin with nothing
+but himself. Yet such is the union of all mankind, that, with the aid of
+the present generation, in a few years he will learn all that mankind
+has learned in its long history; next go beyond that, discovering and
+creating anew; and then draw up to the same height the new generation,
+which will presently surpass him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A man's education never ends, but there are two periods thereof, quite
+dissimilar, the period of the Boy, and that of the Man. Education in
+general is the developing and instructing the faculties, and is,
+therefore, the same in kind to both man and boy, though it may be
+brought about by different forces. The education of the boy, so far as
+it depends on institutions, and conscious modes of action, must be so
+modified as to enable him to meet the influences which will surround him
+when he is a man; otherwise, his training will not enable him to cope
+with the new forces he meets, and so will fail of the end of making him
+a man. I pass over the influence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> the family, and of nature, which do
+not belong to my present theme. In America, the public education of men
+is chiefly influenced by four great powers, which I will call
+educational forces, and which correspond to four modes of national
+activity:</p>
+
+<p>I. The political action of the people, represented by the State;</p>
+
+<p>II. The industrial action of the people, represented by Business;</p>
+
+<p>III. The ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Church;</p>
+
+<p>IV. The literary action of the people, represented by the Press.</p>
+
+<p>I now purposely name them in this order, though I shall presently refer
+to them several times, and in a different succession. These forces act
+on the people, making us such men as we are; they act indirectly on the
+child before he comes to consciousness; directly, afterwards, but most
+powerfully on the man. What is commonly and technically called
+education&mdash;the development and instruction of the faculties of children,
+is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but
+introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this
+preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of
+the school-masters. Their business is to give the child such a
+development of his faculties, and such furniture of preliminary
+knowledge, that he can secure the influence of all these educational<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+forces, appreciating and enhancing the good, withstanding,
+counteracting, and at last ending the evil thereof, and so continue his
+education; and at the same time that he can work in one or more of those
+modes of activity, serving himself and mankind, politically by the
+state, ecclesiastically by the church, literarily by the press, or at
+any rate, industrially by his business. To give children the preparatory
+education necessary for this fourfold receptivity, or activity, we need
+three classes of public institutions:</p>
+
+<p>I. Free common schools;</p>
+
+<p>II. Free high schools;</p>
+
+<p>III. Free colleges.</p>
+
+<p>Of these I will presently speak in detail, but now, for the sake of
+shortness, let me call them all collectively by their generic name&mdash;the
+School. It is plain the teachers who work by this instrument ought to
+understand the good and evil of the four educational forces which work
+on men grown, in order to prepare their pupils to receive the good
+thereof, and withstand the evil. So then let us look a moment at the
+character of these educational forces, and see what they offer us, and
+what men they are likely to make of their unconscious pupils. Let us
+look at the good qualities first, and next at the evil.</p>
+
+<p>It is plain that business, the press, and politics all tend to promote a
+great activity of body and mind. In business, the love of gain, the
+enterprising spirit of our practical men in all departments, their
+industry,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> thrift and forecast, stimulate men to great exertions, and
+produce a consequent development of the faculties called out. Social
+distinction depends almost wholly on wealth; that never is accumulated
+by mere manual industry, such is the present constitution of society,
+but it is acquired by the higher forms of industry, in which the powers
+of nature serve the man, or he avails himself of the creations of mere
+manual toil. Hence there is a constant pressure towards the higher modes
+of industry for the sake of money; of course, a constant effort to be
+qualified for them. So in the industrial departments the mind is more
+active than the hand. Accordingly it has come to pass that most of the
+brute labor of the free states is done by cattle, or by the forces of
+nature&mdash;wind, water, fire&mdash;which we have harnessed by our machinery, and
+set to work. In New England most of the remaining work which requires
+little intelligence is done by Irishmen, who are getting a better
+culture by that very work. Men see the industrial handiwork of the
+North, and wonder; they do not always see the industrial head-work,
+which precedes, directs and causes it all; they seldom see the complex
+forces of which this enterprise and progress are the resultant.</p>
+
+<p>There is no danger that we shall be sluggards. Business now takes the
+same place in the education of the people that was once held by war: it
+stimulates activity, promotes the intercourse of man with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> man, nation
+with nation; assembling men in masses, it elevates their temperature, so
+to say; it leads to new and better forms of organization; it excites men
+to invention, so that thereby we are continually acquiring new power
+over the elements, peacefully annexing to our domain new provinces of
+nature&mdash;water, wind, fire, lightning&mdash;setting them to do our work,
+multiplying the comforts of life, and setting free a great amount of
+human time. It is not at all destructive; not merely conservative, but
+continually creates anew. Its creative agent is not brute force, but
+educated mind. A man's trade is always his teacher, and industry keeps a
+college for mankind, much of our instruction coming through our hands;
+with us, where the plough is commonly in the hands of him who owns the
+land it furrows, business affords a better education than in most other
+countries, and develops higher qualities of mind. There is a marked
+difference in this respect between the North and South. There was never
+before such industry, such intense activity of head and hand in any
+nation in a time of peace.</p>
+
+<p>The press encourages the same activity, enterprise, perseverance. Both
+of these encourage generosity; neither honors the miser, who gets for
+the sake of getting, or "starves, cheats, and pilfers to enrich an
+heir;" he does not die respectably in Boston, who dies rich and
+bequeaths nothing to any noble public charity. It encourages industry
+which accumulates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> with the usual honesty, and for a rather generous
+use.</p>
+
+<p>The press furnishes us with books exceedingly cheap. We manufacture
+literature cheaper than any nation except the Chinese. Even the best
+books, the works of the great masters of thought, are within the reach
+of an industrious farmer or mechanic, if half a dozen families combine
+for that purpose. The educational power of a few good books scattered
+through a community, is well known.</p>
+
+<p>Then the press circulates, cheap and wide, its newspapers, emphatically
+the literature of men who read nothing else: they convey intelligence
+from all parts of the world, and broaden the minds of home-keeping
+youths, who need not now have homely wits.</p>
+
+<p>The state, also, promotes activity, enterprise, hardihood, perseverance
+and thrift. The American Government is eminently distinguished by these
+five qualities. The form of government stimulates patriotism, each man
+has a share in the public lot. The theocracies, monarchies, and
+aristocracies of old time have produced good and great examples of
+patriotism, in the few or the many; but the nobler forms of love of
+country, of self-denial and disinterested zeal for its sake, are left
+for a democracy to bring to light.</p>
+
+<p>Here all men are voters, and all great questions are, apparently and in
+theory, left to the decision of the whole people. This popular form of
+government<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> is a great instrument in developing and instructing the mind
+of the nation. It helps extend and intensify the intelligent activity
+which is excited by business and the press. Such is the nature of our
+political institutions that, in the free states, we have produced the
+greatest degree of national unity of action, with the smallest
+restriction of personal freedom, have reconciled national unity with
+individual variety, not seeking uniformity; thus room is left for as
+much individualism as a man chooses to take; a vast power of talent,
+enterprise and invention is left free for its own work. Elsewhere, save
+in England, this is latent, kept down by government. Since this power is
+educated and has nothing to hold it back; since so much brute work is
+done by cattle and the forces of nature, now domesticated and put in
+harness, and much time is left free for thought, more intelligence is
+demanded, more activity, and the citizens of the free states have become
+the most active, enterprising and industrious people in the world; the
+most inventive in material work.</p>
+
+<p>In all these three forms of action there is much to stir men to love of
+distinction. The career is open to talent, to industry; open to every
+man; the career of letters, business, and politics. Our rich men were
+poor men; our famous men came of sires else not heard of. The laurel,
+the dollar, the office, and the consequent social distinction of men
+successful in letters, business and politics, these excite the obscure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+or needy youth to great exertions, and he cannot sleep; emulation wakes
+him early, and keeps him late astir. Behind him, scattering "the rear of
+darkness," stalk poverty and famine, gaunt and ugly forms, with scorpion
+whip to urge the tardier, idler man. The intense ambition for money, for
+political power, and the social results they bring, keeps men on the
+alert. So ambition rises early, and works with diligence that never
+tires.</p>
+
+<p>The Church, embracing all the churches under that name, cultivates the
+memory of men, and teaches reverence for the past; it helps keep
+activity from wandering into unpopular forms of wickedness or of
+unbelief. Men who have the average intelligence, goodness and piety, it
+keeps from slipping back, thus blocking to rearward the wheels of
+society, so that the ascent gained shall not be lost; men who have less
+than this average it urges forward, addressing them in the name of God,
+encouraging by hope of heaven, and driving with fear of hell. It turns
+the thought of the people towards God; it sets before us some facts in
+the life, and some parts of the doctrine, of the noblest One who ever
+wore the form of man, bidding us worship him. The ecclesiastical worship
+of Jesus of Nazareth is, perhaps, the best thing in the American church.
+It has the Sunday and the institution of preaching under its control. A
+body of disciplined men are its servants; they praise the ordinary
+virtues; oppose and condemn the unpopular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> forms of error and of sin.
+Petty vice, the vice of low men, in low places, is sure of their lash.
+They promote patriotism in its common form. Indirectly, they excite
+social and industrial rivalry, and favor the love of money by the honor
+they bestow upon the rich and successful. But at the same time they
+temper it a little, sometimes telling men, as business or the state does
+not, that there is in man a conscience, affection for his brother-man,
+and a soul which cannot live by bread alone; no, not by wealth, office,
+fame and social rank. They tell us, also, of eternity, where worldly
+distinctions, except of orthodox and heterodox, are forgotten, where
+wealth is of no avail; they bid us remember God.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the good things of these great national forces; the good things
+which in this fourfold way we are teaching ourselves. The nation is a
+monitorial school, wonderfully contrived for the education of the
+people. I do not mean to say that it is by the forethought of men that
+the American democracy is at the same time a great practical school for
+the education of the human race. This result formed no part of our plan,
+and is not provided for by the Constitution of the United States; it
+comes of the forethought of God, and is provided for in the Constitution
+of the Universe.</p>
+
+<p>Now each of these educational forces has certain defects, negative
+evils, and certain vices, positive evils, which tend to misdirect the
+nation, and so hinder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> the general education of the people: of these,
+also, let me speak in detail.</p>
+
+<p>The state appeals to force, not to justice; this is its last appeal; the
+force of muscles aided by force of mind, instructed by modern science in
+the art to kill. The nation appeals to force in the settlement of
+affairs out of its borders. We have lately seen an example of this, when
+we commenced war against a feeble nation, who, in that special
+emergency, had right on her side, about as emphatically as the force was
+on our side. The immediate success of the enterprise, the popular
+distinction acquired by some of the leaders, the high honor bestowed on
+one of its heroes, all this makes the lesson of injustice attractive. It
+may be that a similar experiment will again be tried, and doubtless with
+like success. Certainly there is no nation this side of the water which
+can withstand the enterprise, the activity, the invention, industry and
+perseverance of a people so united, and yet so free and intelligent.
+Another successful injustice of this character, on a large scale, will
+make right still less regarded, and might honored yet more.</p>
+
+<p>The force we employ out of our borders, might opposed to right, we
+employ also at home against our brethren, and keep three millions of
+them in bondage; we watch for opportunities to extend the institution of
+slavery over soil unpolluted by that triple curse, and convert the
+Constitution, the fundamental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> law of the land, into an instrument for
+the defence of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>The men we honor politically, by choosing them to offices in the state,
+are commonly men of extraordinary force, sometimes, it is true, only of
+extraordinary luck, but of only ordinary justice; men who, perhaps, have
+mind in the heroic degree, but conscience of the most vulgar pattern.
+They are to keep the law of the United States when it is wholly hostile
+to the law of the universe, to the everlasting justice of God.</p>
+
+<p>I am not speaking to politicians, professional representatives of the
+state; not speaking for political effect; not of the state as a
+political machine for the government of the people. I am speaking to
+teachers, for an educational purpose; of the state as an educational
+machine, as one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the
+people. Now by this preference of force and postponement of justice at
+home and abroad, in the selection of men for office, with its wealth,
+and rank, and honor, by keeping the law of the land to the violation of
+the law of God, it is plain we are teaching ourselves to love wrong; at
+least to be insensible to the right. What we practise on a national
+scale as a people, it is not easy to think wrong when practised on a
+personal scale, by this man and that.</p>
+
+<p>The patriotism, also, which the state nurses, is little more than that
+Old Testament patriotism which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> loves your countryman, and hates the
+stranger; the affection which the Old Testament attributes to Jehovah,
+and which makes him say, "I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau;" a patriotism
+which supports our country in the wrong as readily as in the right, and
+is glad to keep one sixth part of the nation in bondage without hope. It
+is not a patriotism which, beginning here, loves all the children of
+God, but one that robs the Mexican, enslaves the African, and
+exterminates the Indian.</p>
+
+<p>These are among the greater evils taught us by the political action of
+the people as a whole. If you look at the action of the chief political
+parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either
+party, than in the politics of the nation, the resultant of both; no
+more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively
+at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for
+that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It
+legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth, than
+for the laboring man who now accumulates. This party goes for the
+dollar; the other for the majority, and aims at the greatest good of the
+greatest number, leaving the good of the smaller number to most
+uncertain mercies. Neither party seems to aim at justice, which protects
+both the wealth that labor has piled up, and the laborer who now creates
+it; justice, which is the point of morals common to man and God, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+the interests of all men, abroad and at home, electing and elected,
+greatest number and smallest number, exactly balance. Falsehood, fraud,
+a willingness to deceive, a desire for the power and distinction of
+office, a readiness to use base means in obtaining office&mdash;these vices
+are sown with a pretty even hand upon both parties, and spring up with
+such blossoms and such a fruitage as we all see. The third political
+party has not been long enough in existence to develop any distinctive
+vices of its own.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not speak of the public or private character of the politicians
+who direct the state; no doubt that is a powerful element in our
+national education; but as a class, they seem no better and no worse
+than merchants, mechanics, ministers and farmers, as a class; so in
+their influence there is nothing peculiar, only their personal character
+ceases to be private, and becomes a public force in the education of the
+people.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Churches have the same faults as the State. There is the same
+postponement of justice and preference of force, the same neglect of the
+law of God in their zeal for the statutes of men; the same crouching to
+dollars or to numbers. However, in the churches these faults appear
+negatively, rather than as an affirmation. The worldliness of the church
+is not open, self-conscious and avowed; it is not, as a general thing,
+that human injustice is openly defended, but rather justice goes by
+default. But if the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> churches do not positively support and teach
+injustice, as the state certainly does, they do not teach the opposite,
+and, so far as that goes, are allies of the state in its evil influence.
+The fact that the churches, as such, did not oppose the war, and do not
+oppose slavery, its continuance, or its extension; nay, that they are
+often found its apologists and defenders, seldom its opponents; that
+they not only pervert the sacred books of the Christians to its defence,
+but wrest the doctrines of Christianity to justify it; the fact that
+they cannot, certainly do not, correct the particularism of the
+political parties, the love of wealth in one, of mere majorities in the
+other; that they know no patriotism not bounded by their country, none
+coextensive with mankind; that they cannot resist the vice of party
+spirit&mdash;these are real proofs that the church is but the ally of the
+state in this evil influence.</p>
+
+<p>But the church has also certain specific faults of its own. It teaches
+injustice by continually referring to the might of God, not His justice;
+to His ability and will to damn mankind, not asking if He has the right?
+It teaches that in virtue of His infinite power, He is not amenable to
+infinite justice, and to infinite love. Thus, while the state teaches,
+in the name of expediency and by practice, that the strong may properly
+be the tyrants of the weak, the mighty nation over the feeble, the
+strong race over the inferior, that the government may dispense with
+right at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> home and abroad&mdash;the church, as theory in Christ's name,
+teaches that God may repudiate His own justice and His own love.</p>
+
+<p>The churches have little love of truth, as such, only of its uses. It
+must be such a truth as they can use for their purposes; canonized
+truth; truth long known; that alone is acceptable and called "religious
+truth;" all else is "profane and carnal," as the reason which discovers
+it. They represent the average intelligence of society; hence, while
+keeping the old, they welcome not the new. They promote only popular
+forms of truth, popular in all Christendom, or in their special sect.
+They lead in no intellectual reforms; they hinder the leaders.
+Negatively and positively, they teach, that to believe what is
+clerically told you in the name of religion, is better than free,
+impartial search after the truth. They dishonor free thinking, and
+venerate constrained believing. When the clergy doubt, they seldom give
+men audience of their doubt. Few scientific men not clerical believe the
+Bible account of creation,&mdash;the universe made in six days, and but a few
+thousand years ago,&mdash;or that of the formation of woman, and of the
+deluge. Some clerical men still believe these venerable traditions,
+spite of the science of the times; but the clerical men who have no
+faith in these stories not only leave the people to think them true and
+miraculously taught, but encourage men in the belief, and calumniate the
+men of science who look the universe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> fairly in the face and report the
+facts as they find them.</p>
+
+<p>The church represents only the popular morality, not any high and
+aboriginal virtue. It represents not the conscience of human nature,
+reflecting the universal and unchangeable moral laws of God, touched and
+beautified by his love, but only the conscience of human history,
+reflecting the circumstances man has passed by, and the institutions he
+has built along the stream of time. So, while it denounces unpopular
+sins, vices below the average vice of society, it denounces also
+unpopular excellence, which is above the average virtue of society. It
+blocks the wheels rearward, and the car of humanity does not roll down
+hill; but it blocks them forward also. No great moral movement of the
+age is at all dependent directly on the church for its birth; very
+little for its development. It is in spite of the church that reforms go
+forward; it holds the curb to check more than the rein to guide. In
+morals, as in science, the church is on the anti-liberal side, afraid of
+progress, against movement, loving "yet a little sleep, a little
+slumber;" conservative and chilling, like ice, not creative, nor even
+quickening, as water. It doffs to use and wont; has small confidence in
+human nature, much in a few facts of human history. It aims to separate
+Piety from Goodness, her natural and heaven-appointed spouse, and marry
+her to Bigotry, in joyless and unprofitable wedlock. The church does
+not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> lead men to the deep springs of human nature, fed ever from the far
+heights of the Divine nature, whence flows that river of God, full of
+living water, where weary souls may drink perennial supply. While it
+keeps us from falling back, it does little directly to advance mankind.
+In common with the state, this priest and Levite pass by on the other
+side of the least developed classes of society, leaving the slave, the
+pauper, and the criminal, to their fate, hastening to strike hands with
+the thriving or the rich.</p>
+
+<p>These faults are shared in the main by all sects; some have them in the
+common, and some in a more eminent degree, but none is so distinguished
+from the rest as to need emphatic rebuke, or to deserve a special
+exemption from the charge. Such are the faults of the church of every
+land, and must be from the nature of the institution; like the state, it
+can only represent the average of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>I am not speaking to clergymen, professional representatives of the
+church, not of the church as an ecclesiastical machine for keeping and
+extending certain opinions and symbols; not for an ecclesiastical
+purpose; I speak to teachers, for an educational purpose, of the church
+as an educational machine, one of the great forces for the spiritual
+development of the people.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Business of the land has also certain vices of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> its own; while it
+promotes the virtues I have named before, it does not tend to promote
+the highest form of character. It does not promote justice and humanity,
+as one could wish; it does not lead the employer to help the operative
+as a man, only to use him as a tool, merely for industrial purposes. The
+average merchant cares little whether his ship brings cloth and cotton,
+or opium and rum. The average capitalist does not wish the stock of his
+manufacturing company divided into small shares, so that the operatives
+can invest their savings therein and have a portion of the large
+dividends of the rich; nor does he care whether he takes a mortgage on a
+ship or a negro slave, nor whether his houses are rented for sober
+dwellings, or for drunkeries; whether the state hires his money to build
+harbors at home, or destroy them abroad. The ordinary manufacturer is as
+ready to make cannons and cannon-balls to serve in a war which he knows
+is unjust, as to cast his iron into mill-wheels, or forge it into
+anchors. The common farmer does not care whether his barley feeds
+poultry for the table, or, made into beer, breeds drunkards for the
+almshouse and the jail; asks not whether his rye and potatoes become the
+bread of life, or, distilled into whiskey, are deadly poison to men and
+women. He cares little if the man he hires become more manly or not; he
+only asks him to be a good tool. Whips for the backs of negro slaves are
+made, it is said, in Connecticut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> with as little compunction as Bibles
+are printed there; "made to order," for the same purpose&mdash;for the
+dollar. The majority of blacksmiths would as soon forge fetter-chains to
+enslave the innocent limbs of a brother-man, as draught-chains for oxen.
+Christian mechanics and pious young women, who would not hurt the hair
+of an innocent head, have I seen at Springfield, making swords to
+slaughter the innocent citizens of Vera Cruz and Jalapa. The ships of
+respectable men carry rum to intoxicate the savages of Africa, powder
+and balls to shoot them with; they carry opium to the Chinese; nay,
+Christian slaves from Richmond and Baltimore to New Orleans and
+Galveston. In all commercial countries, the average vice of the age is
+mixed up with the industry of the age, and unconsciously men learn the
+wickedness long intrenched in practical life. It is thought industrial
+operations are not amenable to the moral law, only to the law of trade.
+"Let the supply follow the demand" is the maxim. A man who makes as
+practical a use of the golden rule as of his yard-stick, is still an
+exception in all departments of business.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the commercial and manufacturing parts of America, money
+accumulates in large masses; now in the hands of an individual, now of a
+corporation. This money becomes an irresponsible power, acting by the
+laws, but yet above them. It is wielded by a few men, to whom it gives a
+high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> social position and consequent political power. They use this
+triple form of influence, pecuniary, social and political, in the spirit
+of commerce, not of humanity, not for the interest of mankind; thus the
+spirit of trade comes into the state. Hence it is not thought wrong in
+politics to buy a man, more than in commerce to buy a ship; hence the
+rights of a man, or a nation, are looked on as articles of trade, to be
+sold, bartered, and pledged; and in the Senate of the United States, we
+have heard a mass of men, more numerous than all our citizens seventy
+years ago, estimated as worth twelve hundred millions of dollars.</p>
+
+<p>In most countries business comes more closely into contact with men than
+the state, or the church, or the press, and is a more potent educator.
+Here it not only does this, but controls the other three forces, which
+are mainly instruments of this; hence this form of evil is more
+dangerous than elsewhere, for there is no power organized to resist it
+as in England or Rome; so it subtly penetrates everywhere, bidding you
+place the accidents before the substance of manhood, and value money
+more than man.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the good qualities of the Press, the books it
+multiplies, and the great service it renders, it also has certain vices
+of its own. From the nature of the thing the greater part of literature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+represents only the public opinion of the time. It must therefore teach
+deference to that, not deference to truth and justice. It is only the
+eminent literature which can do more than this; books, which at first
+fall into few hands though fit, and like the acorns sown with the
+mulleins and the clover, destined to germinate but slowly, long to be
+over-topped by an ephemeral crop, at last, after half an hundred years,
+shall mature their own fruit for other generations of men. The current
+literature of this age only popularizes the thought of the eminent
+literature of the past. Great good certainly comes from this, but also
+great evil.</p>
+
+<p>Of all literature, the newspapers come most into contact with men&mdash;they
+are the literature of the people, read by such as read nothing else;
+read also by such as read all things beside. Taken in the mass, they
+contain little to elevate men above the present standard. The political
+journals have the general vice of our politics, and the special faults
+of the particular party; the theological journals have the common
+failings of the church, intensified by the bigotry of the sects they
+belong to; the commercial journals represent the bad qualities of
+business. Put all three together, and it is not their aim to tell the
+truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, nor to promote
+justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular
+literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> ideas which
+prevail in the state, the church, and business. It brings those
+sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing
+them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little
+directly to promote a higher form of human character.</p>
+
+<p>So, notwithstanding the good influence of these four modes of national
+activity in educating the grown men of America, they yet do not afford
+the highest teaching which the people require, to realize individually
+the idea of a man, and jointly that of a democracy. The state does not
+teach perfect justice; the church does not teach that, or love of truth.
+Business does not teach perfect morality, and the average literature,
+which falls into the hands of the million, teaches men to respect public
+opinion more than the word of God, which transcends that. Thus these
+four teach only the excellence already organized or incorporated in the
+laws, the theology, the customs, and the books of the land. I cannot but
+think these four teachers are less deficient here than in other lands,
+and have excellences of their own, but the faults mentioned are
+inseparable from such institutions. An institution is an organized
+thought; of course, no institution can represent a truth which is too
+new or too high for the existing organizations, yet that is the truth
+which it is desirable to teach. So there will always be exceptional men,
+with more justice, truth and love than is represented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> by the
+institutions of the time, who seem therefore hostile to these
+institutions, which they seek to improve and not destroy. Contemporary
+with the priests of Judah and Israel were the prophets thereof,
+antithetic to one another as the centripetal and centrifugal forces,
+but, like them, both necessary to the rhythmic movement of the orbs in
+heaven, and the even poise of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome and in England the idea of a theocracy and an aristocracy has
+become a fact in the institutions of the land, which accordingly favor
+the formation of priests and gentlemen. The teachers of the educated
+class, therefore, may trust to the machinery already established to do
+their work, only keeping off the spirit of the age which would make
+innovations; and such is the respectability and popular esteem of the
+institutions, that this is done easier than men think, by putting an
+exceptional book in the index at Rome or in the academical fire at
+Oxford. But here, the idea of a democracy is by no means so well
+established and organized in institutions. It is new, and while a
+theocrat and an aristocrat are respected everywhere, a democrat is held
+in suspicion; accordingly, to make men, the teacher cannot trust his
+educational machinery, he must make it, and invent anew as well as turn
+his mill.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>These things being so, it is plain the teachers in the schools should be
+of such a character that they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> can give the children what they will most
+want when they become men; such an intellectual and moral development
+that they can appreciate and receive the good influence of these four
+educational forces, and withstand, resist, and exterminate the evil
+thereof. In the schools of a democracy which are to educate the people
+and make them men, you need more aboriginal virtue than in the schools
+of an aristocracy or a theocracy, where a few are to be educated as
+gentlemen or priests. Since the institutions of the land do not
+represent the idea of a democracy, and the average spirit of the people,
+which makes the institutions, represents it no more, if the children of
+the people are to become better than their fathers, it is plain their
+teachers must be prophets, and not priests merely; must animate them
+with a spirit higher, purer and more holy than that which inspires the
+state, the church, business, or the common literature of the times. As
+the teacher cannot impart and teach what he does not possess and know,
+it is also plain that the teacher must have this superior spirit.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To accomplish the public education of the children of the people, we
+need the three classes of institutions just mentioned: free Common
+Schools, free High Schools and free Colleges. Let me say a word of each.</p>
+
+<p>The design of the Common School is to take children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> at the proper age
+from their mothers, and give them the most indispensable development,
+intellectual, moral, affectional and religious; to furnish them with as
+much positive, useful knowledge as they can master, and, at the same
+time, teach them the three great scholastic helps or tools of
+education&mdash;the art to read, to write and calculate.</p>
+
+<p>The children of most parents are easily brought to school, by a little
+diligence on the part of the teachers and school committee; but there
+are also children of low and abandoned, or, at least, neglected parents,
+who live in a state of continual truancy; they are found on the banks of
+your canals; they swarm in your large cities. When those children become
+men, through lack of previous development, instruction and familiarity
+with these three instruments of education, they cannot receive the full
+educational influence of the state and church, of business and the
+press: they lost their youthful education, and therefore they lose, in
+consequence, their manly culture. They remain dwarfs, and are barbarians
+in the midst of society; there will be exceptional men whom nothing can
+make vulgar; but this will be the lot of the mass. They cannot perform
+the intelligent labor which business demands, only the brute work, so
+they lose the development which comes through the hand that is active in
+the higher modes of industry, which, after all, is the greatest
+educational force; accordingly, they cannot compete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> with ordinary men,
+and remain poor; lacking also that self-respect which comes of being
+respected, they fall into beggary, into intemperance, into crime; so,
+from being idlers at first, a stumbling-block in the way of society,
+they become paupers, a positive burden which society must take on its
+shoulders; or they turn into criminals, active foes to the industry, the
+order, and the virtue of society.</p>
+
+<p>Now if a man abandons the body of his child, the state adopts that body
+for a time; takes the guardianship thereof, for the child's own sake;
+sees that it is housed, fed, clad, and cared for. If a man abandons his
+child's spirit, and the child commits a crime, the state, for its own
+sake, assumes the temporary guardianship thereof, and puts him in a
+jail. When a man deserts his child, taking no concern about his
+education, I venture to make the suggestion, whether it would not be
+well, as a last resort, for the State to assume the guardianship of the
+child for its own sake, and for the child's sake. We allow no one, with
+ever so thick a skin, to grow up in nakedness; why should we suffer a
+child, with however so perverse a parent, to grow up in ignorance and
+degenerate into crime? Certainly, a naked man is not so dangerous to
+society as an ignorant man, nor is the spectacle so revolting. I should
+have less hope of a state where the majority were so perverse as to
+continue ignorant of reading, writing and calculating, than of one where
+they were so thick-skinned as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> wear no clothes. In Massachusetts,
+there is an Asylum for juvenile offenders, established by the city of
+Boston, a Farm School for bad boys, established by the characteristic
+benevolence of the rich men of that place, and a State Reform School
+under the charge of the Commonwealth: all these are for lads who break
+the laws of the land. Would it not be better to take one step more,
+adopt them before they offended, and allow no child to grow up in the
+barbarism of ignorance? Has any man an unalienable right to live a
+savage in the midst of civilization?</p>
+
+<p>We need also public High Schools, to take children where the common
+schools leave them, and carry them further on. Some States have done
+something towards establishing such institutions; they are common in New
+England. Some have established Normal Schools, special High Schools for
+the particular and professional education of public teachers. Without
+these, it is plain there would not be a supply of competent educators
+for the public service.</p>
+
+<p>Then we need free Colleges, conducted by public officers, and paid for
+by the public purse. Without these the scheme is not perfect. The idea
+which lies at the basis of the public education of a people in a
+democracy, is this: Every man, on condition of doing his duty, has a
+right to the means of education, as much as a right, on the same
+condition, to the means of defence from a public enemy in time of war,
+or from starvation in time of plenty and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> peace. I say every man, I
+mean every woman also. The amount of education must depend on the three
+factors named before,&mdash;on the general achievement of mankind, the
+special ability of the state, and the particular power of the
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>If all is free, common schools, high schools, and colleges, boys and
+girls of common ability and common love of learning, will get a common
+education; those of greater ability, a more extended education, and
+those of the highest powers, the best culture which the race can now
+furnish, and the state afford. Hitherto no nation has established a
+public college, wholly at the public cost, where the children of the
+poor and the rich could enjoy together the great national charity of
+superior education. To do this is certainly not consistent with the idea
+of a theocracy or an aristocracy, but it is indispensable to the
+complete realization of a democracy. Otherwise the children of the rich
+will have a monopoly of superior education, which is the case with the
+girls everywhere&mdash;for only the daughters of rich men can get a superior
+education, even in the United States&mdash;and with boys in England and
+France, and of course the offices, emoluments and honors which depend on
+a superior education; or else the means thereof will be provided for
+poor lads by private benefactions, charity-funds and the like, which
+some pious and noble man has devoted to this work. In this case the
+institutions will have a sectarian character, be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> managed by narrow,
+bigoted men, and the gift of the means of education be coupled with
+conditions which must diminish its value, and fetter the free spirit of
+the young man. This takes place in many of the collegiate establishments
+of the North, which, notwithstanding those defects, have done a great
+good to mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The Common Schools giving their pupil the power of reading, writing and
+calculating, developing his faculties and furnishing him with much
+elementary knowledge, put him in communication with all that is written
+in a common form, in the English tongue; its treasures lie level to his
+eye and hand. The High School and the College, teaching him also other
+languages, afford him access to the treasures contained there; teaching
+him the mathematics and furnishing him with the discipline of science,
+they enable him to understand all that has hitherto been recorded in the
+compendious forms of philosophy, and thus place the child of large
+ability in connection with all the spiritual treasures of the world. In
+the mean time, for all these pupils, there is the material and the human
+world about them, the world of consciousness within. They can study both
+and add what they may to the treasures of human discovery or invention.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that it is the duty of the state to place the means of
+this education within the reach of all children of superior ability,&mdash;a
+duty that follows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> from the very idea of a democracy, not to speak of
+the idea of Christianity. It is not less the interest of the state to do
+so, for then, youths, well born, with good abilities, will not be
+hindered from getting a breeding proportionate to their birth, and from
+occupying the stations which are adequately filled only by men of
+superior native abilities, enriched by culture, and developed to their
+highest power. Then the work of such stations will fall to the lot of
+such men, and of course be done. Eminent ability, talent, or genius,
+should have eminent education, and so serve the nation in its eminent
+kind; for when God makes a million-minded man, as once or twice in the
+ages, or a myriad-minded man, as He does now and then, it is plain that
+this gift also is to be accounted precious, and used for the advantage
+of all.</p>
+
+<p>I say no state has ever attempted to establish such institutions; yet
+the Government of the United States has a seminary for the public
+education of a few men at the public cost. But it is a school to qualify
+men to fight; they learn the science of destruction, the art thereof,
+the kindred art and science of defence. If the same money we now pay for
+military education at West Point were directed to the education of
+teachers of the highest class, say professors and presidents of
+colleges; if the same pains were taken to procure able men, to furnish
+them with the proper instruction for their special<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> work, and give them
+the best possible general development of their powers, not forgetting
+the moral, the affectional and the religious, and animating them with
+the philanthropic spirit needed for such a work, how much better results
+would appear! But in the present intellectual condition of the people it
+would be thought unworthy of a nation to train up school-masters! But is
+it only soldiers that we need?</p>
+
+<p>All these institutions are but introductory, a preparatory school, in
+three departments, to fit youths for the great educational establishment
+of practical life. This will find each youth and maiden as the schools
+leave him, moulding him to their image, or moulded by him to a better.
+So it is plain what the teachers are to do:&mdash;besides teaching the
+special branches which fall to their lot, they are to supply for the
+pupils, the defects of the State, of the Church, of Business, and the
+Press, especially the moral defects. For this great work of mediating
+between the mother and the world, for so furnishing and fitting the
+rising generation, introducing them into practical life, that they shall
+receive all the good of these public educational forces with none of the
+ill, but enhance the one while they withstand the other, and so each in
+himself realize the idea of man, and all in their social capacity, the
+idea of a democracy&mdash;it is also plain what sort of men we need for
+teachers: we need able men, well endowed by nature, well disciplined by
+art; we need superior men&mdash;men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> juster than the state, truer and better
+than the churches, more humane than business, and higher than the common
+literature of the press. There are always men of that stamp born into
+the world; enough of them in any age to do its work. How shall we bring
+them to the task? Give young men and women the opportunity to fit
+themselves for the work, at free common schools, high schools, normal
+schools, and colleges; give them a pay corresponding to their services,
+as in England and Rome; give them social rank and honor in that
+proportion, and they will come; able men will come; men well disciplined
+will come; men of talent and even genius for education will come.</p>
+
+<p>In the state you pay a man of great political talents large money and
+large honors; hence there is no lack of ability in politics, none of
+competition for office. In the church you pay a good deal for a "smart
+minister," one who can preach an audience into the pews and not himself
+out of the pulpit. Talent enough goes to business; educated talent too,
+at least with a special education for this, honor, and social
+distinction. Private colleges and theological schools, often, have
+powerful men for their professors and presidents; sometimes, men of much
+talent for education; commonly, men of ripe learning and gentlemanly
+accomplishments. Even men of genius seek a place as teachers in some
+private college, where they are under the control of the leaders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> of a
+sect&mdash;and must not doubt its creed, nor set science a-going freely lest
+it run over some impotent theological dogma&mdash;or else of a little
+coterie, or close corporation of men selected because radical or because
+conservative, men chosen not on account of any special fitness for
+superintending the superior education of the people, but because they
+were one-sided, and leaned this way in Massachusetts and that in
+Virginia. Able men seek such places because they get a competent pay,
+competent honors, competent social rank. Senators and ambassadors are
+not ashamed to be presidents of a college, and submit to the control of
+a coterie, or a sect, and produce their results. If such men can be had
+for private establishments to educate a few to work in such trammels and
+such company, certainly, it is not difficult to get them for the public
+and for the education of all. As the state has the most children to
+educate, the most money to pay with, it is clear, not only that they
+need the best ability for this work, but that they can have it soon as
+they make the teacher's calling gainful and respectable.</p>
+
+<p>In England and Rome, the most important spiritual function of the state
+is the production of the gentleman and the priest; in democratic America
+it is the production of the man. Some nations have taken pains with the
+military training of all the people, for the sake of the state, and made
+every man a soldier. No nation has hitherto taken equivalent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> pains with
+the general education of all, for the sake of the state and the sake of
+the citizens;&mdash;"the heathens of China" have done more than any Christian
+people, for the education of all. This was not needed in a theocracy,
+nor an aristocracy; it is essential to a democracy. This is needed
+politically; for where all men are voters, the ignorant man, who cannot
+read the ballot which he casts; the thief, the pirate, and the murderer,
+may, at any time, turn the scale of an election, and do us a damage
+which it will take centuries to repair. Ignorant men are the tools of
+the demagogue; how often he uses them, and for what purposes, we need
+not go back many years to learn. Let the people be ignorant and suffrage
+universal, a very few men will control the state, and laugh at the folly
+of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks
+they ride to insolence and miserable fame.</p>
+
+<p>America has nothing to fear from any foreign foe; for nearly forty years
+she has had no quarrel but of her own making. Such is our enterprise and
+our strength, that few nations would, carelessly, engage in war with us;
+none, without great provocation. In the midst of us, is our danger; not
+in foreign arms, but in the ignorance and the wickedness of our own
+children, the ignorance of the many, the wickedness of the few who will
+lead the many to their ruin. The bulwark of America is not the army and
+navy of the United States, with all the men at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> public cost instructed
+in the art of war; it is not the swords and muskets idly bristling in
+our armories; it is not the cannon and the powder carefully laid by; no,
+nor is it yet the forts, which frown in all their grim barbarity of
+stone along the coast, defacing the landscape, else so fair: these might
+all be destroyed to-night, and the nation be as safe as now. The more
+effectual bulwark of America is her schools. The cheap spelling-book, or
+the vane on her school-house is a better symbol of the nation than "The
+star-spangled banner;" the printing press does more than the cannon; the
+press is mightier than the sword. The army that is to keep our
+liberties&mdash;you are part of that, the noble army of teachers. It is you,
+who are to make a great nation greater, even wise and good,&mdash;the next
+generation better than their sires.</p>
+
+<p>Europe shows us, by experiment, that a republic cannot be made by a few
+well-minded men, however well-meaning. They tried for it at Rome, full
+of enlightened priests; in Germany, the paradise of the scholar, but
+there was not a people well educated, and a democracy could not stand
+upright long enough to be set a-going. In France, where men are better
+fitted for the experiment than elsewhere in continental Europe, you see
+what comes of it&mdash;the first step is a stumble, and for their president,
+the raw republicans chose an autocrat, not a democrat; not a mere
+soldier, but only the name of a soldier;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> one that thinks it an insult
+if liberty, equality, and fraternity be but named!</p>
+
+<p>Think you a democracy can stand without the education of all; not barely
+the smallest pittance thereof which will keep a live soul in a live
+body, but a large, generous cultivation of mind and conscience, heart
+and soul? A man, with half an eye, can see how we suffer continually in
+politics for lack of education among the people. Some nations are
+priest-ridden, some king-ridden, some ridden of nobles; America is
+ridden by politicians, a heavy burden for a foolish neck.</p>
+
+<p>Our industrial interests demand the same education. The industrial
+prosperity of the North, our lands yearly enriching, while they bear
+their annual crop; our railroads, mills and machines, the harness with
+which we tackle the elements,&mdash;for we domesticate fire and water, yes,
+the very lightning of heaven&mdash;all these are but material results of the
+intelligence of the people. Our political success and our industrial
+prosperity, both come from the pains taken with the education of the
+people. Halve this education, and you take away three fourths of our
+political welfare, three fourths of our industrial prosperity; double
+this education, you greaten the political welfare of the people, you
+increase their industrial success fourfold. Yes, more than that, for the
+results of education increase by a ratio of much higher powers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It seems strange that so few of the great men in politics have cared
+much for the education of the people; only one of those, now prominent
+before the North, is intimately connected with it. He, at great personal
+sacrifice of money, of comfort, of health, even of respectability,
+became superintendent of the common schools of Massachusetts, a place
+whence we could ill spare him, to take the place of the famous man he
+succeeds. Few of the prominent scholars of the land interest themselves
+in the public education of the people. The men of superior culture think
+the common school beneath their notice; but it is the mother of them
+all.</p>
+
+<p>None of the States of the North has ever given this matter the attention
+it demands. When we legislate about public education, this is the
+question before us:&mdash;Shall we give our posterity the greatest blessing
+that one generation can bestow upon another? Shall we give them a
+personal power which will create wealth in every form, multiply ships,
+and roads of earth, or of iron; subdue the forest, till the field, chain
+the rivers, hold the winds as its vassals, bind with an iron yoke the
+fire and water, and catch and tame the lightning of God? Shall we give
+them a personal power which will make them sober, temperate, healthy,
+and wise; that shall keep them at peace, abroad and at home, organize
+them so wisely that all shall be united, and yet, each left free, with
+no tyranny of the few over the many, or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> little over the great?
+Shall we enable them to keep, to improve, to double manifold the
+political, social, and personal blessings they now possess; shall we
+give them this power to create riches, to promote order, peace,
+happiness&mdash;all forms of human welfare, or shall we not? That is the
+question. Give us intelligent men, moral men, men well developed in mind
+and conscience, heart and soul, men that love man and God, industrial
+prosperity, social prosperity, and political prosperity, are sure to
+follow. But without such men, all the machinery of this threefold
+prosperity is but a bauble in a child's hand, which he will soon break
+or lose, which he cannot replace when gone, nor use while kept.</p>
+
+<p>Rich men, who have intelligence and goodness, will educate their
+children, at whatever cost. There are some men, even poor men's sons,
+born with such native power that they will achieve an education, often a
+most masterly culture; men whom no poverty can degrade, or make vulgar,
+whom no lack of means of culture can keep from being wise and great.
+Such are exceptional men; the majority, nine tenths of the people, will
+depend, for their culture, on the public institutions of the land. If
+there had never been a free public school in New England, not half of
+her mechanics and farmers would now be able to read, not a fourth part
+of her women. I need not stop to tell what would be the condition of her
+agriculture, her manufactures, her commerce;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> they would have been,
+perhaps, even behind the agriculture, commerce and manufactures of South
+Carolina. I need not ask what would be the condition of her free
+churches, or the republican institutions which now beautify her rugged
+shores and sterile soil; there would be no such churches, no such
+institutions. If there had been no such schools in New England, the
+Revolution would yet remain to be fought. Take away the free schools,
+you take away the cause of our manifold prosperity; double their
+efficiency and value, you not only double and quadruple the prosperity
+of the people, but you will enlarge their welfare&mdash;political, social,
+personal&mdash;far more than I now dare to calculate. I know men object to
+public schools; they say, education must be bottomed on religion, and
+that cannot be taught unless we have a State religion, taught "by
+authority" in all our schools; we cannot teach religion, without
+teaching it in a sectarian form. This objection is getting made in New
+York; we have got beyond it in New England. It is true, all manly
+education must be bottomed on religion; it is essential to the normal
+development of man, and all attempts at education, without this, must
+fail of the highest end. But there are two parts of religion which can
+be taught in all the schools, without disturbing the denominations, or
+trenching upon their ground, namely, piety, the love of God, and
+goodness, the love of man. The rest of religion, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> piety and
+goodness are removed, may safely be left to the institutions of any of
+the sects, and so the state will not occupy their ground.</p>
+
+<p>It is often said that superior education is not much needed; the common
+schools are enough, and good enough, for it is thought that superior
+education is needed for men as lawyers, ministers, doctors, and the
+like, not for men as men. It is not so. We want men cultivated with the
+best discipline, everywhere, not for the profession's sake, but for
+man's sake. Every man with a superior culture, intellectual, moral, and
+religious, every woman thus developed, is a safeguard and a blessing. He
+may sit on the bench of a judge or a shoemaker, be a clergyman or an
+oysterman, that matters little, he is still a safeguard and a blessing.
+The idea that none should have a superior education but professional
+men&mdash;they only for the profession's sake&mdash;belongs to dark ages, and is
+unworthy of a democracy.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is the duty of all men to watch over the public education of the
+people, for it is the most important work of the state. It is
+particularly the duty of men who, hitherto, have least attended to it,
+men of the highest culture, men, too, of the highest genius. If a man
+with but common abilities has attained great learning, he is one of the
+"public administrators," to distribute the goods of men of genius, from
+other times and lands, to mankind, their legal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> heirs. Why does God
+sometimes endow a man with great intellectual power, making, now and
+then, a million-minded man? Is that superiority of gift solely for the
+man's own sake? Shame on such a thought. It is of little value to him
+unless he use it for me; it is for your sake and my sake, more than for
+his own. He is a precious almoner of wisdom; one of the public guardians
+of mankind, to think for us, to help us think for ourselves; born to
+educate the world of feebler men. I call on such men, men of culture,
+men of genius, to help build up institutions for the education of the
+people. If they neglect this, they are false to their trust. The culture
+which hinders a man from sympathy with the ignorant, is a curse to both,
+and the genius which separates a man from his fellow-creatures, lowlier
+born than he, is the genius of a demon.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in
+your hands; nine tenths of the children of the people depend on you for
+their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever
+get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon,
+all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will
+easily learn from state and church, from business and the press. It is
+for you to give them such a developing and such a furnishing of their
+powers, that they will withstand, counteract and exterminate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> that evil.
+Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better
+than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own
+nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing
+of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the
+inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith
+their works.</p>
+
+<p>The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your
+image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these
+children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties.
+Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country,
+not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective
+tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the
+extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage&mdash;not a question of
+this sort has come up before Congress, or the people, which could not
+have been better decided by seven men, honest, intelligent, and just,
+who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right
+in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative,
+a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make
+a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not
+too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions,
+all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head
+of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the
+"Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land,
+the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice,
+unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years'
+time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of
+development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall
+double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land.
+You can, if you will. I ask If you will? If your works say "Yes," then
+you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a
+charity far nobler yet, education, the greatest charity. You will help
+fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and
+help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of
+that noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the
+Christians still worship as their God. Yes, you will work with God
+himself; He will work with you, work for you, and bless you with
+everlasting life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+<h2>V.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA AND THE SIGNS OF THE
+TIMES.&mdash;DELIVERED BEFORE SEVERAL LITERARY SOCIETIES, 1848.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Every nation has a peculiar character, in which it differs from all
+others that have been, that are, and possibly from all that are to come;
+for it does not yet appear that the Divine Father of the nations ever
+repeats himself and creates either two nations or two men exactly alike.
+However, as nations, like men, agree in more things than they differ,
+and in obvious things too, the special peculiarity of any one tribe does
+not always appear at first sight. But if we look through the history of
+some nation which has passed off from the stage of action, we find
+certain prevailing traits which continually reappear in the language and
+laws thereof; in its arts, literature, manners, modes of religion&mdash;in
+short, in the whole life of the people. The most prominent thing in the
+history of the Hebrews is their continual trust in God, and this marks
+them from their first appearance to the present day. They have
+accordingly done little for art,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> science, philosophy, little for
+commerce and the useful arts of life, but much for religion; and the
+psalms they sung two or three thousand years ago are at this day the
+hymns and prayers of the whole Christian world. Three great historical
+forms of religion, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, all have
+proceeded from them.</p>
+
+<p>He that looks at the Ionian Greeks finds in their story always the same
+prominent characteristic, a devotion to what is beautiful. This appears
+often to the neglect of what is true, right, and therefore holy. Hence,
+while they have done little for religion, their literature,
+architecture, sculpture, furnish us with models never surpassed, and
+perhaps not equalled. Yet they lack the ideal aspiration after religion
+that appears in the literature and art, and even language of some other
+people, quite inferior to the Greeks in elegance and refinement.
+Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks
+for truth is one form of loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>If we take the Romans, from Romulus their first king, to Augustulus the
+last of the C&aelig;sars, the same traits of national character appear, only
+the complexion and dress thereof changed by circumstances. There is
+always the same hardness and materialism, the same skill in organizing
+men, the same turn for affairs and genius for legislation. Rome borrowed
+her theology and liturgical forms; her art, science, literature,
+philosophy, and eloquence; even her art<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> of war was an imitation. But
+law sprung up indigenous in her soil; her laws are the best gift she
+offers to the human race,&mdash;the "monument more lasting than brass," which
+she has left behind her.</p>
+
+<p>We may take another nation, which has by no means completed its history,
+the Saxon race, from Hengist and Horsa to Sir Robert Peel: there also is
+a permanent peculiarity in the tribe. They are yet the same bold, handy,
+practical people as when their bark first touched the savage shores of
+Britain; not over religious; less pious than moral; not so much upright
+before God, as downright before men; servants of the understanding more
+than children of reason; not following the guidance of an intuition, and
+the light of an idea, but rather trusting to experiment, facts,
+precedents, and usages; not philosophical, but commercial; warlike
+through strength and courage, not from love of war or its glory;
+material, obstinate, and grasping, with the same admiration of horses,
+dogs, oxen, and strong drink; the same willingness to tread down any
+obstacle, material, human or divine, which stands in their way; the same
+impatient lust of wealth and power; the same disposition to colonize and
+reannex other lands; the same love of liberty and love of law; the same
+readiness in forming political confederations.</p>
+
+<p>In each of these four instances, the Hebrews, the Ionians, the Romans,
+and the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a nationality so strong, that while
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> have mingled with other nations in commerce and in war, as victors
+and vanquished, they have stoutly held their character through all; they
+have thus modified feebler nations joined with them. To take the last,
+neither the Britons nor the Danes affected very much the character of
+the Anglo-Saxons; they never turned it out of its course. The Normans
+gave the Saxon manners, refinement, letters, elegance. The Anglo-Saxon
+bishop of the eleventh century, dressed in untanned sheep-skins, "the
+woolly side out and the fleshy side in;" he ate cheese and flesh, drank
+milk and mead. The Norman taught him to wear cloth, to eat also bread
+and roots, to drink wine. But in other respects the Norman left him as
+he found him. England has received her kings and her nobles from
+Normandy, Anjou, the Provence, Scotland, Holland, Hanover, often seeing
+a foreigner ascend her throne; yet the sturdy Anglo-Saxon character held
+its own, spite of the new element infused into its blood: change the
+ministries, change the dynasties often as they will, John Bull is
+obstinate as ever, and himself changes not; no philosophy or religion
+makes him less material. No nation but the English could have produced a
+Hobbes, a Hume, a Paley, or a Bentham; they are all instantial and not
+exceptional men in that race.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Now this idiosyncrasy of a nation is a sacred gift; like the genius of a
+Burns, a Thorwaldsen, a Franklin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> or a Bowditch, it is given for some
+divine purpose, to be sacredly cherished and patiently unfolded. The
+cause of the peculiarities of a nation or an individual man we cannot
+fully determine as yet, and so we refer it to the chain of causes which
+we call Providence. But the national persistency in a common type is
+easily explained. The qualities of father and mother are commonly
+transmitted to their children, but not always, for peculiarities may lie
+latent in a family for generations, and reappear in the genius or the
+folly of a child&mdash;often in the complexion and features: and besides,
+father and mother are often no match. But such exceptions are rare, and
+the qualities of a race are always thus reproduced, the deficiency of
+one man getting counterbalanced by the redundancy of the next: the
+marriages of a whole tribe are not far from normal.</p>
+
+<p>Some nations, it seems, perish through defect of this national
+character, as individuals fail of success through excess or deficiency
+in their character. Thus the Celts, that great flood of a nation which
+once swept over Germany, France, England, and, casting its spray far
+over the Alps, at one time threatened destruction to Rome itself, seem
+to have been so filled with love of individual independence that they
+could never accept a minute organization of human rights and duties, and
+so their children would not group themselves into a city, as other
+races, and submit to a strong central power, which should curb
+individual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> will enough to insure national unity of action. Perhaps this
+was once the excellence of the Celts, and thereby they broke the
+trammels and escaped from the theocratic or despotic traditions of
+earlier and more savage times, developing the power of the individual
+for a time, and the energy of a nation loosely bound; but when they came
+in contact with the Romans, Franks and Saxons, they melted away as snow
+in April&mdash;only, like that, remnants thereof yet lingering in the
+mountains and islands of Europe. No external pressure of famine or
+political oppression now holds the Celts in Ireland together, or gives
+them national unity of action enough to resist the Saxon foe. Doubtless
+in other days this very peculiarity of the Irish has done the world some
+service. Nations succeed each other as races of animals in the
+geological epochs, and like them, also, perish when their work is done.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar character of a nation does not appear nakedly, without
+relief and shadow. As the waters of the Rhone, in coming from the
+mountains, have caught a stain from the soils they have traversed which
+mars the cerulean tinge of the mountain snow that gave them birth, so
+the peculiarities of each nation become modified by the circumstances to
+which it is exposed, though the fundamental character of a nation, it
+seems, has never been changed. Only when the blood of the nation is
+changed by additions from another stock is the idiosyncrasy altered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, while each nation has its peculiar genius or character which does
+not change, it has also and accordingly a particular work to perform in
+the economy of the world, a certain fundamental idea to unfold and
+develop. This is its national task, for in God's world, as in a shop,
+there is a regular division of labor. Sometimes it is a limited work,
+and when it is done the nation may be dismissed, and go to its repose.
+<i>Non omnia possumus omnes</i> is as true of nations as of men; one has a
+genius for one thing, another for something different, and the idea of
+each nation and its special work will depend on the genius of the
+nation. Men do not gather grapes of thorns.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this specific genius of the nation and its corresponding
+work, there are also various accidental or subordinate qualities, which
+change with circumstances, and so vary the nation's aspect that its
+peculiar genius and peculiar duty are often hid from its own
+consciousness, and even obscured to that of the philosophic looker-on.
+These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar
+genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient
+circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which
+the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of
+the present age, and they the character of the men now living. Thus new
+modifications of the national type continually take place; new
+variations are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> played, but on the same old strings and of the same old
+tune. Once circumstances made the Hebrews entirely pastoral, now as
+completely commercial; but the same trust in God, the same national
+exclusiveness appear, as of old. As one looks at the history of the
+Ionians, Romans, Saxons, he sees unity of national character, a
+continuity of idea and of work; but it appears in the midst of variety,
+for while these remained ever the same to complete the economy of the
+world, subordinate qualities&mdash;sentiments, ideas, actions&mdash;changed to
+suit the passing hour. The nation's <i>course</i> was laid towards a certain
+point, but they stood to the right hand or the left, they sailed with
+much canvas or little, and swift or slow, as the winds and waves
+compelled: nay, sometimes the national ship "heaves to," and lies with
+her "head to the wind," regardless of her destination; but when the
+storm is overblown resumes her course. Men will carelessly think the
+ship has no certain aim, but only drifts.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The most marked characteristic of the American nation is Love of
+Freedom; of man's natural rights. This is so plain to a student of
+American history, or of American politics, that the point requires no
+arguing. We have a genius for liberty: the American idea is freedom,
+natural rights. Accordingly, the work providentially laid out for us to
+do seems this,&mdash;to organize the rights of man. This is a problem
+hitherto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> unattempted on a national scale, in human history. Often
+enough attempts have been made to organize the powers of priests, kings,
+nobles, in a theocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, powers which had no
+foundation in human duties or human rights, but solely in the
+selfishness of strong men. Often enough have the mights of men been
+organized, but not the rights of man. Surely there has never been an
+attempt made on a national scale to organize the rights of man as man;
+rights resting on the nature of things; rights derived from no
+conventional compact of men with men; not inherited from past
+generations, nor received from parliaments and kings, nor secured by
+their parchments; but rights that are derived straightway from God, the
+Author of Duty and the Source of Right, and which are secured in the
+great charter of our being.</p>
+
+<p>At first view it will be said, the peculiar genius of America is not
+such, nor such her fundamental idea, nor that her destined work. It is
+true that much of the national conduct seems exceptional when measured
+by that standard, and the nation's course as crooked as the Rio Grande;
+it is true that America sometimes seems to spurn liberty, and sells the
+freedom of three million men for less than three million annual bales of
+cotton; true, she often tramples, knowingly, consciously, tramples on
+the most unquestionable and sacred rights. Yet, when one looks through
+the whole character and history of America, spite of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> the exceptions,
+nothing comes out with such relief as this love of freedom, this idea of
+liberty, this attempt to organize right. There are numerous subordinate
+qualities which conflict with the nation's idea and work, coming from
+our circumstances, not our soul, as well as many others which help the
+nation perform her providential work. They are signs of the times, and
+it is important to look carefully among the most prominent of them,
+where, indeed, one finds striking contradictions.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The first is an impatience of authority. Every thing must render its
+reason, and show cause for its being. We will not be commanded, at least
+only by such as we choose to obey. Does some one say, "Thou shalt," or
+"Thou shalt not," we ask, "Who are you?" Hence comes a seeming
+irreverence. The shovel hat, the symbol of authority, which awed our
+fathers, is not respected unless it covers a man, and then it is the man
+we honor, and no longer the shovel hat. "I will complain of you to the
+government!" said a Prussian nobleman to a Yankee stage-driver, who
+uncivilly threw the nobleman's trunk to the top of the coach. "Tell the
+government to go to the devil!" was the symbolical reply.</p>
+
+<p>Old precedents will not suffice us, for we want something anterior to
+all precedents; we go beyond what is written, asking the cause of the
+precedent and the reason of the writing. "Our fathers did so,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> says
+some one. "What of that?" say we. "Our fathers&mdash;they were giants, were
+they? Not at all, only great boys, and we are not only taller than they,
+but mounted on their shoulders to boot, and see twice as far. My dear
+wise man, or wiseacre, it is we that are the ancients, and have
+forgotten more than all our fathers knew. We will take their wisdom
+joyfully, and thank God for it, but not their authority, we know better;
+and of their nonsense not a word. It was very well that they lived, and
+it is very well that they are dead. Let them keep decently buried, for
+respectable dead men never walk."</p>
+
+<p>Tradition does not satisfy us. The American scholar has no folios in his
+library. The antiquary unrolls his codex, hid for eighteen hundred years
+in the ashes of Herculaneum, deciphers its fossil wisdom, telling us
+what great men thought in the bay of Naples, and two thousand years ago.
+"What do you tell of that for?" is the answer to his learning. "What has
+Pythagoras to do with the price of cotton? You may be a very learned
+man; you can read the hieroglyphics of Egypt, I dare say, and know so
+much about the Pharaohs, it is a pity you had not lived in their time,
+when you might have been good for something; but you are too
+old-fashioned for our business, and may return to your dust." An eminent
+American, a student of Egyptian history, with a scholarly indignation
+declared, "There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> is not a man who cares to know whether Shoophoo lived
+one thousand years before Christ, or three."</p>
+
+<p>The example of other and ancient States does not terrify or instruct us.
+If slavery were a curse to Athens, the corruption of Corinth, the
+undoing of Rome, and all history shows it was so, we will learn no
+lesson from that experience, for we say, "We are not Athenians, men of
+Corinth, nor pagan Romans, thank God, but free republicans, Christians
+of America. We live in the nineteenth century, and though slavery worked
+all that mischief then and there, we know how to make money out of it,
+twelve hundred millions of dollars, as Mr. Clay counts the cash."</p>
+
+<p>The example of contemporary nations furnishes us little warning or
+guidance. We will set our own precedents, and do not like to be told
+that the Prussians or the Dutch have learned some things in the
+education of the people before us, which we shall do well to learn after
+them. So when a good man tells us of their schools and their colleges,
+"patriotic" school-masters exclaim, "It is not true; our schools are the
+best in the world! But if it were true, it is unpatriotic to say so; it
+aids and comforts the enemy." Jonathan knows little of war; he has heard
+his grandfather talk of Lexington and Saratoga; he thinks he should like
+to have a little touch of battle on his own account: so when there is
+difficulty in setting up the fence betwixt his estate and his neighbors,
+he blusters for awhile, talks big, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> threatens to strike his father;
+but, not having quite the stomach for that experiment, falls to beating
+his other neighbor, who happens to be poor, weak, and of a sickly
+constitution; and when he beats her at every step,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For 'tis no war, as each one knows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When only one side deals the blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And t' other bears 'em,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Jonathan thinks he has covered himself "with imperishable honors," and
+sets up his general for a great king. Poor Jonathan&mdash;he does not know
+the misery, the tears, the blood, the shame, the wickedness, and the sin
+he has set a-going, and which one day he is to account for with God who
+forgets nothing!</p>
+
+<p>Yet while we are so unwilling to accept the good principles, to be
+warned by the fate, or guided by the success, of other nations, we
+gladly and servilely copy their faults, their follies, their vice and
+sin. Like all upstarts, we pique ourselves on our imitation of
+aristocratic ways. How many a blusterer in Congress,&mdash;for there are two
+denominations of blusterers, differing only in degree, your great
+blusterer in Congress and your little blusterer in a bar-room,&mdash;has
+roared away hours long against aristocratic influence, in favor of the
+"pure democracy," while he played the oligarch in his native village,
+the tyrant over his hired help, and though no man knows who his
+grandfather was, spite of the herald's office, conjures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> up some
+trumpery coat of arms! Like a clown, who, by pinching his appetite, has
+bought a gaudy cloak for Sabbath wearing, we chuckle inwardly at our
+brave apery of foreign absurdities, hoping that strangers will be
+astonished at us&mdash;which, sure enough, comes to pass. Jonathan is as vain
+as he is conceited, and expects that the Fiddlers, and the Trollopes,
+and others, who visit us periodically as the swallows, and likewise for
+what they can catch, shall only extol, or at least stand aghast at the
+brave spectacle we offer, of "the freest and most enlightened nation in
+the world;" and if they tell us that we are an ill-mannered set, raw and
+clownish, that we pick our teeth with a fork, loll back in our chairs,
+and make our countenance hateful with tobacco, and that with all our
+excellences we are a nation of "rowdies,"&mdash;why, we are offended, and our
+feelings are hurt. There was an African chief, long ago, who ruled over
+a few miserable cabins, and one day received a French traveller from
+Paris, under a tree. With the exception of a pair of shoes, our chief
+was as naked as a pestle, but with great complacency he asked the
+traveller, "What do they say of me at Paris?"</p>
+
+<p>Such is our dread of authority, that we like not old things; hence we
+are always a-changing. Our house must be new, and our book, and even our
+church. So we choose a material that soon wears out, though it often
+outlasts our patience. The wooden house is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> an apt emblem of this sign
+of the times. But this love of change appears not less in important
+matters. We think "Of old things all are over old, of new things none
+are new enough." So the age asks of all institutions their right to be:
+What right has the government to existence? Who gave the majority a
+right to control the minority, to restrict trade, levy taxes, make laws,
+and all that? If the nation goes into a committee of the whole and makes
+laws, some little man goes into a committee of one and passes his
+counter resolves. The State of South Carolina is a nice example of this
+self-reliance, and this questioning of all authority. That little brazen
+State, which contains only about half so many free white inhabitants as
+the single city of New York, but which none the less claims to have
+monopolized most of the chivalry of the nation, and its patriotism, as
+well as political wisdom&mdash;that chivalrous little State says, "If the
+nation does not make laws to suit us; if it does not allow us to
+imprison all black seamen from the North; if it prevents the extension
+of Slavery wherever we wish to carry it&mdash;then the State of South
+Carolina will nullify, and leave the other nine-and-twenty States to go
+to ruin!"</p>
+
+<p>Men ask what right have the churches to the shadow of authority which
+clings to them&mdash;to make creeds, and to bind and to loose! So it is a
+thing which has happened, that when a church excommunicates a young
+stripling for heresy, he turns round,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> fulminates his edict, and
+excommunicates the church. Said a sly Jesuit to an American Protestant
+at Rome, "But the rites and customs and doctrines of the Catholic church
+go back to the second century, the age after the apostles!" "No doubt of
+it," said the American, who had also read the Fathers, "they go back to
+the times of the apostles themselves; but that proves nothing, for there
+were as great fools in the first century as the last. A fool or a folly
+is no better because it is an old folly or an old fool. There are fools
+enough now, in all conscience. Pray don't go back to prove their
+apostolical succession."</p>
+
+<p>There are always some men who are born out of due season, men of past
+ages, stragglers of former generations, who ought to have been born
+before Dr. Faustus invented printing, but who are unfortunately born
+now, or, if born long ago, have been fraudulently and illegally
+concealed by their mothers, and are now, for the first time, brought to
+light. The age lifts such aged juveniles from the ground, and bids them
+live, but they are sadly to seek in this day; they are old-fashioned
+boys; their authority is called in question; their traditions and old
+wives' fables are laughed at, at any rate disbelieved; they get
+profanely elbowed in the crowd&mdash;men not knowing their great age and
+consequent venerableness; the shovel hat, though apparently born on
+their head, is treated with disrespect. The very boys laugh pertly in
+their face when they speak, and even old men can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> scarce forbear a
+smile, though it may be a smile of pity. The age affords such men a
+place, for it is a catholic age, large-minded, and tolerant,&mdash;such a
+place as it gives to ancient armor, Indian Bibles, and fossil bones of
+the mastodon; it puts them by in some room seldom used, with other old
+furniture, and allows them to mumble their anilities by themselves; now
+and then takes off its hat; looks in, charitably, to keep the medi&aelig;val
+relics in good heart, and pretends to listen, as they discourse of what
+comes of nothing and goes to it; but in matters which the age cares
+about, commerce, manufactures, politics, which it cares much for, even
+in education, which it cares far too little about, it trusts no such
+counsellors, nor tolerates, nor ever affects to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is a philosophical tendency, distinctly visible; a groping
+after ultimate facts, first principles, and universal ideas. We wish to
+know first the fact, next the law of that fact, and then the reason of
+the law. A sign of this tendency is noticeable in the titles of books;
+we have no longer "treatises" n the eye, the ear, sleep, and so forth,
+but in their place we find works professing to treat of the "philosophy"
+of vision, of sound, of sleep. Even in the pulpits, men speak about the
+"philosophy" of religion; we have philosophical lectures, delivered to
+men of little culture, which would have amazed our grandfathers, who
+thought a shoemaker should never go beyond his last, even to seek for
+the philosophy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> of shoes. "What a pity," said a grave Scotchman, in the
+beginning of this century, "to teach the beautiful science of geometry
+to weavers and cobblers." Here nothing is too good or high for any one
+tall and good enough to get hold of it. What audiences attend the Lowell
+lectures in Boston&mdash;two or three thousand men, listening to twelve
+lectures on the philosophy of fish! It would not bring a dollar or a
+vote, only thought to their minds! Young ladies are well versed in the
+philosophy of the affections, and understand the theory of attraction,
+while their grandmothers, good easy souls, were satisfied with the
+possession of the fact. The circumstance, that philosophical lectures
+get delivered by men like Walker, Agassiz, Emerson, and their
+coadjutors, men who do not spare abstruseness, get listened to, and even
+understood, in town and village, by large crowds of men, of only the
+most common culture; this indicates a philosophical tendency, unknown in
+any other land or age. Our circle of professed scholars, men of culture
+and learning, is a very small one, while our circle of thinking men is
+disproportionately large. The best thought of France and Germany finds a
+readier welcome here than in our parent land: nay, the newest and the
+best thought of England, finds its earliest and warmest welcome in
+America. It was a little remarkable, that Bacon and Newton should be
+reprinted here, and La Place should have found his translator and
+expositor coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> out of an insurance office in Salem! Men of no great
+pretensions object to an accomplished and eloquent politician: "That is
+all very well; he made us cry and laugh, but the discourse was not
+philosophical; he never tells us the reason of the thing; he seems not
+only not to know it, but not to know that there is a reason for the
+thing, and if not, what is the use of this bobbing on the surface?"
+Young maidens complain of the minister, that he has no philosophy in his
+sermons, nothing but precepts, which they could read in the Bible as
+well as he; perhaps in heathen Seneca. He does not feed their souls.</p>
+
+<p>One finds this tendency where it is least expected: there is a
+philosophical party in politics, a very small party it may be, but an
+actual one. They aim to get at everlasting ideas and universal laws, not
+made by man, but by God, and for man, who only finds them; and from them
+they aim to deduce all particular enactments, so that each statute in
+the code shall represent a fact in the universe; a point of thought in
+God; so, indeed, that legislation shall be divine in the same sense that
+a true system of astronomy is divine&mdash;or the Christian religion&mdash;the law
+corresponding to a fact. Men of this party, in New England, have more
+ideas than precedents, are spontaneous more than logical; have
+intuitions, rather than intellectual convictions, arrived at by the
+process of reasoning. They think it is not philosophical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> to take a
+young scoundrel and shut him up with a party of old ones, for his
+amendment; not philosophical to leave children with no culture,
+intellectual, moral, or religious, exposed to the temptations of a high
+and corrupt civilization, and then, when they go astray&mdash;as such
+barbarians needs must, in such temptations&mdash;to hang them by the neck for
+the example's sake. They doubt if war is a more philosophical mode of
+getting justice between two nations, than blows to settle a quarrel
+between two men. In either case, they do not see how it follows, that he
+who can strike the hardest blow is always in the right. In short, they
+think that judicial murder, which is hanging, and national murder, which
+is war, are not more philosophical than homicide, which one man commits
+on his own private account.</p>
+
+<p>Theological sects are always the last to feel any popular movement. Yet
+all of them, from the Episcopalians to the Quakers, have each a
+philosophical party, which bids fair to outgrow the party which rests on
+precedent and usage, to overshadow and destroy it. The Catholic church
+itself, though far astern of all the sects, in regard to the great
+movements of the age, shares this spirit, and abroad, if not here, is
+wellnigh rent asunder by the potent medicine which this new Daniel of
+philosophy has put into its mouth. Everywhere in the American churches
+there are signs of a tendency to drop all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> that rests merely on
+tradition and hearsay, to cling only to such facts as bide the test of
+critical search, and such doctrines as can be verified in human
+consciousness here and to-day. Doctors of divinity destroy the faith
+they once preached.</p>
+
+<p>True, there are antagonistic tendencies, for, soon as one pole is
+developed, the other appears; objections are made to philosophy, the old
+cry is raised&mdash;"Infidelity," "Denial," "Free-thinking." It is said that
+philosophy will corrupt the young men, will spoil the old ones, and
+deceive the very elect. "Authority and tradition," say some, "are all we
+need consult; reason must be put down, or she will soon ask terrible
+questions." There is good cause for these men warring against reason and
+philosophy; it is purely in self-defence. But this counsel and that cry
+come from those quarters before mentioned, where the men of past ages
+have their place, where the forgotten is re-collected, the obsolete
+preserved, and the useless held in esteem. The counsel is not dangerous;
+the bird of night, who overstays his hour, is only troublesome to
+himself, and was never known to hurt a dovelet or a mouseling after
+sun-rise. In the night only is the owl destructive. Some of those who
+thus cry out against this tendency, are excellent men in their way, and
+highly useful, valuable as conveyancers of opinions. So long as there
+are men who take opinions as real estate, "to have and to hold for
+themselves and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> heirs forever," why should there not be such
+conveyancers of opinions, as well as of land? And as it is not the duty
+of the latter functionary to ascertain the quality or the value of the
+land, but only its metes and bounds, its appurtenances and the title
+thereto; to see if the grantor is regularly seized and possessed
+thereof, and has good right to convey and devise the same, and to make
+sure that the whole conveyance is regularly made out,&mdash;so is it with
+these conveyancers of opinion; so should it be, and they are valuable
+men. It is a good thing to know that we hold under Scotus, and Ramus,
+and Albertus Magnus, who were regularly seized of this or that opinion.
+It gives an absurdity the dignity of a relic. Sometimes these worthies,
+who thus oppose reason and her kin, seem to have a good deal in them,
+and, when one examines, he finds more than he looked for. They are like
+a nest of boxes from Hingham and Nuremburg, you open one, and behold
+another; that, and lo! a third. So you go on, opening and opening, and
+finding and finding, till at last you come to the heart of the matter,
+and then you find a box that is very little, and entirely empty.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Yet, with all this tendency&mdash;and it is now so strong that it cannot be
+put down, nor even howled down, much as it may be howled over&mdash;there is
+a lamentable want of first principles, well known and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> established; we
+have rejected the authority of tradition, but not yet accepted the
+authority of truth and justice. We will not be treated as striplings,
+and are not old enough to go alone as men. Accordingly, nothing seems
+fixed. There is a perpetual see-sawing of opposite principles. Somebody
+said ministers ought to be ordained on horseback, because they are to
+remain so short a time in one place. It would be as emblematic to
+inaugurate American politicians, by swearing them on a weathercock. The
+great men of the land have as many turns in their course as the Euripus
+or the Missouri. Even the facts given in the spiritual nature of man are
+called in question. An eminent Unitarian divine regards the existence of
+God as a matter of opinion, thinks it cannot be demonstrated, and
+publicly declares that it is "not a certainty." Some American
+Protestants no longer take the Bible as the standard of ultimate appeal,
+yet venture not to set up in that place reason, conscience, the soul
+getting help of God; others, who affect to accept the Scripture as the
+last authority, yet, when questioned as to their belief in the
+miraculous and divine birth of Jesus of Nazareth, are found unable to
+say yes or no, not having made up their minds.</p>
+
+<p>In politics, it is not yet decided whether it is best to leave men to
+buy where they can buy cheapest, and sell where they can sell dearest,
+or to restrict that matter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was a clear case to our fathers, in '76, that all men were "created
+equal," each with "Unalienable Rights." That seemed so clear, that
+reasoning would not make it appear more reasonable; it was taken for
+granted, as a self-evident proposition. The whole nation said so. Now,
+it is no strange thing to find it said that negroes are not "created
+equal" in unalienable rights with white men. Nay, in the Senate of the
+United States, a famous man declares all this talk a dangerous mistake.
+The practical decision of the nation looks the same way. So, to make our
+theory accord with our practice, we ought to recommit the Declaration to
+the hands which drafted that great State-paper, and instruct Mr.
+Jefferson to amend the document, and declare that "All men are created
+equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, if
+born of white mothers; but if not, not."</p>
+
+<p>In this lack of first principles, it is not settled in the popular
+consciousness, that there is such a thing as an absolute right, a great
+law of God, which we are to keep, come what will come. So the nation is
+not upright, but goes stooping. Hence, in private affairs, law takes the
+place of conscience, and, in public, might of right. So the bankrupt
+pays his shilling in the pound, and gets his discharge, but afterwards,
+becoming rich, does not think of paying the other nineteen shillings. He
+will tell you the law is his conscience; if that be satisfied, so is
+he.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> But you will yet find him letting money at one or two per cent. a
+month, contrary to law; and then he will tell you that paying a debt is
+a matter of law, while letting money is only a matter of conscience. So
+he rides either indifferently&mdash;now the public hack, and now his own
+private nag, according as it serves his turn.</p>
+
+<p>So a rich State borrows money and "repudiates" the debt, satisfying its
+political conscience, as the bankrupt his commercial conscience, with
+the notion that there is no absolute right; that expediency is the only
+justice, and that King People can do no wrong. No calm voice of
+indignation cries out from the pulpit and the press and the heart of the
+people, to shame the repudiators into decent morals; because it is not
+settled in the popular mind that there is any absolute right. Then,
+because we are strong and the Mexicans weak, because we want their land
+for a slave-pasture and they cannot keep us out of it, we think that is
+reason enough for waging an infamous war of plunder. Grave men do not
+ask about "the natural justice" of such an undertaking, only about its
+cost. Have we not seen an American Congress vote a plain lie, with only
+sixteen dissenting voices in the whole body; has not the head of the
+nation continually repeated that lie; and do not both parties, even at
+this day, sustain the vote?</p>
+
+<p>Now and then there rises up an honest man, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> a great Christian heart
+in his bosom, and sets free a score or two of slaves inherited from his
+father; watches over and tends them in their new-found freedom: or
+another, who, when legally released from payment of his debts, restores
+the uttermost farthing. We talk of this and praise it, as an
+extraordinary thing. Indeed it is so; justice is an unusual thing, and
+such men deserve the honor they thus win. But such praise shows that
+such honesty is a rare honesty. The northern man, born on the
+battle-ground of freedom, goes to the South and becomes the most
+tyrannical of slave-drivers. The son of the Puritan, bred up in austere
+ways, is sent to Congress to stand up for truth and right, but he turns
+out a "dough-face," and betrays the duty he went to serve. Yet he does
+not lose his place, for every dough-faced representative has a
+dough-faced constituency to back him.</p>
+
+<p>It is a great mischief that comes from lacking first principles, and the
+worst part of it comes from lacking first principles in morals. Thereby
+our eyes are holden so that we see not the great social evils all about
+us. We attempt to justify slavery, even to do it in the name of Jesus
+Christ. The whig party of the North loves slavery; the democratic party
+does not even seek to conceal its affection therefor. A great politician
+declares the Mexican war wicked, and then urges men to go and fight it;
+he thinks a famous general not fit to be nominated for President,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> but
+then invites men to elect him. Politics are national morals, the morals
+of Thomas and Jeremiah, multiplied by millions. But it is not decided
+yet that honesty is the best policy for a politician; it is thought that
+the best policy is honesty, at least as near it as the times will allow.
+Many politicians seem undecided how to turn, and so sit on the fence
+between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. Facing-both-ways is a popular
+politician in America just now, sitting on the fence between honesty and
+dishonesty, and, like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testaments,
+belonging to neither dispensation. It is a little amusing to a trifler
+to hear a man's fitness for the Presidency defended on the ground that
+he has no definite convictions or ideas!</p>
+
+<p>There was once a man who said he always told a lie when it would serve
+his special turn. It is a pity he went to his own place long ago. He
+seemed born for a party politician in America. He would have had a large
+party, for he made a great many converts before he died, and left a
+numerous kindred busy in the editing of newspapers, writing addresses
+for the people, and passing "resolutions."</p>
+
+<p>It must strike a stranger as a little odd, that a republic should have a
+slaveholder for President five sixths of the time, and most of the
+important offices be monopolized by other slaveholders; a little
+surprising that all the pulpits and most of the presses should be in
+favor of slavery, at least not against it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> But such is the fact.
+Everybody knows the character of the American government for some years
+past, and of the American parties in politics. "Like master, like man,"
+used to be a true proverb in old England, and "Like people, like ruler,"
+is a true proverb in America; true now. Did a decided people ever choose
+dough-faces?&mdash;a people that loved God and man, choose representatives
+that cared for neither truth nor justice? Now and then, for dust gets
+into the brightest eyes; but did they ever choose such men continually?
+The people are always fairly represented; our representatives do
+actually represent us, and in more senses than they are paid for.
+Congress and the Cabinet are only two thermometers hung up in the
+capital, to show the temperature of the national morals.</p>
+
+<p>But amid this general uncertainty there are two capital maxims which
+prevail amongst our huxters of politics: To love your party better than
+your country, and yourself better than your party. There are, it is
+true, real statesmen amongst us, men who love justice and do the right,
+but they seem lost in the mob of vulgar politicians and the dust of
+party editors.</p>
+
+<p>Since the nation loves freedom above all things, the name democracy is a
+favorite name. No party could live a twelvemonth that should declare
+itself anti-democratic. Saint and sinner, statesman and politician,
+alike love the name. So it comes to pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> that there are two things
+which bear that name; each has its type and its motto. The motto of one
+is, "You are as good as I, and let us help one another." That represents
+the democracy of the Declaration of Independence, and of the New
+Testament; its type is a free school, where children of all ranks meet
+under the guidance of intelligent and Christian men, to be educated in
+mind, and heart, and soul. The other has for its motto, "I am as good as
+you, so get out of my way." Its type is the bar-room of a tavern&mdash;dirty,
+offensive, stained with tobacco, and full of drunken, noisy, quarrelsome
+"rowdies," just returned from the Mexican war, and ready for a "buffalo
+hunt," for privateering, or to go and plunder any one who is better off
+than themselves, especially if also better. That is not exactly the
+democracy of the Declaration, or of the New Testament; but of&mdash;no matter
+whom.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then, again, there is a great intensity of life and purpose. This
+displays itself in our actions and speeches; in our speculations; in the
+"revivals" of the more serious sects; in the excitements of trade; in
+the general character of the people. All that we do we overdo. It
+appears in our hopefulness; we are the most aspiring of nations. Not
+content with half the continent, we wish the other half. We have this
+characteristic of genius: we are dissatisfied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> with all that we have
+done. Somebody once said we were too vain to be proud. It is not wholly
+so; the national idea is so far above us that any achievement seems
+little and low. The American soul passes away from its work soon as it
+is finished. So the soul of each great artist refuses to dwell in his
+finished work, for that seems little to his dream. Our fathers deemed
+the Revolution a great work; it was once thought a surprising thing to
+found that little colony on the shores of New England; but young America
+looks to other revolutions, and thinks she has many a Plymouth colony in
+her bosom. If other nations wonder at our achievements, we are a
+disappointment to ourselves, and wonder we have not done more. Our
+national idea out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began
+our national career by setting all history at defiance&mdash;for that said,
+"A republic on a large scale cannot exist." Our progress since has shown
+that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The political
+ideas of the nation are transcendant, not empirical. Human history could
+not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of
+the new idea: the nation went behind human history and appealed to human
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>We are more spontaneous than logical; we have ideas, rather than facts
+or precedents. We dream more than we remember, and so have many orators
+and poets, or poetasters, with but few antiquaries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> and general
+scholars. We are not so reflective as forecasting. We are the most
+intuitive of modern nations. The very party in politics which has the
+least culture, is richest in ideas which will one day become facts.
+Great truths&mdash;political, philosophical, religious&mdash;lie a-burning in many
+a young heart which cannot legitimate nor prove them true, but none the
+less feels, and feels them true. A man full of new truths finds a ready
+audience with us. Many things which come disguised as truths under such
+circumstances pass current for a time, but by and by their bray
+discovers them. The hope which comes from this intensity of life and
+intuition of truths is a national characteristic. It gives courage,
+enterprise, and strength. They can who think they can. We are confident
+in our star; other nations may see it or not, we know it is there above
+the clouds. We do not hesitate at rash experiments&mdash;sending fifty
+thousand soldiers to conquer a nation with eight or nine millions of
+people. We are up to every thing, and think ourselves a match for any
+thing. The young man is rash, for he only hopes, having little to
+remember; he is excitable, and loves excitement; change of work is his
+repose; he is hot and noisy, sanguine and fearless, with the courage
+that comes from warm blood and ignorance of dangers; he does not know
+what a hard, tough, sour old world he is born into. We are a nation of
+young men. We talked of annexing Texas and northern Mexico,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> and did
+both; now we grasp at Cuba, Central America,&mdash;all the continent,&mdash;and
+speak of a railroad to the Pacific as a trifle for us to accomplish. Our
+national deeds are certainly great, but our hope and promise far
+outbrags them all.</p>
+
+<p>If this intensity of life and hope have its good side, it has also its
+evil; with much of the excellence of youth we have its faults&mdash;rashness,
+haste, and superficiality. Our work is seldom well done. In English
+manufactures there is a certain solid honesty of performance; in the
+French a certain air of elegance and refinement: one misses both these
+in American works. It is said America invents the most machines, but
+England builds them best. We lack the phlegmatic patience of older
+nations. We are always in a hurry, morning, noon and night. We are
+impatient of the process, but greedy of the result; so that we make
+short experiments but long reports, and talk much though we say little.
+We forget that a sober method is a short way of coming to the end, and
+that he who, before he sets out, ascertains where he is going and the
+way thither, ends his journey more prosperously than one who settles
+these matters by the way. Quickness is a great desideratum with us. It
+is said an American ship is known far off at sea by the quantity of
+canvas she carries. Rough and ready is a popular attribute. Quick and
+off would be a symbolic motto for the nation at this day, representing
+one phase of our character. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> are sudden in deliberation; the
+"one-hour rule" works well in Congress. A committee of the British
+Parliament spends twice or thrice our time in collecting facts,
+understanding and making them intelligible, but less than our time in
+speech-making after the report; speeches there commonly being for the
+purpose of facilitating the business, while here one sometimes is half
+ready to think, notwithstanding our earnestness, that the business is to
+facilitate the speaking. A State revises her statutes with a rapidity
+that astonishes a European. Yet each revision brings some amendment, and
+what is found good in the constitution or laws of one State gets
+speedily imitated by the rest; each new State of the North becoming more
+democratic than its predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>We are so intent on our purpose that we have no time for amusement. We
+have but one or two festivals in the year, and even then we are serious
+and reformatory. Jonathan thinks it a very solemn thing to be merry. A
+Frenchman said we have but two amusements in America&mdash;Theology for the
+women and politics for the men; preaching and voting. If this be true,
+it may help to explain the fact that most men take their theology from
+their wives, and women politics from their husbands. No nation ever
+tried the experiment of such abstinence from amusement. We have no time
+for sport, and so lose much of the poetry of life. All work and no play
+does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> always make a dull boy, but it commonly makes a hard man.</p>
+
+<p>We rush from school into business early; we hurry while in business; we
+aim to be rich quickly, making a fortune at a stroke, making or losing
+it twice or thrice in a lifetime. "Soft and fair, goes safe and far," is
+no proverb to our taste. We are the most restless of people. How we
+crowd into cars and steamboats; a locomotive would well typify our
+fuming, fizzing spirit. In our large towns life seems to be only a
+scamper. Not satisfied with bustling about all day, when night comes we
+cannot sit still, but alone of all nations have added rockers to our
+chairs.</p>
+
+<p>All is haste, from the tanning of leather to the education of a boy, and
+the old saw holds its edge good as ever&mdash;"the more haste the worse
+speed." The young stripling, innocent of all manner of lore, whom a
+judicious father has barrelled down in a college, or law-school, or
+theological seminary, till his beard be grown, mourns over the few years
+he must spend there awaiting that operation. His rule is, "to make a
+spoon or spoil a horn;" he longs to be out in the world "making a
+fortune," or "doing good," as he calls what his father better names
+"making noisy work for repentance, and doing mischief." So he rushes
+into life not fitted, and would fly towards heaven, this young Icarus,
+his wings not half fledged. There seems little taste for thoroughness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+In our schools as our farms, we pass over much ground but pass over it
+poorly.</p>
+
+<p>In education the aim is not to get the most we can, but the least we can
+get along with. A ship with over-much canvas and over-little ballast
+were no bad emblem of many amongst us. In no country is it so easy to
+get a reputation for learning&mdash;accumulated thought, because so few
+devote themselves to that accumulation. In this respect our standard is
+low. So a man of one attainment is sure to be honored, but a man of many
+and varied abilities is in danger of being undervalued. A Spurzheim
+would be warmly welcomed, while a Humboldt would be suspected of
+superficiality, as we have not the standard to judge him by. Yet in no
+country in the world is it so difficult to get a reputation for
+eloquence, as many speak and that well. It is surprising with what
+natural strength and beauty the young American addresses himself to
+speak. Some hatter's apprentice, or shoemaker's journeyman, at a
+temperance or anti-slavery meeting, will speak words like the blows of
+an axe, that cut clean and deep. The country swarms with orators, more
+abundantly where education is least esteemed&mdash;in the West or South.</p>
+
+<p>We have secured national unity of action for the white citizens, without
+much curtailing individual variety of action, so we have at the North
+pretty well solved that problem which other nations have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> so often
+boggled over; we have balanced the centripetal power, the government and
+laws, with the centrifugal power, the mass of individuals, into
+harmonious proportions. If one were to leave out of sight the three
+million slaves, one sixth part of the population, the problem might be
+regarded as very happily solved. As the consequences of this, in no
+country is there more talent, or so much awake and active. In the South
+this unity is attained by sacrificing all the rights of three million
+slaves, and almost all the rights of the other colored population. In
+despotic countries this unity is brought about by the sacrifice of
+freedom, individual variety of action, in all except the despot and his
+favorites; so, much of the nation's energy is stifled in the chains of
+the State, while here it is friendly to institutions which are friendly
+to it, goes to its work, and approves itself in the vast increase of
+wealth and comfort throughout the North, where there is no class of men
+which is so oppressed that it cannot rise. One is amazed at the amount
+of ready skill and general ability which he finds in all the North,
+where each man has a little culture, takes his newspaper, manages
+his own business, and talks with some intelligence of many
+things&mdash;especially of politics and theology. In respect to this general
+intellectual ability and power of self-help, the mass of people seem far
+in advance of any other nation. But at the same time our scholars, who
+always represent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> the nation's higher modes of consciousness, will not
+bear comparison with the scholars of England, France, and Germany, men
+thoroughly furnished for their work. This is a great reproach and
+mischief to us, for we need most accomplished leaders, who by their
+thought can direct this national intensity of life. Our literature does
+not furnish them; we have no great men there; Irving, Channing, Cooper,
+are not names to conjure with in literature. One reads thick volumes
+devoted to the poets of America, or her prose writers, and finds many
+names which he wonders he never heard of before, but when he turns over
+their works, he finds consolation and recovers his composure.</p>
+
+<p>American literature may be divided into two departments: the permanent
+literature, which gets printed in books, that sometimes reach more than
+one edition; and the evanescent literature, which appears only in the
+form of speeches, pamphlets, reviews, newspaper articles, and the like
+extempore productions. Now our permanent literature, as a general thing,
+is superficial, tame, and weak; it is not American; it has not our
+ideas, our contempt of authority, our philosophical turn, nor even our
+uncertainty as to first principles, still less our national intensity,
+our hope, and fresh intuitive perceptions of truth. It is a miserable
+imitation. Love of freedom is not there. The real national literature is
+found almost wholly in speeches, pamphlets, and newspapers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> The latter
+are pretty thoroughly American; mirrors in which we see no very
+flattering likeness of our morals or our manners. Yet the picture is
+true: that vulgarity, that rant, that bragging violence, that
+recklessness of truth and justice, that disregard of right and duty, are
+a part of the nation's everyday life. Our newspapers are low and "wicked
+to a fault;" only in this weakness are they un-American. Yet they
+exhibit, and abundantly, the four qualities we have mentioned as
+belonging to the signs of our times. As a general rule, our orators are
+also American, with our good and ill. Now and then one rises who has
+studied Demosthenes in Leland or Francis, and got a second-hand
+acquaintance with old models: a man who uses literary commonplaces, and
+thinks himself original and classic because he can quote a line or so of
+Horace, in a Western House of Representatives, without getting so many
+words wrong as his reporter; but such men are rare, and after making due
+abatement for them, our orators all over the land are pretty thoroughly
+American, a little turgid, hot, sometimes brilliant, hopeful, intuitive,
+abounding in half truths, full of great ideas; often inconsequent;
+sometimes coarse; patriotic, vain, self-confident, rash, strong, and
+young-mannish. Of course the most of our speeches are vulgar, ranting,
+and worthless, but we have produced some magnificent specimens of
+oratory, which are fresh, original, American, and brand new.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The more studied, polished, and elegant literature is not so; that is
+mainly an imitation. It seems not a thing of native growth. Sometimes,
+as in Channing, the thought and the hope are American, but the form and
+the coloring old and foreign. We dare not be original; our American pine
+must be cut to the trim pattern of the English yew, though the pine
+bleed at every clip. This poet tunes his lyre at the harp of Goethe,
+Milton, Pope, or Tennyson. His songs might be better sung on the Rhine
+than the Kennebec. They are not American in form or feeling; they have
+not the breath of our air; the smell of our ground is not in them. Hence
+our poet seems cold and poor. He loves the old mythology; talks about
+Pluto&mdash;the Greek devil, the fates and furies&mdash;witches of old time in
+Greece, but would blush to use our mythology, or breathe the name in
+verse of our devil, or our own witches, lest he should be thought to
+believe what he wrote. The mother and sisters, who with many a pinch and
+pain sent the hopeful boy to college, must turn over the classical
+dictionary before they can find out what the youth would be at in his
+rhymes. Our poet is not deep enough to see that Aphrodite came from the
+ordinary waters, that Homer only hitched into rhythm and furnished the
+accomplishment of verse to street-talk, nursery tales, and old men's
+gossip in the Ionian towns; he thinks what is common is unclean. So he
+sings of Corinth and Athens, which he never saw,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> but has not a word to
+say of Boston, and Fall River, and Baltimore, and New York, which are
+just as meet for song. He raves of Thermopyl&aelig; and Marathon, with never a
+word for Lexington and Bunker-hill, for Cowpens, and Lundy's Lane, and
+Bemis's Heights. He loves to tell of the Ilyssus, of "smooth-sliding
+Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds," yet sings not of the Petapsco, the
+Susquehanna, the Aroostook, and the Willimantick. He prates of the
+narcissus and the daisy, never of American dandelions and blue-eyed
+grass; he dwells on the lark and the nightingale, but has not a thought
+for the brown thrasher and the bobolink, who every morning in June rain
+down such showers of melody on his affected head. What a lesson Burns
+teaches us, addressing his "rough bur-thistle," his daisy, "wee crimson
+tippit thing," and finding marvellous poetry in the mouse whose nest his
+plough turned over! Nay, how beautifully has even our sweet poet sung of
+our own Green river, our waterfowl, of the blue and fringed gentian, the
+glory of autumnal days.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto, spite of the great reading public, we have no permanent
+literature which corresponds to the American idea. Perhaps it is not
+time for that; it must be organized in deeds before it becomes classic
+in words; but as yet we have no such literature which reflects even the
+surface of American life, certainly nothing which portrays our intensity
+of life, our hope, or even our daily doings and drivings, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the
+Odyssey paints old Greek life, or Don Quixote and Gil Bias portray
+Spanish life. Literary men are commonly timid; ours know they are but
+poorly fledged as yet, so dare not fly away from the parent tree, but
+hop timidly from branch to branch. Our writers love to creep about in
+the shadow of some old renown, not venturing to soar away into the
+unwinged air, to sing of things here and now, making our life classic.
+So, without the grace of high culture, and the energy of American
+thought, they become weak, cold, and poor; are "curious, not knowing,
+not exact, but nice." Too fastidious to be wise, too unlettered to be
+elegant, too critical to create, they prefer a dull saying that is old
+to a novel form of speech, or a natural expression of a new truth. In a
+single American work,&mdash;and a famous one too,&mdash;there are over sixty
+similes, not one original, and all poor. A few men, conscious of this
+defect, this sin against the Holy Spirit of Literature, go to the
+opposite extreme, and are American-mad; they wilfully talk rude, write
+in-numerous verse, and play their harps all jangling, out of tune. A yet
+fewer few are American without madness. One such must not here be passed
+by, alike philosopher and bard, in whose writings "ancient wisdom shines
+with new-born beauty," and who has enriched a genius thoroughly American
+in the best sense, with a cosmopolitan culture and literary skill, which
+were wonderful in any land. But of American literature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> in general, and
+of him in special, more shall be said at another time.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another remarkable feature is our excessive love of material things.
+This is more than a Utilitarianism, a preference of the useful over the
+beautiful. The Puritan at Plymouth had a corn-field, a cabbage-garden,
+and a patch for potatoes, a school-house, and a church, before he sat
+down to play the fiddle. He would have been a fool to reverse this
+process. It were poor economy and worse taste to have painters,
+sculptors, and musicians, while the rude wants of the body are uncared
+for. But our fault in this respect is, that we place too much the charm
+of life in mere material things,&mdash;houses, lands, well-spread tables, and
+elegant furniture,&mdash;not enough in man, in virtue, wisdom, genius,
+religion, greatness of soul, and nobleness of life. We mistake a
+perfection of the means of manliness for the end&mdash;manhood itself. Yet
+the housekeeping of a Shakspeare, Milton, Franklin, had only one thing
+worth boasting of. Strange to say, that was the master of the house. A
+rich and vulgar man once sported a coach and four, and at its first
+turn-out rode into the great commercial street of a large town in New
+England. "How fine you must feel with your new coach and four," said one
+of his old friends, though not quite so rich. "Yes," was the reply, "as
+fine as a beetle in a gold snuff-box." All<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of his kindred are not so
+nice and discriminating in their self-consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>This practical materialism is a great affliction to us. We think a man
+cannot be poor and great also. So we see a great man sell himself for a
+little money, and it is thought "a good operation." A conspicuous man,
+in praise of a certain painter, summed up his judgment with this: "Why,
+Sir, he has made twenty thousand dollars by his pictures." "A good deal
+more than Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael together," might have
+been the reply. But it is easier to weigh purses than artistic skill. It
+was a characteristic praise bestowed in Boston on a distinguished
+American writer, that his book brought him more money than any man had
+ever realized for an original work in this country. "Commerce," said Mr.
+Pitt, "having got into both houses of Parliament, privilege must be done
+away,"&mdash;the privilege of wit and genius, not less than rank. Clergymen
+estimate their own and their brothers' importance, not by their
+apostolical gifts, or even apostolic succession, but by the value of the
+living.</p>
+
+<p>All other nations have this same fault, it may be said. But there is
+this difference: in other nations the things of a man are put before the
+man himself; so a materialism which exalts the accidents of the
+man&mdash;rank, wealth, birth, and the like&mdash;above the man, is not
+inconsistent with the general idea of England or Austria. In America it
+is a contradiction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> Besides, in most civilized countries, there is a
+class of men living on inherited wealth, who devote their lives to
+politics, art, science, letters, and so are above the mere material
+elegance which surrounds them. That class has often inflicted a deep
+wound on society, which festers long and leads to serious trouble in the
+system, but at the same time it redeems a nation from the reproach of
+mere material vulgarity; it has been the source of refinement, and has
+warmed into life much of the wisdom and beauty which have thence spread
+over all the world. In America there is no such class. Young men
+inheriting wealth very rarely turn to any thing noble; they either
+convert their talents into gold, or their gold into furniture, wines,
+and confectionary. A young man of wealth does not know what to do with
+himself or it; a rich young woman seems to have no resource but
+marriage! Yet it must be confessed, that at least in one part of the
+United States wealth flows freely for the support of public institutions
+of education.</p>
+
+<p>Here it is difficult for a man of science to live by his thought. Was
+Bowditch one of the first mathematicians of his age? He must be at the
+head of an annuity office. If Socrates should set up as a dealer in
+money, and outwit the brokers as formerly the Sophists, and shave notes
+as skilfully as of old, we should think him a great man. But if he
+adopted his old plan, what should we say of him?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Manliness is postponed and wealth preferred. "What a fine house is
+this," one often says; "what furniture; what feasting. But the master of
+the house!&mdash;why every stone out of the wall laughs at him. He spent all
+of himself in getting this pretty show together, and now it is empty,
+and mocks its owner. He is the emblematic coffin at the Egyptian feast."
+"Oh, man!" says the looker-on, "why not furnish thyself with a mind, and
+conscience, a heart and a soul, before getting all this brass and
+mahogany together; this beef and these wines?" The poor wight would
+answer,&mdash;"Why, Sir, there were none such in the market!"&mdash;The young man
+does not say, "I will first of all things be a man, and so being will
+have this thing and the other," putting the agreeable after the
+essential. But he says, "First of all, by hook or by crook, I will have
+money, the manhood may take care of itself." He has it,&mdash;for tough and
+hard as the old world is, it is somewhat fluid before a strong man who
+resolutely grapples with difficulty and will swim through, it can be
+made to serve his turn. He has money, but the man has evaporated in the
+process; when you look he is not there. True, other nations have done
+the same thing, and we only repeat their experiment. The old devil of
+conformity says to our American Adam and Eve, "Do this and you shall be
+as gods," a promise as likely to hold good as the devil's did in the
+beginning. A man was meant for something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> more than a tassel to a large
+estate, and a woman to be more than a rich housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>With this offensive materialism we copy the vices of feudal aristocracy
+abroad, making our vulgarity still more ridiculous. We are ambitious or
+proud of wealth, which is but labor stored up, and at the same time are
+ashamed of labor which is wealth in process. With all our talk about
+democracy, labor is thought less honorable in Boston than in Berlin and
+Leipsic. Thriving men are afraid their children will be shoemakers, or
+ply some such honorable and useful craft. Yet little pains are taken to
+elevate the condition or improve the manners and morals of those who do
+all the manual work of society. The strong man takes care that his
+children and himself escape that condition. We do not believe that all
+stations are alike honorable if honorably filled; we have little desire
+to equalize the burdens of life, so that there shall be no degraded
+class; none cursed with work, none with idleness. It is popular to endow
+a college; vulgar to take an interest in common schools. Liberty is a
+fact, equality a word, and fraternity, we do not think of yet.</p>
+
+<p>In this struggle for material wealth and the social rank which is based
+thereon, it is amusing to see the shifting of the scenes; the social
+aspirations of one and the contempt with which another rebuts the
+aspirant. An old man can remember when the most exclusive of men, and
+the most golden, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> scarce a penny in their purse, and grumbled at not
+finding a place where they would. Now the successful man is ashamed of
+the steps he rose by. The gentleman who came to Boston half a century
+ago, with all his worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief, and
+that not of so large a pattern as are made now-a-days, is ashamed to
+recollect that his father was a currier, or a blacksmith, or a skipper
+at Barnstable or Beverly; ashamed, also, of his forty or fifty country
+cousins, remarkable for nothing but their large hands and their
+excellent memory. Nay, he is ashamed of his own humble beginnings, and
+sneers at men starting as he once started. The generation of English
+"Snobs" came in with the Conqueror, and migrated to America at an early
+day, where they continue to thrive marvellously&mdash;the chief "conservative
+party" in the land.</p>
+
+<p>Through this contempt for labor, a certain affectation runs through a
+good deal of American society, and makes our aristocracy vulgar and
+contemptible. What if Burns had been ashamed of his plough, and Franklin
+had lost his recollection of the candle-moulds and the composing stick?
+Mr. Chubbs, who got rich to-day, imitates Mr. Swipes, who got rich
+yesterday, buys the same furniture, gives similar entertainments, and
+counts himself "as good a man as Swipes, any day." Nay, he goes a little
+beyond him, puts his servants in livery, with the "Chubbs arms" on the
+button; but the new-found family<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> arms are not descriptive of the
+character of the Chubbses, or of their origin and history&mdash;only of their
+vanity. Then Mr. Swipes looks down on poor Chubbs, and curls his lip
+with scorn; calls him a "parvenu," "an upstart," "a plebeian;" speaks of
+him as one of "that sort of people," "one of your ordinary men;"
+"thrifty and well off in the world, but a little vulgar." At the same
+time Mr. Swipes looks up to Mr. Bung, who got rich the day before
+yesterday, as a gentleman of old family and quite distinguished, and
+receives from that quarter the same treatment he bestows on his
+left-hand neighbor. The real gentleman is the same all the world over.
+Such are by no means lacking here, while the pretended gentlemen swarm
+in America. Chaucer said a good word long ago:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"&mdash;This is not mine intend&eacute;ment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To clepen no wight in no age<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only gentle for his line&aacute;ge;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But whoso that is virtuous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his port not outrag&eacute;ous:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When such one thou see'st thee beforn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though he be not gentle born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou mayest well see this in soth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he is gentle, because he doth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As 'longeth to a gentleman;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of them none other deem I can;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For certainly withouten drede,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A churl is deem&eacute;d by his deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of high or low, as ye may see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or of what kindred that he be."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>It is no wonder vulgar men, who travel here and eat our dinners, laugh
+at this form of vulgarity. Wiser men see its cause, and prophesy its
+speedy decay. Every nation has its aristocracy, or controlling class: in
+some lands it is permanent, an aristocracy of blood; men that are
+descended from distinguished warriors, from the pirates and freebooters
+of a rude age. The nobility of England are proud of their fathers'
+deeds, and emblazon the symbols thereof in their family arms, emblems of
+barbarism. Ours is an aristocracy of wealth, not got by plunder, but by
+toil, thrift, enterprise; of course it is a movable aristocracy: the
+first families of the last century are now forgot, and their successors
+will give place to new names. Now earning is nobler than robbing, and
+work is before war; but we are ashamed of both, and seek to conceal the
+noble source of our wealth. An aristocracy of gold is far preferable to
+the old and immovable nobility of blood, but it has also its peculiar
+vices: it has the effrontery of an upstart, despises its own ladder, is
+heartless and lacks noble principle, vulgar and cursing. This lust of
+wealth, however, does us a service, and gives the whole nation a
+stimulus which it needs, and, low as the motive is, drives us to
+continual advancement. It is a great merit for a nation to secure the
+largest amount of useful and comfortable and beautiful things which can
+be honestly earned, and used with profit to the body and soul of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> man.
+Only when wealth becomes an idol, and material abundance is made the
+end, not the means, does the love of it become an evil. No nation was
+ever too rich, or overthrifty, though many a nation has lost its soul by
+living wholly for the senses.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then we see noble men living apart from this vulgarity and
+scramble; some rich, some poor, but both content to live for noble aims,
+to pinch and spare for virtue, religion, for truth and right. Such men
+never fail from any age or land, but everywhere they are the exceptional
+men. Still they serve to keep alive the sacred fire in the hearts of
+young men, rising amid the common mob as oaks surpass the brambles or
+the fern.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In these secondary qualities of the people which mark the special signs
+of the times, there are many contradictions, quality contending with
+quality; all by no means balanced into harmonious relations. Here are
+great faults not less than great virtues. Can the national faults be
+corrected? Most certainly; they are but accidental, coming from our
+circumstances, our history, our position as a people&mdash;heterogeneous,
+new, and placed on a new and untamed continent. They come not from the
+nation's soul; they do not belong to our fundamental idea, but are
+hostile to it. One day our impatience of authority, our philosophical
+tendency, will lead us to a right method, that to fixed principles, and
+then we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> shall have a continuity of national action. Considering the
+pains taken by the fathers of the better portion of America to promote
+religion here, remembering how dear is Christianity to the heart of all,
+conservative and radical&mdash;though men often name as Christian what is
+not&mdash;and seeing how truth and right are sure to win at last,&mdash;it becomes
+pretty plain that we shall arrive at true principles, laws of the
+universe, ideas of God; then we shall be in unison also with it and Him.
+When that great defect&mdash;lack of first principles&mdash;is corrected, our
+intensity of life, with the hope and confidence it inspires, will do a
+great work for us. We have already secured an abundance of material
+comforts hitherto unknown; no land was ever so full of corn and cattle,
+clothing, comfortable houses, and all things needed for the flesh. The
+desire of those things, even the excessive desire thereof, performs an
+important part in the divine economy of the human race; nowhere is its
+good effect more conspicuous than in America, where in two generations
+the wild Irishman becomes a decent citizen, orderly, temperate, and
+intelligent. This done or even a-doing, as it is now, we shall go forth
+to realize our great national idea, and accomplish the great work of
+organizing into institutions the unalienable rights of man. The great
+obstacle in the way of that is African slavery&mdash;the great exception in
+the nation's history; the national sin. When that is removed, as soon it
+must be, lesser but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> kindred evils will easily be done away; the truth
+which the land-reformers, which the associationists, the free-traders,
+and others, have seen, dimly or clearly, can readily be carried out. But
+while this monster vice continues, there is little hope of any great and
+permanent national reform. The positive things which we chiefly need for
+this work, are first, education, next, education, and then education, a
+vigorous development of the mind, conscience, affections, religious
+power of the whole nation. The method and the means for that I shall not
+now discuss.</p>
+
+<p>The organization of human rights, the performance of human duties, is an
+unlimited work. If there shall ever be a time when it is all done, then
+the race will have finished its course. Shall the American nation go on
+in this work, or pause, turn off, fall, and perish? To me it seems
+almost treason to doubt that a glorious future awaits us. Young as we
+are, and wicked, we have yet done something which the world will not let
+perish. One day we shall attend more emphatically to the rights of the
+hand, and organize labor and skill; then to the rights of the head,
+looking after education, science, literature, and art; and again to the
+rights of the heart, building up the State with its laws, society with
+its families, the church with its goodness and piety. One day we shall
+see that it is a shame, and a loss, and a wrong, to have a criminal, or
+an ignorant man, or a pauper, or an idler, in the land; that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> jail,
+and the gallows, and the almshouse are a reproach which need not be. Out
+of new sentiments and ideas, not seen as yet, new forms of society will
+come, free from the antagonism of races, classes, men&mdash;representing the
+American idea in its length, breadth, depth, and height, its beauty and
+its truth, and then the old civilization of our time shall seem
+barbarous and even savage. There will be an American art commensurate
+with our idea and akin to this great continent; not an imitation, but a
+fresh, new growth. An American literature also must come with democratic
+freedom, democratic thought, democratic power&mdash;for we are not always to
+be pensioners of other lands, doing nothing but import and quote; a
+literature with all of German philosophic depth, with English solid
+sense, with French vivacity and wit, Italian fire of sentiment and soul,
+with all of Grecian elegance of form, and more than Hebrew piety and
+faith in God. We must not look for the maiden's ringlets on the baby's
+brow; we are yet but a girl; the nameless grace of maturity, and
+womanhood's majestic charm, are still to come. At length we must have a
+system of education, which shall uplift the humblest, rudest, worst born
+child in all the land; which shall bring forth and bring up noble men.</p>
+
+<p>An American State is a thing that must also be; a State of free men who
+give over brawling, resting on industry, justice, love, not on war,
+cunning, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> violence,&mdash;a State where liberty, equality, and fraternity
+are deeds as well as words. In its time the American Church must also
+appear, with liberty, holiness, and love for its watchwords, cultivating
+reason, conscience, affection, faith, and leading the world's way in
+justice, peace, and love. The Roman Church has been all men know what
+and how; the American Church, with freedom for the mind, freedom for the
+heart, freedom for the soul, is yet to be, sundering no chord of the
+human harp, but tuning all to harmony. This also must come; but hitherto
+no one has risen with genius fit to plan its holy walls, conceive its
+columns, project its towers, or lay its corner-stone. Is it too much to
+hope all this? Look at the arena before us&mdash;look at our past history.
+Hark! there is the sound of many million men, the trampling of their
+freeborn feet, the murmuring of their voice; a nation born of this land
+that God reserved so long a virgin earth, in a high day married to the
+human race,&mdash;rising, and swelling, and rolling on, strong and certain as
+the Atlantic tide; they come numerous as ocean waves when east winds
+blow, their destination commensurate with the continent, with ideas vast
+as the Mississippi, strong as the Alleghanies, and awful as Niagara;
+they come murmuring little of the past, but, moving in the brightness of
+their great idea, and casting its light far on to other lands and
+distant days&mdash;come to the world's great work, to organize the rights of
+man.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. DELIVERED AT
+THE MELODEON, IN BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1848.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Within a few days one of the most distinguished statesmen of the age has
+passed away; a man who has long been before the public, familiarly known
+in the new world and the old. He was one of the prominent monuments of
+the age. It becomes us to look at his life, works, and public character,
+with an impartial eye; to try him by the Christian standard. Let me
+extenuate nothing, add nothing, and set down nought from any partial
+love or partial hate. His individuality has been so marked in a long
+life, his good and evil so sharply defined, that one can scarcely fail
+to delineate its most important features.</p>
+
+<p>God has made some men great and others little. The use of great men is
+to serve the little men; to take care of the human race, and act as
+practical interpreters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> of justice and truth. This is not the Hebrew
+rule, nor the heathen, nor the common rule, only the Christian. The
+great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him. Perhaps
+greatness is always the same thing in kind, differing only in mode and
+in form, as well as degree. The great man has more of human nature than
+other men, organized in him. So far as that goes, therefore, he is more
+me than I am myself. We feel that superiority in all our intercourse
+with great men, whether kings, philosophers, poets, or saints. In kind
+we are the same; different in degree.</p>
+
+<p>In nature we find individuals, not orders and genera; but for our own
+convenience in understanding and recollecting, we do a little violence
+to nature, and put the individuals into classes. In this way we
+understand better both the whole and each of its parts. Human nature
+furnishes us with individual great men; for convenience we put them into
+several classes, corresponding to their several modes or forms of
+greatness. It is well to look at these classes before we examine any one
+great man; this will render it easier to see where he belongs and what
+he is worth. Actual service is the test of actual greatness; he who
+renders, of himself, the greatest actual service to mankind, is actually
+the greatest man. There may be other tests for determining the potential
+greatness of men, or the essential; this is the Christian rule for
+determining the actual greatness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> Let us arrange these men in the
+natural order of their work.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, there are great men who discover general truths, great
+ideas, universal laws, or invent methods of thought and action. In this
+class the vastness of a man's genius may be measured, and his relative
+rank ascertained by the transcendency of his ideas, by the newness of
+his truth, by its practical value, and the difficulty of attaining it in
+his time, and under his peculiar circumstances. In literature it is such
+men who originate thoughts, and put them into original forms; they are
+the great men of letters. In philosophy we meet with such; and they are
+the great men of science. Thus Socrates discovered the philosophical
+method of minute analysis that distinguished his school, and led to the
+rapid advance of knowledge in the various and even conflicting
+academies, which held this method in common, but applied it in various
+ways, well or ill, and to various departments of human inquiry; thus
+Newton discovered the law of gravitation, universal in nature, and by
+the discovery did immense service to mankind. In politics we find
+similar, or analogous men, who discover yet other laws of God, which
+bear the same relation to men in society that gravitation bears to the
+orbs in heaven, or to the dust and stones in the street; men that
+discover the first truths of politics, and teach the true method of
+human society. Such are the great men in politics.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We find corresponding men in religion; men who discover an idea so
+central that all sectarianism of parties or of nations seems little in
+its light; who discover and teach the universal law which unifies the
+race, binding man to man, and men to God; who discover the true method
+of religion conducting to natural worship without limitation, to free
+piety, free goodness, free thought. To my mind such are the greatest of
+great men, when measured by the transcendency of their doctrine and the
+service they render to all. By the influence of their idea, letters,
+philosophy, and politics become nobler and more beautiful, both in their
+forms and their substance.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the class of discoverers; men who get truth at first hand, truth
+pertaining either especially to literature, philosophy, politics,
+religion, or at the same time to each and all of them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The next class consists of such as organize these ideas, methods,
+truths, and laws; they concretize the abstract, particularize the
+general; they apply philosophy to practical purposes, organizing the
+discoveries of science into a railroad, a mill, a steam-ship, and by
+their work an idea becomes fact. They organize love into families,
+justice into a state, piety into a church. Wealth is power, knowledge is
+power, religion power; they organize all these powers, wealth,
+knowledge, religion, into common life, making divinity humanity, and
+that society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This organizing genius is a very great one, and appears in various
+forms. One man spreads his thought out on the soil, whitening the land
+with bread-corn; another applies his mind to the rivers of New England,
+making them spin and weave for the human race; this man will organize
+his thought into a machine with one idea, joining together fire and
+water, iron and wood, animating them into a new creature, ready to do
+man's bidding; while that with audacious hand steals the lightning of
+heaven, organizes his plastic thought within that pliant fire, and sends
+it of his errands to fetch and carry tidings between the ends of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>Another form of this mode of greatness is seen in politics, in
+organizing men. The man spreads his thought out on mankind, puts men
+into true relations with one another and with God; he organizes
+strength, wisdom, justice, love, piety; balances the conflicting forces
+of a nation, so that each man has his natural liberty as complete as if
+the only man, yet, living in society, gathers advantages from all the
+rest. The highest degree of this organizing power is the genius for
+legislation, which can enact justice and eternal right into treaties and
+statutes, codifying the divine thought into human laws, making absolute
+religion common life and daily custom, and balancing the centripetal
+power of the mass, with the centrifugal power of the individual, into a
+well-proportioned state, as God has balanced these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> two conflicting
+forces into the rhythmic ellipses above our heads. It need not be
+disguised, that politics are the highest business for men of this class,
+nor that a great statesman or legislator is the greatest example of
+constructive skill. It requires some ability to manage the brute forces
+of Nature, or to combine profitably nine-and-thirty clerks in a shop;
+how much more to arrange twenty millions of intelligent, free men, not
+for a special purpose, but for all the ends of universal life!</p>
+
+<p>Such is the second class of great men; the organizers, men of
+constructive heads, who form the institutions of the world, the little
+and the great.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The next class consists of men who administer the institutions after
+they are founded. To do this effectually and even eminently, it requires
+no genius for original organization of truths freshly discovered, none
+for the discovery of truths, outright. It requires only a perception of
+those truths, and an acquaintance with the institutions wherein they
+have become incarnate; a knowledge of details, of formulas, and
+practical methods, united with a strong will and a practised
+understanding,&mdash;what is called a turn for affairs, tact, or address; a
+knowledge of routine and an acquaintance with men. The success of such
+men will depend on these qualities; they "know the ropes" and the
+soundings, the signs of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> the times; can take advantage of the winds and
+the tides.</p>
+
+<p>In a shop, farm, ship, factory, or army, in a church or a State, such
+men are valuable; they cannot be dispensed with; they are wheels to the
+carriage; without them cannot a city be inhabited. They are always more
+numerous than both the other classes; more such are needed, and
+therefore born. The American mind, just now, runs eminently in this
+direction. These are not men of theories, or of new modes of thought or
+action, but what are called practical men, men of a few good rules, men
+of facts and figures, not so full of ideas as of precedents. They are
+called common-sense men; not having too much common-sense to be
+understood. They are not likely to be fallen in with far off at sea;
+quite as seldom out of their reckoning in ordinary weather. Such men are
+excellent statesmen in common times, but in times of trouble, when old
+precedents will not suit the new case, and men must be guided by the
+nature of man, not his history, they are not strong enough for the
+place, and get pushed off by more constructive heads.</p>
+
+<p>These men are the administrators, or managers. If they have a little
+less of practical sense, such men fall a little below, and turn out only
+critics, of whom I will not now stop to discourse.</p>
+
+<p>To have a railroad, there must have been first the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> discoverers, who
+found out the properties of wood and iron, fire and water, and their
+latent power to carry men over the earth; next, the organizers, who put
+these elements together, surveyed the route, planned the structure, set
+men to grade the hill, to fill the valley, and pave the road with iron
+bars; and then the administrators, who, after all that is done, procure
+the engines, engineers, conductors, ticket-distributors, and the rest of
+the "hands;" they buy the coal and see it is not wasted, fix the rates
+of fare, calculate the savings, and distribute the dividends. The
+discoverers and organizers often fare hard in the world, lean men, ill
+clad and suspected, often laughed at, while the administrator is thought
+the greater man, because he rides over their graves and pays the
+dividends, where the organizer only called for the assessments, and the
+discoverer told what men called a dream. What happens in a railroad
+happens also in a Church, or a State.</p>
+
+<p>Let us for a moment compare these three classes of great men. Measured
+by the test referred to, the discoverers are the greatest of all. They
+anticipate the human race, with long steps, striding before their kind.
+They learn not only from the history of man, but man's nature; not by
+empirical experience alone, but by a transcendent intuition of truth,
+now seen as a law, now as an idea. They are wiser than experience, and
+by divination through their nobler nature know at once what the human
+race has not learned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> in its thousands of years, kindling their lamp at
+the central fire now streaming from the sky, now rushing broad-sheeted
+and terrible as ground-lightning from the earth. Of such men there are
+but few, especially in the highest mode of this greatness. A single One
+makes a new world, and men date ages after him.</p>
+
+<p>Next in order of greatness comes the organizer. He, also, must have
+great intellect, and character. It is no light work to make thoughts
+things. It requires mind to make a mill out of a river, bricks, iron,
+and stone, and set all the Connecticut to spinning cotton. But to
+construct a State, to harness fittingly twenty million men, animated by
+such divergent motives, possessing interests so unlike&mdash;this is the
+greatest work of constructive skill. To translate the ideas of the
+discoverer into institutions, to yoke men together by mere
+"abstractions," universal laws, and by such yoking save the liberty of
+all and secure the welfare of each&mdash;that is the most creative of poetry,
+the most constructive of sciences. In modern times, it is said, Napoleon
+is the greatest example of this faculty; not a discoverer, but an
+organizer of the highest power and on the largest scale. In human
+history he seems to have had no superior, perhaps no equal.</p>
+
+<p>Some callings in life afford little opportunity to develop the great
+qualities above alluded to. How much genius lies latent no man can know;
+but he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> that walks familiarly with humble men often stumbles over masses
+of unsunned gold, where men proud in emptiness, looked only for common
+dust. How many a Milton sits mute and inglorious in his shop; how many a
+Cromwell rears only corn and oxen for the world's use, no man can know.
+Some callings help to light, some hide and hinder. But there is none
+which demands more ability than politics; they develop greatness, if the
+man have the germ thereof within him. True, in politics, a man may get
+along with a very little ability, without being a discoverer or an
+organizer; were it otherwise we should not be blessed with a very large
+House, or a crowded Senate. Nay, experience shows that in ordinary times
+one not even a great administrator may creep up to a high place and hang
+on there awhile. Few able administrators sit on the thrones of Europe at
+this day. But if power be in the man, the hand of politics will draw out
+the spark.</p>
+
+<p>In America, politics more than elsewhere demand greatness, for ours is,
+in theory, the government of all, for all, and by all. It requires
+greater range of thought to discover the law for all than for a few;
+after the discovery thereof it is more difficult to construct a
+democracy than a monarchy, or an aristocracy, and after that is
+organized, it is more difficult to administer. It requires more manhood
+to wield at will "the fierce democratie" of America than to rule England
+or France; yet the American institutions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> are germane to human nature,
+and by that fact are rendered more easy, complicated as they are.</p>
+
+<p>In politics, when the institutions are established, men often think
+there is no room for discoverers and organizers; that administrators
+alone are needed, and choose accordingly. But there are ideas well
+known, not yet organized into institutions: that of free trade, of
+peace, of universal freedom, universal education, universal comfort, in
+a word, the idea of human brotherhood. These wait to be constructed into
+a State without injustice, without war, without slavery, ignorance, or
+want. It is hardly true that Infinity is dry of truths, unseen as yet;
+there are truths enough waiting to be discovered; all the space betwixt
+us and God is full of ideas, waiting for some Columbus to disclose new
+worlds. Men are always saying there is no new thing under the sun, but
+when the discoverer comes, they see their mistake. We want the new eye.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Now, it is quite plain where we are to place the distinguished person of
+whom I speak. Mr. Adams was not a discoverer; not an organizer. He added
+no truth to mankind, not known before, and even well known; he made no
+known truth a fact. He was an administrator of political institutions.
+Taking the whole land into consideration, comparing him with his
+competitors, measuring him by his apparent works, at first sight he does
+not seem very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> highly eminent in this class of political administrators.
+Nay, some would set him down, not an administrator so much as a
+political critic.</p>
+
+<p>Here there is danger of doing him injustice, by neglecting a fact so
+obvious, that it is seldom seen. Mr. Adams was a northern man, with
+northern habits, methods, and opinions. By the North, I mean the free
+States. The chief business of the North is to get empire over nature;
+all tends to that. Young men of talents become merchants,
+merchant-manufacturers, merchant-traders. The object directly aimed at,
+is wealth; not wealth by plunder, but by productive work. Now, to get
+dominion over nature, there must be education, universal education,
+otherwise there is not enough intelligent industry, which alone insures
+that dominion. With widespread intelligence, property will be widely
+distributed, and, of course, suffrage and civil power will get
+distributed. All is incomplete without religion. I deny not that these
+peculiarities of the North, come, also, from other sources, but they all
+are necessary to attain the chief object thereof&mdash;dominion over the
+material world. The North subdues nature by thought, and holds her
+powers in thrall. As results of this, see the increase in wealth which
+is signified by northern railroads, ships, mills, and shops; in the
+colleges, schools, churches, which arise; see the skill developed in
+this struggle with nature, the great enterprises which come of that,
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> movements of commerce, manufactures, the efforts&mdash;and successful,
+too&mdash;for the promotion of education, of religion. All is democratic, and
+becomes more so continually, each descendant founding institutions more
+liberal than those of the parent State. Men designedly, and, as their
+business, become merchants, mechanics, and the like; they are
+politicians by exception, by accident, from the necessity of the case.
+Few northern men are politicians by profession; they commonly think it
+better to be a collector or a postmaster, than a Senator, estimating
+place by money, not power. Northern politicians are bred as lawyers,
+clergymen, mechanics, farmers, merchants. Political life is an accident,
+not an end.</p>
+
+<p>In the South, the aim is to get dominion over men; so, the whole working
+population must be in subjection, in slavery. While the North makes
+brute nature half intelligent, the South makes human nature half brutal,
+the man becoming a thing. Talent tends to politics, not trade. Young men
+of ability go to the army or navy, to the public offices, to diplomatic
+posts, in a word, to politics. They learn to manage men. To do this,
+they not only learn what men think, but why they think it. The young man
+of the North seeks a fortune; of the South, a reputation and political
+power. The politician of the South makes politics the study and work of
+his whole life; all else is accidental and subordinate. He begins low,
+but ends high; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> mingles with men; has bland and agreeable manners; is
+frank, honorable, manly, and knows how to persuade.</p>
+
+<p>See the different results of causes so unlike. The North manages the
+commercial affairs of the land, the ships, mills, farms, and shops; the
+spiritual affairs, literature, science, morals, education,
+religion;&mdash;writes, calculates, instructs, and preaches. But the South
+manages the political affairs, and has free-trade or tariff, war or
+peace, just as she will. Of the eight Presidents who were elected in
+fifty years, only three were northern men. Each of them has retired from
+office, at the end of a single term, in possession of a fortune, but
+with little political influence. Each of the five southern Presidents
+has been twice elected; only one of them was rich. There is no accident
+in all this. The State of Rhode Island has men that can administer the
+Connecticut or the Mississippi; that can organize Niagara into a cotton
+factory; yes, that can get dominion over the ocean and the land: but the
+State of South Carolina has men that can manage the Congress, can rule
+the North and South, and make the nation do their bidding.</p>
+
+<p>So the South succeeds in politics, but grows poor, and the North fails
+in politics, but thrives in commerce and the arts. There great men turn
+to politics, here to trade. It is so in time of peace, but, in the day
+of trouble, of storms, of revolution like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> old one, men of tall
+heads will come up from the ships and the shops, the farms and the
+colleges of the North, born discoverers and organizers, the aristocracy
+of God, and sit down in the nation's councils to control the State. The
+North made the revolution, furnished the men, the money, the ideas, and
+the occasion for putting them into form. At the making of the
+Constitution, the South out-talked the North; put in such claims as it
+saw fitting, making the best bargain it could, violating the ideas of
+the Revolution, and getting the North, not only to consent to slavery,
+but to allow it to be represented in Congress itself. Now, the South
+breaks the Constitution just when it will, puts northern sailors in its
+jails, and the North dares not complain, but bears it "with a patient
+shrug." An eastern merchant is great on a southern exchange, makes
+cotton rise or fall, but no northern politician has much weight at the
+South, none has ever been twice elected President. The North thinks it
+is a great thing to get an inoffensive northern man as Speaker, in the
+House of Representatives. The South is an aristocracy, which the
+democracy of the North would not tolerate a year, were it at the North
+itself. Now it rules the land, has the northern masses, democrats and
+whigs, completely under its thumb. Does the South say, "Go," they
+hasten; "Come," they say "Here we are;" "Do this," they obey in a
+moment; "Whist," there is not a mouse stirring in all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> North. Does
+the South say "Annex," it is done; "Fight," men of the North put on the
+collar, lie lies, issue their proclamations, enroll their soldiers, and
+declare it is moral treason for the most insignificant clergyman to
+preach against the war.</p>
+
+<p>All this needs to be remembered in judging of Mr. Adams. True he was
+regularly bred to politics, and "to the manor born;" but he was a New
+England man, with northern notions, northern habits, and though more
+than fifty years in public life, yet he seems to have sought the object
+of New England far more than the object of the South. Measure his
+greatness by his service; but that is not to be measured by immediate
+and apparent success.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In a notice so brief as this, I can say but little of the details of Mr.
+Adams's life, and purposely pass over many things, dwelling mainly on
+such as are significant of his character. He was born at Quincy, the
+11th of July, 1767; in 1777 he went to Europe with his father, then
+Minister to France. He remained in Europe most of the time, his powers
+developing with rapidity and promise of future greatness, till 1785,
+when he returned and entered the junior class in Harvard College. In
+1787, he graduated with distinguished honors. He studied law at
+Newburyport, with Judge Parsons, till 1790, and was a lawyer in Boston,
+till 1794.</p>
+
+<p>That may be called the period of his education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> He enjoyed the
+advantages of a residence abroad, which enabled him to acquire a
+knowledge of foreign languages, modes of life, and habits of thought.
+His father's position brought the son in contact with the ablest men of
+the age. He was Secretary of the American minister to Russia at the age
+of fourteen. He early became acquainted with Franklin and Jefferson, men
+who had a powerful influence on his youthful mind. For three years he
+was a student with Judge Parsons, a very remarkable man. These years,
+from 1767 to 1794, form a period marked by intense mental activity in
+America and in Europe. The greatest subjects which claim human
+attention, the laws that lie at the foundation of society, the State,
+the church, and the family, were discussed as never before. Mr. Adams
+drew in liberty and religion from his mother's breast. His cradle rocked
+with the Revolution. When eight years old, from a hill-top hard by his
+house he saw the smoke of Charlestown, burning at the command of the
+oppressor. The lullaby of his childhood was the roar of cannon at
+Lexington and Bunker Hill. He was born in the gathering of the storm, of
+a family that felt the blast, but never bent thereto; he grew up in its
+tumult. Circumstances like these make their mark on the character.</p>
+
+<p>His attention was early turned to the most important matters. In 1793,
+he wrote several papers in the "Centinel," at Boston, on neutral rights,
+advising<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> the American government to remain neutral in the quarrel
+between France, our ally, and others; the papers attracted the attention
+of Washington, who appointed the author Minister to Holland. He remained
+abroad in various diplomatic services in that country, in Russia and
+England, till 1801, when he was recalled by his father, and returned
+home. It was an important circumstance, that he was abroad during that
+time when the nation divided into two great parties. He was not called
+on to take sides with either; he had a vantage ground whence he could
+overlook both, approve their good and shun their evil. The effect of
+this is abundantly evident in all his life. He was not dyed in the wool
+by either political party,&mdash;the moral sense of the man drowned in the
+process of becoming a federalist or a democrat.</p>
+
+<p>In 1802, he was elected to the Senate of Massachusetts, yet not wholly
+by the votes of one party. In 1803, he was chosen to the Senate of the
+United States. In the Massachusetts Legislature he was not a strict
+party man; he was not elected to the Senate by a strictly party vote. In
+1806, he was inaugurated as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
+University, and continued in that office about three years. In 1808, he
+resigned his place in the Senate. In 1809, he was sent by Mr. Madison as
+Minister to Russia, and remained abroad in various ministries and
+commissions, till 1817, when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> returned, and became Secretary of State
+under Mr. Monroe. This office he filled till he became President, in
+1825. In 1829, failing of re&euml;lection, he retired to private life. In
+1831, he was elected as one of the Representatives to Congress from
+Massachusetts, and continued there till his death, the first President
+that ever sat in an American Congress.</p>
+
+<p>It will be fifty-four years the thirtieth of next May, since he began
+his public career. What did he aim at in that long period? At first
+sight, it is easy to see the aim of some of the conspicuous men of
+America. It has obviously been the aim of Mr. Clay to build up the
+"American System," by the establishment of protective duties; that of
+Mr. Calhoun to establish free trade, leaving a man to buy where he can
+buy cheapest, and sell where he can sell dearest. In respect to these
+matters the two are exactly opposite to one another&mdash;antithetic as the
+poles. But each has also, and obviously, another aim,&mdash;to build up the
+institution of slavery in the South. In this they agree, and if I
+understand them aright, this is the most important political design of
+each; for which Mr. Calhoun would forego even free trade, and Mr. Clay
+would "compromise" even a tariff. Looked at in reference to their aims,
+there is a certain continuity of action in both these gentlemen. I speak
+not now of another object which both have equally and obviously aimed
+at; not of the personal, but the political object.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At first sight, it does not appear that Mr. Adams had any definite
+scheme of measures which he aimed to establish; there is no obvious
+unity of idea, or continuity of action, that forces itself upon the
+spectator. He does not seem to have studied the two great subjects of
+our political economy, finance and trade, very deeply, or even with any
+considerable width of observation or inquiry; he had no financial or
+commercial hobby. He has worked with every party, and against every
+party; all have claimed, none held him. Now he sides with the
+federalists, then with the democrats; now he opposes France, showing
+that her policy is that of pirates; now he contends against England; now
+he works in favor of General Jackson, who put down the nullification of
+South Carolina with a rough hand; then he opposes the general in his
+action against the Bank; now he contends for the Indians, then for the
+Negroes; now attacks Masonry, and then Free trade. He speaks in favor of
+claiming and holding "the whole of Oregon;" then against annexing Texas.</p>
+
+<p>But there is one sentiment which runs through all his life: an intense
+love of freedom for all men; one idea, the idea that each man has
+unalienable rights. These are what may be called the American sentiment,
+and the American idea; for they lie at the basis of American
+institutions, except the "patriarchal," and shine out in all our
+history&mdash;I should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> say, our early history. These two form the golden
+thread on which Mr. Adams's jewels are strung. Love of human freedom in
+its widest sense is the most marked and prominent thing in his
+character. This explains most of his actions. Studied with this in mind,
+his life is pretty consistent. This explains his love of the
+Constitution. He early saw the peculiarity of the American government;
+that it rested in theory on the natural rights of man, not on a compact,
+not on tradition, but on somewhat anterior to both, on the unalienable
+rights universal in man, and equal in each. He looked on the American
+Constitution as an attempt to organize these rights; resting, therefore,
+not on force, but natural law; not on power, but right. But with him the
+Constitution was not an idol; it was a means, not an end. He did more
+than expound it; he went back of the Constitution, to the Declaration of
+Independence, for the ideas of the Constitution; yes, back of the
+Declaration to Human Nature and the Laws of God, to legitimate these
+ideas. The Constitution is a compromise between those ideas and
+institutions and prejudices existing when it was made; not an idol, but
+a servant. He saw that the Constitution is "not the work of eternal
+justice, ruling through the people," but the work "of man; frail,
+fallen, imperfect man, following the dictates of his nature, and
+aspiring to be perfect."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Though a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> "constitutionalist," he did not
+worship the Constitution. He was much more than a "defender of the
+Constitution,"&mdash;a defender of Human Rights.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Adams had this American sentiment and idea in an heroic degree.
+Perhaps no political man now living has expressed them so fully. With a
+man like him, not very genial or creative, having no great constructive
+skill, and not without a certain pugnacity in his character, this
+sentiment and idea would naturally develop themselves in a negative
+form, that of opposition to Wrong, more often than in the positive form
+of direct organization of the Right; would lead to criticism oftener
+than to creation. Especially would this be the case if other men were
+building up institutions in opposition to this idea. In him they
+actually take the form of what he called "The unalienable right of
+resistance to oppression." His life furnishes abundant instances of
+this. He thought the Indians were unjustly treated, cried out against
+the wrong; when President, endeavored to secure justice to the Creeks in
+Georgia, and got into collision with Governor Troup. He saw, or thought
+he saw, that England opposed the American idea, both in the new world
+and the old. In his zeal for freedom he sometimes forgot the great
+services of England in that same cause, and hated England, hated her
+with great intensity of hatred, hated her political policy, her
+monarchy, and her aristocracy, mocked at the madness of her king, for he
+thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> England stood in the way of freedom.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> Yet he loved the
+English name and the English blood, was "proud of being himself
+descended from that stock," thinking it worth noting, "that Chatham's
+language was his mother tongue, and Wolfe's great name compatriot with
+his own." He confessed no nation had done more for the cause of human
+improvement. He loved the Common Law of England, putting it far above
+the Roman Law, perhaps not without doing a little injustice to the
+latter.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The common law was a rude and barbarous code. But human
+liberty was there; a trial by jury was there; the habeas corpus was
+there. It was the law of men "regardful of human rights."</p>
+
+<p>This sentiment led him to defend the right of petition in the House of
+Representatives, as no other man had dared to do. He cared not whether
+it was the petition of a majority, or a minority; of men or women, free
+men or slaves. It might be a petition to remove him from a committee, to
+expel him from the House, a petition to dissolve the Union&mdash;he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+presented it none the less. To him there was but one nature in all, man
+or woman, bond or free, and that was human nature, the most sacred thing
+on earth. Each human child had unalienable rights, and though that child
+was a beggar or slave, had rights, which all the power in the world,
+bent into a single arm, could not destroy nor abate, though it might
+ravish away. This induced him to attempt to procure the right of
+suffrage for the colored citizens of the District of Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>This sentiment led him to oppose tyranny in the House of
+Representatives, the tyranny of the majority. In one of his juvenile
+essays, published in 1791, contending against a highly popular work, he
+opposed the theory that a State has the right to do what it pleases,
+declaring it had no right to do wrong.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> In his old age he had not
+again to encounter the empty hypothesis of Thomas Paine, but the
+substantial enactment of the "Representatives" of the people of the
+United States. The hypothesis was trying to become a fact. The South had
+passed the infamous Gag-Law, which a symbolical man from New Hampshire
+had presented, though it originated with others.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> By that law the
+mouth of the North<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> was completely stopped in Congress, so that not one
+word could be said about the matter of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>The North was quite willing to have it stopped, for it did not care to
+speak against slavery, and the gag did not stop the mouth of the
+Northern purse. You may take away from the North its honor, if you can
+find it; may take away its rights; may imprison its free citizens in the
+jails of Louisiana and the Carolinas; yes, may invade the "Sacred soil
+of the North," and kidnap a man out of Boston itself, within sight of
+Faneuil Hall, and the North will not complain; will bear it with that
+patient shrug, waiting for yet further indignities. Only when the
+Northern purse is touched, is there an uproar. If the postmaster demands
+silver for letters, there is instant alarm; the repeal of a tariff
+rouses the feelings, and an embargo once drove the indignant North to
+the perilous edge of rebellion! Mr. Adams loved his dollars as well as
+most New England men; he looked out for their income as well; guarded as
+carefully against their outgo; though conscientiously upright in all his
+dealings, kind and hospitable, he has never been proved generous, and
+generosity is the commonest virtue of the North; is said to have been
+"close," if not mean. He loved his dollars as well as most men, but he
+loved justice more; honor more; freedom more; the Unalienable Rights of
+man far more.</p>
+
+<p>He looked on the Constitution as an instrument for the defence of the
+Rights of man. The government<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> was to act as the people had told how.
+The Federal government was not sovereign; the State government was not
+sovereign;<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> neither was a court of ultimate appeal;&mdash;but the People
+was sovereign; had the right of Eminent Domain over Congress and the
+Constitution, and making that, had set limits to the government. He
+guarded therefore against all violation of the Constitution, as a wrong
+done to the people; he would not overstep its limits in a bad cause; not
+even in a good one. Did Mr. Jefferson obtain Louisiana by a confessed
+violation of the Constitution, Mr. Adams would oppose the purchase of
+Louisiana, and was one of the six senators who voted against it. Making
+laws for that Territory, he wished to extend the trial by jury to all
+criminal prosecutions, while the law limited that form of trial to
+capital offences. Before that Territory had a representative in
+Congress, the American government wished to collect a revenue there. Mr.
+Adams opposed that too. It was "assuming a dangerous power;" it was
+government without the consent of the governed, and therefore an unjust
+government. "All exercise of human authority must be under the
+limitation of right and wrong." All other power is despotic, and "in
+defiance of the laws of nature and of God."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>This love of freedom led him to hate and oppose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> the tyranny of the
+strong over the weak, to hate it most in its worst form; to hate
+American Slavery, doubtless the most infamous form of that tyranny now
+known amongst the nations of Christendom, and perhaps the most
+disgraceful thing on earth. Mr. Adams called slavery a vessel of
+dishonor so base that it could not be named in the Constitution with
+decency. In 1805, he wished to lay a duty on the importation of slaves,
+and was one of five senators who voted to that effect. He saw the power
+of this institution&mdash;the power of money and the power of votes which it
+gives to a few men. He saw how dangerous it was to the Union; to
+American liberty, to the cause of man. He saw that it trod three
+millions of men down to the dust, counting souls but as cattle. He hated
+nothing as he hated this; fought against nothing so manfully. It was the
+lion in the pathway of freedom, which frightened almost all the
+politicians of the North and the East and the West, so that they forsook
+that path; a lion whose roar could wellnigh silence the forum and the
+bar, the pulpit and the press; a lion who rent the Constitution,
+trampled under foot the Declaration of Independence, and tore the Bible
+to pieces. Mr. Adams was ready to rouse up this lion, and then to beard
+him in his den. Hating slavery, of course he opposed whatever went to
+strengthen its power; opposed Mr. Atherton's Gag-law; opposed the
+annexation of Texas; opposed the Mexican war; and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> wonderful to tell,
+actually voted against it, and never took back his vote.</p>
+
+<p>When Secretary of State, this same feeling led him to oppose conceding
+to the British the right of searching American vessels supposed to be
+concerned in the slave-trade, and when Representative to oppose the
+repeal of the law giving "protection" to American sailors. It appeared
+also in private intercourse with men. No matter what was a man's
+condition, Mr. Adams treated him as an equal.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>This devotion to freedom and the unalienable rights of man, was the most
+important work of his life. Compared with some other political men, he
+seems inconsistent, because he now opposes one evil, then its opposite
+evil. But his general course is in this direction, and, when viewed in
+respect to this idea, seems more consistent than that of Mr. Webster, or
+Calhoun, or Clay, when measured by any great principle. This appears in
+his earlier life. In 1802, he became a member of the Massachusetts
+Senate. The majority of the General Court were federalists. It was a
+time of intense political excitement, the second year of Mr. Jefferson's
+administration. The custom is well known&mdash;to take the whole of the
+Governor's Council from the party which has a majority in the General
+Court. On the 27th of May, 1802, Mr. Adams stood up for the rights of
+the minority. He wanted some anti-federalists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> in the Council of
+Governor Strong, and as Senator threw his first vote to secure that
+object. Such was the first legislative action of John Quincy Adams. In
+the House of Representatives, in 1831, the first thing he did was to
+present fifteen petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District
+of Columbia, though, from constitutional scruples, opposed to granting
+the petitions. The last public act of his life was this:&mdash;The question
+was before the House on giving medals to the men distinguished in the
+Mexican war; the minority opposing it wanted more time for debate; the
+previous question was moved, Mr. Adams voted for the last time,&mdash;voted
+"No," with unusual emphasis; the great loud No of a man going home to
+God full of "The unalienable right of resistance to oppression," its
+emphatic word on his dying lips. There were the beginning, the middle,
+and the end, all three in the same spirit, all in favor of mankind; a
+remarkable unity of action in his political drama.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody once asked him, What are the recognized principles of politics?
+Mr. Adams answered that there were none: the recognized precepts are bad
+ones, and so not principles. But, continued the inquirer, is not this a
+good one&mdash;To seek "The greatest good of the greatest number?" No, said
+he, that is the worst of all, for it looks specious while it is ruinous.
+What shall become of the minority, in that case? This is the only
+principle,&mdash;"To seek the greatest good of all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I do not say there were no exceptions to this devotion to freedom in a
+long life; there are some passages in his history which it is impossible
+to justify, and hard to excuse. In early life he was evidently ambitious
+of place, and rank, and political power. I must confess, it seems to me,
+at some times, he was not scrupulous enough about the means of attaining
+that place and power. He has been much censured for his vote in favor of
+the Embargo, in 1807. His vote, howsoever unwise, may easily have been
+an honest vote. To an impartial spectator at this day, perhaps it will
+be evidently so. His defence of it I cannot think an honest defence, for
+in that he mentions arguments as impelling him to his vote which could
+scarcely have been present to his mind at the time, and, if they were
+his arguments then, were certainly kept in silence&mdash;they did not appear
+in the debate,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> they were not referred to in the President's
+message.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p><p>I am not to praise Mr. Adams simply because he is dead; what is wrong
+before is wrong after death. It is no merit to die; shall we tell lies
+about him because he is dead? No, the Egyptian people scrutinized and
+judged their kings after death&mdash;much more should we our fellow-citizens,
+intrusted with power to serve the State. "A lavish and undistinguishing
+eulogium is not praise." I know what coals of terrible fire lie under my
+feet, as I speak of this matter, and how thin and light is the coat of
+ashes deposited there in forty years; how easily they are blown away at
+the slightest breath of "Hartford Convention," or the "Embargo," and the
+old flame of political animosity blazes forth anew, while the hostile
+forms of "federalists" and "democrats" come back to light. I would not
+disquiet those awful shades, nor bring them up again. But a word must be
+said. The story of the embargo is well known: the President sent his
+message to the Senate recommending it, and accompanied with several
+documents. The message was read and assigned to a committee; the
+ordinary rule of business was suspended; the bill was reported by the
+committee; drafted, debated, engrossed, and completely passed through
+all its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> stages, the whole on the same day, in secret session, and in
+about four hours! Yet it was a bill that involved the whole commerce of
+the country, and prostrated that commerce, seriously affecting the
+welfare of hundreds of thousands of men. Eight hundred thousand tons of
+shipping were doomed to lie idle and rot in port. The message came on
+Friday. Some of the Senators wanted yet further information and more
+time for debate, at least for consideration,&mdash;till Monday. It could not
+be! Till Saturday, then. No; the bill must pass now, no man sleeping on
+that question. Mr. Adams was the most zealous for passing the bill. In
+that "debate," if such it can be called, while opposing a postponement
+for further information and reflection, he said, "The President has
+recommended the measure on his high responsibility; I would <i>not
+consider</i>, I would <i>not deliberate</i>; I would <i>act</i>. Doubtless the
+<i>President possesses such further information as will justify the
+measure</i>!"<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> To my mind, that is the worst act<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> of his public life; I
+cannot justify it. I wish I could find some reasonable excuse for it.
+What had become of the "sovereignty of the people," the "unalienable
+right of resistance to oppression?" Would <i>not consider</i>; would <i>not
+deliberate</i>; would <i>act</i> without doing either; leave it all to the "high
+responsibility" of the President, with a "doubtless" he has "further
+information" to justify the measure! It was a shame to say so; it would
+have disgraced a Senator in St. Petersburg. Why not have the "further
+information" laid before the Senate? What would Mr. Adams have said, if
+President Jackson, Tyler, or Polk, had sent such a message, and some
+Senator or Representative had counselled submissive action, without
+considering, without deliberation? With what appalling metaphors would
+he describe such a departure from the first duty of a statesman; how
+would the tempestuous eloquence of that old patriot shake the Hall of
+Congress till it rung again, and the nation looked up with indignation
+in its face! It is well known what Mr. Adams said in 1834, when Mr.
+Polk, in the House of Representatives, seemed over-laudatory of the
+President: "I shall never be disposed to interfere with any member who
+shall rise on this floor and pronounce a panegyric upon the chief
+magistrate.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thrift may follow fawning.'"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Yet the future of Mr. Polk was not so obvious in 1834, as the reward of
+Mr. Adams in 1808.</p>
+
+<p>This act is particularly glaring in Mr. Adams. The North often sends men
+to Washington who might have done it without any great inconsistency;
+men, too, not so remarkable for infirmity in the head, as for that less
+pardonable weakness in the knees and the neck; men that bend to power
+"right or wrong." Mr. Adams was not afflicted with that weakness, and so
+the more to be censured for this palpable betrayal of a trust so
+important. I wish I could find some excuse for it. He was forty years
+old; not very old, but old enough to know better. His defence made the
+matter worse. The Massachusetts Legislature disapproved of his conduct;
+chose another man to succeed him in the Senate. Then Mr. Adams resigned
+his seat, and soon after was sent minister to Russia, as he himself
+subsequently declared,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> "in consequence of the support he had for
+years given to the measures of Mr. Jefferson's administration against
+Great Britain." But his father said of that mission of his son,
+"Aristides is banished because he is too just."<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> It is easy to judge
+of the temper of the times, when such words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> as those of the father
+could be said on such an occasion, and that by a man who had been
+President of the United States! When a famine occurs, disease appears in
+the most hideous forms; men go back to temporary barbarism. In times of
+political strife, such diseases appear of the intellectual and moral
+powers. No man who did not live in those times can fully understand the
+obliquity of mind and moral depravity which then displayed themselves
+amongst those otherwise without reproach. Says Mr. Adams himself,
+referring to that period, "Imagination in her wildest vagaries can
+scarcely conceive the transformation of temper, the obliquities of
+intellect, the perversions of moral principle, effected by junctures of
+nigh and general excitement." However, it must be confessed that this,
+though not the only instance of injustice, is the only case of servile
+compliance with the Executive to be found in the whole life of the man.
+It was a grievous fault, but grievously did he answer it; and if a long
+life of unfaltering resistance to every attempt at the assumption of
+power is fit atonement, then the expiation was abundantly made.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time, Mr. Adams was chairman of a committee of the
+Senate, appointed to consider the case of a Senator from Ohio. His
+conduct, on that occasion, has been the theme of violent attack, and
+defence as violent. To the calm spectator, at this day, his conduct
+seems unjustifiable, inconsistent with the counsels of justice, which,
+though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> moving with her "Pace of snail," looks always towards the right,
+and will not move out of her track, though the heavens fall.</p>
+
+<p>While Mr. Adams was President, Hayti became free; but he did not express
+any desire that the United States should acknowledge her independence,
+and receive her minister at Washington,&mdash;an African plenipotentiary. In
+his message,<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> he says, "There are circumstances that have hitherto
+forbidden the acknowledgment," and mentions "additional reasons for
+withholding that acknowledgment." In the instructions to the American
+functionary, sent to the celebrated Congress of Panama, it is said, the
+President "is not prepared now to say that Hayti ought to be recognized
+as an independent sovereign power;" he "does not think it would be
+proper at this time to recognize it as a new State." He was unwilling to
+consent to the independence of Cuba, for fear of an insurrection of her
+slaves, and the effect at home. The duty of the United States would be
+"To defend themselves against the contagion of such near and dangerous
+examples," that would "constrain them ... to employ all means necessary
+to their security." That is, the President would be constrained to put
+down the blacks in Cuba, who were exercising "The unalienable right of
+resistance to oppression," for fear the blacks in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> the United States
+would discover that they also were men, and had "Unalienable rights!"
+Had he forgotten the famous words, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience
+to God?" The defence of such language on such an occasion is, that Mr.
+Adams's eyes were not yet open to the evil of slavery. That is a good
+defence, if true. To me it seems a true defence. Even great men do not
+see every thing. In 1800, Fisher Ames, while delivering the eulogy on
+General Washington, censured even the British government, because, "In
+the wilds of Africa, it obstructed the commerce in slaves!" No man is so
+wise as mankind. It must be confessed that Mr. Adams, while Secretary of
+State, and again, while President, showed no hostility to the
+institution of slavery. His influence all went the other way. He would
+repress the freedom of the blacks, in the West Indies, lest American
+slavery should be disturbed, and its fetters broke; he would not
+acknowledge the independence of Hayti, he would urge Spain to make peace
+with her descendants, for the same reason&mdash;"not for those new
+republics," but lest the negroes in Cuba and Porto Rico should secure
+their freedom. He negotiated with England, and she paid the United
+States more than a million of dollars<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> for the fugitive slaves who
+took refuge under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> her flag during the late war. Mr. Adams had no
+scruples about receiving the money during his administration. An attempt
+was repeatedly made by his secretary, Mr. Clay, through Mr. Gallatin,
+and then through Mr. Barbour, to induce England to restore the "fugitive
+slaves who had taken refuge in the Canadian provinces," who, escaping
+from the area of freedom, seek the shelter of the British crown.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
+Nay, he negotiated a treaty with Mexico, which bound her to deliver up
+fugitive slaves, escaping from the United States&mdash;a treaty which the
+Mexican Congress refused to ratify! Should a great man have known
+better? Great men are not always wise. Afterwards, public attention was
+called to the matter; humble men gave lofty counsel; Mr. Adams used
+different language, and recommended different measures. But long before
+that, on the 7th of December, 1804, Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the
+Senate of the United States, offered a resolution, for the purpose of
+amending the Constitution, so as to apportion representatives, and
+direct taxes among the States, according to their free inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p><p>But there are other things in Mr. Adams's course and conduct, which
+deserve the censure of a good man. One was, the attempt to justify the
+conduct of England, in her late war with China, when she forced her
+opium upon the barbarians with the bayonet. To make out his case, he
+contended that "In the celestial empire ... the patriarchal system of
+Sir Robert Filmer, flourished in all its glory," and the Chinese claimed
+superior dignity over all others; they refused to hold equal and
+reciprocal commercial intercourse with other nations, and "It is time
+this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and the first
+principles of the laws of nations, should cease."<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> It is true, the
+Chinese were "barbarians;" true, the English carried thither the Bible
+and Christianity, at least their own Christianity. But, even by the law
+of nations, letting alone the law of nature, the barbarians had a right
+to repel both Bible and Christianity, when they came in a contraband
+shape&mdash;that of opium and cannon balls. To justify this outrage of the
+strong against the weak, he quite forgets his old antipathy to England,
+his devotion to human freedom, and the sovereignty of the people,
+calling the cause of England "a righteous cause."</p>
+
+<p>He defended the American claim to the whole of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> Oregon, up to 54&deg; 40&acute;.
+He did not so much undertake to make out a title to either, by the law
+of nature or of nations, but cut the matter short, and claimed the whole
+of Oregon, on the strength of the first chapter of Genesis. This was the
+argument: God gave mankind dominion over all the earth;<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> between
+Christian nations, the command of the Creator lays the foundation of all
+titles to land, of titles to territory, of titles to jurisdiction. Then
+in the Psalms,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> God gives the "uttermost part of the earth for a
+possession" to the Messiah, as the representative of all mankind, who
+held the uttermost parts of the earth in chief. But the Pope, as head of
+the visible church, was the representative of Christ, and so, holding
+under him, had the right to give to any king or prelate, authority to
+subdue barbarous nations, possess their territory, and convert them to
+Christianity. In 1493, the Pope, in virtue of the above right, gave the
+American continent to the Spanish monarchs, who, in time, sold their
+title to the people of the United States. That title may be defective,
+as the Pope may not be the representative of Christ, and so the passage
+in the Psalms will not help the American claim, but then the United
+States will hold under the first clause in the Testament of God, that
+is, in Genesis. The claim of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> Great Britain is not valid, for she does
+not want the land for the purpose specified in that clause of the
+Testament, to "Replenish the earth and subdue it." She wants it, "That
+she may keep it open as a hunting-ground," while the United States want
+it, that it may grow into a great nation, and become a free and
+sovereign republic.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>This strange hypothesis, it seems, lay at the bottom of his defence of
+the British in their invasion of China. It would have led him, if
+consistent, to claim also the greater part of Mexico. But, as he did not
+publicly declare his opinion on that matter, no more need be said
+concerning it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Such was the most prominent idea in his history; such the departures
+from it. Let us look at other events in his life. While President, the
+most important object of his administration was the promotion of
+internal improvements, especially the internal communication between the
+States. For this purpose the government lent its aid in the construction
+of roads and canals, and a little more than four millions of dollars
+were devoted to this work in his administration. On the 4th of July,
+1828, he helped break ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio canal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+thinking it an important event in his life. He then said there were
+three great steps in the progress of America. The first was the
+Declaration of Independence and the achievement thereof; the second, the
+union of the whole country under the Constitution; but the third was
+more arduous than both of the others: "It is," said he, "the adaptation
+of the powers, physical, moral, and intellectual, of the whole Union, to
+the improvement of its own condition; of its <i>moral</i> and <i>political</i>
+condition, by wise and liberal institutions; by the cultivation of the
+understanding and the heart; by academies, schools, and learned
+institutions; by the pursuit and patronage of learning and the arts; of
+its <i>physical</i> condition, by associated labor to improve the bounties
+and supply the deficiencies of nature; to stem the torrent in its
+course; to level the mountain with the plain; to disarm and fetter the
+raging surge of the ocean."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> He faithfully adhered to these words in
+his administration.</p>
+
+<p>He was careful never to exceed the powers which the Constitution
+prescribed for him. He thought the acquisition of Louisiana was
+"accomplished by a flagrant violation of the Constitution,"<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> and
+himself guarded against such violations. He revered the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> God of Limits,
+who, in the Roman mythology, refused to give way or remove, even for
+Jupiter himself. No man was ever more conscientious on that ground. To
+him the Constitution meant something; his oath to keep it meant
+something.</p>
+
+<p>No great political event occurred in his administration; the questions
+which now vex the country had not arisen. There was no quarrel between
+freedom and slavery; no man in Congress ventured to denounce slavery as
+a crime; the African slave-trade was thought wrong, not the slavery
+which caused it. Party lines, obliterated under Mr. Monroe's
+administration, were viewed and marked with a good deal of care and
+exactness; but the old lines could not be wholly restored. Mr. Adams was
+not the President of a section of the country; not the President of a
+party, but of the nation. He favored no special interest of a class, to
+the injury of another class. He did not reward his friends, nor punish
+his foes; the party of the spoils, patent or latent at all times, got no
+spoils from him. He never debauched his country by the removal and
+appointment of officers. Had he done otherwise, done as all his
+successors have done, used his actual power to promote his own ambition,
+no doubt he might have been re&euml;lected. But he could not stoop to manage
+men in that way. No doubt he desired a re&euml;lection, and saw the method
+and means to effect that, but conscience said, "It is not right." He
+forbore, lost his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> election, and gained&mdash;we shall soon see what he
+gained.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th of July, 1826, at a public dinner at Edgefield Court-house,
+South Carolina, Mr. McDuffie said, "Mr. Adams came into power upon
+principles utterly subversive of the republican system; substituting the
+worst species of aristocracy, that of speculating politicians and
+office-hunters, in the place of a sound and wholesome republican
+democracy." When Mr. Adams retired from office, he could remember, with
+the virtuous Athenian, that no man had put on mourning for him because
+unjustly deprived of his post. Was an office-holder or an office-wanter
+a political friend of Mr. Adams, that did not help him; a foe, that did
+not hinder. He looked only to the man's ability and integrity. I wish it
+was no praise to say these things; but it is praise I dare not apply to
+any other man since Washington. Mr. Adams once said, "There is no
+official act of the chief magistrate, however momentous, or however
+minute, but it should be traceable to a dictate of duty, pointing to the
+welfare of the people." That was his executive creed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>As a public servant, he had many qualities seldom united in the same
+person. He was simple, and unostentatious; he had none of the airs of a
+great man; seemed humble, modest, and retiring; caring much for the
+substance of manhood, he let the show take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> care of itself. He carried
+the simplicity of a plain New England man into the President's house,
+spending little in its decorations&mdash;about one fourth, it is said, of the
+amount of his successor. In his housekeeping, public or private, there
+was only one thing much to be boasted of and remarked upon: strange to
+say, that was the master of the house. He was never eclipsed by his own
+brass and mahogany. He had what are called democratic habits, and served
+himself in preference to being served by others. He treated all that
+were about him with a marked deference and courtesy, carrying his
+respect for human rights into the minutest details of common life.</p>
+
+<p>He was a model of diligence, though not, perhaps, very systematic. His
+State papers, prepared while he was Minister, Secretary, or Member of
+Congress, his numerous orations and speeches, though not always
+distinguished for that orderly arrangement of parts which is instinctive
+with minds of a high philosophical character, are yet astonishing for
+their number, and the wide learning they display. He was well acquainted
+with the classic and most modern languages; at home in their literature.
+He was surprisingly familiar with modern history; perhaps no political
+man was so thoroughly acquainted with the political history of America,
+and that of Christian Europe for the last two hundred years. He was
+widely read and profoundly skilled in all that relates to diplomacy, and
+to international law. He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> fond of belles-lettres, and commented on
+Shakspeare more like a professor than a layman in that department. Few
+theologians in America, it is said, were so widely read in their
+peculiar lore as he. He had read much, remembered much, understood much.
+However, he seems to have paid little attention to physical science, and
+perhaps less to metaphysical. His speeches and his conversation, though
+neither brilliant, nor rich in ideas, astonished young men with an
+affluence of learning, which seemed marvellous in one all his life
+devoted to practical affairs. But this is a trifle: to achieve that,
+nothing is needed but health, diligence, memory, and a long life. Mr.
+Adams had all these requisites.</p>
+
+<p>He had higher qualities: he loved his country, perhaps no man more so;
+he had patriotism in an heroic degree, yet was not thereby blinded to
+humanity. He thought it a vital principle of human society, that each
+nation should contribute to the happiness of all; and, therefore, that
+no nation should "regulate its conduct by the exclusive or even the
+paramount consideration of its own interest."<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Yet he loved his
+country, his whole country, and when she was in the wrong he told her
+so, because he loved her. This, said he, would be a good sentiment: "Our
+country! May she be always successful; but, whether successful or not,
+may she be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> always in the right." He saw the faults of America, saw the
+corruption of the American government. He did not make gain by this in
+private, but set an honest face against it.</p>
+
+<p>He was a conscientious man. This peculiarity is strongly marked in most
+of his life. He respected the limit between right and wrong. He did not
+think it unworthy of a statesman to refer to moral principles, to the
+absolutely right. I do not mean to say, that in his whole life there was
+no departure from the strict rule of duty. I have mentioned already some
+examples, but kept one more for this place: he pursued persons with a
+certain vindictiveness of spirit. I will not revive again the old
+quarrels, nor dig up his hard words, long ago consigned to oblivion; it
+would be unjust to the living. He was what is called a good hater. If he
+loved an idea, he seemed to hate the man who opposed it. He was not
+content with replying; he must also retort, though it manifestly
+weakened the force of the reply. In his attacks on persons he was
+sometimes unjust, violent, sharp, and vindictive; sometimes cruel, and
+even barbarous. Did he ever forgive an enemy? Every opponent was a foe,
+and he thrashed his foes with an iron hoof and winnowed them with a
+storm. The most awful specimens of invective which the language affords
+can be found in his words&mdash;bitter, revengeful, and unrelenting. I am
+sorry to say these things; it hurts my feelings to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> them, yours not
+less to hear them. But it is not our fault they are true; it would be
+mine, if, knowing they were true, I did not on this occasion point them
+out in warning words. Mr. Adams says that Roger Williams was
+conscientious and contentious; it is equally true of himself. Perhaps
+Mr. Adams had little humor, but certainly a giant's wit; he used it
+tyrannously and like a giant. Wit has its place in debate; in
+controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive. After
+one has beaten the single barley-corn of good sense out of a whole
+wagon-load of chaff, the easiest way to be rid of the rubbish is to burn
+it up with the lightning of wit; the danger is, that the burning should
+begin before the separation is made; that the fire consume the good and
+bad indifferently. When argument is edged and pointed with wit, it is
+doubly effective; but when that edge is jagged with ill-will, poisoned,
+too, with personal spleen, then it becomes a weapon unworthy of a man.
+Sometimes Mr. Adams used his wit as fairly as his wisdom; and bags of
+wind, on which Hercules might have stamped and beaten a twelvemonth, but
+in vain&mdash;at a single puncture from that keen wit gave up their ghost and
+flattened into nothing; a vanity to all men, but a vexation of spirit to
+him who had blown them so full of his own soul. But sometimes, yes,
+often, Mr. Adams's wit performs a different part: it sits as a judge,
+unjust and unforgiving, "often deciding wrong, and when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> right from
+wrong motives." It was the small dagger with which he smote the fallen
+foe. It is a poor praise for a famous man, churchman, or statesman, to
+beat a blackguard with his own weapons. It must be confessed, that in
+controversy, Mr. Adams's arrows were sharp and deftly delivered; but
+they were often barbed, and sometimes poisoned.</p>
+
+<p>True, he encountered more political opposition than any man in the
+nation. For more than forty years he has never been without bitter and
+unrelenting enemies, public and private. No man in America, perhaps,
+ever had such provocations; surely, none had ever such opportunities to
+reply without retorting. How much better would it have been, if, at the
+end of that long life and fifty years' war, he could say he had never
+wasted a shot; had never sinned with his lips, nor once feathered his
+public arrow with private spleen! Wise as he was, and old, he never
+learned that for undeserved calumny, for personal insult and abuse,
+there is one answer, Christian, manly, and irrefutable&mdash;the dignity of
+silence. A just man can afford to wait till the storm of abuse shall
+spend its rage and vanish under the rainbow, which itself furnishes and
+leaves behind. The retorting speech of such a man may be silvern or
+iron; his silence, victorious and golden.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to censure Mr. Adams for such intemperance of speech and
+persecution of persons; unfortunately, too easy to furnish other
+examples of both.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> We know what he spoke&mdash;God only what he repressed.
+Who knows out of how deep a fulness of indignation such torrents gush?
+Tried by the standard of other men, his fellow politicians of America
+and Europe, he was no worse than they, only abler.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> The mouse and the
+fox have as great a proportionate anger as the lion, though the one is
+ridiculous and the other terrific. Mr. Adams must be tried by his own
+standard, the rule of right, the standard of conscience and of
+Christianity; then surely he did wrong. For such a man the vulgarity of
+the offence is no excuse.</p>
+
+<p>With this and the other exceptions he appears a remarkably conscientious
+man in his public life. He may often have erred, as all men, without
+violating his own sense of right.</p>
+
+<p>While he was President he would not consent to any "public manifestation
+of honors personal to himself." He would not accept a present, for his
+Bible taught him what experience continually enforces, that a gift
+blinds the eyes of wise men and perverts their judgment. While at St.
+Petersburg, the Russian Minister of the Interior, then an old man, felt
+uneasy on account of the presents accepted during his official service,
+and, calculating the value of all gifts received, returned it to the
+imperial treasury.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> This fact made an impression on Mr. Adams, and led
+to a resolution which he faithfully kept. When a bookseller sent him a
+costly Bible, he kept the book, but paid its full value. No bribes, no
+pensions in any form, ever soiled justice in his hands. He would never
+be indebted to any body of men, lest they might afterwards sway him from
+the right path.</p>
+
+<p>Because he was a conscientious man he would never be the servant of a
+party, and never was. It was of great advantage to him that he was
+absent while the two chief parties were forming in the United States. He
+came into the Massachusetts Legislature as a federalist, but some
+anti-federalists also voted for him. His first vote showed he was not
+limited by the common principles of a party. He was chosen to the Senate
+of the United States, not by a party vote. At first he acted mainly with
+the federalists, though not always voting with his colleague; but in
+1807 acted with the administration in the matter of the Embargo. This
+was the eventful crisis of his life; this change in his politics, while
+it gave him station and political power, yet brought upon him the
+indignation of his former friends; it has never been forgotten nor
+forgiven. Be the outward occasion and inward motive what they may, this
+led to the sundering of friendships long cherished and deservedly dear;
+it produced the most bitter experience of his life. Political men would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+naturally undertake to judge his counsel by its probable and obvious
+consequences, the favor of the Executive, rather than attribute it to
+any latent motive of patriotism in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>While at the head of the nation he would not be the President of a
+party, but of the people; when he became a representative in Congress he
+was not the delegate of a party, but of justice and the eternal right,
+giving his constituents an assurance that he would hold himself in
+allegiance to no party, national or political. He has often been accused
+of hatred to the South; I can find no trace of it. "I entered Congress,"
+says he, "without one sentiment of discrimination between the North and
+South." At first he acted with Mr. Jackson, to arrest the progress of
+nullification, for the democracy of South Carolina was putting in
+practice what the federalists of New England have so often been alleged
+to have held in theory, and condemned on that allegation. Here he was
+consistent. In 1834, he approved the spirit of the same President in
+demanding justice of France; but afterwards he did not hesitate to
+oppose, and perhaps abuse him.</p>
+
+<p>He had a high reverence for religion; none of our public men more. He
+aimed to be a Christian man. Signs of this have often been sought in his
+habits of church-going, of reading the Bible; they may be found rather
+in the general rectitude of his life, public and private, and in the
+high motives which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> swayed him, in his opposition to slavery, in the
+self-denial which cost him his re&euml;lection. In his public acts he seems
+animated by the thought that he stood in the presence of God. Though
+rather unphilosophical in his theology, resting to a great degree on the
+authority of tradition and the letter, and attaching much value to forms
+and times, he yet saw the peculiar excellence of Christianity,&mdash;that it
+recognized "Love as the paramount and transcendent law of human nature."
+I do not say that his life indicates the attainment of a complete
+religious repose, but that he earnestly and continually labored to
+achieve that. You shall find few statesmen, few men, who act with a more
+continual and obvious reference to religion as a motive, as a guide, as
+a comfort. He was, however, no sectarian. His devotion to freedom
+appeared, where it seldom appears, in his notions about religion. He
+thought for himself, and had a theology of his own, rather
+old-fashioned, it is true, and not very philosophical or consistent, it
+may be, and in that he was not very singular, but he allowed others to
+think also for themselves, and have a theology of their own. Mr. Adams
+was a Unitarian. It is no great merit to be a Unitarian, or a Calvinist,
+or a Catholic, perhaps no more merit to be one than the other. But he
+was not ashamed of his belief when Unitarianism was little, despised,
+mocked at, and called "Infidelity" on all sides. When the Unitarian
+church at Washington,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> a small and feeble body, met for worship in an
+upper room&mdash;not large, but obscure, over a public bathing-house&mdash;John
+Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State and expecting to be President, came
+regularly to worship with them. It was not fashionable; it was hardly
+respectable, for the Unitarians were not then, as now, numerous and
+rich: but he went and worshipped. It was no merit to think with any
+sect, it was a great merit to dare be true to his convictions. In his
+theology, as in politics, he feared not to stand in a minority. If there
+ever was an American who loved the praise of God more than the praise of
+men, I believe Mr. Adams was one.</p>
+
+<p>His devotion to freedom, his love of his country, his conscientiousness,
+his religion, are four things strong and noticeable in his character.
+You shall look long amongst our famous men before you find his equal in
+these things.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Somebody says, no man ever used all his intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> faculties as far
+as possible. If any man is an exception to this rule, it is Mr. Adams.
+He was temperate and diligent; industrious almost to a fault, though not
+orderly or systematic. His diplomatic letters, his orations, his reports
+and speeches, all indicate wide learning, the fruit of the most
+remarkable diligence. The attainments of a well-bred scholar are not
+often found in the American Congress, or the President's house. Yet he
+never gives proof that he had the mind of a great man. In his special
+department of politics he does not appear as a master. He has no great
+ideas with which to solve the riddles of commerce and finance; has done
+little to settle the commercial problems of the world,&mdash;for that work
+there is needed not only a retrospective acquaintance with the habits
+and history of men, but the foresight which comes from a knowledge of
+the nature of things and of man. His chief intellectual excellence seems
+to have been memory; his great moral merit, a conscientious and firm
+honesty; his practical strength lay in his diligence. His counsels seem
+almost always to have come from a knowledge of human history, seldom to
+have been prompted by a knowledge of the nature of man. Hence he was a
+critic of the past, or an administrator of the present, rather than a
+prophetic guide for the future. He had many facts and precedents, but
+few ideas. Few examples of great political foresight can be quoted from
+his life; and therein, to his honor be it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> spoken, his heart seems to
+have out-travelled his head. The public affairs of the United States
+seem generally to be conducted by many men of moderate abilities, rather
+than by a few men of great genius for politics.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Mr. Adams wrote much. Some of his works are remarkable for their beauty,
+for the graceful proportions of their style, and the felicity of their
+decoration. Such are his celebrated Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory,
+which are sufficiently learned and sagacious, not very philosophical,
+but written in an agreeable style, and at the present day not wholly
+without value. His review of the works of Fisher Ames, I speak only of
+the rhetoric, is, perhaps, the finest of his compositions. Some of his
+productions are disorderly, ill-compacted, without "joints or
+contexture," and homely to a fault: this oration is a growth out of a
+central thought, marked by an internal harmony; that, a composition, a
+piece of carpentry distinguished by only an outward symmetry of members;
+others are neither growth nor composition, only a mass of materials
+huddled and lumped together. Most of his later productions, with the
+exception of his congressional speeches, are hard, cold, and unfinished
+performances, with little order in the thoughts, and less beauty in the
+expression. His extemporaneous speeches have more of both; they are
+better finished than his studied orations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> He could judge and speak
+with fury, though he wrote with phlegm. His illustrations are usually
+drawn from literature, not from nature or human life; his language is
+commonly cold, derived from the Roman stream which has been filtered
+through books, rather than from the deep and original well of our Saxon
+home. His published letters are compact, written in a cold style,
+without playfulness or wit, with no elegance, and though mostly business
+letters, they are not remarkable for strength or distinctness. His
+diligence appears in verse as well as prose. He wrote much that rhymed
+tolerably; little that was poetical. The same absence of nature, the
+same coldness and lack of inspiration, mark his poetry and prose. But in
+all that he wrote, with the exceptions mentioned above, though you miss
+the genial warmth, the lofty thought, the mind that attracts, embraces,
+warms, and inspires the reader, you find always a spirit of humanity, of
+justice, and love to God.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Adams was seldom eloquent. Eloquence is no great gift. It has its
+place among subordinate powers, not among the chief. Alas for the
+statesman or preacher who has only that to save the State withal!
+Washington had none of it, yet how he ruled the land! No man in America
+has ever had a political influence so wide and permanent as Mr.
+Jefferson; yet he was a very indifferent writer, and never made a speech
+of any value. The acts of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Washington, the ideas of Jefferson, made
+eloquence superfluous. True, it has its value: if a man have at command
+the electricity of truth, justice, love, the sentiments and great ideas
+thereof, it is a good thing to be able with Olympian hand to condense
+that electric fire into bolted eloquence; to thunder and lighten in the
+sky. But if a man have that electric truth, it matters little whether it
+is Moses that speaks, or only Aaron; whether or not Paul's bodily
+presence be weak and his speech contemptible: it is Moses' thought which
+thunders and lightens out of Sinai; it is Paul's idea that is powerful
+and builds up the church. Of true eloquence, the best thoughts put in
+the best words, and uttered in the best form, Mr. Adams had little, and
+that appeared mainly in the latter part of his life. Hundreds have more.
+What passes for eloquence is common in America, where the public mouth
+is always a-going. His early orations are poor in their substance and
+faulty in their form. His ability as an orator developed late; no proofs
+of it appear before he entered the House of Representatives, at a good
+old age. In his manner of speaking there was little dignity and no
+grace, though sometimes there was a terrible energy and fire. He was
+often a powerful speaker&mdash;by his facts and figures, by his knowledge,
+his fame, his age, and his position, but most of all by his independent
+character. He spoke worthily of great men, of Madison or Lafayette,
+kindling with his theme,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> and laying aside all littleness of a party.
+However, he was most earnest and most eloquent not when he stood up the
+champion of a neglected truth, not when he dwelt on great men now
+venerable to us all, but when he gathered his strength to attack a foe.
+Incensed, his sarcasm was terrific; colossal vanity aspiring to be a
+Ghenghis Khan, at the touch of that Ithuriel spear shrank to the
+dimensions of Tom Thumb. His invective is his masterpiece of oratoric
+skill. It is sad to say this, and to remember, that the greatest works
+of ancient or of modern rhetoric, from the thundering Philippics of
+Demosthenes down to the sarcastic and crazy rattle of Lord Brougham, are
+all of the same character, are efforts against a personal foe! Men find
+hitherto the ablest acts and speech in the same cause,&mdash;not positive and
+creating, but critical and combative,&mdash;in war.</p>
+
+<p>If Mr. Adams had died in 1829, he would have been remembered for awhile
+as a learned man; as an able diplomatist, who had served his country
+faithfully at home and abroad; as a President spotless and
+incorruptible, but not as a very important personage in American
+history. His mark would have been faint and soon effaced from the sands
+of time. But the last period of his life was the noblest. He had worn
+all the official honors which the nation could bestow; he sought the
+greater honor of serving that nation, who had now no added boon to give.
+All that he had done as Minister abroad, as Senator,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> as Secretary, and
+President, is little compared with what he did in the House of
+Representatives; and while he stood there, with nothing to hope, with
+nothing to fear, the hand of Justice wrote his name high up on the walls
+of his country. It was surprising to see at his first attendance there,
+men who, while he was President, had been the loudest to call out
+"Coalition, Bargain, Intrigue, Corruption," come forward and express the
+involuntary confidence they felt in his wisdom and integrity, and their
+fear, actual though baseless, that his withdrawal from the Committee on
+Manufactures would "endanger the very Union itself."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Great questions
+soon came up: nullification was speedily disposed of; the Bank and the
+tariff got ended or compromised, but slavery lay in the consciousness of
+the nation, like the one dear but appalling sin in a man's heart. Some
+wished to be rid of it, northern men and southern men. It would come up;
+to justify that, or excuse it, the American sentiment and idea must be
+denied and rejected utterly; the South, who had long known the charms of
+Bathsheba, was ready for her sake to make way with Uriah himself. To
+remove that monstrous evil, gradually but totally, and restore unity to
+the nation, would require a greater change than the adoption of the
+Constitution. To keep slavery out of sight, yet in existence,
+unjustified, unexcused,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> unrepented of, a contradiction in the national
+consciousness, a political and deadly sin, the sin against the Holy
+Spirit of American Liberty, known but not confessed, the public secret
+of the people&mdash;that would lead to suppressing petitions, suppressing
+debate in Congress and out of Congress, to silencing the pulpit, the
+press, and the people.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances, Mr. Adams went to Congress, an old man, well
+known on both sides the water, the presidential laurels on his brow,
+independent and fearless, expecting no reward from men for services
+however great. In respect to the subject of slavery, he had no ideas in
+advance of the nation; he was far behind the foremost men. He
+"deprecated all discussion of slavery or its abolition, in the House,
+and gave no countenance to petitions for the abolition of slavery in the
+District of Columbia or the territories." However, he acquired new ideas
+as he went on, and became the congressional leader in the great movement
+of the American mind towards universal freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Here he stood as the champion of human rights; here he fought, and with
+all his might. In 1836, by the celebrated resolution, forbidding debate
+on the subject of slavery, the South drove the North to the wall, nailed
+it there into shameful silence. A "Northern man with Southern
+principles," before entering the President's chair, declared, that if
+Congress should pass a law to abolish slavery in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> District of
+Columbia, he would exercise his veto to prevent the law.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> Mr. Adams
+stood up manfully, sometimes almost alone, and contended for freedom of
+speech. Did obstinate men of the North send petitions relative to
+slavery, asking for its abolition in the District or elsewhere? Mr.
+Adams was ready to present the petitions. Did women petition? It made no
+difference with him. Did slaves petition? He stood up there to defend
+their right to be heard. The South had overcome many an obstacle, but
+that one fearless soul would not bend, and could not be broken. Spite of
+rules of order, he contrived to bring the matter perpetually before
+Congress, and sometimes to read the most offensive parts of the
+petitions. When Arkansas was made a State, he endeavored to abolish
+slavery in its domain; he sought to establish international relations
+with Hayti, and to secure the right of suffrage for the colored citizens
+of the District of Columbia. The laws which forbid blacks to vote in the
+Northern States he held "in utter abhorrence."</p>
+
+<p>He saw from afar the plots of southern politicians, plots for extending
+the area of slavery, for narrowing the area of freedom, and exposed
+those plots. You all remember the tumult it excited when he rose in his
+place holding a petition from slaves; that the American Congress was
+thrown into long and disgraceful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> confusion. You cannot have forgotten
+the uproar which followed his presenting a petition to dissolve the
+Union!<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> I know few speeches more noble and manly than his on the
+right of petition,&mdash;occasioned by that celebrated attempt to stifle
+debate, and on the annexation of Texas. Some proposed to censure him,
+some clamored, "expel him," some cried out, "burn the petitions!" and
+"him with them," screamed yet others. Some threatened to have him
+indicted by the grand jury of the district, "or be made amenable to
+<i>another tribunal</i>," hoping to see "an incendiary brought to condign
+punishment." "My life on it," said a southern legislator, "if he
+presents that petition from slaves, we shall yet see him within the
+walls of the penitentiary." Some in secret threatened to assassinate him
+in the streets. They mistook their man; with justice on his side he did
+"not fear all the grand juries in the universe." He would not curl nor
+cringe, but snorted his defiance in their very face. In front of
+ridicule, of desertion, obloquy, rage, and brutal threats, stood up that
+old man, bald and audacious, and the chafed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> rock of Cohasset stands not
+firmer mid the yesty waves, nor more triumphant spurns back into the
+ocean's face the broken billows of the storm. That New England knee bent
+only before his God. That unpretending man&mdash;the whole power of the
+nation could not move him from his post.</p>
+
+<p>Men threatened to increase the slave power. Said one of the champions of
+slavery with prophetic speech, but fatal as Cassandra's in the classic
+tale, Americans "would come up in thousands to plant the lone star of
+the Texan banner on the Mexican capital.... The boundless wealth of
+captured towns and rifled churches, and a lazy, vicious, and luxurious
+priesthood, would soon enable Texas to pay her soldiery and redeem her
+State debt, and push her victorious arms to the very shores of the
+Pacific. And would not all this extend the bounds of slavery? Yes, the
+result would be, that before another quarter of a century the extension
+of slavery would not stop short of the Western ocean." Against this
+danger Mr. Adams armed himself, and fought in the holiest cause&mdash;the
+cause of human rights.</p>
+
+<p>I know few things in modern times so grand as that old man standing
+there in the House of Representatives, the compeer of Washington, a man
+who had borne himself proudly in kings' courts, early doing service in
+high places, where honor may be won; a man who had filled the highest
+office in any nation's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> gift; a President's son, himself a President,
+standing there the champion of the neediest of the oppressed: the
+conquering cause pleased others; him only, the cause of the conquered.
+Had he once been servile to the hands that wielded power? No thunderbolt
+can scare him now! Did he once make a treaty and bind Mexico to bewray
+the wandering fugitive who took his life in his hand and fled from the
+talons of the American eagle? Now he would go to the stake sooner than
+tolerate such a deed! When he went to the Supreme Court, after an
+absence of thirty years, and arose to defend a body of friendless
+negroes torn from their home and most unjustly held in thrall; when he
+asked the judges to excuse him at once both for the trembling faults of
+age and the inexperience of youth, the man having labored so long
+elsewhere that he had forgotten the rules of court; when he summed up
+the conclusion of the whole matter, and brought before those judicial
+but yet moistening eyes the great men whom he had once met there&mdash;Chase,
+Cushing, Martin, Livingston, and Marshall himself; and while he
+remembered them that were "gone, gone, all gone," remembered also the
+Eternal Justice that is never gone,&mdash;why the sight was sublime. It was
+not an old patrician of Rome who had been consul, dictator, coming out
+of his honored retirement at the Senate's call, to stand in the forum to
+levy new armies, marshal them to victory afresh, and gain thereby new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+laurels for his brow;&mdash;but it was a plain citizen of America, who had
+held an office far greater than that of consul, king, or dictator, his
+hand reddened by no man's blood, expecting no honors, but coming in the
+name of Justice to plead for the slave, for the poor barbarian negro of
+Africa, for Cinque and Grabbo, for their deeds comparing them to
+Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose classic memory made each bosom thrill.
+That was worth all his honors,&mdash;it was worth while to live fourscore
+years for that.</p>
+
+<p>When he stood in the House of Representatives, the champion of the
+rights of a minority, of the rights of man, he stood colossal. Frederick
+the Great seems doubly so, when, single-handed, "that son of the Dukes
+of Brandenburg" contended against Austria, France, England, Russia, kept
+them all at bay, divided by his skill, and conquered by his might.
+Surely he seems great, when measured merely by his deeds. But, in
+comparison, Frederick the Great seems Frederick the little: for Adams
+fought not for a kingdom, nor for fame, but for Justice and the Eternal
+Right; fought, too, with weapons tempered in a heavenly stream!<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had his reward. Who ever missed it? From mythological Cain, who slew
+his brother, down to Judas Iscariot, and Aaron Burr; from Jesus of
+Nazareth, down to the least man that dies or lives&mdash;who ever lost his
+reward? None. No; not one. Within the wicked heart there dwells the
+avenger, with unseen hands, to adjust the cord, to poison the fatal
+bowl. In the impenetrable citadel of a good man's consciousness, unseen
+by mortal eyes, there stands the palladium of justice, radiant with
+celestial light; mortal hands may make and mar,&mdash;this they can mar not,
+no more than they can make. Things about the man can others build up or
+destroy; but no foe, no tyrant, no assassin, can ever steal the man out
+of the man. Who would not have the consciousness of being right, even of
+trying to be right, though affronted by a whole world, rather than
+conscious of being wrong, and hollow, and false, have all the honors of
+a nation on his head? Of late years, no party stood up for Mr. Adams,
+"The madman of Massachusetts," as they called him, on the floor of
+Congress; but he knew that he had, and in his old age, done one
+work,&mdash;he had contended for the unalienable rights of man, done it
+faithfully. The government of God is invisible, His justice the more
+certain,&mdash;and by that Mr. Adams had his abundant reward.</p>
+
+<p>But he had his poorer and outward rewards, negative and positive. For
+his zeal in behalf of freedom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> he was called "a monarchist in disguise,"
+"an alien to the true interests of his country," "a traitor." A
+slaveholder from Kentucky published to his constituents that he "was
+sincerely desirous to check that man, for if he could be removed from
+the councils of the nation, or silenced upon the exasperating subject to
+which he had devoted himself, none other, I believe, could be found
+hardy enough or bad enough to fill his place." It was worth something to
+have an enemy speak such praise as that: but the slaveholder was wrong
+in his conjecture; the North has yet other sons not less hardy, not more
+likely to be silenced. Still more praise of a similar sort:&mdash;at a fourth
+of July dinner at Walterborough, in South Carolina, this sentiment was
+proposed and responded to with nine cheers: "May we never want a
+democrat to trip up the heels of a federalist, or a hangman to prepare a
+halter for John Quincy Adams." Considering what he had done and whence
+those rewards proceeded, that was honor enough for a yet greater man.</p>
+
+<p>Let me turn to things more grateful. Mr. Adams, through lack of genial
+qualities, had few personal friends, yet from good men throughout the
+North there went up a hearty thanksgiving for his manly independence,
+and prayers for his success. Brave men forgot their old prejudices,
+forgot the "Embargo," forgot the "Hartford Convention," forgot all the
+hard things which he had ever said, forgot his words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> in the Senate,
+forgot their disappointments, and said&mdash;"For this our hearts shall honor
+thee, thou brave old man!" In 1843, when, for the first time, he visited
+the West, to assist at the foundation of a scientific institution, all
+the West rose up to do him reverence. He did not go out to seek honors,
+they came to seek him. 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 honor
+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!</p>
+
+<p>You all remember the last time he was at any public meeting in this
+city. A man had been kidnapped in Boston, kidnapped at noon-day, "on the
+high road between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy," and carried off to be a
+slave! New England hands had seized their brother, sold him into bondage
+for ever, and his children after him. In the presence of slavery, as of
+arms, the laws are silent,&mdash;not always men. Then it appears who are men,
+who not! A meeting was called to talk the matter over, in a plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> way,
+and look in one another's faces. Who was fit to preside in such a case?
+That old man sat in the chair in Faneuil Hall; above him was the image
+of his father, and his own; around him were Hancock and the other
+Adams,&mdash;Washington, greatest of all; before him were the men and women
+of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave;
+the roof of the old Cradle of Liberty spanned over them all. Forty years
+before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting
+called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently
+impressed by the British from an American ship of war, the unlucky
+Chesapeake; some of you remember that event. Now, an old man, clothed
+with half a century of honors, he sits in the same hall, to preside over
+a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave; a greater
+outrage&mdash;alas, not done by a hostile, not by an alien hand! One was the
+first meeting of citizens he ever presided over, the other was the last;
+both for the same object&mdash;the defence of the Eternal Right.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But I would not weary you. His death was noble; fit ending for such a
+life. He was an old man, the last that had held a diplomatic office
+under Washington. He had uttered his oracles; had done his work. The
+highest honors of the nation he had worthily worn; but, as his townsmen
+tell us,&mdash;caring little for the President, and much for the man,&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+was very little in comparison with his character. The good and ill of
+the human cup he had tasted, and plentifully, too, as son, husband,
+father. He had borne his testimony for freedom and the rights of
+mankind; he had stood in Congress almost alone; with a few gallant men
+had gone down to the battlefield, and if victory escaped him, it was
+because night came on.</p>
+
+<p>He saw others enter the field in good heart, to stand in the imminent
+deadly breach; he lived long enough for his own welfare, for his own
+ambition; long enough to see the seal broken,&mdash;and then, this aged
+Simeon, joyful in the consolation, bowed his head and went home in
+peace. His feet were not hurt with fetters; he died with his armor on;
+died like a Senator in the capitol of the nation; died like an American,
+in the service of his country; died like a Christian, full of
+immortality; died like a man, fearless and free!</p>
+
+<p>You will ask, What was the secret of his strength? Whence did he gain
+such power to stand erect where others so often cringed and crouched low
+to the ground? It is plain to see: he looked beyond time, beyond men;
+looked to the eternal God, and fearing Him forgot all other fear. Some
+of his failings he knew to be such, and struggled with them though he
+did not overcome. A man, not over-modest, once asked him what he most of
+all lamented in his life, and he replied, "My impetuous temper and
+vituperative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> speech; that I have not always returned good for evil, but
+in the madness of my blood have said things that I am ashamed of before
+my God!" As the world goes, it needed some greatness to say that.</p>
+
+<p>When he was a boy, his mother, a still woman, and capable, deep-hearted,
+and pious, took great pains with his culture; most of all with his
+religious culture. When, at the age of ten, he was about to leave home
+for years of absence in another land, she took him aside to warn him of
+temptations which he could not then understand. She bade him remember
+religion and his God&mdash;his secret, silent prayer. Often in his day there
+came the earthquake of party strife; the fire, the storm, and the
+whirlwind of passion; he listened&mdash;and God was not there; but there
+came, too, the remembrance of his mother's whispered words; God came in
+that memory, and earthquake and storm, the fire and the whirlwind were
+powerless, at last, before that still small voice. Beautifully did she
+write to her boy of ten, "Great learning and superior abilities will be
+of little value ... unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are
+added to them. Remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all
+your words and your actions." "Dear as you are to me," says this more
+than Spartan, this Christian mother, "Dear as you are to me, I would
+much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have
+crossed, or that any untimely death cross you in your infant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> years,
+than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child. Let your
+observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of
+domination and power&mdash;the parents of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism.
+May you be led to an imitation of that disinterested patriotism and that
+noble love of your country, which will teach you to despise wealth,
+titles, pomp, and equipage, as mere external advantages, which cannot
+add to the internal excellence of your mind, or compensate for the want
+of integrity and virtue." She tells him in a letter, that her father, a
+plain New England clergyman, of Braintree, who had just died, "left you
+a legacy more valuable than gold or silver; he left you his blessing,
+and his prayers that you might become a useful citizen, a guardian of
+the laws, liberty, and religion of your country.... Lay this bequest up
+in your memory and practise upon it; believe me, you will find it a
+treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy."</p>
+
+<p>If a child have such a mother, there is no wonder why he stood fearless,
+and bore a charmed life which no opposition could tame down. I wonder
+more that one so born and by such a mother bred, could ever once bend a
+servile knee; could ever indulge that fierce and dreadful hate; could
+ever stoop to sully those hands which hers had joined in prayer. It ill
+accords with teachings like her own. I wonder that he could ever have
+refused to "deliberate."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> Religion is a quality that makes a man
+independent; disappointment will not render such an one sour, nor
+oppression drive him mad, nor elevation bewilder; power will not dazzle,
+nor gold corrupt; no threat can silence and no fear subdue.</p>
+
+<p>There are men enough born with greater abilities than Mr. Adams, men
+enough in New England, in all the walks of man. But how many are there
+in political life who use their gifts so diligently, with such
+conscience, such fearless deference to God?&mdash;nay, tell us one. I have
+not spared his faults; I am no eulogist, to paint a man with
+undiscriminating praise. Let his follies warn us, while his virtues
+guide. But look on all his faults, and then compare him with our famous
+men of the North or the South; with the great whigs or the great
+democrats. Ask which was the purest man, the most patriotic, the most
+honest; which did his nation the smallest harm and the greatest good;
+which for his country and his kind denied himself the most. Shall I
+examine their lives, public and private, strip them bare and lay them
+down beside his life, and ask which, after all, has the least of blemish
+and the most of beauty? Nay, that is not for me to do or to attempt.</p>
+
+<p>In one thing he surpassed most men,&mdash;he grew more liberal the more he
+grew old, ripening and mellowing, too, with age. After he was seventy
+years old, he welcomed new ideas, kept his mind vigorous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> and never
+fell into that crabbed admiration of past times and buried institutions,
+which is the palsy of so many a man, and which makes old age nothing but
+a pity, and gray hairs provocative of tears. This is the more remarkable
+in a man of his habitual reverence for the past, in one who judged
+oftener by the history than by the nature of man.</p>
+
+<p>Times will come when men shall look to that vacant seat. But the thunder
+is silent, the lightning gone; other men must take his place and fill it
+as they can. Let us not mourn that he has gone from us; let us remember
+what was evil in him, but only to be warned of ambition, of party
+strife, to love more that large charity which forgives an enemy, and,
+through good and ill, contends for mankind. Let us be thankful for the
+good he has said and done, be guided by it and blessed. There is a
+certain affluence of intellectual power granted to some men, which
+provokes admiration for a time, let the man of myriad gifts use his
+talent as he may. Such merely cubic greatness of mind is matter of
+astonishment rather than a fit subject for esteem and praise. Of that,
+Mr. Adams had little, as so many of his contemporaries had more. In him
+what most commands respect is, his independence, his love of justice, of
+his country and his kind. No son of New England has been ever so
+distinguished in political life. But it is no great thing to be
+President of the United States; some men it only makes ridiculous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> A
+worm on a steeple's top is nothing but a worm, no more able to fly than
+while creeping in congenial mud; a mountain needs no steeple to lift its
+head and show the world what is great and high. The world obeys its
+great men, stand where they may.</p>
+
+<p>After all, this must be the greatest praise of Mr. Adams: In private he
+corrupted no man nor woman; as a politician he never debauched the
+public morals of his country, nor used public power for any private end;
+in public and private he lived clean and above board; he taught a
+fearless love of truth and the right, both by word and deed. I wish I
+could add, that was a small praise. But as the times go, as our famous
+men are, it is a very great fame, and there are few competitors for such
+renown; I must leave him alone in that glory. Doubtless, as he looked
+back on his long career, his whole life, motives as well as actions,
+must have seemed covered with imperfections. I will seek no further to
+disclose his merits, or "draw his frailties from their dead abode."</p>
+
+<p>He has passed on, where superior gifts and opportunities avail not, nor
+his long life, nor his high station, nor his wide spread fame; where
+enemies cease from troubling, and the flattering tongue also is still.
+Wealth, honor, fame, forsake him at the grave's mouth. It is only the
+living soul, sullied or clean, which the last angel bears off in his
+arms to that world where many that seem first shall be last, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> the
+last first; but where justice shall be lovingly done to the great man
+full of power and wisdom who rules the State, and the feeblest slave
+whom oppression chains down in ignorance and vice&mdash;done by the
+all-seeing Father of both President and slave, who loves both with equal
+love. The venerable man is gone home. He shall have his praise. But who
+shall speak it worthily? Mean men and little, who shrank from him in
+life, who never shared what was manliest in the man, but mocked at his
+living nobleness, shall they come forward and with mealy mouths, to sing
+his requiem, forgetting that his eulogy is their own ban? Some will
+rejoice at his death; there is one man the less to fear, and they who
+trembled at his life may well be glad when the earth has covered up the
+son she bore. Strange men will meet with mutual solace at his tomb,
+wondering that their common foe is dead, and they are met! The Herods
+and Pilates of contending parties may be made friends above his grave,
+and clasping hands may fancy that their union is safer than before; but
+there will come a day after to-day! Let us leave him to his rest.</p>
+
+<p>The slave has lost a champion who gained new ardor and new strength the
+longer he fought; America has lost a man who loved her with his heart;
+Religion has lost a supporter; Freedom an unfailing friend, and Mankind
+a noble vindicator of our unalienable rights.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is not long since he was here in our own streets; three winter months
+have scantly flown: he set out for his toil&mdash;but went home to his rest.
+His labors are over. No man now threatens to assassinate; none to expel;
+none even to censure. The theatrical thunder of Congress, noisy but
+harmless, has ended as it ought, in honest tears. South Carolina need
+ask no more a halter for that one northern neck she could not bend nor
+break. The tears of his country are dropped upon his urn; the muse of
+history shall write thereon, in letters not to be effaced, <span class="smcap">The one great
+man since Washington, whom America had no cause to fear</span>.</p>
+
+<p>To-day that venerable form lies in the Capitol,&mdash;the disenchanted dust.
+All is silent. But his undying soul, could we deem it still hovering
+o'er its native soil, bound to take leave yet lingering still, and loath
+to part, that would bid us love our country, love man, love justice,
+freedom, right, and above all, love God. To-morrow that venerable dust
+starts once more to join the dear presence of father and mother, to
+mingle his ashes with their ashes, as their lives once mingled, and
+their souls again. Let his native State communicate her last sad
+sacrament, and give him now, it is all she can, a little earth for
+charity.</p>
+
+<p>But what shall we say as the dust returns?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Where slavery's minions cower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the servile power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He bore their ban;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like the aged oak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That braved the lightning's stroke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thunders round it broke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood up a man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nay, when they stormed aloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And round him like a cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Came thick and black,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He single-handed strove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like Olympian Jove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his own thunder drove<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The phalanx back.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Not from the bloody field,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Borne on his battered shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By foes o'ercome;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But from a sterner fight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the defence of Right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed with a conqueror's might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We hail him home.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"His life in labors spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That 'Old man eloquent'<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now rests for aye;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His dust the tomb may claim;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His spirit's quenchless flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His 'venerable name,'<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pass not away."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> See <i>Social Compact</i>, etc. Providence, 1848, p. 31, <i>et
+al.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See <i>Address at Washington</i>, 4th of July, 1821. Second
+Edition, Cambridge, <i>passim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Reference is made to his <i>speech in the House of
+Representatives</i>, May 8th and 9th, 1840. (Boston, 1840.) It is a little
+remarkable, that the false principle of the common law, on which Mr.
+Adams was commenting, as laid down by Blackstone, is corrected by a
+writer, M. Pothier, who rests on the civil law for his authority. See
+pp. 6-8, and 20, 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Answer to Paine's Rights of Man</i> (London, 1793),
+originally published in the Columbian Centinel. The London Edition bears
+the name of <i>John Adams</i> on the title-page.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Mr. Atherton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> See <i>Oration at Quincy</i>, 1831, p. 12, <i>et seq.</i> (Boston,
+1831.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The <i>Social Compact</i>, etc., etc. (Providence, 1842). p.
+24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> See Pickering's <i>Letter to Governor Sullivan, on the
+Embargo</i>. Boston, 1808. John Quincy Adams's <i>Letter to the Hon. H. G.
+Otis</i>, etc. Boston, 1808. Pickering's <i>Interesting Correspondence</i>,
+1808. <i>Review of the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the
+late William Cunningham</i>, etc. 1824. But see, also, Mr. Adams's
+"Appendix" to the above letter, published <i>sixteen</i> years after the vote
+on the embargo. Baltimore, 1824. Mr. Pickering's <i>Brief Remarks on the
+Appendix</i>. August, 1824.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Reference is here made to British "<i>Orders in Council</i>" of
+Nov. 22d, 1807. They were not officially made known to the American
+Congress till Feb. 7th, 1808. They were, however, published in the
+National Intelligencer, the morning on which the Message was sent to the
+Senate, Dec. 18th, 1807, but were not mentioned in that document, nor in
+the debate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> I copy this from the first letter of Mr. Pickering. Mr.
+Adams wrote a letter (to H. G. Otis) in reply to this of Mr. Pickering,
+but said nothing respecting the words charged upon him; but in 1824, in
+an appendix to that letter, he denies that he expressed the "sentiment"
+which Mr. Pickering charged him with. But he <i>does not deny the words
+themselves</i>. They rest on the authority of Mr. Pickering, his colleague
+in the Senate, a strong party man, it is true, perhaps not much disposed
+to conciliation, but a man of most unquestionable veracity. The
+"sentiment" speaks for itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Adams's <i>Remarks in the House of Representatives</i>, Jan. 5,
+1846.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late
+William Cunningham, Esq.</i> Boston, 1823, Letter xliii. p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> March 15th, 1826.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> See Mr. Adams's <i>Message</i>, Dec. 2, 1828. The exact sum was
+$1,197,422.18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> See Mr. Clay's Letter to Mr. A. H. Everett, April 27th,
+1825; to Mr. Middleton, respecting the intervention of the Emperor of
+Russia, May 10th, and Dec. 26th, 1825; to Mr. Gallatin, May 10th, and
+June 19th, 1826, and Feb. 24th, 1827. <i>Executive Documents</i>, Second
+Session of the 20th Congress, Vol. I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Report of Mr. Adams's <i>Lecture on the Chinese War</i>, in the
+Boston Atlas, for Dec. 4th and 5th, 1841.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Genesis i. 26-28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Psalms ii. 6-8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See Mr. Adams's <i>Speech on Oregon</i>, Feb. 9th, 1846.
+Arguments somewhat akin to this, may be found also in the oration
+delivered at Newburyport, before cited.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Address on breaking ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio
+Canal.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Jubilee of the Constitution</i>, p. 99.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Lecture on China.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> See his defence of this in his <i>Address to his
+Constituents at Braintree</i>, Sept. 17th, 1842. Boston, 1842, p. 56, <i>et
+seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known
+words of Tacitus (Annal VI. 39), <i>Par negotiis neque supra</i>,&mdash;applying
+them to a distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire
+whence they came. Mr. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be
+adequately translated in less than seven words in English. The lady
+replied that they might be well translated in five&mdash;<i>Equal to, not
+above, duty</i>, but better in three&mdash;<span class="smcap">John Quincy Adams</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Remarks</i> of Mr. Cambreleng.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Mr. Van Buren.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> See the <i>Debates of the House</i>, January 23d and following,
+1837; or Mr. Adams's own account of the matter in his <i>Letters to his
+Constituents</i>, etc. (Boston, 1837.) See, too, his <i>Series of Speeches on
+the Right of Petition and the Annexation of Texas</i>, January 14th and
+following, 1838. (Printed in a pamphlet. Washington, 1838.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Acer et indomitus, quo spes, quoque ira vocasset,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ferre manum, et nunquam temerando parcere ferro;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Successus urgere suos; instare favori<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Numinis; impellens quiequid sibi summa petenti<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Clarum et venerabile nomen.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> The above lines are from the pen of the Rev. John
+Pierpont.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE
+THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, APRIL 6, 1848.</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Chairman</span>,&mdash;The Gentleman before me<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> has made an allusion to Rome.
+Let me also turn to that same city. Underneath the Rome of the Emperors,
+there was another Rome; not seen by the sun, known only to a few men.
+Above, in the sunlight, stood Rome of the C&aelig;sars, with her markets and
+her armies, her theatres, her temples, and her palaces, glorious and of
+marble. A million men went through her brazen gates. The imperial city,
+she stood there, beautiful and admired, the queen of nations. But
+underneath all that, in caverns of the earth, in the tombs of dead men,
+in quarries whence the upper city had been slowly hewn, there was
+another population, another Rome, with other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> thoughts; yes, a devout
+body of men, who swore not by the public altars; men whose prayers were
+forbidden; their worship disallowed, their ideas prohibited, their very
+lives illegal. Time passed on; and gradually Rome of the Pagans
+disappeared, and Rome of the Christians sat there in her place, on the
+Seven Hills, and stretched out her sceptre over the nations.</p>
+
+<p>So underneath the laws and the institutions of each modern nation,
+underneath the monarchy and the republic, there is another and unseen
+State, with sentiments not yet become popular, and with ideas not yet
+confirmed in actions, not organized into institutions, ideas scarcely
+legal, certainly not respectable. Slowly from its depths comes up this
+ideal State, the State of the Future; and slowly to the eternal deep
+sinks down the actual State, the State of the Present. But sometimes an
+earthquake of the nations degrades of a sudden the actual; and speedily
+starts up the ideal Kingdom of the Future. Such a thing has just come to
+pass. In France, within five-and-forty days, a new State has arisen from
+underneath the old. Men, whose words were suppressed, and their ideas
+reckoned illegal but two months ago, now hold the sceptre of
+five-and-thirty millions of grateful citizens, hold it in clean and
+powerful hands. A great revolution has taken place; one which will
+produce effects that we cannot foresee. It is itself the greatest act of
+this century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> God only knows what it will lead to. We are here to
+express the sympathy of republicans for a new republic. We are here to
+rejoice over the rising hopes of a new State, not to exult over the
+fallen fortunes of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe has done much which we
+may thank him for. He has kept mainly at peace the fiercest nation of
+the world; has kept the peace of Europe for seventeen years. Let us
+thank him for that. He has consolidated the French nation, helped to
+give them a new unity of thought and unity of action, which they had not
+before. Perhaps he did not intend all this. Since he has brought it
+about, let us thank him for it, even if his conduct transcended his
+intention. But, most of all, I would thank this "Citizen King" for
+another thing. His greatest lesson is his last. He has shown that
+five-and-thirty millions of Frenchmen, in this nineteenth century, are
+only to be ruled by Justice and the Eternal Law of Right. We have seen
+this crafty king, often wise and always cunning, driven from his throne.
+He was the richest man in Europe, and the embodiment of the idea of
+modern wealth. He had an army the best disciplined, probably, in the
+world, and, as he thought, completely in his power. He had a Chamber of
+Peers of his own appointment; a Chamber of Deputies almost of his own
+election. He ruled a nation that contained three hundred thousand
+office-holders, appointed by himself, and only two hundred and forty
+thousand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> voters! Who sat so safe as the citizen king on his throne,
+surrounded by republican institutions! So confident was he, as the
+journals tell, that he bade a friend stop a day or two, "and see how I
+will put down the people!" For once, this shrewd calculator reckoned
+without his host.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we have seen this man, this citizen monarch, who married his
+children only to kings, rush from his place; his peers and his deputies
+were unavailing; his office-holders could not sustain him; his army
+"fraternized with the people;" and he, forgetful of his own children,
+ignominiously is hustled out of the kingdom, in a street cab, with
+nothing but a five-franc piece in his pocket. For the lesson thus
+taught, let us thank him most of all.</p>
+
+<p>Men tell us it is too soon to rejoice: "Perhaps the Revolution will not
+hold;" "it will not last;" "the kings of Europe will put it down." When
+a sound, healthy child is born, the friends of the family congratulate
+the parents then; they do not wait till the child has grown up, and got
+a beard. Now this is a live child; it is well born in both senses, come
+of good parentage, and gives signs of a good constitution. Let us
+rejoice at its birth, and not wait to see if it will grow up. Let us now
+baptize it in the crystal fountain of our own Hope.</p>
+
+<p>In a great revolution, there are always two things to be looked at,
+namely, the actions, and the ideas which produce the actions. The
+actions I will say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> little of; you have all read of them in the
+newspapers. Some of the actions were bad. It is not true that all at
+once the French have become angels. There are low and base men, who
+swarm in the lanes and alleys of Paris; for that great city also is like
+all capitals, girt about with a belt of misery, of vice and of crime,
+eating into her painful loins. It was a bad thing to sack the Tuileries;
+to burn bridges, and chateaux, and railroad stations. Property is under
+the insurance of mankind, and the human race must pay in public for
+private depredations. It was a bad thing to kill men; the human race
+cannot make up that loss; only suffer and be penitent. I am sorry for
+these bad actions; but I am not surprised at them. You cannot burn down
+the poor dwelling of a widow in Boston, but some miserable man will
+steal pot or pan, in the confusion of the fire. How much more should we
+expect pillage and violence in the earthquake which throws down a king!</p>
+
+<p>I have said enough of the actions; but there was one deed too symbolical
+to be passed by. In the garden of the Tuileries, before the great gate
+of the palace, there stands a statue of Spartacus, a colossal bronze,
+his broken chain in the left hand, his Roman sword in the right.
+Spartacus was a Roman gladiator. He broke his chains; gathered about him
+other gladiators, fugitive slaves, and assembled an army. He and his
+comrades fought for freedom; they cut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> off four consular armies sent
+against them; at last the hero fell amid a heap of men, slain by his own
+well-practised hand. When the people took the old and emblematic French
+throne, and burned it solemnly with emblematic fire, they stripped off
+some of the crimson trappings of the royal seat, made a tiara thereof,
+and bound it on the gladiator's brazen head! But red is the color of
+revolution, the color of blood; the unconscious gladiator was an image
+too savage for new France. So they hid the Roman sword in his hand, and
+wreathed it all over with a chaplet of flowers!</p>
+
+<p>Let us say a word of the ideas. Three ideas filled the mind of the
+nation: the idea of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Three noble words.
+Liberty meant liberty of all. So, at one word, they set free the slaves,
+and, if my friend's ciphers are correct, at once three hundred thousand
+souls rise up from the ground disenthralled, free men. That is a great
+act. A population as large as the whole family of our sober sister
+Connecticut, all at once find their chains drop off, and they are free:
+not beasts, but men. This may not hold. Our Declaration of Independence
+was not the Confederation of '78&mdash;still less was it the Constitution of
+'87. The French may be as false as the Americans to their idea of
+liberty. At any rate, it is a good beginning. Let us rejoice at that.</p>
+
+<p>Equality means that all are equal before the law;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> equal in rights,
+however unequal in mights. So all titles of nobility come at once to the
+ground. The royal family is like the family of our Presidents. The
+Chamber of Peers is abolished. Universal suffrage is decreed; all men
+over twenty-one are voters. Men here in America say, "The French are not
+ready for that." No doubt the king thought so. At any rate, he was not
+ready for it. But it is not a thing altogether unknown in France. It has
+been tried several times before. The French Constitution was accepted by
+the whole people in 1800; Napoleon was made Consul by the whole people;
+made Emperor by the whole people. Even in 1815, the "acte additionelle"
+to the "Charte" was accepted by the whole people. To decree universal
+suffrage was the most natural thing in the world. Those two ideas,
+liberty and equality, have long been American ideas; they were never
+American facts. America sought liberty only for the whites. Our fathers
+thought not of universal suffrage.</p>
+
+<p>But France has not only attempted to make our ideas into facts; she has
+advanced an idea not hinted at in the American Declaration; the idea of
+Fraternity. By this she means human brotherhood. This points not merely
+to a political, but to a social revolution. It is not easy for us to
+understand how a government can effect this. Here, all comes from the
+people, and the people have to take care of the government, meaning
+thereby the men in official<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> power; have to furnish them with ideas, and
+tell them what application to make thereof. There all comes from the
+government. So the new provisional government of France must be one that
+can lead the nation; have ideas in advance of the nation. Accordingly,
+it proposes many plans which with us could never have come from any
+party in power. Here, the government is only the servant of the people.
+There, it aims to be the father and teacher thereof; a patriarchal
+government with Christian thoughts and feelings. But as an eloquent man
+is to come after me, whose special aim is to develop the idea of human
+brotherhood into social institutions, I will not dwell on this, save to
+mention an act of the provisional authorities. They have abolished the
+punishment of death for all political offences. You remember the
+guillotine, the massacres of September, the drowning in the Loire and
+the Seine, the dreadful butchery in the name of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Put this new decree side by side with the old, and you see why
+Spartacus, though crowned by a revolution, bears peaceful blossoms in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>But let us hasten on; time would fail me to speak of the cause or point
+out the effect of this movement of the people. Only a word concerning
+the objections made to it. Some say, "It is only an extempore affair.
+Men drunk with new power are telling their fancies, and trying in their
+heat to make laws thereof." It is not so. The ideas I have hinted at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+have been long known and deeply cherished by the best minds in France.
+Last autumn, M. Lamartine, in his own newspaper, for the deputy for
+Macon is an editor, published the "Programme and confession of his
+political faith."<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<p>Others say, "The whole thing seems rash." Well, so it does; so does any
+good thing seem rash to all except the man who does it, and such as
+would do it if he did not. What is rash to one is not to another. It is
+dangerous for an old man to run, fatal for him to leap, while his
+grandson jumps over wall and ditch without hurt. The American Revolution
+was a rash act; the English Revolution a rash act; the Protestant
+Reformation was a rash act. Was it safe to withstand the Revolution? Did
+the king of the French find it so? Yet others say, "The leaders are
+unknown," "Lamartine, you might as well put any man in the street at the
+head of the nation." But when the American Revolution begun, who, in
+England, had ever heard of John Hancock, President of the Congress? To
+the men who knew him, John Hancock was a country trader, the richest man
+in a town of ten thousand inhabitants: That did not sound very great at
+London. Samuel Adams, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and all the
+other men, what did the world know of them? Only that they had been
+christened with Hebrew names. Why, George Washington was only, as Gen.
+Braddock called him, "A young Buckskin." But the world heard of these
+men afterwards. Let us leave the French statesmen to make to the future
+what report of themselves they can! Let me tell a story of Dupont de
+l'Eure, the head of the government at this moment. He was one of the
+movers of the Revolution of 1830. He dined with the citizen king, once,
+in some council. At the table, he and the king differed; the king
+affirmed, and Dupont denied. Said the king, "Do you tell me I lie?" Said
+Dupont, "When the king says yes, and Dupont de l'Eure replies no, France
+will know which to believe!" The king said, "Yes, we will put the people
+down;" Dupont said, "No, you shall not put the people down;" and now
+France knows which to believe.</p>
+
+<p>Again, say others yet, "War may come; royalty may come back, despotism
+may come back. Other kings will interpose, and put down a republic."
+Other kings interpose to put down the French! Perhaps they will. They
+tried it in 1793, but did not like the experiment very well. They will
+be well off if they do not find it necessary to put down a republic a
+little nearer at hand; their anti-revolutionary work may begin at home.
+War followed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> the American Revolution. It cost money, it cost men. But
+if we calculate the value of American ideas, they are worth what they
+cost. Even the French Revolution, with all its carnage, robbery and
+butchery, is worth what it cost. But it is possible that war will not
+come. From a foreign war, France has little to fear. There seems little
+danger that it will come at all. What monarchy will dare fight
+republican France? Internal trouble may indeed come. It is to be
+expected that the new republic will make many a misstep. But is it
+likely that all the old tragedies will be enacted again? Surely not; the
+burnt child dreads the fire. Besides, the France of '48 is not the
+France of '89. There is no triple despotism weighing on the nation's
+neck, a trinity of despotic powers&mdash;the throne, the nobility, the
+church. The king has fled; the nobles have ceased to be; the church
+seems republican. There is no hatred between class and class, as before.
+The men of '89 sought freedom for the middle class, not for all classes,
+neither for the high, nor for the low. Religion pervades the church and
+the people, as never before. Better ideas prevail. It is not the gospel
+of Jean Jaques, and the scoffing negations of Voltaire, that are now
+proclaimed to the people; but the broad maxims of Christian men; the
+words of human brotherhood. The men of terror knew no weapon but the
+sword; the provisional government<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> casts the sword from its hands, and
+will not shed blood for political crimes.</p>
+
+<p>Still, troubles may come; war may come from without, and, worse still,
+from within; the republic may end. But if it lasts only a day, let us
+rejoice in that day. Suppose it is only the dream of the nation; it is
+worth while to dream of liberty, of equality, of fraternity; and to
+dream that we are awake, and trying to make them all into institutions
+and common life. What is only a dream now, will be a fact at last.</p>
+
+<p>Next Sunday is the election day of France; six millions of voters are to
+choose nine hundred representatives! Shall not the prayers of all
+Christian hearts go up with them on that day, a great deep prayer for
+their success? The other day, the birthday of Washington, the calm,
+noiseless spirit of death came to release the soul of the patriarch of
+American statesmen. While his sun was slowly sinking in the western sky,
+the life-star of a new nation was visibly rising there, far off in the
+east. A pagan might be pardoned for the thought, that the intrepid soul
+of that old man foresaw the peril, and, slowly quitting its hold of the
+worn-out body, went thither to kindle anew the flames of liberty he
+fanned so often here. That is but a pagan thought. This is a Christian
+thought: The same God who formed the world for man's abode, presides
+also in the movements<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> of mankind, and directs their voluntary march.
+See how this earth has been brought to her present firm and settled
+state. By storm and earthquake, continent has been rent from continent;
+oceans have swept over the mountains, and the scars of ancient war still
+mark our parent's venerable face. So is it in the growth of human
+Society: it is the child of pain; revolutions have rocked its cradle,
+war and violence rudely nursed it into hardy life. Good institutions,
+how painfully, how slowly have they come!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Slowly as spreads the green of earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er the receding ocean's bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dim as the distant stars come forth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Uncertain as a vision slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has been the old world's toiling pace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere she can give fair freedom place."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Let us welcome the green spot, when it begins to spread; let us shout as
+the sterile sea of barbarism goes back; let us rejoice in the vision of
+good things to come; let us welcome the distant and rising orb, for it
+is the Bethlehem star of a great nation, and they who behold it may well
+say&mdash;"Peace on earth, and good-will to men."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Mr. Wendell Phillips.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See the <i>Courier des Etats Unis</i>, for Nov. 24, 1847, which
+contains passages from M. Lamartine's programme, which set forth all the
+schemes that the provisional government had afterwards tried to carry
+out.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION,
+MAY 31, 1848.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The design of the Abolitionists is this,&mdash;to remove and destroy the
+institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed,
+ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions.</p>
+
+<p>What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this, That all men are
+created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those
+rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of
+human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another's
+rights; of course, no man may use me for his good, and not my own good
+also; of course, there can be no ownership of man by man; of course, no
+slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious
+doctrines that follow from it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> the minds of the
+people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.</p>
+
+<p>It seems a very easy matter to get it there. The idea is nothing new;
+all the world knows it. Talk with men, democrats and whigs, they will
+say they like freedom in the abstract, they hate slavery in the
+abstract. But you find that somehow they like slavery in the concrete,
+and dislike abolitionism when it tries to set free the slave. Slavery is
+the affair of the whole people; not Congress, but the nation, made
+slavery; made it national, constitutional. Not Congress, but the voters,
+must unmake slavery; make it un-constitutional, un-national. They say
+Congress cannot do it. Well, perhaps it is so; but they that make can
+break. If the people made slavery, they can unmake it.</p>
+
+<p>You talk with the people; the idea of freedom is there. They tell you
+they believe the Declaration of Independence&mdash;that all men are created
+equal. But somehow they contrive to believe that negroes now in bondage
+are an exception to the rule, and so they tell us that slavery must not
+be meddled with, that we must respect the compromises of the
+Constitution. So we see that respect for the Constitution overrides
+respect for the inalienable rights of three millions of negro men.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to move men, it is necessary to know two things&mdash;first, What they
+think, and next, Why they think it. Let us look a little at both.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In New England, men over twenty-one years old may be divided into two
+classes. First, the men that vote, and secondly, the men that choose the
+Governor. The voters in Massachusetts are some hundred and twenty
+thousand; the men that choose the Governor, who tell the people how to
+vote, whom to vote for, what laws to make, what to forbid, what policy
+to pursue&mdash;they are not very numerous. You may take one hundred men out
+of Boston, and fifty men from the other large towns in the State&mdash;and if
+you could get them to be silent till next December, and give no counsel
+on political affairs, the people would not know what to do. The
+democrats would not know what to do, nor the whigs. We are a very
+democratic people, and suffrage is almost universal; but it is a very
+few men who tell us how to vote, who make all the most important laws.
+Do I err in estimating the number at one hundred and fifty? I do not
+like to exaggerate&mdash;suppose there are six hundred men, three hundred in
+each party; that six hundred manage the political action of the State,
+in ordinary times.</p>
+
+<p>I need not stop to ask what the rest of the people think about freedom
+and slavery. What do the men who control our politics think thereof? I
+answer, They are not opposed to slavery; to the slavery of three
+millions of men. They may not like slavery in the abstract, or they may
+like it, I do not pretend to judge; but slavery in the concrete, at the
+South,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> they do like; opposition to that slavery, in the mildest form,
+or the sternest, they do hate.</p>
+
+<p>That is a serious charge to bring against the prominent rulers of the
+State. Let me call your attention to a few facts which prove it. Look at
+the men we send to Congress. There are thirty-one New England men in
+Congress. By the most liberal construction you can only make out five
+anti-slavery men in the whole number. Who ever heard of an anti-slavery
+Governor of Massachusetts in this century? Men know what they are about
+when they select candidates for election. Do the voters always know what
+they are about when they choose them?</p>
+
+<p>Then these men always are in favor of a pro-slavery President. The
+President must be a slaveholder. There have been fifteen presidential
+elections. Men from the free States have filled the chair twelve years,
+or three terms; men from the slave States forty-four years, or eleven
+terms. During one term, the chair was filled by an amphibious
+presidency, by General Harrison, who was nothing but a concrete
+availability, and John Tyler, who was&mdash;John Tyler. They called him an
+accident; but there are no accidents in politics. A slaveholder presides
+over the United States forty-eight years out of sixty! Do those men who
+control the politics of New England not like it? It is no such thing.
+They love to have it so. We have just seen the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> democratic party, or
+their leaders, nominate General Cass for their candidate&mdash;and General
+Cass is a northern man; but on that account is he any the less a
+pro-slavery man? He did oppose the South once, but it was in pressing a
+war with England. Everybody knows General Cass, and I need say no more
+about him. But the northern whigs have their leaders&mdash;are they
+anti-slavery men? Not a whit more. Next week you will see them nominate,
+not the great Eastern whig, though he is no opponent of slavery, only an
+Expounder and Defender of the Constitution; not the great Western whig,
+the Compromiser, though steeped to the lips in slavery; no, they will
+nominate General Taylor, a man who lives a little further south, and is
+at this moment dyed a little more scarlet with the sin of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>But go a step further as to the proof. Those men who control the
+politics of Massachusetts, or New England, or the whole North, they have
+never opposed the aggressive movements of the slave power. The
+annexation of Texas, did they oppose that? No, they were glad of it.
+True, some earnest men came up here in Faneuil Hall, and passed
+resolutions, which did no good whatever, because it was well known that
+the real controllers of our politics thought the other way. Then
+followed the Mexican war. It was a war for slavery, and they knew it;
+they like it now&mdash;that is, if a man's likings can be found out by his
+doings, not his occasional and exceptional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> deeds, but his regular and
+constant actions. They knew that there would be a war against the
+currency, a war against the tariff, or a war against Mexico. They chose
+the latter. They knew what they were about.</p>
+
+<p>The same thing is shown by the character of the Press. No "respectable"
+paper is opposed to slavery; no whig paper, no democratic paper. You
+would as soon expect a Catholic newspaper to oppose the Pope and his
+church, for the slave power is the Pope of America, though not exactly a
+pious Pope. The churches show the same thing; they also are in the main
+pro-slavery, at least not anti-slavery. There are some forty
+denominations or sects in New England. Mr. President, is one of these
+anti-slavery? Not one! The land is full of ministers, respectable men,
+educated men&mdash;are they opposed to slavery? I do not know a single man,
+eminent in any sect, who is also eminent in his opposition to slavery.
+There was one such man, Dr. Channing; but just as he became eminent in
+the cause of freedom, he lost power in his own church, lost caste in his
+own little sect; and though men are now glad to make sectarian capital
+out of his reputation after he is dead, when he lived, they cursed him
+by their gods! Then, too, all the most prominent men of New England
+fraternize with slavery. Massachusetts received such an insult from
+South Carolina as no State ever before received from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> another State in
+this Union; an affront which no nation would dare offer another, without
+grinding its sword first. And what does Massachusetts do? She
+does&mdash;nothing. But her foremost man goes off there, "The schoolmaster
+that gives no lessons,"<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> to accept the hospitality of the South, to
+take the chivalry of South Carolina by the hand; the Defender of the
+Constitution fraternizes with the State which violates the Constitution,
+and imprisons his own constituents on account of the color of their
+skin.</p>
+
+<p>Put all these things together, and they show that the men who control
+the politics of Massachusetts, of all New England, do not oppose or
+dislike slavery.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>So much for what they think; and now for the Why they think so.</p>
+
+<p>First, there is the general indifference to what is absolutely right.
+Men think little of it. The Anglo-Saxon race, on both sides of the
+water, have always felt the instinct of freedom, and often contended
+stoutly enough for their own rights. But they never cared much for the
+rights of other men. The slaves are at a distance from us, and so the
+wrong of this institution is not brought home to men's feelings as if it
+were our own wrong.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the pecuniary interests of the North are supposed to be connected
+with slavery, so that the North would lose dollars if the South lost
+slaves. No doubt this is a mistake; still, it is an opinion currently
+held. The North wants a market for its fabrics, freight for its ships.
+The South affords it; and, as men think, better than if she had
+manufactures and ships of her own, both of which she could have, were
+there no slaves. All this seems to be a mistake. Freedom, I think, can
+be shown to be the interest of both North and South.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another reason is found in devotion to the interests of a party.
+Tell a whig he could make whig capital out of anti-slavery, he would
+turn abolitionist in a moment, if he believed you. Tell a democrat that
+he can make capital out of abolition, and he also will come over to your
+side. But the fact is, each party knows it would gain nothing for its
+political purposes by standing out for the rights of man. The time will
+come, and sooner too than some men think, when it will be for the
+interest of a party to favor abolition; but that time is not yet. It
+does seem strange, that while you can find men who will practise a good
+deal of self-denial for their sect or their party, lending, and hoping
+nothing in return, you so rarely find a man who will compromise even his
+popularity for the sake of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Then again, there is the fear of change. Men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> who control our politics
+seem to have little confidence in man, little in truth, little in
+justice, and the eternal right. Therefore, while it is never out of
+season to do something for the tariff, for the moneyed interests of men,
+they think it is never in time to do much for the great work of
+elevating mankind itself. They have no confidence in the people, and
+take little pains to make the people worthy of confidence. So any change
+which gives a more liberal government to a people, which gives freedom
+to the slave, they look on with distrust, if not alarm. In 1830, when
+the French expelled the despotic king who encumbered their throne, what
+said Massachusetts, what said New England, in honor of the deed?
+Nothing. Your old men? Nothing. Your young men? Not a word. What did
+they care for the freedom of thirty millions of men? They were looking
+at their imports and exports. In 1838, when England set free eight
+hundred thousand men in a day, what did Massachusetts say about that?
+What had New England to say? Not a word in its favor from these
+political leaders of the land. Nay, they thought the experiment was
+dangerous, and ever since that it is with great reluctance you can get
+them to confess that the scheme works well. In 1848, when France again
+expels her king, and all the royalty in the kingdom is carted off in a
+one-horse cab&mdash;when the broadest principles of human government are laid
+down, and a great nation sets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> about the difficult task of moving out of
+her old political house, and into a new one, without tearing down the
+old, without butchering men in the process of removal,&mdash;why, what has
+Boston to say to that? What have the political leaders of Massachusetts,
+of New England, to say? They have nothing to say for liberty; they are
+sorry the experiment was made; they are afraid the French will not want
+so much cotton; they have no confidence in man, and fear every change.</p>
+
+<p>Such are their opinions, to judge by what they do; such the reasons
+thereof, judging by what they say.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But now how can we change this, and get the idea of freedom into men's
+minds? Something can be done by the gradual elevation of men, by schools
+and churches, by the press. The churches and colleges of New England
+have not directly aided us in the work of abolishing slavery. No doubt
+by their direct action they have retarded that work, and that a good
+deal. But indirectly they have done much to hasten the work. They have
+helped educate men; helped make men moral, in a general way; and now
+this moral power can be turned to this special business, though the
+churches say, "No, you shall not." I see before me a good and an earnest
+man,<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> who, not opening his mouth in public against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> slavery, has yet
+done a great service in this way: he has educated the teachers of the
+Commonwealth, has taught them to love freedom, to love justice, to love
+man and God. That is what I call sowing the seeds of anti-slavery. The
+honored and excellent Secretary of Education,<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> who has just gone to
+stand in the place of a famous man, and I hope to fill it nobly, has
+done much in this way. I wish in his reports on education he had exposed
+the wrong which is done here in Boston, by putting all the colored
+children in one school, by shutting them out of the Latin School and the
+English High School. I wish he had done that duty, which plainly belongs
+to him to do. But without touching that, he has yet done, indirectly, a
+great work towards the abolition of slavery. He has sown the seeds of
+education wide spread over the State. One day these seeds will come up;
+come up men, men that will both vote and choose the Governor; men that
+will love right and justice; will see the iniquity of American slavery,
+and sweep it off the continent, cost what it may cost, spite of all
+compromises of the Constitution, and all compromisers. I look on that as
+certain. But that is slow work, this waiting for a general morality to
+do a special act. It is going without dinner till the wheat is grown for
+your bread.</p>
+
+<p>So we want direct and immediate action upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> people themselves. The
+idea must be set directly before them, with all its sanctions displayed,
+and its obligations made known. This can be done in part by the pulpit.
+Dr. Channing shows how much one man can do, standing on that eminence.
+You all know how much he did do. I am sorry that he came so late, sorry
+that he did not do more, but thankful for what he did do. However, you
+cannot rely on the pulpit to do much. The pulpit represents the average
+goodness and piety; not eminent goodness and piety. It is unfair to call
+ordinary men to do extraordinary works. I do not concur in all the hard
+things that are said about the clergy, perhaps it is because I am one of
+them; but I do not expect a great deal from them. It is hard to call a
+class of men all at once to rise above all other classes of men, and
+teach a degree of virtue which they do not understand. But you may call
+them to be true to their own consciences.</p>
+
+<p>So the pulpit is not to be relied on for much aid. If all the ministers
+of New England were abolitionists, with the same zeal that they are
+Protestants, Universalists, Methodists, Calvinists, or Unitarians, no
+doubt the whole State would soon be an anti-slavery State, and the day
+of emancipation would be wonderfully hastened. But that we are not to
+look for.</p>
+
+<p>Much can be done by lecturers, who shall go to the people and address
+them, not as whigs or democrats,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> not as sectarians, but as men, and in
+the name of man and God present the actual condition of the slaves, and
+show the duty of the North and the South, of the nation, in regard to
+this matter. For this business, we want money and men, the two sinews of
+war; money to pay the men, men to earn the money. They must appeal to
+the people in their primary capacity, simply as men.</p>
+
+<p>Much also may be done by the press. How much may be done by these two
+means, and that in a few years, these men<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> can tell; all the North
+and South can tell. Men of the most diverse modes of thought can work
+together in this cause. Here on my right is Mr. Phillips, an
+old-fashioned Calvinist, who believes all the five points of Calvinism.
+I am rather a new-fashioned Unitarian, and believe only one of the five
+points, the one Mr. Phillips has proved&mdash;the perseverance of the saints;
+but we get along without any quarrel by the way.</p>
+
+<p>Some men will try political action. The action of the people, of the
+nation, must be political action. It may be constitutional, it may be
+un-constitutional. I see not why men need quarrel about that. Let not
+him that voteth, condemn him that voteth not; nor let not him that
+voteth not, condemn him that voteth, but let every man be faithful to
+his own convictions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is said, the abolitionists waste time and wind in denunciation. It is
+partly true. I make no doubt it inspires the slaveholder's heart to see
+division amongst his foes. I ought to say his friends, for such we are.
+He thinks the day of justice is deferred, while the ministers thereof
+contend. I do not believe a revolution is to be baptized with
+rose-water. I do not believe a great work is to be done without great
+passions. It is not to be supposed that the Leviathan of American
+Slavery will allow himself to be drawn out of the mire in which he has
+made his nest, and grown fat and strong, without some violence and
+floundering. When we have caught him fairly, he will put his feet into
+the mud to hold on by; he will reach out and catch hold of every thing
+that will hold him. He has caught hold of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. He
+will catch hold of General Cass and General Taylor. He will die, though
+slowly, and die hard. Still it is a pity that men who essay to pull him
+out, should waste their strength in bickerings with one another, or in
+needless denunciation of the leviathan's friends. Call slaveholding,
+slaveholding; let us tell all the evils which arise from it, if we can
+find language terrible enough; let us show up the duplicity of the
+nation, the folly of our wise men, the littleness of our great men, the
+baseness of our honorable men, if need be; but all that with no unkind
+feelings toward any one. Virtue never appears so lovely as when
+destroying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> sin, she loves the sinner, and seeks to save him. Absence of
+love is absence of the strongest power. See how much Mr. Adams lost of
+his influence, how much he wasted of his strength, by the violence with
+which he pursued persons. I am glad to acknowledge the great services he
+performed. He wished to have every man stand on the right side of the
+anti-slavery line; but I believe there were some men whom he would like
+to have put there with a pitch-fork. On the other hand, Dr. Channing
+never lost a moment by attacking a personal foe; and see what he gained
+by it! However, I must say this, that no great revolution of opinion and
+practice was ever brought about before with so little violence, waste of
+force, and denunciation. Consider the greatness of the work: it is to
+restore three millions to liberty; a work, in comparison with which the
+American Revolution was a little thing. Yet consider the violence, the
+denunciation, the persecution, and the long years of war, which that
+Revolution cost. I do not wonder that abolitionists are sometimes
+violent; I only deplore it. Remembering the provocation, I wonder they
+are not more so and more often. The prize is to be run for, "not without
+dust and heat."</p>
+
+<p>Working in this way, we are sure to succeed. The idea is an eternal
+truth. It will find its way into the public mind, for there is that
+sympathy between man and the truth, that he cannot live without it and
+be blessed. What allies we have on our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> side! True, the cupidity, the
+tyranny, the fear and the atheism of the land are against us. But all
+the nobleness, all the honor, all the morality, all the religion, are on
+our side. I was sorry to hear it said, that the religion of the land
+opposed us. It is not true. Religion never opposed any good work. I know
+what my friend meant, and I wish he had said it, calling things by their
+right names. It is the irreligion of the land that favors slavery; it is
+the idolatry of gold; it is our atheism. Of speculative atheism there is
+not much; you see how much of the practical!</p>
+
+<p>We are certain of success; the spirit of the age is on our side. See how
+the old nations shake their tyrants out of the land. See how every
+steamer brings us good tidings of good things; and do you believe
+America can keep her slaves? It is idle to think so. So all we want is
+time. On our side are Truth, Justice, and the Eternal Right. Yes, on our
+side is religion, the religion of Christ; on our side are the hopes of
+mankind, and the great power of God.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> This was a sentiment offered at a public dinner given by
+the citizens of Charleston, S. C., to Hon. Daniel Webster.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Rev. Cyrus Pierce, Teacher of the Normal School at
+Newton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Hon. Horace Mann.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Messrs. Garrison, Phillips and Quincy.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY AND THE ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR.
+DECEMBER, 1848.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The people of the United States have just chosen an officer, who, for
+the next four years, will have more power than any monarch of Europe;
+yet three years ago he was scarcely known out of the army in Florida,
+and even now has appeared only in the character of a successful general.
+His supporters at the North intend, by means of his election, to change
+the entire commercial policy of the country, and perhaps, also, its
+financial policy; they contemplate, or profess to contemplate, a great
+change. Yet the election has been effected without tumult or noise; not
+a soldier has drawn his bayonet; scarcely has a constable needed his
+official rod to keep order withal. In Europe, at the same time, the
+beginning of a change in the national dynasty or the national policy is
+only attempted by violence, by soldiers with arms ready for fight, by
+battle and murder. One day or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> another, men will be wise enough to see
+the cause of this difference, and insular statesmen in England, who now
+sneer at the new government in America, may learn that democracy has at
+least one quality&mdash;that of respecting law and order, and may live to see
+ours the oldest government in the whole Caucasian race.</p>
+
+<p>Since the election is now over, it is worth while to look a moment at
+the politics and political parties of the country, that we may gain
+wisdom for the future, and perhaps hope; at any rate, may see the actual
+condition of things. Each political party is based on an Idea, which
+corresponds to a Truth, or an Interest. It commonly happens that the
+idea is represented as an interest, and the interest as an idea, before
+either becomes the foundation of a large party. Now when a new idea is
+introduced to any party, or applied to any institution, if it be only
+auxiliary to the old doctrines incarnated therein, a regular growth and
+new development take place; but when the new idea is hostile to the old,
+the development takes place under the form of a revolution, and that
+will be greater or less in proportion to the difference between the new
+idea and the old doctrine; in proportion to their relative strength and
+value. As Aristotle said of seditions, a revolution comes on slight
+occasions, but not of slight causes;<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> the occasion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> may be obvious
+and obviously trivial, but the cause obscure and great. The occasion of
+the French Revolution of 1848 was afforded by the attempt of the king to
+prevent a certain public dinner: he had a legal right to prevent it. The
+cause of the Revolution was a little different; but some men in America
+and England, at first, scarcely looked beyond the occasion, and, taking
+that for the cause, thought the Frenchmen fools to make so much ado
+about a trifle, and that they had better eat their <i>soupe maigre</i> at
+home, and let their victuals stop their mouths. The occasion of the
+American Revolution may be found in the Stamp-Act, or the Sugar-Act, the
+Writs of Assistance, or the Boston Port-Bill; some men, even now, see no
+further, and logically conclude the colonists made a mistake, because
+for a dozen years they were far worse off than before the "Rebellion,"
+and have never been so lightly taxed since. Such men do not see the
+cause of the Revolution, which was not an unwillingness to pay taxes,
+but a determination to govern themselves.</p>
+
+<p>At the present day it is plain that a revolution, neither slow nor
+silent, is taking place in the political parties of America. The
+occasion thereof is the nomination of a man for the presidency who has
+no political or civil experience, but who has three qualities that are
+important in the eyes of the leading men who have supported and pushed
+him forward: one is, that he is an eminent slaveholder, whose interests<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>
+and accordingly whose ideas are identical with those of the
+slaveholders; the next, that he is not hostile to the doctrines of
+northern manufacturers respecting a protective tariff; and the third,
+that he is an eminent and very successful military commander. The last
+is an accidental quality, and it is not to be supposed that the
+intelligent and influential men at the North and South who have promoted
+his election, value him any more on that account, or think that mere
+military success fits him for his high office, and enables him to settle
+the complicated difficulties of a modern State. They must know better;
+but they must have known that many men of little intelligence are so
+taken with military glory that they will ask for no more in their hero;
+it was foreseen, also, that honest and intelligent men of all parties
+would give him their vote because he had never been mixed up with the
+intrigues of political life. Thus "far-sighted" politicians of the North
+and South saw that he might be fairly elected, and then might serve the
+purposes of the slaveholder, or the manufacturer of the North. The
+military success of General Taylor, an accidental merit, was only the
+occasion of his nomination by the whigs; his substantial merit was found
+in the fact, that he was supposed, or known, to be favorable to the
+"peculiar institution" of the South, and the protective policy of the
+manufacturers at the North: this was the cause of his formal nomination
+by the Whig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> Convention of Philadelphia, and his real nomination by
+members of the whig party at Washington. The men of property at the
+South wanted an extension of slavery; the men of property at the North,
+a high protective tariff; and it was thought General Taylor could serve
+both purposes, and promote the interests of the North and South.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the occasion of the revolution in political parties: the cause
+is the introduction of a new idea into these parties entirely hostile to
+some of their former doctrines. In the electioneering contest, the new
+idea was represented by the words "Free Soil." For present practice it
+takes a negative form: "No more Slave States, no more Slave Territory,"
+is the motto. But these words and this motto do not adequately represent
+the idea, only so much thereof as has been needful in the present
+crisis.</p>
+
+<p>Before now there has been much in the political history of America to
+provoke the resentment of the North. England has been ruled by various
+dynasties; the American chair has been chiefly occupied by the Southern
+House, the Dynasty of Slaveholders: now and then a member of the
+Northern House has sat on that seat, but commonly it has been a
+"Northern man with Southern principles," never a man with mind to see
+the great idea of America, and will to carry it out in action. Still the
+spirit of liberty has not died out of the North; the attempt to put an
+eighth slaveholder in the chair of "The model<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> republic," gave occasion
+for that spirit to act again.</p>
+
+<p>The new idea is not hostile to the distinctive doctrine of either
+political party; neither to free trade, nor to protection; so it makes
+no revolution in respect to them: it is neutral, and leaves both as it
+found them. It is not hostile to the general theory of the American
+State, so it makes no revolution there; this idea is assumed as
+self-evident, in the Declaration of Independence. It is not inimical to
+the theory of the Constitution of the United States, as set forth in the
+preamble thereto, where the design of the Constitution is declared to be
+"To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
+tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
+welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
+posterity."</p>
+
+<p>There are clauses in the Constitution, which are exceptions to this
+theory, and hostile to the design mentioned above; to such, this idea
+will one day prove itself utterly at variance, as it is now plainly
+hostile to one part of the practice of the American government, and that
+of both the parties.</p>
+
+<p>We have had several political parties since the Revolution: the
+federalists, and anti-federalists,&mdash;the latter shading off into
+republicans, democrats, and loco focos; the former tapering into modern
+whigs, in which guise some of their fathers would scarcely recognize the
+family type. We have had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> protective party and an anti-protective
+party; once there was a free-trade party, which no longer appears in
+politics. There has been a National Bank party, which seems to have gone
+to the realm of things lost on earth. In the rise and fall of these
+parties, several dramas, tragic and comic, have been performed on the
+American boards, where "One man in his time plays many parts," and stout
+representatives of the Hartford Convention find themselves on the same
+side with worshippers of the Gerrymander, and shouting the same cry. It
+is kindly ordered that memory should be so short, and brass so common.
+None of the old parties is likely to return; the living have buried the
+dead. "We are all federalists," said Mr. Jefferson, "we are all
+democrats," and truly, so far as old questions are concerned. It is well
+known that the present representatives of the old federal party, have
+abjured the commercial theory of their predecessors; and the men who
+were "Jacobins" at the beginning of the century, curse the new French
+Revolution by their gods. At the presidential election of 1840, there
+were but two parties in the field&mdash;democrats and whigs. As they both
+survive, it is well to see what interests or what ideas they represent.</p>
+
+<p>They differ accidentally in the possession and the desire of power; in
+the fact that the former took the initiative, in annexing Texas, and in
+making the Mexican war, while the latter only pretended to oppose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+either, but zealously and continually co&ouml;perated in both. Then, again,
+the democratic party sustains the sub-treasury system, insisting that
+the government shall not interfere with banking, shall keep its own
+deposits, and give and take only specie in its business with the people.
+The whig party, if we understand it, has not of late developed any
+distinctive doctrine, on the subject of money and financial operations,
+but only complained of the action of the sub-treasury; yet, as it
+sustained the late Bank of the United States, and appropriately followed
+as chief mourner at the funeral thereof, uttering dreadful lamentations
+and prophecies which time has not seen fit to accomplish, it still keeps
+up a show of differing from the democrats on this matter. These are only
+accidental or historical differences, which do not practically affect
+the politics of the nation to any great degree.</p>
+
+<p>The substantial difference between the two is this: The whigs desire a
+tariff of duties which shall directly and intentionally protect American
+industry, or, as we understand it, shall directly and intentionally
+protect manufacturing industry, while the commercial and agricultural
+interests are to be protected indirectly, not as if they were valuable
+in themselves, but were a collateral security to the manufacturing
+interest: a special protection is desired for the great manufactures,
+which are usually conducted by large capitalists&mdash;such as the
+manufacture of wool, iron,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> and cotton. On the other hand, the democrats
+disclaim all direct protection of any special interest, but, by raising
+the national revenue from the imports of the nation, actually afford a
+protection to the articles of domestic origin to the extent of the
+national revenue, and much more. That is the substantial difference
+between the two parties&mdash;one which has been much insisted on at the late
+election, especially at the North.</p>
+
+<p>Is this difference of any practical importance at the present moment?
+There are two methods of raising the revenue of a country: first, by
+direct taxation,&mdash;a direct tax on the person, a direct tax on the
+property; second, by indirect taxation. To a simple-minded man direct
+taxation seems the only just and equal mode of collecting the public
+revenue: thereby, the rich man pays in proportion to his much, the poor
+to his little. This is so just and obvious, that it is the only method
+resorted to, in towns of the North, for raising their revenue. But while
+it requires very little common sense and virtue to appreciate this plan
+in a town, it seems to require a good deal to endure it in a nation. The
+four direct taxes levied by the American government since 1787 have been
+imperfectly collected, and only with great difficulty and long delay. To
+avoid this difficulty, the government resorts to various indirect modes
+of taxation, and collects the greater part of its revenue from the
+imports which reach our shores.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> In this way a man's national tax is not
+directly in proportion to his wealth, but directly in proportion to his
+consumption of imported goods, or directly to that of domestic goods,
+whose price is enhanced by the duties laid on the foreign article. So it
+may happen that an Irish laborer, with a dozen children, pays a larger
+national tax than a millionnaire who sees fit to live in a miserly
+style. Besides, no one knows when he pays or what. At first it seems as
+if the indirect mode of taxation made the burden light, but in the end
+it does not always prove so. The remote effect thereof is sometimes
+remarkable. The tax of one per cent, levied in Massachusetts on articles
+sold by auction, has produced some results not at all anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>Now since neither party ventures to suggest direct taxation, the actual
+question between the two is not between free trade and protection, but
+only between a protective and a revenue tariff. So the real and
+practical question between them is this: Shall there be a high tariff or
+a low one? At first sight a man not in favor of free trade might think
+the present tariff gave sufficient protection to those great
+manufactures of wool, cotton, and iron, and as much as was reasonable.
+But the present duty is perhaps scarcely adequate to meet the expenses
+of the nation, for with new territory new expenses must come; there is a
+large debt to be discharged, its interest to be paid; large sums will be
+demanded as pensions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> for the soldiers. Since these things are so, it is
+but reasonable to conclude that, under the administration of the whigs
+or democrats, a pretty high tariff of duties will continue for some
+years to come. So the great and substantial difference between the two
+parties ceases to be of any great and substantial importance.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time another party rises up, representing neither of these
+interests; without developing any peculiar views relative to trade or
+finance, it proclaims the doctrine that there must be no more slave
+territory, and no more slave States. This doctrine is of great practical
+importance, and one in which the free soil party differs substantially
+from both the other parties. The idea on which the party rests is not
+new; it does not appear that the men who framed the Constitution, or the
+people who accepted it, ever contemplated the extension of slavery
+beyond the limits of the United States at that time; had such a
+proposition been then made, it would have been indignantly rejected by
+both. The principle of the Wilmot Proviso boasts the same origin as the
+Declaration of Independence. The state of feeling at the North
+occasioned by the Missouri Compromise is well known, but after that
+there was no political party opposed to slavery. No President has been
+hostile to it; no Cabinet; no Congress. In 1805, Mr. Pickering, a
+Senator from Massachusetts, brought forward his bill for amending the
+Constitution,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> so that slaves should not form part of the basis of
+representation; but it fell to the ground, not to be lifted up by his
+successors for years to come. The refusal of John Quincy Adams, while
+President, to recognize the independence of Hayti, and his efforts to
+favor the slave power, excited no remark. In 1844, for the first time
+the anti-slavery votes began seriously to affect the presidential
+election. At that time the whigs had nominated Mr. Clay as their
+candidate, a man of great powers, of popular manners, the friend of
+northern industry, but still more the friend of southern slavery, and
+more directly identified with that than any man in so high a latitude.
+The result of the anti-slavery votes is well known. The bitterest
+reproaches have been heaped on the men who voted against him as the
+incarnation of the slave power; the annexation of Texas, though
+accomplished by a whig senate, and the Mexican war, though only sixteen
+members of Congress voted against it, have both been laid to their
+charge; and some have even affected to wonder that men conscientiously
+opposed to slavery could not forget their principle for the sake of
+their party, and put a most decided slaveholder, who had treated not
+only them but their cause with scorn and contempt, in the highest place
+of power.</p>
+
+<p>The whig party renewed its attempt to place a slaveholder in the
+President's chair, at a time when all Europe was rising to end for ever
+the tyranny of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> man. General Taylor was particularly obnoxious to the
+anti-slavery men. He is a slaveholder, holding one or two hundred men in
+bondage, and enlarging that number by recent purchases; he employs them
+in the worst kind of slave labor, the manufacture of sugar; he leaves
+them to the mercy of overseers, the dregs and refuse of mankind; he has
+just returned from a war undertaken for the extension of slavery; he is
+a southern man with southern interests, and opinions favorable to
+slavery, and is uniformly represented by his supporters at the South, as
+decidedly opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, and in favor of the extension
+of slavery. We know this has been denied at the North; but the testimony
+of the South settles the question. The convention of democrats in South
+Carolina, when they also nominated him, said well, "His interests are
+our interests:... we know that on this great, paramount, and leading
+question of the rights of the South [to extend slavery over the new
+territory], he is for us and he is with us." Said a newspaper in his own
+State, "General Taylor is from birth, association, and conviction,
+identified with the South and her institutions, being one of the most
+extensive slaveholders in Louisiana, and supported by the slaveholding
+interest; is opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, and in favor of procuring
+the privilege to the owners of slaves to remove with them to newly
+acquired territory."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The southerners evidently thought the crisis an important one. The
+following is from the distinguished whig senator, Mr. Berrien.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I consider it the most important Presidential election,
+especially to southern men, which has occurred since the
+foundation of the government.</p>
+
+<p>"We have great and important interests at stake. If we fail
+to sustain them now, we may be forced too soon to decide
+whether we will remain in the Union, at the mercy of a band
+of fanatics or political jugglers, or reluctantly retire
+from it for the preservation of our domestic institutions,
+and all our rights as freemen. If we are united, we can
+sustain them; if we divide on the old party issues, we must
+be victims.</p>
+
+<p>"With a heart devoted to their interests on this great
+question, and without respect to party, I implore my
+fellow-citizens of Georgia, whig and democratic, to forget
+for the time their party divisions: to know each other only
+as southern men: to act upon the truism uttered by Mr.
+Calhoun, that on this vital question,&mdash;the preservation of
+our domestic institutions,&mdash;the southern man who is furthest
+from us, is nearer to us than any northern man can be; that
+General Taylor is identified with us, in feeling and
+interest, was born in a slaveholding State, educated in a
+slaveholding State, is himself a slaveholder; that his slave
+property constitutes the means of support to himself and
+family; that he cannot desert us without sacrificing his
+interest, his principle, the habits and feelings of his
+life; and that with him, therefore, our institutions are
+safe. I beseech them, therefore, from the love which they
+bear to our noble State, to rally under the banner of
+Zachary Taylor, and, with one united voice, to send him by
+acclamation to the executive chair."</p></div>
+
+<p>All this has been carefully kept from the sight of the people at the
+North.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There have always been men in America, who were opposed to the extension
+and the very existence of slavery. In 1787, the best and the most
+celebrated statesmen were publicly active on the side of freedom. Some
+thought slavery a sin, others a mistake, but nearly all in the
+Convention thought it an error. South Carolina and Georgia were the only
+States thoroughly devoted to slavery at that time. They threatened to
+withdraw from the Union, if it were not sufficiently respected in the
+new Constitution. If the other States had said, "You may go, soon as you
+like, for hitherto you have been only a curse to us, and done little but
+brag," it would have been better for us all. However, partly for the
+sake of keeping the peace, and still more for the purpose of making
+money by certain concessions of the South, the North granted the
+southern demands. After the adoption of the Constitution, the
+anti-slavery spirit cooled down; other matters occupied the public mind.
+The long disasters of Europe; the alarm of the English party, who feared
+their sons should be "conscripts in the armies of Napoleon," and the
+violence of the French party, who were ready to compromise the dignity
+of the nation, and add new elements to the confusion in Europe; the
+subsequent conflict with England, and then the efforts to restore the
+national character, and improve our material condition,&mdash;these occupied
+the thought of the nation, till the Missouri Compromise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> again disturbed
+the public mind. But that was soon forgotten; little was said about
+slavery. In the eighteenth century, it was discussed in the colleges and
+newspapers, even in the pulpits of the North; but, in the first quarter
+of the nineteenth, little was heard of it. Manufactures got established
+at the North, and protected by duties; at the South, cotton was
+cultivated with profit, and a heavy duty protected the slave-grown sugar
+of Louisiana. The pecuniary interests of North and South became closely
+connected, and both seemed dependent on the peaceable continuance of
+slavery. Little was said against it, little thought, and nothing done.
+Southern masters voluntarily brought their slaves to New England, and
+took them back, no one offering the African the conventional shelter of
+the law, not to speak of the natural shelter of justice. We well
+remember the complaint made somewhat later, when a Judge decided that a
+slave, brought here by his master's consent, became, from that moment,
+free!</p>
+
+<p>But where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. There rose up one
+man who would not compromise, nor be silent,&mdash;who would be heard.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> He
+spoke of the evil, spoke of the sin&mdash;for all true reforms are bottomed
+on religion, and while they seem adverse to many interests, yet
+represent the idea of the Eternal. He found a few others, a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> few,
+and began the anti-slavery movement. The "platform" of the new party was
+not an interest, but an idea&mdash;that "All men are created equal, and
+endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Every truth
+is also a fact; this was a fact of human consciousness, and a truth of
+necessity.</p>
+
+<p>The time has not come to write the history of the abolitionists,&mdash;other
+deeds must come before words; but we cannot forbear quoting the
+testimony of one witness, as to the state of anti-slavery feeling in New
+England in 1831. It is the late Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, a former mayor
+of Boston, who speaks in his recent letter.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The first information received by me, of a disposition to
+agitate this subject in our State, was from the Governors of
+Virginia and Georgia, severally remonstrating against an
+incendiary newspaper, published in Boston, and, as they
+alleged, thrown broadcast among their plantations, inciting
+to insurrection and its horrid results. It appeared, on
+inquiry, that no member of the city government [of Boston]
+had ever heard of the publication. Some time afterwards it
+was reported to me by the city officers, that they had
+ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was
+an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and
+his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all
+colors. This information.... I communicated to the
+above-named governors, with an assurance of my belief that
+the new fanaticism had not made, nor was likely to make,
+proselytes among the respectable classes of our people."</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the state of things in 1831. Anti-slavery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> had "an obscure
+hole" for its head-quarters; the one agitator, who had filled the two
+doughty Governors of Virginia and Georgia with uncomfortable
+forebodings, had a "negro boy" "for his only visible auxiliary," and
+none of the respectable men of Boston had heard of the hole, of the
+agitator, of the negro boy, or even of the agitation. One thing must be
+true: either the man and the boy were pretty vigorous, or else there was
+a great truth in that obscure hole; for, in spite of the governors and
+the mayors, spite of the many able men in the South and the North,
+spite, also, of the wealth and respectability of the whole land, it is a
+plain case that the abolitionists have shaken the nation, and their idea
+is the idea of the time; and the party which shall warmly welcome that
+is destined before long to override all the other parties.</p>
+
+<p>One thing must be said of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement. They
+asked for nothing but justice; not justice for themselves&mdash;they were not
+Socratic enough to ask that,&mdash;but only justice for the slave; and to
+obtain that, they forsook all that human hearts most love. It is rather
+a cheap courage that fought at Monterey and Palo Alto, a bravery that
+can be bought for eight dollars a month; the patriotism which hurras for
+"our side," which makes speeches at Faneuil Hall, nay, which carries
+torch-lights in a procession, is not the very loftiest kind of
+patriotism; even the man who stands up at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> the stake, and in one brief
+hour of agony anticipates the long torment of disease, does not endure
+the hardest, but only the most obvious kind of martyrdom. But when a
+man, for conscience' sake, leaves a calling that would insure him bread
+and respectability; when he abjures the opinions which give him the
+esteem of honorable men; when, for the sake of truth and justice, he
+devotes himself to liberating the most abused and despised class of men,
+solely because they are men and brothers; when he thus steps forth in
+front of the world, and encounters poverty and neglect, the scorn, the
+loathing, and the contempt of mankind&mdash;why, there is something not very
+common in that. There was once a Man who had not where to lay his head,
+who was born in "an obscure hole," and had not even a negro boy for his
+"auxiliary;" who all his life lived with most obscure persons&mdash;eating
+and drinking with publicans and sinners; who found no favor with mayors
+or governors, and yet has had some influence on the history of the
+world. When intelligent men mock at small beginnings, it is surprising
+they cannot remember that the greatest institutions have had their times
+which tried men's souls, and that they who have done all the noblest and
+best work of mankind, sometimes forgot self-interest in looking at a
+great truth; and though they had not always even a negro boy to help
+them, or an obscure hole to lay their heads in, yet found the might of
+the universe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> was on the side of right, and themselves workers with God!</p>
+
+<p>The abolitionists did not aim to found a political party; they set forth
+an idea. If they had set up the interest of the whigs or the democrats,
+the manufacturers or the merchants, they might have formed a party and
+had a high place in it, with money, ease, social rank and a great name
+in the party&mdash;newspapers. Some of them had political talents, ideas more
+than enough, the power of organizing men, the skill to manage them, and
+a genius for eloquence. With such talents, it demands not a little
+manliness to keep out of politics and in the truth.</p>
+
+<p>To found a political party there is no need of a great moral idea: the
+whig party has had none such this long time; the democratic party
+pretends to none and acts on none; each represents an interest which can
+be estimated in dollars; neither seems to see that behind questions of
+political economy there is a question of political morality, and the
+welfare of the nation depends on the answer we shall give! So long as
+the abolitionists had nothing but an idea, and but few men had that,
+there was no inducement for the common run of politicians to join them;
+they could make nothing by it, so nothing of it. The guardians of
+education, the trustees of the popular religion, did not like to invest
+in such funds. But still the idea went on, spite of the most entire,
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> most bitter, the most heartless and unrelenting opposition ever
+known in America. No men were ever hated as the abolitionists; political
+parties have joined to despise, and sectarian churches to curse them.
+Yet the idea has gone on, till now all that is most pious in the sects,
+most patriotic in the parties, all that is most Christian in modern
+philanthropy, is on its side. It has some representative in almost every
+family, save here and there one whose God is mammon alone, where the
+parents are antediluvian and the children born old and conservative,
+with no faculty but memory to bind them to mankind. It has its spokesmen
+in the House and the Senate. The tide rises and swells, and the compact
+wall of the whig party, the tall ramparts of the democrats, are
+beginning to "cave in."</p>
+
+<p>As the idea has gained ground, men have begun to see that an interest is
+connected with it, and begun to look after that. One thing the North
+knows well&mdash;the art of calculation, and of ciphering. So it begins to
+ask questions as to the positive and comparative influence of the slave
+power on the country. Who fought the Revolution? Why the North,
+furnishing the money and the men, Massachusetts alone sending fourteen
+thousand soldiers more than all the present slave States. Who pays the
+national taxes? The North, for the slaves pay but a trifle. Who owns the
+greater part of the property, the mills, the shops, the ships? The
+North.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> Who writes the books&mdash;the histories, poems, philosophies, works
+of science, even the sermons and commentaries on the Bible? Still the
+North. Who sends their children to school and college? The North. Who
+builds the churches, who founds the Bible societies, Education
+societies, Missionary societies, the thousand-and-one institutions for
+making men better and better off? Why the North. In a word, who is it
+that in seventy years has made the nation great, rich, and famous for
+her ideas and their success all over the world? The answer is, still the
+North, the North.</p>
+
+<p>Well, says the calculator, but who has the offices of the nation? The
+South. Who has filled the Presidential chair forty-eight years out of
+sixty? Nobody but slaveholders. Who has held the chief posts of honor?
+The South. Who occupy the chief offices in the army and navy? The South.
+Who increases the cost of the post-office and pays so little of its
+expense?<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> The South. Who is most blustering and disposed to quarrel?
+The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> South. Who made the Mexican war? The South. Who sets at nought the
+Constitution? The South. Who would bring the greatest peril in case of
+war with a strong enemy? Why the South, the South. But what is the South
+most noted for abroad? For her three million slaves; and the North? for
+her wealth, freedom, education, religion!</p>
+
+<p>Then the calculator begins to remember past times&mdash;opens the
+account-books and turns back to old charges: five slaves count the same
+as three freemen, and the three million slaves, which at home are
+nothing but property, entitle their owners to as many representatives in
+Congress as are now sent by all the one million eight hundred thousand
+freemen who make the entire population of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
+Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, and have created a vast amount of
+property worth more than all the slave States put together! Then the
+North must deliver up the fugitive slaves, and Ohio must play the
+traitor, the kidnapper, the bloodhound, for Kentucky! The South wanted
+to make two slave States out of Florida, and will out of Texas; she
+makes slavery perpetual in both; she is always bragging as if she made
+the Revolution, while she only laid the Embargo, and began the late war
+with England,&mdash;but that is going further back than is needful. The South
+imprisons our colored sailors in her ports, contrary to justice, and
+even contrary to the Constitution. She drove our commissioners<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> out of
+South Carolina and Louisiana, when they were sent to look into the
+matter and legally seek for redress. She affronts the world with a most
+odious despotism, and tried to make the English return her runaway
+slaves, making the nation a reproach before the world; she insists on
+kidnapping men even in Boston; she declares that we shall not abolish
+slavery in the capital of the Union; that she will extend it in spite of
+us from sea to sea. She annexed Texas for a slave-pasture, and then made
+the Mexican war to enlarge that pasture, but the North must pay for it;
+she treads the Constitution under her feet, the North under her feet,
+justice and the unalienable rights of man under her feet.</p>
+
+<p>The North has charged all these items and many more; now they are
+brought up for settlement, and, if not cancelled, will not be forgot
+till the Muse of History gives up the ghost; some Northern men have the
+American sentiment, and the American idea, put the man before the
+dollar, counting man the substance, property the accident. The sentiment
+and idea of liberty are bottomed on Christianity, as that on human
+nature; they are quite sure to prevail; the spirit of the nation is on
+their side&mdash;the spirit of the age and the everlasting right.</p>
+
+<p>It is instructive to see how the political parties have hitherto kept
+clear of anti-slavery. It is "no part of the whig doctrine;" the
+democrats abhor it. Mr. Webster, it is true, once claimed the Wilmot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+Proviso as his thunder, but he cannot wield it, and so it slips out of
+his hands, and runs round to the chair of his brother senator from New
+Hampshire.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> No leading politician in America has ever been a leader
+against slavery. Even Mr. Adams only went as he was pushed. True, among
+the whigs there are Giddings, Palfrey, Tuck, Mann, Root, and Julian;
+among the democrats there is Hale&mdash;and a few others; but what are they
+among so many? The members of the family of Truth are unpopular, they
+make excellent servants but hard masters, while the members of the
+family of Interest are all respectable, and are the best company in the
+world; their livery is attractive; their motto, "The almighty dollar,"
+is a passport everywhere. Now it happens that some of the more advanced
+members of the family of Truth fight their way into "good society," and
+make matrimonial alliances with some of the poor relations of the family
+of Interest. Straightway they become respectable; the church publishes
+the banns; the marriage is solemnized in the most Christian form; the
+attorney declares it legal. So the gospel and law are satisfied, Truth
+and Interest made one, and many persons after this alliance may be seen
+in the company of Truth who before knew not of her existence.</p>
+
+<p>The free soil party has grown out of the anti-slavery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> movement. It will
+have no more slave territory, but does not touch slavery in the States,
+or between them, and says nothing against the compromises of the
+Constitution; the time has not come for that. The party has been
+organized in haste, and is composed, as are all parties, of most
+discordant materials, some of its members seeming hardly familiar with
+the idea; some are not yet emancipated from old prejudices, old methods
+of action, and old interests; but the greater part seem hostile to
+slavery in all its forms. The immediate triumph of this new party is not
+to be looked for; not desirable. In Massachusetts they have gained large
+numbers in a very short period, and under every disadvantage. What their
+future history is to be, we will not now attempt to conjecture; but this
+is plain, that they cannot remain long in their present position; either
+they will go back, and, after due penance, receive political absolution
+from the church of the whigs, or the democrats,&mdash;and this seems
+impossible,&mdash;or else they must go forward where the idea of justice
+impels them. One day the motto "No more slave territory" will give place
+to this, "No slavery in America." The revolution in ideas is not over
+till that is done, nor the corresponding revolution in deeds while a
+single slave remains in America. A man who studies the great movements
+of mankind feels sure that that day is not far off; that no combination
+of northern and southern interest, no declamation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> no violence, no love
+of money, no party zeal, no fraud and no lies, no compromise, can long
+put off the time. Bad passions will ere long league with the holiest
+love of right, and that wickedness may be put down with the strong hand
+which might easily be ended at little cost and without any violence,
+even of speech. One day the democratic party of the North will remember
+the grievances which they have suffered from the South, and, if they
+embrace the idea of freedom, no constitutional scruple will long hold
+them from destroying the "peculiar institution." What slavery is in the
+middle of the nineteenth century is quite plain; what it will be at the
+beginning of the twentieth it is not difficult to foresee. The slave
+power has gained a great victory: one more such will cost its life.
+South Carolina did not forget her usual craft in voting for a northern
+man that was devoted to slavery.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let us now speak briefly of the conduct of the election. It has been
+attended, at least in New England, with more intellectual action than
+any election that I remember, and with less violence, denunciation, and
+vulgar appeals to low passions and sordid interest. Massachusetts has
+shown herself worthy of her best days; the free soil vote may be looked
+on with pride, by men who conscientiously cast their ballot the other
+way. Men of ability and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> integrity have been active on both sides, and
+able speeches have been made, while the vulgarity that marked the
+"Harrison campaign" has not been repeated.</p>
+
+<p>In this contest the democratic party made a good confession, and "owned
+up" to the full extent of their conduct. They stated the question at
+issue, fairly, clearly, and entirely; the point could not be mistaken.
+The Baltimore Convention dealt honestly in declaring the political
+opinions of the party; the opinions of their candidate on the great
+party questions, and the subject of slavery, were made known with
+exemplary clearness and fidelity. The party did not fight in the dark;
+they had no dislike to holding slaves, and they pretended none. In all
+parts of the land they went before the people with the same doctrines
+and the same arguments; everywhere they "repudiated" the Wilmot Proviso.
+This gave them an advantage over a party with a different policy. They
+had a platform of doctrines; they knew what it was; the party stood on
+the platform; the candidate stood on it.</p>
+
+<p>The whig party have conducted differently; they did not publish their
+confession of faith. We know what was the whig platform in 1840 and in
+1844. But what is it in 1848? Particular men may publish their opinions,
+but the doctrines of the party are "not communicated to the public." For
+once in the history of America there was a whig convention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> which passed
+no "Resolutions;" it was the Convention at Philadelphia. But on one
+point, of the greatest importance too, it expressed the opinions of the
+whigs: it rejected the Wilmot Proviso, and Mr. Webster's thunder, which
+had fallen harmless and without lightning from his hands, was "kicked
+out of the meeting!" As the party had no platform, so their candidate
+had no political opinions. "What!" says one, "Choose a President who
+does not declare his opinions,&mdash;then it must be because they are
+perfectly well known!" Not at all: General Taylor is raw in politics,
+and has not taken his first "drill!" "Then he must be a man of such
+great political and moral ability, that his will may take the place of
+reason!" Not at all: he is known only as a successful soldier, and his
+reputation is scarcely three years old. Mr. Webster declared his
+nomination "not fit to be made," and nobody has any authentic statement
+of his political opinions; perhaps not even General Taylor himself.</p>
+
+<p>In the electioneering campaign there has been a certain duplicity in the
+supporters of General Taylor: at the North it was maintained that he was
+not opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, while at the South quite uniformly
+the opposite was maintained. This duplicity had the appearance of
+dishonesty. In New England the whigs did not meet the facts and
+arguments of the free soil party; in the beginning of the campaign the
+attempt was made, but was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> afterwards comparatively abandoned; the
+matter of slavery was left out of the case, and the old question of the
+sub-treasury and the tariff was brought up again, and a stranger would
+have thought, from some whig newspapers, that that was the only question
+of any importance. Few men were prepared to see a man of the ability and
+experience of Mr. Webster in his electioneering speeches pass wholly
+over the subject of slavery. The nation is presently to decide whether
+slavery is to extend over the new territory or not; even in a commercial
+and financial point of view, this is far more important than the
+question of banks and tariffs; but when its importance is estimated by
+its relation to freedom, right, human welfare in general,&mdash;we beg the
+pardon of American politicians for speaking of such things,&mdash;one is
+amazed to find the whig party of the opinion that it is more important
+to restore the tariff of 1842 than to prohibit slavery in a country as
+large as the thirteen States which fought the Revolution! It might have
+been expected of little, ephemeral men&mdash;minute politicians, who are the
+pest of the State,&mdash;but when at such a crisis a great man rises,<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>
+amid a sea of upturned faces, to instruct the lesser men, and forgets
+right, forgets freedom, forgets man, and forgets God, talking only of
+the tariff and of banks, why a stranger is amazed, till he remembers
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> peculiar relation of the great man to the moneyed men,&mdash;that he is
+their attorney, retained, paid, and pensioned to do the work of men
+whose interest it is to keep the question of slavery out of sight. If
+General Cavaignac had received a pension from the manufacturers of Lyons
+and of Lisle, to the amount of half a million of francs, should we be
+surprised if he forgot the needy millions of the land? Nay, only if he
+did not forget them!</p>
+
+<p>It was a little hardy to ask the anti-slavery men to vote for General
+Taylor; it was like asking the members of a temperance society to choose
+an eminent distiller for president of their association. Still, we know
+that honest anti-slavery men did honestly vote for him. We know nothing
+to impeach the political integrity of General Taylor; the simple fact
+that he is a slaveholder, seems reason enough why he should not be
+President of a nation who believe that "All men are created equal, and
+endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Men will be
+astonished in the next century to learn that the "model republic," had
+such an affection for slaveholders. Here is a remarkable document, which
+we think should be preserved:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><h4>DEED OF SALE.</h4>
+
+<p class="center">"<span class="smcap">John Hagard, Sr. To Zachariah Taylor.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">"<i>Received for Record, 18th Feb., 1843.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>This Indenture</i>, made this twenty-first day of April,
+eighteen hundred and forty-two, between John Hagard, Sr., of
+the City of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> New Orleans, State of Louisiana, of one part,
+and Zachariah Taylor, of the other part, <i>Witnesseth</i>, that
+the said John Hagard, Sr., for and in consideration of the
+sum of <i>Ninety-Five Thousand Dollars</i> to him in hand paid,
+and secured to be paid, as hereafter stated by the said
+Zachariah Taylor, at and before the sealing and delivering
+of these presents, has this day bargained, sold, and
+delivered, conveyed, and confirmed, and by these Presents
+does bargain, sell, deliver, and confirm unto the said
+Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and assigns, forever, all that
+plantation and tract of land:...</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Also</span>, all the following Slaves&mdash;Nelson, Milley, Peldea,
+Mason, Willis, Rachel, Caroline, Lucinda, Ramdall, Wirman,
+Carson, Little Ann, Winna, Jane, Tom, Sally, Gracia, Big
+Jane, Louisa, Maria, Charles, Barnard, Mira, Sally, Carson,
+Paul, Sansford, Mansfield, Harry Oden, Harry Horley, Carter,
+Henrietta, Ben, Charlotte, Wood, Dick, Harrietta, Clarissa,
+Ben, Anthony, Jacob, Hamby, Jim, Gabriel, Emeline, Armstead,
+George, Wilson, Cherry, Peggy, Walker, Jane, Wallace,
+Bartlett, Martha, Letitia, Barbara, Matilda, Lucy, John,
+Sarah, Bigg Ann, Allen, Tom, George, John, Dick, Fielding,
+Nelson, or Isom, Winna, Shellod, Lidney, Little Cherry,
+Puck, Sam, Hannah or Anna, Mary, Ellen, Henrietta, and two
+small children:&mdash;Also, all the Horses, Mules, Cattle, Hogs,
+Farming Utensils, and Tools, now on said
+Plantation&mdash;together with all and singular, the
+hereditaments, appurtenances, privileges, and advantages
+unto the said Land and Slaves belonging or appertaining. <i>To
+have and to hold</i> the said Plantation and tract of Land and
+Slaves, and other property above described, unto the said
+Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and assigns, for ever, and to
+his and to their only proper use, benefits, and behoof, for
+ever. And the said John Hagard, Sr., for himself, his heirs,
+executors, and administrators, does covenant, promise, and
+agree to and with said Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and
+assigns, that the aforesaid Plantation and tract of Land and
+Slaves, and other property, with the appurtenances, unto the
+said Zachariah Taylor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> his heirs, and assigns against the
+claim or claims of all persons whomsoever claiming or to
+claim the same, or any part or parcel thereof, shall and
+will warrant, and by these Presents for ever defend.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>In Testimony Whereof</i>, the said John Hagard, Sr., has
+hereunto set his hand and seal, the day and year first above
+written."</p></div>
+
+<p>If this document had been discovered among some Egyptian papyri, with
+the date 1848 before Christ, it would have been remarkable as a sign of
+the times. In a republic, nearly four thousand years later, it has a
+meaning which some future historian will appreciate.</p>
+
+<p>The free soil party have been plain and explicit as the democrats; they
+published their creed in the celebrated Buffalo platform. The questions
+of sub-treasury and tariff are set aside; "No more slave territory" is
+the watchword. In part they represent an interest, for slavery is an
+injury to the North in many ways, and to a certain extent puts the North
+into the hands of the South; but chiefly an idea. Nobody thought they
+would elect their candidate, whosoever he might be; they could only
+arrest public attention and call men to the great questions at issue,
+and so, perhaps, prevent the evil which the South was bent on
+accomplishing. This they have done, and done well. The result has been
+highly gratifying. It was pleasant and encouraging to see men ready to
+sacrifice their old party attachments and their private interests,
+oftentimes, for the sake of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> a moral principle. I do not mean to say
+that there was no moral principle in the other parties&mdash;I know better.
+But it seems to me that the free soilers committed a great error in
+selecting Mr. Van Buren as their candidate. True, he is a man of
+ability, who has held the highest offices and acquitted himself
+honorably in all; but he had been the "Northern man, with Southern
+principles;" had shown a degree of subserviency to the South, which was
+remarkable, if not singular or strange: his promise, made and repeated
+in the most solemn manner, to veto any act of Congress, abolishing
+slavery in the capital, was an insult to the country, and a disgrace to
+himself. He had a general reputation for instability, and want of
+political firmness. It is true, he had opposed the annexation of Texas,
+and lost his nomination in 1844 by that act; but it is also true that he
+advised his party to vote for Mr. Polk, who was notoriously in favor of
+annexation. His nomination, I must confess, was unfortunate; the Buffalo
+Convention seems to have looked at his availability more than his
+fitness, and, in their contest for a principle, began by making a
+compromise of that very principle itself. It was thought he could
+"carry" the State of New York; and so a man who was not a fair
+representative of the idea, was set up. It was a bad beginning. It is
+better to be defeated a thousand times, rather than seem to succeed by a
+compromise of the principle contended for. Still, enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> has been done,
+to show the nation that the dollar is not almighty; that the South is
+not always to insult the North, and rule the land, annexing, plundering,
+and making slaves when she will; that the North has men who will not
+abandon the great sentiment of freedom, which is the boast of the nation
+and the age.</p>
+
+<p>General Taylor is elected by a large popular vote; some voted for him on
+account of his splendid military success; some because he is a
+slaveholder, and true to the interests of the slave power; some because
+he is a "Good whig," and wants a high tariff of duties. But we think
+there are men who gave him their support, because he has never been
+concerned in the intrigues of a party, is indebted to none for past
+favors, is pledged to none, bribed by none, and intimidated by none;
+because he seems to be an honest man, with a certain rustic
+intelligence; a plain blunt man, that loves his country and mankind. We
+hope this was a large class. If he is such a man, he will enter upon his
+office under favorable auspices, and with the best wishes of all good
+men.</p>
+
+<p>But what shall the free soil party do next? they cannot go
+back,&mdash;conscience waves behind them her glittering wings and bids them
+on; they cannot stand still, for as yet their measures and their
+watchword do not fully represent their idea. They must go forward, as
+the early abolitionists went, with this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> for their motto: "No slavery in
+America." "He that would lead men, must walk but one step before them;"
+says somebody. Well, but he must think many steps before them, or they
+will presently tread him under their feet. The present success of the
+idea is doubtful; the interests of the South will demand the extension
+of slavery;<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> the interests of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> party now coming into power, will
+demand their peculiar boon. So another compromise is to be feared,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> and
+the extension of slavery yet further West. But the ultimate triumph of
+the genius of freedom is certain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> In Europe, it shakes the earth with
+mighty tread; thrones fall before its conquering feet. While in the
+eastern continent, kings, armies, emperors, are impotent before that
+power, shall a hundred thousand slaveholders stay it here with a bit of
+parchment?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+&#915;&#953;&#947;&#957;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#953; &#956;&#949;&#957; &#959;&#965;&#957; &#945;&#7985; &#963;&#964;&#945;&#963;&#949;&#953;&#962; &#959;&#8017;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#953; &#956;&#953;&#954;&#961;&#969;&#957; &#945;&#955;&#955;' &#949;&#954; &#956;&#953;&#954;&#961;&#969;&#957;,
+&#959;&#964;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#945;&#950;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#953; &#948;&#949; &#960;&#949;&#961;&#953; &#956;&#949;&#947;&#945;&#955;&#969;&#957;.&mdash;Aristotle's
+<i>Polit.</i>, Lib. V.
+Chap. 4, &sect; 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> William Lloyd Garrison.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> The following table shows the facts of the case:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Cost of post-office in slave States for the year ending July 1st, 1847,</td><td align='right'>$1,318,541</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Receipts from post-office,</td><td align='right'>624,380</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cost of post-office in free States for the year ending July 1st, 1847,</td><td align='right'>$1,038,219</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Receipts from post-office,</td><td align='right'>1,459,631</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>So the Southern post-office cost the nation $694,161, and the Northern
+post-office paid the nation $421,412, making a difference of $1,115,573
+against the South.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Mr. John P. Hale.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Hon. Daniel Webster.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> The following extract, from the <i>Charleston Mercury</i>,
+shows the feeling of the South. "Pursuant to a call, a meeting of the
+citizens of Orangeburg District was held to-day, 6th November, in the
+court-house, which was well filled on the occasion.... Gen. D. F.
+Jamison then rose, and moved the appointment of a committee of
+twenty-five, to take into consideration the continued agitation by
+Congress of the question of slavery;... the committee, through their
+chairman, Gen. Jamison, made the following report:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"The time has arrived when the slaveholding States of the confederacy
+must take decided action upon the continued attacks of the North against
+their domestic institutions, or submit in silence to that humiliating
+position in the opinions of mankind, that longer acquiescence must
+inevitably reduce them to.... The agitation of the subject of slavery
+commenced in the fanatical murmurings of a few scattered abolitionists,
+to whom it was a long time confined; but now it has swelled into a
+torrent of popular opinion at the North; it has invaded the fireside and
+the church, the press and the halls of legislation; it has seized upon
+the deliberations of Congress, and at this moment is sapping the
+foundations, and about to overthrow the fairest political structure that
+the ingenuity of man has ever devised.
+</p><p>
+"The overt efforts of abolitionism were confined for a long period to
+annoying applications to Congress, under color of the pretended right of
+petition; it has since directed the whole weight of its malign influence
+against the annexation of Texas, and had wellnigh cost to the country
+the loss of that important province; but emboldened by success and the
+inaction of the South, in an unjust and selfish spirit of national
+agrarianism it would now appropriate the whole public domain. It might
+well have been supposed that the undisturbed possession of the whole of
+Oregon Territory would have satisfied the non-slaveholding States. This
+they now hold, by the incorporation of the ordinance of 1787 into the
+bill of the last session for establishing a territorial government for
+Oregon. That provision, however, was not sustained by them from any
+apprehension that the territory could ever be settled from the States of
+the South, but it was intended as a gratuitous insult to the southern
+people, and a malignant and unjustifiable attack upon the institution of
+slavery.
+</p><p>
+"We are called upon to give up the whole public domain to the fanatical
+cravings of abolitionism, and the unholy lust of political power. A
+territory, acquired by the whole country for the use of all, where
+treasure has been squandered like chaff, and southern blood poured out
+like water, is sought to be appropriated by one section, because the
+other chooses to adhere to an institution held not only under the
+guaranties that brought this confederacy into existence, but under the
+highest sanction of Heaven. Should we quietly fold our hands under this
+assumption on the part of the non-slaveholding States, the fate of the
+South is sealed, the institution of slavery is gone, and its existence
+is but a question of time.... Your committee are unwilling to anticipate
+what will be the result of the combined wisdom and joint action of the
+southern portion of the confederacy on this question; but as an
+initiatory step to a concert of action on the part of the people of
+South Carolina, they respectfully recommend, for the adoption of this
+meeting, the following resolutions:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"<i>Resolved</i>, That the continued agitation of the question of slavery, by
+the people of the non-slaveholding States, by their legislatures, and by
+their representatives in Congress, exhibits not only a want of national
+courtesy, which should always exist between kindred States, but is a
+palpable violation of good faith towards the slaveholding States, who
+adopted the present Constitution 'in order to form a more perfect
+union.'
+</p><p>
+"<i>Resolved</i>, That while we acquiesce in adopting the boundary between
+the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States, known as the Missouri
+Compromise line, we will not submit to any further restriction upon the
+rights of any southern man to carry his property and his institutions
+into territory acquired by southern treasure and by southern blood.
+</p><p>
+"<i>Resolved</i>, That should the Wilmot Proviso, or any other restriction,
+be applied by Congress to the territories of the United States, south of
+36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, we recommend to our representative in
+Congress, as the decided opinion of this portion of his district, to
+leave his seat in that body, and return home.
+</p><p>
+"<i>Resolved</i>, That we respectfully suggest to both houses of the
+legislature of South Carolina, to adopt a similar recommendation as to
+our senators in Congress from this State.
+</p><p>
+"<i>Resolved</i>, That upon the return home of our senators and
+representatives in Congress, the legislature of South Carolina should be
+forthwith assembled to adopt such measures as the exigency may demand.
+</p><p>
+"The resolutions were then submitted, <i>seriatim</i>, and, together with the
+report, were unanimously adopted."</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional
+Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3), by Theodore Parker
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, SERMONS (2/3) ***
+
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diff --git a/34637.txt b/34637.txt
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+++ b/34637.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional
+Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3), by Theodore Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
+
+Author: Theodore Parker
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2010 [EBook #34637]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, SERMONS (2/3) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SPEECHES, ADDRESSES,
+
+AND
+
+OCCASIONAL SERMONS,
+
+BY
+
+THEODORE PARKER,
+
+MINISTER OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN BOSTON.
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+BOSTON:
+HORACE B. FULLER,
+(SUCCESSOR TO WALKER, FULLER, AND COMPANY,)
+245, WASHINGTON STREET.
+
+1867.
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
+THEODORE PARKER,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
+of the District of Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
+
+
+I.
+
+A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--Preached
+at the Melodeon, on Sunday, February 18, 1849
+
+                                                               PAGE 1
+
+II.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE MOST CHRISTIAN USE OF THE
+SUNDAY.--A Sermon preached at the Melodeon, on Sunday,
+January 30, 1848                                                   56
+
+III.
+
+A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.--Preached at the Melodeon
+on Sunday, September 20, 1846                                     105
+
+IV.
+
+THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.--An Address
+delivered before the Onondaga Teachers' Institute at Syracuse,
+New York, October 4, 1849                                         139
+
+V.
+
+THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA, AND THE
+SIGNS OF THE TIMES.--An Address delivered before
+several literary Societies in 1848                                198
+
+VI.
+
+A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN
+QUINCY ADAMS.--Delivered at the Melodeon, on Sunday,
+March 5, 1848                                                     252
+
+VII.
+
+A SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY
+SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE THE ABOLITION OF
+SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, April 6, 1848                     331
+
+VIII.
+
+A SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND
+ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, May 31, 1848                             344
+
+IX.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY, AND THE
+ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR, December, 1848                        360
+
+
+
+
+A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--PREACHED AT THE
+MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1849.
+
+MATTHEW VIII. 20.
+
+    By their fruits ye shall know them.
+
+
+Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I
+ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I
+use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition
+of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of
+piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all
+manly excellence, and was the condition of all noble, manly development;
+that love of truth, love of justice, love of love, were respectively the
+condition of intellectual, moral, and affectional development, and that
+they were also respectively the intellectual, moral, and affectional
+forms of piety; that the love of God as the Infinite Father, the
+totality of truth, justice, and love was the general condition of the
+total development of man's spiritual powers. But I showed, that
+sometimes this piety, intellectual, moral, affectional or total, did not
+arrive at self-consciousness; the man only unconsciously loving the
+Infinite in one or all these modes, and in such cases the man was a
+loser by frustrating his piety, and allowing it to stop in the truncated
+form of unconsciousness.
+
+Now what is in you will appear out of you; if piety be there in any of
+these forms, in either mode, it will come out; if not there, its fruits
+cannot appear. You may reason forward or backward: if you know piety
+exists, you may foretell its appearance; if you find fruits thereof, you
+may reason back and be sure of its existence. Piety is love of God as
+God, and as we only love what we are like, and in that degree, so it is
+also a likeness to God. Now it is a general doctrine in Christendom that
+divinity must manifest itself; and, in assuming the highest form of
+manifestation known to us, divinity becomes humanity. However, that
+doctrine is commonly taught in the specific and not generic form, and is
+enforced by an historical and concrete example, but not by way of a
+universal thesis. It appears thus: The Christ was God; as such He must
+manifest himself; the form of manifestation was that of a complete and
+perfect man. I reject the concrete example, but accept the universal
+doctrine on which the special dogma of the Trinity is erected. From that
+I deduce this as a general rule: If you follow the law of your nature,
+and are simple and true to that, as much of godhead as there is in you,
+so much of manhood will come out of you, and, as much of manhood comes
+out of you, so much of godhead was there within you; as much subjective
+divinity, so much objective humanity.
+
+Such being the case, the demands you can make on a man for manliness
+must depend for their answer on the amount of piety on deposit in his
+character; so it becomes important to know the condition of this town in
+respect of piety, for if this be not right in the above sense, nothing
+else is right; or, to speak more clerically, "Unless the Lord keep the
+city, the watchman waketh but in vain," and unless piety be developed or
+a-developing in men, it is vain for the minister to sit up late of a
+Saturday night to concoct his sermon, and to rise up early of a Sunday
+morning to preach the same; he fights but as one that beateth the air,
+and spends his strength for that which is nought. They are in the right,
+therefore, who first of all things demand piety: so let us see what
+signs or proof we have, and of what amount of piety in Boston.
+
+To determine this, we must have some test by which to judge of the
+quality, distinguishing piety from impiety, and some standard whereby to
+measure the quantity thereof; for though you may know what piety is in
+you, I what is in me, and God what is in both and in all the rest of us,
+it is plain that we can only judge of the existence of piety in other
+men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in
+some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard
+measure.
+
+Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides
+alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal
+unlike: each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and
+standard measure. Let me say a word of each.
+
+I. Some contend for what I call the conventional standard; that is, the
+manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these
+forms there are three modes or degrees: namely, first, the form of
+bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain
+doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without
+proof, but because they are taught with authority; and third, a passive
+acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance
+thereof.
+
+II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of
+piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes
+of action.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is plain, that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear
+very different when tested by one or the other of these standards. It
+may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds
+the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may
+leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this
+importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is
+but fair to try it by both standards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its
+manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the
+outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general
+ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the
+Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies
+the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the
+unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a
+State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then
+the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in
+any one State, would vary with the health of the judge. However, to do
+what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it is plain, that,
+estimated by any ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small.
+There is, as men often say, "A general decline of piety;" that is a
+common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter
+worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the
+complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. The disease
+which is thus lamented is said to be acute, but is proved to be chronic
+also; only it would seem, from the lamentations of some modern
+Jeremiahs, that the decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the
+more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became.
+
+Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view,
+let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come
+nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The
+majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant
+Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a "Great awakening," but
+a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great
+decline of religion--a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that
+modern philosophy, the physics of Galileo and Newton, the metaphysics of
+Descartes and of Kant, mark another decline of religion--a decline of
+piety in the philosophical form; that all the modern democracy of the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marks a yet further decline of
+religion--a decline of piety in the political form; that all the modern
+secular societies, for removing the evils of men and their sins, mark a
+yet fourth decline of religion--a decline of piety in the philanthropic
+form. Certainly, when measured by the mediaeval standard of Catholicism,
+these mark four great declensions of piety, for, in all four, the old
+principle of subordination to an external and personal authority is set
+aside.
+
+All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical
+establishments are breaking down; other establishments are a-building
+up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the
+last of the Popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great
+schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no
+longer Roman. The old forms of piety, such as service in Latin, the
+withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the
+ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood--all these are protested
+against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works
+greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail
+that the Virgin Mary appeared on the nineteenth of September, 1846, to
+two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such things to
+Ronge and Wessenberg? Neither the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous
+mother, avails aught against this untoward generation, charm they never
+so wisely. The decline of piety goes on. By the new Constitution of
+France, all forms of religion are equal; the Catholic and the
+Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under the
+broad shield of the law. Even Spain, the fortress walled and moated
+about, whither the spirit of the middle ages retired and shut herself up
+long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with
+unfeminine queens and nuns--even Spain fails with the general failure.
+British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into
+woollen mills. Monks and nuns forget their beads in some new
+handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy
+with serving, careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not
+cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long
+unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas,
+making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the
+Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of
+St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright,
+Watt, and Fulton,--the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom.
+It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on
+the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs
+which is Solomon's, that get printed there: but fiery novels of Eugene
+Sue, and George Sand; and so extremes meet.
+
+Protestant establishments share the same peril. A new sect of
+Protestants rises up in Germany, who dissent as much from the letter and
+spirit of Protestantism, as the Protestants from Catholicism; men that
+will not believe the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of the
+Trinity, the depravity of man, the eternity of future punishment, nor
+justification by faith--a justification before God, for mere belief
+before men. The new spirit gets possession of new men, who cannot be
+written down, nor even howled down. Excommunication or abuse does no
+good on such men as Bauer, Strauss, and Schwegler; and it answers none
+of their questions. It seems pretty clear, that in all the north of
+Germany, within twenty years, there will be entire freedom of worship,
+for all sects, Protestant and Catholic.
+
+In England, Protestantism has done its work less faithfully than in
+Germany. The Protestant spirit of England came here two hundred years
+ago, so that new and Protestant England is on the west of the ocean; in
+England, an established church lies there still, an iceberg in the
+national garden. But even there, the decline of the ecclesiastical form
+of piety is apparent: the new bishops must not sit in the House of
+Lords, till the old ones die out, for the number of lords spiritual must
+not increase, though the temporal may; the new attempt, at Oxford and
+elsewhere, to restore the Middle Ages, will not prosper. Bring back all
+the old rites and forms into Leeds and Manchester; teach men the
+theology of Thomas Aquinas, or of St. Bernard; bid them adore the
+uplifted wafer, as the very God, men who toil all day with iron mills,
+who ride in steam-drawn coaches, and talk by lightning in a whisper,
+from the Irk to the Thames,--they will not consent to the philosophy or
+the theology of the Middle Ages, nor be satisfied with the old forms of
+piety, which, though too elevated for their fathers in the time of
+Elizabeth, are yet too low for them, at least too antiquated. Dissenters
+have got into the House of Commons; the test-act is repealed, and a man
+can be a captain in the army, or a postmaster in a village, without
+first taking the Lord's Supper, after the fashion of the Church of
+England. Some men demand the abandonment of tithes, the entire
+separation of Church and State, the return to "The voluntary principle"
+in religion. "The battering ram which levelled old Sarum," and other
+boroughs as corrupt, now beats on the church, and the "Church is in
+danger." Men complain of the decline of piety in England. An intelligent
+and very serious writer, not long ago, lamenting this decline, in proof
+thereof, relates, that formerly men began their last wills, "In the name
+of God, Amen;" and headed bills of lading with, "Shipped in good order,
+by the grace of God;" that indictments for capital crimes charged the
+culprit with committing felony, "At the instigation of the devil," and
+now, he complains, these forms have gone out of use.
+
+In America, in New England, in Boston, when measured by that standard,
+the same decline of piety is apparent. It is often said that our
+material condition is better than our moral; that in advance of our
+spiritual condition. There is a common clerical complaint of a certain
+thinness in the churches; men do not give their bodily attendance, as
+once they did; they are ready enough to attend lectures, two or three in
+a week, no matter how scientific and abstract, or how little connected
+with their daily work, yet they cannot come to the church without
+teasing beforehand, nor keep awake while there. It is said the minister
+is not respected as formerly. True, a man of power is respected, heard,
+sought, and followed, but it is for his power, for his words of grace
+and truth, not for his place in a pulpit; he may have more influence as
+a man, but less as a clergyman. Ministers lament a prevalent disbelief
+of their venerable doctrines; that there is a concealed skepticism in
+regard to them, often not concealed. This, also, is a well-founded
+complaint; the well-known dogmas of theology were never in worse repute;
+there was never so large a portion of the community in New England who
+were doubtful of the Trinity, of eternal damnation, of total depravity,
+of the atonement, of the Godhead of Jesus, of the miracles of the New
+Testament, and of the truth of every word of the Bible. A complaint is
+made, that the rites and forms which are sometimes called "the
+ordinances of religion," are neglected; that few men join the church,
+and though the old hedge is broken down before the altar, yet the number
+of communicants diminishes, and it is no longer able-headed men, the
+leaders of society, who come; that the ordinances seem haggard and
+ghastly to young men, who cannot feed their hungry souls on such a thin
+pittance of spiritual aliment as these afford; that the children are not
+baptized. These things are so; so in Europe, Catholic and Protestant; so
+in America, so in Boston. Notwithstanding the well-founded complaint
+that our modern churches are too costly for the times, we do not build
+temples which bear so high a proportion to our wealth as the early
+churches of Boston; the attendance at meeting does not increase as the
+population; the ministers are not prominent, as in the days of Wilson,
+of Cotton, and of Norton; their education is not now in the same
+proportion to the general culture of the times. Harvard College,
+dedicated to "Christ and the Church," designed at first chiefly for the
+education of the clergy, graduates few ministers; theological literature
+no longer overawes all other. The number of church members was never so
+small in proportion to the voters as now; the number of Protestant
+births never so much exceeded the number of Protestant baptisms. Young
+men of superior ability and superior education have little affection for
+the ministry; take little interest in the welfare of the church. Nay,
+youths descended from a wealthy family seldom look that way. It is poor
+men's sons, men of obscure family, who fill the pulpits; often,
+likewise, men of slender ability, eked out with an education
+proportionately scant. The most active members of the churches are
+similar in position, ability, and culture. These are undeniable facts.
+They are not peculiar to New England. You find them wherever the
+voluntary principle is resorted to. In England, in Catholic countries,
+you find the old historic names in the Established Church; there is no
+lack of aristocratic blood in clerical veins; but there and everywhere
+the church seems falling astern of all other craft which can keep the
+sea.
+
+Since these things are so, men who have only the conventional standard
+wherewith to measure the amount of piety, only that test to prove its
+existence by, think we are rapidly going to decay; that the tabernacle
+is fallen down, and no man rises to set it up. They complain that Zion
+is in distress; theological newspapers lament that there are no revivals
+to report; that "The Lord has withheld His arm," and does not "pour out
+His Spirit upon the churches." Ghastly meetings are held by men with
+sincere and noble heart, but saddened face; speeches are made which seem
+a groan of linked wailings long drawn out. Men mourn at the infidelity
+of the times, at the coldness of some, at the deadness of others. All
+the sects complain of this, yet each loves to attribute the deadness of
+the rival sects to their special theology; it is Unitarianism which is
+choking the Unitarians, say their foes, and the Unitarians know how to
+retort after the same fashion. The less enlightened put the blame of
+this misfortune on the good God who has somehow "withheld His hand," or
+omitted to "pour out His Spirit,"--the people perishing for want of the
+open vision. Others put the blame on mankind; some on "poor human
+nature," which is not what might have been expected, not perceiving
+that if the fault be there it is not for us to remedy, and if God made
+man a bramble-bush, that no wailing will make him bear figs. Yet others
+refer this condition to the use made of human nature, which certainly is
+a more philosophical way of looking at the matter.
+
+Now there is one sect which has done great service in former days, which
+is, I think, still doing something to enlighten and liberalize the land,
+and, I trust, will yet do more, more even than it consciously intends.
+The name of Unitarian is deservedly dear to many of us, who yet will not
+be shackled by any denominational fetters. This sect has always been
+remarkable for a certain gentlemanly reserve about all that pertained to
+the inward part of religion; other faults it might have, but it did not
+incur the reproach of excessive enthusiasm, or a spirituality too
+sublimated and transcendental for daily use. This sect has long been a
+speckled bird among the denominations, each of which has pecked at her,
+or at least cawed with most unmelodious croak against this new-fledged
+sect. It was said the Unitarians had "denied the Lord that bought them;"
+that theirs was the church of unbelief--not the church of Christ, but of
+No-Christ; that they had a Bible of their own, and a thin, poor Bible,
+too; that their ways were ways of destruction; "Touch not, taste not,
+handle not," was to be written on their doctrines; that they had not
+even the grace of lukewarmness, but were moral and stone-cold; that
+they looked fair on the side turned towards man, but on the Godward side
+it was a blank wall with no gate, nor window, nor loop-hole, nor eyelet
+for the Holy Ghost to come through; that their prayers were only a show
+of devotion to cover up the hard rock of the flinty heart, or the frozen
+ground of morality. Their faith, it was said, was only a conviction
+after the case was proven by unimpeachable evidence, and good for
+nothing; while belief without evidence, or against proof, seems to be
+the right ecclesiastical talisman.
+
+For a long time the Unitarian sect did not grumble unduly, but set
+itself to promote the cultivation of reason and apply that to religion;
+to cultivate morality and apply it to life; and to demand the most
+entire personal freedom for all men in all matters pertaining to
+religion. Hence came its merits; they were very great merits, too, and
+not at all the merits of the times, held in common with the other sects.
+I need not dwell on this, and the good works of Unitarianism, in this
+the most Unitarian city in the world; but as a general thing the
+Unitarians, it seems to me, did neglect the culture of piety; and of
+course their morality, while it lasted, would be unsatisfactory, and in
+time would wither and dry up because it had no deepness of earth to grow
+out of. The Unitarians, as a general thing, began outside, and sought to
+work inward, proceeding from the special to the general, by what might
+be called the inductive mode of religious culture; that was the form
+adopted in pulpits, and in families so far as there was any religious
+education attempted in private. That is not the method of nature, where
+all growth is the development of a living germ, which by an inward power
+appropriates the outward things it needs, and grows thereby. Hence came
+the defects of Unitarianism, and they were certainly very great defects;
+but they came almost unavoidably from the circumstances of the times.
+The sensational philosophy was the only philosophy that prevailed; the
+Orthodox sects had always rejected a part of that philosophy, not in the
+name of science, but of piety, and they supplied its place not with a
+better philosophy, but with tradition, speaking with an authority which
+claimed to be above human nature. It was not in the name of reason that
+they rejected a false philosophy, but in the name of religion often
+denounced all philosophy and the reason which demanded it. The
+Unitarians rejected that portion of Orthodoxy, became more consistent
+sensationalists, and arrived at results which we know. Now it is easy to
+see their error; not difficult to avoid it; but forty or fifty years ago
+it was almost impossible not to fall into this mistake. Sometimes it
+seems as if the Unitarians were half conscious of this defect, and so
+dared not be original, but borrowed Orthodox weapons, or continued to
+use Trinitarian phrases long after they had blunted those weapons of
+their point, and emptied the phrases of their former sense. In the
+controversy between the Orthodox and Unitarians, neither party was
+wholly right: the Unitarians had reason to charge the Orthodox with
+debasing man's nature, and representing God as not only unworthy, but
+unjust, and somewhat odious; the Trinitarians were mainly right in
+charging us with want of conscious piety, with beginning to work at the
+wrong end; but at the same time it must be remembered, that, in
+proportion to their numbers, the Unitarians have furnished far more
+philanthropists and reformers than any of the other sects. It is time to
+confess this on both sides.
+
+For a long time the Unitarian sect did not complain much of the decline
+of piety; it did not care to have an organization, loving personal
+freedom too well for that, and it had not much denominational feeling;
+indeed, its members were kept together, not so much by an agreement and
+unity of opinion among themselves, as by a unity of opposition from
+without; it was not the hooks on their shields that held the legion
+together with even front, but the pressure of hostile shields crowded
+upon them from all sides. They did not believe in spasmodic action; if a
+body was dead, they gave it burial, without trying to galvanize it into
+momentary life, not worth the spark it cost; they knew that a small
+cloud may make a good many flashes in the dark, but that many
+lightnings cannot make light. They stood apart from the violent efforts
+of other churches to get converts. The converts they got commonly
+adhered to their faith, and in this respect differed a good deal from
+those whom "Revivals" brought into other churches; with whom
+Christianity sprung up in a night, and in a night also perished. Some
+years ago, when this city was visited and ravaged by Revivals, the
+Unitarians kept within doors, gave warning of the danger, and suffered
+less harm and loss from that tornado than any of the sects. Unitarianism
+seems, in this city, to have done its original work; so the company is
+breaking up by degrees, and the men are going off, to engage in other
+business, to weed other old fields, or to break up new land, each man
+following his own sense of duty, and for himself determining whether to
+go or stay. But at the same time, an attempt is made to keep the company
+together; to cultivate a denominational feeling; to put hooks and
+staples on the shields which no longer offer that formidable and even
+front; to teach all trumpets to give the same sectarian bray, all voices
+to utter the same war-cry. The attempt does not succeed; the ranks are
+disordered, the trumpets give an uncertain sound, and the soldiers do
+not prepare themselves for denominational battle; nay, it often happens
+that the camp lacks the two sinews of war--both money, and men. Hence
+the denominational view of religious affairs has undergone a change; I
+make no doubt a real and sincere change, though I know this has been
+denied, and the change thought only official. The men I refer to are
+sincere and devout men; some of them quite above the suspicion of mere
+official conduct. This sect is now the loudest in its wailing; these
+Christian Jeremiahs tell us that we do not realize spiritual things,
+that we are all dead men, that there is no health in us. These cold
+Unitarian Thomases crowd unwontedly together in public to bewail the
+spiritual weather, the dearth of piety in Boston, the "General decline
+of religion" in New England. Church unto church raises the Macedonian
+cry, "Come over and help us!" The opinion seems general that piety is in
+a poor way, and must have watchers, the strongest medicine, and nursing
+quite unusual, or it will soon be all over, and Unitarianism will give
+up the ghost. Various causes have I heard assigned for the malady; some
+think that there has been over-much preaching of philosophy, though
+perhaps there is not evidence to convict any one man in particular of
+the offence; that philosophy is the dog in the manger, who keeps the
+hungry Unitarian flock from their spiritual hay, and cut-straw, which
+are yet of not the smallest use to him. But look never so sharp, and you
+do not find this dangerous beast in the neighborhood of the fold. Others
+think that there has been also an excess of moral preaching, against the
+prevalent sins of the nation, I suppose--but few individuals seem
+liable to conviction on that charge. Yet others think this decline comes
+from the fact that the terrors have not been duly and sufficiently
+administered from the pulpit; that while Catholics and Methodists thrive
+under such influences, the Unitarian widows are neglected in the weekly
+ministration of terror and of threat; that there has not been so much an
+excess of lightning in the form of philosophy or morality, but only a
+lack of thunder.
+
+This temporary movement among the Unitarians of Boston is natural; in
+some respects it is what our fathers would have called "judicial." The
+Unitarians have been cold, have looked more at the outward
+manifestations of goodness than at the inward spirit of piety which was
+to make the manifestations; they have not had an excess of philosophy,
+or of morality, but a defect of piety. They have been more respectable
+than pious. They have not always quite rightly appreciated the
+enthusiasm of sterner and more austere sects; not always done justice to
+the inwardness of religion those sects sought to promote. When their
+churches get a little thin, and their denominational affairs a little
+disturbed, it is quite natural these Unitarians should look after the
+cause and pass over to lamentations at the present state of things;
+while looking at the community from the new point of view, it is quite
+natural that they should suppose piety on the decline, and religion
+dying out. Yes, in general it is plain that, if men have no eyes but
+conventional eyes, no spirit but that of the ecclesiastical order they
+serve in, and of the denomination they belong to, it is natural for them
+to think that because piety does not flow in the old ecclesiastical
+channel, it does not flow anywhere, and there is none at all to run.
+Thus it is easy to explain the complaint of the Catholics at the great
+defection of the most enlightened nations of Europe; the lamentation of
+the Protestants at the heresy of the most enlightened portion of their
+sect; and the Unitarian wail over the general decline of piety in the
+city of Boston. Some men can only judge the present age by the
+conventional standard of the past, and as the old form of piety does not
+appear, they must conclude there is no piety.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now recur to the other or natural standard, and look at the
+manifestation of piety in the form of morality. Last Sunday I spoke of
+our moral condition; and it appeared that morals were in a low state
+here when compared with the ideal morals of Christianity. Now as the
+outward deed is but the manifestation of the inward life, and objective
+humanity the index of subjective divinity, so the low state of morals
+proves a low state of piety; if the heart of this town was right towards
+God, then would its hand also be right towards man. I am one of those
+who for long years have lamented the want of vital piety in this
+people. We not only do not realize spiritual things, but we do not make
+them our ideals. I see proofs of this want of piety in the low morals of
+trade, of the public press; in poverty, intemperance, and crime; in the
+vices and social wrongs touched on the last Sunday. I judge the tree by
+its fruit. But it is not on this ground that the ecclesiastical
+complaint is based. Men who make so much ado about the absence of piety,
+do not appeal for proof thereof to the great vices and prominent sins of
+the times; they see no sign of that in our trade and our politics; in
+the misery that festers in putrid lanes, one day to breed a pestilence,
+which it were even cheaper to hinder now, than cure at a later time;
+nobody mentions as proof the Mexican War, the political dishonesty of
+officers, the rapacity of office-seekers, the servility of men who will
+tamely suffer the most sacred rights of three millions of men to be
+trodden into the dust. Matters which concern millions of men came up
+before your Congress; the great Senator of Massachusetts loitered away
+the time of the session here in Boston, managing a lawsuit for a few
+thousand dollars, and no fault was publicly found with such neglect of
+public duty; but men see no lack of piety indicated by this fact, and
+others like it; they find signs of that lack in empty pews, in a
+deserted communion-table, in the fact that children, though brought up
+to reverence truth and justice, to love man and to love God, are not
+baptized with water; or in the fact that Unitarianism or Trinitarianism
+is on the decline! How many wailings have we all heard or read, because
+the Puritan churches of Boston have not kept the faith of their grim
+founders; what lamentations at the rising up of a sect which refuses the
+doctrine of the Trinity, or at the appearance of a few men who,
+neglecting the common props of Christianity, rest it, for its basis, on
+the nature of man and the nature of God: though almost all the eminent
+philanthropy of the day is connected with these men, yet they are still
+called "Infidel," and reviled on all hands!
+
+The state of things mentioned in the last sermon does indicate a want of
+piety, a deep and a great want. I do not see signs of that in the debt
+and decay of churches, in absence from meetings, in doubt of theological
+dogmas, in neglect of forms and ceremonies which once were of great
+value; but I do see it in the low morals of trade, of the press; in the
+popular vices. On a national scale I see it in the depravity of
+political parties, in the wicked war we have just fought, in the slavery
+we still tolerate and support. Yes, as I look on the churches of this
+city, I see a want of piety in the midst of us. If eminent piety were in
+them, and allowed to follow its natural bent, it would come out of them
+in the form of eminent humanity; they would lead in the philanthropies
+of this day, where they hardly follow. In this condition of the churches
+I see a most signal proof of the low estate of piety; they do not
+manifest a love of truth, which is the piety of the intellect; nor a
+love of justice, which is the piety of the moral sense; nor a love of
+love, which is the piety of the affections; nor a love of God as the
+Infinite Father of all men, which is the total piety of the whole soul.
+For lack of this internal divinity there is a lack of external humanity.
+Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? This is what I complain
+of, what I mourn over.
+
+The clergymen of this city are most of them sincere men, I doubt not;
+some of them men of a superior culture; many of them laborious men;
+most, perhaps all of them, deeply interested in the welfare of the
+churches, and the promotion of piety. But how many of them are marked
+and known for their philanthropy, distinguished for their zeal in
+putting down any of the major sins of our day, zealous in any work of
+reform? I fear I can count them all on the fingers of a single hand; yet
+there are enough to bewail the departure of monastic forms, and of the
+theology which led men in the dimness of a darker age, but cannot shine
+in the rising light of this. I find no fault with these men; I blame
+them not; it is their profession which so blinds their eyes. They are as
+wise and as valiant as the churches let them be. What sect in all this
+land ever cared about temperance, education, peace betwixt nations, or
+even the freedom of all men in our own, so much as this sect cares for
+the baptizing of children with water, and that for the baptizing of men;
+this for the doctrine of the Trinity, and all for the infallibility of
+the Bible? Do you ask the sects to engage in the work of extirpating
+concrete wrong? It is in vain; each reformer tries it--the mild sects
+answer, "I pray thee have me excused;" the sterner sects reply with
+awful speech. A distinguished theological journal of another city thinks
+the philanthropies of this day are hostile to piety, and declares that
+true spiritual Christianity never prevails where men think slavery is a
+sin. A distinguished minister of a highly respectable sect declares the
+temperance societies unchristian, and even atheistical. He reasons thus:
+The church is an instrument appointed by God and Christ, to overcome all
+forms of wrong, intemperance among the rest; to neglect this instrument
+and devise another, a temperance society, to wit, is to abandon the
+institutions of God and Christ, and so it is unchristian and
+atheistical. In other words, here is intemperance, a stone of stumbling,
+and a rock of offence, in our way; there is an old wooden beetle, which
+has done great service of old time, and is said to have been made by
+God's own hand; men smite therewith the stone or smite it not; still it
+lies there a stone of stumbling and a stone of shame; other men
+approach, and with a sledge-hammer of well-tempered steel smite the
+rock, and break off piece after piece, smoothing the rough
+impracticable way; they call on men to come to their aid, with such
+weapons as they will. But our minister bids them beware; the beetle is
+"of the Lord," the iron which breaks the rock in pieces is an
+unchristian and atheistical instrument. Yet was this minister an
+earnest, a pious, and a self-denying man, who sincerely sought the good
+of men. He had been taught to know no piety but in the church's form. I
+would not do dishonor to the churches; they have done great service,
+they still do much; I would only ask them to be worthy of their
+Christian name. They educate men a little, and allow them to approach
+emancipation, but never to be free and go alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I see much to complain of in the condition of piety; yet nothing to be
+alarmed at. When I look back, it seems worse still, far worse. There has
+not been "A decline of piety" in Boston of late years. Religion is not
+sick. Last Sunday, I spoke of the great progress made in morality within
+fifty years; I said it was an immense progress within two hundred years.
+Now, there cannot be such a progress in the outward manifestation
+without a corresponding and previous development of the inward
+principle. Morality cannot grow without piety more than an oak without
+water, earth, sun, and air. Let me go back one hundred years; see what a
+difference between the religious aspect of things then and now!
+certainly there has been a great growth in spirituality since that day.
+I am not to judge men's hearts; I may take their outward lives as the
+test and measure of their inward piety. Will you say the outward life
+never completely comes up to that? It does so as completely now as then.
+Compare the toleration of these times with those; compare the
+intelligence of the community; the temperance, sobriety, chastity,
+virtue in general. Look at what is now done in a municipal way by towns
+and States for mankind; see the better provision made for the poor, for
+the deaf, the dumb, the blind, for the insane, even for the idiot; see
+what is done for the education of the people--in schools, academies,
+colleges, and by public lectures; what is done for the criminal to
+prevent the growth of crime. See what an amelioration of the penal laws;
+how men are saved and restored to society, who had once been wholly
+lost. See what is done by philanthropy still more eminent, which the
+town and State have not yet overtaken and enacted into law; by the
+various societies for reform--those for temperance, for peace, for the
+discipline of prisons, for the discharged convicts, for freeing the
+slave. See this Anti-slavery party, which, in twenty years, has become
+so powerful throughout all the Northern States, so strong that it cannot
+be howled down, and men begin to find it hardly safe to howl over it; a
+party which only waits the time to lift up its million arms, and hurl
+the hateful institution of slavery out of the land! All these humane
+movements come from a divine piety in the soul of man. A tree which
+bears such fruits is not a dead tree; is not wholly to be despaired of;
+is not yet in a "decline," and past all hope of recovery. Is the age
+wanting in piety, which makes such efforts as these? Yes, you will say,
+because it does no more. I agree to this, but it is rich in piety
+compared to other times. Ours is an age of faith; not of mere belief in
+the commandments of men, but of faith in the nature of man and the
+commandments of God.
+
+This prevailing and contagious complaint about the decline of religion
+is not one of the new things of our time. In the beginning of the last
+century, Dr. Colman, first minister of the church in Brattle street,
+lamented in small capitals over the general decline of piety:--"The
+venerable name of religion and of the church is made a sham pretence for
+the worst of villanies, for uncharitableness and unnatural oppression of
+the pious and the peaceable;" "the perilous times are come, wherein men
+are lovers only of their own selves." "Ah, calamitous day," says he,
+"into which we are fallen, and into which the sins of our infatuated age
+have brought us!" He looks back to the founders of New England; they
+"were rich in faith, and heirs of a better world," "men of whom the
+world was not worthy;" "they laid in a stock of prayers for us which
+have brought down many blessings on us already." Samuel Willard
+bewailed "the checkered state of the gospel church;" it was "in every
+respect a gloomy day, and covered with thick clouds."
+
+We retire yet further back, to the end of the seventeenth century; a
+hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, Dr. Increase Mather, not only in
+his own pulpit, but also at "the great and Thursday lecture," lamented
+over "the degeneracy and departing glory of New England." He complained
+that there was a neglect of the Sabbath, of the ordinances, and of
+family worship; he groaned at the lax discipline of the churches, and
+looked, says another, "as fearfully on the growing charity as on the
+growing vices of the age." He called the existing generation "an
+unconverted generation." "Atheism and profaneness," says he, "have come
+to a prodigious height;" "God will visit" for these things; "God is
+about to open the windows of heaven, and pour down the cataracts of His
+wrath ere this generation ... is passed away." If a comet appeared in
+the sky, it was to admonish men of the visitation, and make "the haughty
+daughters of Zion reform their pride of apparel." "The world is full of
+unbelief" (that is, in the malignant aspect and disastrous influence of
+comets), "but there is an awful Scripture for them that do profanely
+condemn such signal works!"
+
+One of the present and well-known indications of the decline of piety,
+that is often thought a modern luxury, and ridiculously denounced in
+the pulpit, which has done its part in fostering the enjoyment, was
+practised to an extent that alarmed the prim shepherds of the New
+England flock in earlier days. The same Dr. Mather preached a series of
+sermons "tending to promote the power of godliness," and concludes the
+whole with a discourse "Of sleeping at sermons," and says: "To sleep in
+the public worship of God is a thing too frequently and easily
+practised; it is a great and a dangerous evil." "Sleeping at a sermon is
+a greater sin than speaking an idle word. Therefore, if men must be
+called to account for idle words, much more for this!" "Gospel sermons
+are among the most precious talents which any in this world have
+conferred upon them. But what a sad account will be given concerning
+those sermons which have been slept away! As light as thou makest of it
+now, it may be conscience will roar for it upon a death-bed!" "Verily,
+there is many a soul that will find this to be a dismal thought at the
+day of judgment, when he shall remember so many sermons I might have
+heard for my everlasting benefit, but I slighted and slept them all
+away. Therefore consider, if men allow themselves in this evil their
+souls are in danger to perish." "It is true that a godly man may be
+subject unto this as well as unto other infirmities; but he doth not
+allow himself therein." "The name of the glorious God is greatly
+prophaned by this inadvertency." "The support of the evangelical
+ministry is ... discouraged." He thought the character of the pulpit was
+not sufficient explanation of this phenomenon, and adds, in his
+supernatural way, "Satan is the external cause of this evil;" "he had
+rather have men wakeful at any time than at sermon time." The good man
+mentions, by way of example, a man who "had not slept a wink at a sermon
+for more than twenty years together," and also, but by way of warning,
+the unlucky youth in the Acts who slept at Paul's long sermon, and fell
+out of the window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding
+something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did
+so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them to death." "The
+holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not
+punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it."
+"Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks forever and
+ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to
+have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending dayes of
+eternity." Other men denounced their "Wo to sleepy sinners," and issued
+their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."
+
+Dr. Mather thought there was "A deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be
+much in mourning and humiliation that God's bottle may be filled with
+tears." He thought piety was going out because surplices were coming
+in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like
+the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical
+instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy
+fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-slavery societies are
+to many of their sons--an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic!"
+The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that
+"all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at
+once." Inoculation for the smallpox was as vehemently and ably opposed
+as the modern attempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to
+the machinations of men than to the all-wise providence of God."
+
+"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical
+historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the
+primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers;
+a change in the tenor of the divine dispensation towards this country
+was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our
+pease fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with
+multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become
+epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our
+inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable ruins." "The
+serious people throughout the land were awakened by these intimations of
+divine displeasure to inquire into the causes and matters of the
+controversie." Accordingly, 1679, a synod was convened at Boston, to
+"inquire into the causes of the Lord's controversie with his New England
+people," who determined the matter.[1]
+
+A little later, in 1690, the General Court considered the subject anew,
+and declared, that "A corruption of manners, attended with inexcusable
+degeneracies and apostacies ... is the cause of the controversie." We
+"are now arriving at such an extremity, that the axe is laid to the root
+of the trees, and we are in eminent danger of perishing, if a speedy
+reformation of our provoking evils prevent it not." In 1702, Cotton
+Mather complains that "Our manifold indispositions to recover the dying
+power of Godliness, were successive calamities, under all of which, our
+apostacies from that Godliness, have rather proceeded than abated." "The
+old spirit of New England has been sensibly going out of the world, as
+the old saints in whom it was have gone; and, instead thereof, the
+spirit of the world, with a lamentable neglect of strict piety, has
+crept in upon the rising generation."
+
+You go back to the time of the founders and fathers of the colony, and
+it is no better. In 1667, Mr. Wilson, who had "A singular gift in the
+practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that "God would
+judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their
+contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and
+sloth," and before that he said, "People rise up as Corah, against their
+ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the
+church,... I think God is provoked by it. Another sin I take to be the
+making light ... of the authority of the Synods." John Norton, whose
+piety was said to be "Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled,
+after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the
+blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New
+England, who "Liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before
+he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while
+he was under the roof, mourned at "The condition of the churches;" and,
+in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President
+of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to
+"Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the
+professors of religion falling into."[2] In 1641, such was the condition
+of piety in Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man,
+because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was
+appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal
+in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The
+church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a
+minister, one hundred and fifty years ago, "before the dragon cast
+forth several floods to devour it; but not the least of these floods was
+one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what
+alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the
+country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to
+seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first
+mother, they soon hooked in the husbands also." So, in 1637, the Synod
+of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman
+was duly convicted of holding "About thirty monstrous opinions," and
+subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The
+synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation and emptying of private
+passions," condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony,
+as erroneous, and decided to "Refer doubts to be resolved by the great
+God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "The dark and distracted
+condition of the churches of New England."
+
+"The good old times," when piety was in a thriving state, and the
+churches successful and contented, lay as far behind the "Famous Johns,"
+as it now does behind their successors in office and lamentation. Then,
+as now, the complaint had the same foundation: ministers and other good
+men could not see that new piety will not be put into the old forms,
+neither the old forms of thought, nor the old forms of action. In the
+days of Wilson, Cotton, and Norton, there was a gradual growth of
+piety; in the days of the Mathers, of Colman, and Willard, and from that
+time to this, there has been a steady improvement of the community, in
+intellectual, moral, and religious culture. Some men could not see the
+progress two hundred years ago, because they believed in no piety,
+except as it was manifested in their conventional forms. It is so now.
+Mankind advances by the irresistible law of God, under the guidance of a
+few men of large discourse, who look before and after, but amid the
+wailing of many who think each advance is a retreat, and every stride a
+stumble.
+
+Now-a-days nobody complains at "The ungodly custom of wearing long
+hair;" no dandy is dealt with by the church, for his dress; the weakest
+brother is not offended by "Regular singing,"--so it be regular,--"by
+organs and the like;" nobody laments at "The reading of Scripture
+lessons," or "The use of the Lord's Prayer" in public religious
+services, or is offended, because a clergyman makes a prayer at a
+funeral, and solemnizes a marriage,--though these are "prelatical
+customs," and were detested by our fathers. Yet, other things, now as
+much dreaded, and thought "of a bad and dangerous tendency," will one
+day prove themselves as innocent, though now as much mourned over. Many
+an old doctrine will fade out, and though some think a star has fallen
+out of heaven, a new truth will rise up and take its place. It is to be
+expected that ministers will often complain of "The general decay of
+religion." The position of a clergyman, fortunate in many things, is
+unhappy in this: he seldom sees the result of his labors, except in the
+conventional form mentioned above. The lawyer, the doctor, the merchant
+and mechanic, the statesman and the farmer, all have visible and
+palpable results of their work, while the minister can only see that he
+has baptized men, and admitted them to his church; the visible and
+quotable tokens of his success, are a large audience, respectable and
+attentive, a thriving Sunday school, or a considerable body of
+communicants. If these signs fail, or become less than formerly, he
+thinks he has labored in vain; that piety is on the decline, for it is
+only by this form that he commonly tests and measures piety itself.
+Hence, a sincere and earnest minister, with the limitations which he so
+easily gets from his profession and social position, is always prone to
+think ill of the times, to undervalue the new wine which refuses to be
+kept in the old bottles, but rends them asunder; hence he bewails the
+decline of religion, and looks longingly back to the days of his
+fathers.
+
+But you will ask, Why does not a minister demand piety in its natural
+form? Blame him not; unconsciously he fulfils his contract, and does
+what he is taught, ordained, and paid for doing. It is safe for a
+minister to demand piety of his parish, in the conventional form; not
+safe to demand it in the form of morality--eminent piety, in the form
+of philanthropy: it would be an innovation; it would "Hurt men's
+feelings;" it might disturb some branches of business; at the North, it
+would interfere with the liquor-trade; at the South, with the
+slave-trade; everywhere it would demand what many men do not like to
+give. If a man asks piety in the form of bodily attendance at church, on
+the only idle day in the week, when business and amusement must be
+refrained from; in the form of belief in doctrines which are commonly
+accepted by the denomination, and compliance with its forms,--that is
+customary; it hurts nobody's feelings; it does not disturb the
+liquor-trade, nor the slave-trade; it interferes with nothing, not even
+with respectable sleep in a comfortable pew. A minister, like others
+loves to be surrounded by able and respectable men; he seeks, therefore,
+a congregation of such. If he is himself an able man, it is well; but
+there are few in any calling, whom we designate as able. Our weak man
+cannot instruct his parishioners; he soon learns this, and ceases to
+give them counsel on matters of importance. They would not suffer it,
+for the larger includes the less, not the less the larger. He is not
+strong by nature; their position overlooks and commands his. He must
+speak and give some counsel; he wisely limits himself to things of but
+little practical interest, and his parishioners are not offended: "That
+is my sentiment exactly," says the most worldly man in the church,
+"Religion is too pure to be mixed up with the practical business of the
+street." The original and effectual preaching in such cases, is not from
+the pulpit down upon the pews, but from the pews up to the pulpit, which
+only echoes, consciously or otherwise, but does not speak.
+
+In a solar system, the central sun, not barely powerful from its
+position, is the most weighty body; heavier than all the rest put
+together; so with even swing they all revolve about it. Our little
+ministerial sun was ambitious of being amongst large satellites; he is
+there, but the law of gravitation amongst men is as certain as in
+matter; he cannot poise and swing the system; he is not the sun thereof,
+not even a primary planet, only a little satellite revolving with many
+nutations round some primary, in an orbit that is oblique, complicated,
+and difficult to calculate; now waxing in a "Revival," now waning in a
+"Decline of piety," now totally eclipsed by his primary that comes
+between him and the light which lighteth every man. Put one of the cold
+thin moons of Saturn into the centre of the solar system,--would the
+universe revolve about that little dot? Loyal matter with irresistible
+fealty gravitates towards the sun, and wheels around the balance-point
+of the world's weight, be it where it may, called by whatever name.
+
+While ministers insist unduly on the conventional manifestation of
+piety, it is not a thing unheard of for a layman to resolve to go to
+heaven by the ecclesiastical road, yet omit resolving to be a good man
+before he gets there. Such a man finds the ordinary forms of piety very
+convenient, and not at all burdensome; they do not interfere with his
+daily practice of injustice and meanness of soul; they seem a substitute
+for real and manly goodness; they offer a royal road to saintship here
+and heaven hereafter. Is the man in arrears with virtue, having long
+practised wickedness and become insolvent? This form is a new bankrupt
+law of the spirit, he pays off his old debts in the ecclesiastical
+currency--a pennyworth of form for a pound of substantial goodness. This
+bankrupt sinner, cleared by the ecclesiastical chancery, is a solvent
+saint; he exhorts at meetings, strains at every gnat, and mourns over
+"The general decay of piety," and teaches other men the way in which
+they should go--to the same end.
+
+    "So morning insects that in muck begun,
+    Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the evening sun."
+
+I honor the founders of New England; they were pious men--their lives
+proved it; but domineered over by false opinions in theology, they put
+their piety into very unnatural and perverted forms. They had ideas
+which transcended their age; they came here to make those ideas into
+institutions. That they had great faults, bigotry, intolerance, and
+superstition, is now generally conceded. They were picked men, "wheat
+sifted out of three kingdoms," to plant a new world withal. They have
+left their mark very deep and very distinct in this town, which was
+their prayer and their pride. It may seem unjust to ourselves to compare
+a whole community like our own with such a company as filled Boston in
+the first half century of its existence,--men selected for their
+spiritual hardihood; but here and now, in the midst of Boston, are men
+quite as eminent for piety who as far transcend this age, as the
+Puritans and the pilgrims surpassed their time. The Puritan put his
+religion into the ecclesiastical form; not into the form of the Roman or
+the English Church, but into a new one of his own. His descendant,
+inheriting his father's faith in God, and stern self-denial, but
+sometimes without his bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, with
+little fear but with more love of God, and consequently with more love
+of man, puts his piety into a new form. It is not the form of the old
+Church; the Church of the Puritans is to him often what the Church of
+the Pope and the prelates was to his ungentle sire. He puts his piety
+into the form of goodness; eminent piety becomes philanthropy, and takes
+the shape of reform. In such men, in many of their followers, I see the
+same trust in God, the same scorn of compromising right and truth, the
+same unfaltering allegiance to the eternal Father, which shone in the
+pilgrims who founded this new world, which fired the reformers of the
+Church; yes, which burned in the hearts of Paul and John. Piety has not
+failed and gone out; each age has its own forms thereof; the old and
+passing can never understand the new, nor can they consent to decrease
+with the increase of the new. Once, men put their piety into a church,
+Catholic or Protestant; they made creeds and believed them; they devised
+rites and symbols, which helped their faith. It was well; but we cannot
+believe those creeds, nor be aided by such symbols and such rites. Why
+pretend to drag a weighty crutch about because it helped your father
+once, wandering alone and in the dark, sounding on his dim and perilous
+way? Once earthen roads were the best we knew, and horses' feet had
+shoes of swiftness; now we need not, out of reverence, refuse the iron
+road, the chariot and the steed of flame; nor out of irreverence need we
+spurn the path our fathers trod; sorely bested and hunted after,
+tear-bedewed and travel-stained, they journeyed there, passing on to
+their God. If the mother that bore us were never so rude, and to our
+eyes might seem never so graceless now, still she was our mother, and
+without her we should not have been born. Wives and children may men
+have, and manifold; each has but one mother. The great institution we
+call the Christian Church has been the mother of us all; and though in
+her own dotage she deny our piety, and call us infidel, far be it from
+me to withhold the richly earned respect. Behind a decent veil, then,
+let us hide our mother's weakness, and ourselves pass on. Once piety
+built up a theocracy, and men say it was divine; now piety, everywhere
+in Christendom, builds up democracies; it is a diviner work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The piety of this age must manifest itself in Morality, and appear in a
+church where the priests are men of active mind and active hand; men of
+ideas, who commune with God and man through faith and works, finding no
+truth is hostile to their creed, no goodness foreign to their litany, no
+piety discordant with their psalm. The man who once would have built a
+convent and been its rigorous chief, now founds a temperance society,
+contends against war, toils for the pauper, the criminal, the madman,
+and the slave, for men bereft of senses and of sense. The synod of Dort
+and of Cambridge, the assembly of divines at Westminster, did what they
+could with what piety they had; they put it into decrees and platforms,
+into catechisms and creeds. But the various conventions for reform put
+their piety into resolves and then into philanthropic works. I do not
+believe there has ever been an age when piety bore so large a place in
+the whole being of New England as at this day, or attendance on
+church-forms so small a part. The attempts made and making for a better
+education of the people, the lectures on science and literature
+abundantly attended in this town, the increased fondness for reading,
+the better class of books which are read--all these indicate an
+increased love of truth, the intellectual part of piety; societies for
+reform and for charity show an increase of the moral and affectional
+parts of piety; the better, the lovelier idea of God which all sects are
+embracing, is a sign of increased love of God. Thus all parts of piety
+are proving their existence by their work. The very absence from the
+churches, the disbelief of the old sour theologies, the very neglect of
+outward forms and ceremonies of religion, the decline of the ministry
+itself, under the present circumstances, shows an increase of piety. The
+baby-clothes were well and wide for the baby; now, the fact that he
+cannot get them on, shows plainly that he has outgrown them, is a boy
+and no longer a baby.
+
+Once Piety fled to the Church as the only sanctuary in the waste wide
+world, and was fondly welcomed there, fed and fostered. When power fled
+off from the Church--"Wilt thou also go away?" said she; "Lord," said
+Piety, "to whom shall we go? Thou only hast the words of everlasting
+life." Once convents and cathedrals were what the world needed as
+shelter for this fair child of God; then she dwelt in the grim edifice
+that our fathers built, and for a time counted herself "lodged in a
+lodging where good things are." Now is she grown able to wander forth
+fearless and free, lodging where the night overtakes her, and doing what
+her hands find to do, not unattended by the Providence which hitherto
+has watched over and blessed her. I respect piety in the Hebrew saints,
+prophets, and bards, who spoke the fiery speech, or sung their sweet and
+soul-inspiring psalm:
+
+    "Out from the heart of Nature rolled
+    The burdens of the Bible old."
+
+I honor piety among the saints of Greece, clad in the form of
+philanthropy and art, speaking still in dramas, in philosophies, and
+song, and in the temple and the statue too:
+
+    "Not from a vain and shallow thought
+    His awful Jove young Phidias brought."
+
+I admire at the piety of the Middle Ages, which founded the monastic
+tribes of men, which wrote the theologies, scholastic and mystic both,
+still speaking to the mind of men, or in poetic legends insinuated
+truth; which built that heroic architecture, overmastering therewith the
+sense and soul of man:
+
+    "The passive master lent his hand
+    To the vast Soul that o'er him planned:
+    And the same Power that reared the shrine,
+    Bestrode the tribes that knelt therein."
+
+But the piety which I find now, in this age, here in our own land, I
+respect, honor, and admire yet more; I find it in the form of moral
+life; that is the piety I love, piety in her own loveliness. Would I
+could find poetic strains as fit to sing of her--but yet such
+
+    "Loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
+    But is, when unadorned, adorned the most."
+
+Let me do no dishonor to other days, to Hebrew or to Grecian saints.
+Unlike and hostile though they were, they jointly fed my soul in
+earliest days. I would not underrate the mediaeval saints, whose words
+and works have been my study in a manlier age; yet I love best the fair
+and vigorous piety of our own day. It is beautiful, amid the strong,
+rank life of the nineteenth century, amid the steam-mills and the
+telegraphs which talk by lightning, amid the far-reaching enterprises of
+our time, and 'mid the fierce democracies, it is beautiful to find this
+fragrant piety growing up in unwonted forms, in places where men say no
+seed of heaven can lodge and germinate. So in a June meadow, when a boy,
+and looking for the cranberries of another year, faded and tasteless,
+amid the pale but coarse rank grass, and discontented that I found them
+not, so I have seen the crimson arethusa or the cymbidium shedding an
+unexpected loveliness o'er all the watery soil and all the pale and
+coarse rank grass, a prophecy of summer near at hand. So in October,
+when the fields are brown with frost, the blue and fringed gentian meets
+your eye, filling with thankful tears.
+
+There is no decline of piety, but an increase of it; a good deal has
+been done in two hundred years, in one hundred years, yes, in fifty
+years. Let us admit, with thankfulness of heart, that piety is in
+greater proportion to all our activity now than ever before: but then
+compare ourselves with the ideal of human nature, our piety with the
+ideal piety, and we must confess that we are little and very low. Boston
+is the most active city in the world, the most enterprising. In no place
+is it so easy to obtain men's ears and their purses for any good word
+and work. But think of the evils we know of and tolerate; think of an
+ideal Christian city, then think of Boston; of a Christian man, aye of
+Christ himself, and then think of you and me, and we are filled with
+shame. If there were a true, manly piety in this town, in due proportion
+to our numbers, wealth, and enterprise, how long would the vices of this
+city last? How long would men complain of a dead body of divinity and a
+dead church, and a ministry that was dead? How long would intemperance
+continue, and pauperism, in Boston; how long slavery in this land?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Last Sunday, in the name of the poor, I asked you for your charity.
+To-day I ask for dearer alms: I ask you to contribute your piety. It
+will help the town more than the little money all of us can give. Your
+money will soon be spent; it feeds one man once; we cannot give it
+twice, though the blessing thereof may linger long in the hand which
+gave. Few of us can give much money to the poor; some of us none at all.
+This we can all give: the inspiration of a man with a man's piety in his
+heart, living it out in a man's life. Your money may be ill spent, your
+charity misapplied, but your piety never. After all, there is nothing
+you can give which men will so readily take and so long remember as
+this. Mothers can give it to their daughters and their sons; men, after
+spending thereof profusely at home, can coin their inexhausted store
+into industry, patience, integrity, temperance, justice, humanity, a
+practical love of man. A thousand years ago, it was easy to excuse men
+if they chiefly showed religion in the conventional pattern of the
+church. Forms then were helps, and the nun has been mother to much of
+the charity of our times. It is easy to excuse our fathers for their
+superstitious reverence for rites and forms. But now, in an age which
+has its eyes a little open, a practical and a handy age, we are without
+excuse if our piety appears not in a manly life, our faith in works. To
+give this piety to cheer and bless mankind, you must have it first, be
+cheered and blessed thereby yourself. Have it, then, in your own way;
+put it into your own form. Do men tell you, "This is a degenerate age,"
+and "Religion is dying out?" tell them that when those stars have faded
+out of the sky from very age, when other stars have come up to take
+their place, and they too have grown dim and hollow-eyed and old, that
+religion will still live in man's heart, the primal, everlasting light
+of all our being. Do they tell you that you must put piety into their
+forms; put it there if it be your place; if not, in your place. Let men
+see the divinity that is in you by the humanity that comes out from you.
+If they will not see it, cannot, God can and will. Take courage from the
+past, not its counsel; fear not now to be a man. You may find a new Eden
+where you go, a river of God in it, and a tree of life, an angel to
+guard it; not the warning angel to repel, but the guiding angel to
+welcome and to bless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was four years yesterday since I first came here to speak to you; I
+came hesitatingly, reluctant, with much diffidence as to my power to do
+what it seemed to me was demanded. I did not come merely to pull down,
+but to build up, though it is plain much theological error must be
+demolished before any great reform of man's condition can be brought
+about. I came not to contend against any man, or sect, or party, but to
+speak a word for truth and religion in the name of man and God. I was in
+bondage to no sect; you in bondage to none. When a boy I learned that
+there is but one religion though many theologies. I have found it in
+Christians and in Jews, in Quakers and in Catholics. I hope we are all
+ready to honor what is good in each sect, and in rejecting its evil not
+to forget our love and wisdom in our zeal.
+
+When I came I certainly did not expect to become a popular man, or
+acceptable to many. I had done much which in all countries brings odium
+on a man, though perhaps less in Boston than in any other part of the
+world. I had rejected the popular theology of Christendom. I had exposed
+the low morals of society, had complained of the want of piety in its
+natural form. I had fatally offended the sect, small in numbers, but
+respectable for intelligence and goodness, in which I was brought up. I
+came to look at the signs of the times from an independent point of
+view, and to speak on the most important of all themes. I thought a
+house much smaller than this would be much too large for us. I knew
+there would be fit audience; I thought it would be few, and the few
+would soon have heard enough and go their ways.
+
+I know I have some advantages above most clergymen: I am responsible to
+no sect; no sect feels responsible for me; I have rejoiced at good
+things which I have seen in all sects; the doctrines which I try to
+teach do not rest on tradition, on miracles, or on any man's authority;
+only on the nature of man. I seek to preach the natural laws of man. I
+appeal to history for illustration, not for authority. I have no fear of
+philosophy. I am willing to look a doubt fairly in the face, and think
+reason is sacred as conscience, affection, or the religious faculty in
+man. I see a profound piety in modern science. I have aimed to set forth
+absolute religion, the ideal religion of human nature, free piety, free
+goodness, free thought. I call that Christianity, after the greatest man
+of the world, one who himself taught it; but I know that this was never
+the Christianity of the churches, in any age. I have endeavored to teach
+this religion and apply it to the needs of this time. These things
+certainly give me some advantages over most other ministers. Of the
+disadvantages which are personal to myself, I need not speak in public,
+but some which come from my position, ought to be noticed with a word.
+The walls of this house, the associations connected with it, furnish
+little help to devotion; we must rely on ourselves wholly for that.
+Other clergymen, by their occasional exchanges, can present their
+hearers with an agreeable variety in substance and in form. A single
+man, often heard, becomes wearisome and unprofitable, for "No man can
+feed us always." This I feel to be a great disadvantage which I labor
+under. Your kindness and affectionate indulgence make me feel it all the
+more. But one man cannot be twenty men.
+
+When I came here I knew I should hurt men's feelings. My theology would
+prove more offensive and radical than men thought; the freedom of speech
+which men liked at a distance would not be pleasing when near at hand;
+my doctrines of morality I knew could not be pleasing to all men; not to
+all good men. I saw by your looks that in my abstractions I did not go
+too far for your sympathy, or too fast for your following. I soon found
+that my highest thought and most pious sentiment were most warmly
+welcomed as such; but when I came to put abstract thought and mystical
+piety into concrete goodness, and translate what you had accepted as
+Christian faith into daily life; when I came to apply piety to trade,
+politics, life in general, I knew that I should hurt men's feelings. It
+could not be otherwise. Yet I have had a most patient and faithful
+hearing. One thing I must do in my preaching: I must be in earnest. I
+cannot stand here before you and before God, attempting to teach piety
+and goodness, and not feel the fire and show the fire. The greater the
+wrong, the more popular, the more must I oppose it, and with the
+clearer, abler speech. It is not necessary for me to be popular, to be
+acceptable, even to be loved. It is necessary that I should tell the
+truth. But let that pass. You come hither week after week, it is now
+year after year that you come, to listen to one humble man. Do you get
+poor in your souls? Does your religion become poor and low? Are you
+getting less in the qualities of a man? If so, then leave me, to empty
+seats, to cold and voiceless walls; go elsewhere, and feed your souls
+with a wise passiveness, or an activity wiser yet. Such is your duty;
+let no affection for me hinder you from performing it. The same
+theology, the same form suits not all men. But if it is not so, if I do
+you good, if you grow in mind and conscience, heart and soul, then I ask
+one thing--Let your piety become natural life, your divinity become
+humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The Synod declared: "That God hath a controversie with his New
+England people is undeniable." "There are visible manifest evils, which
+without doubt the Lord is provoked by." 1. "A great and visible decay of
+the power of Godliness amongst many professors in these churches." 2.
+"Pride doth abound in New England. Many have offended God by strange
+apparel." 3. "Church fellowship and other divine institutions are
+grossly neglected." "Quakers are false worshippers," "and Anabaptists
+... do no better than set up an Altar against the Lord's Altar." 4. "The
+holy and glorious name of God hath been polluted;" "because of swearing
+the land mourns." "It is a frequent thing for men to sit in prayer-time
+... and to give way to their own sloth and sleepiness." "We read of but
+one man in Scripture that slept at a sermon, and that sin had like to
+have cost him his life." 5. "There is much Sabbath-breaking; since there
+are multitudes that do profanely absent themselves from the public
+worship of God,... walking abroad and travelling ... being a common
+practice on the Sabbath Day." "Worldly unsuitable discourses are very
+common upon the Lord's Day." "This brings wrath, fires, and other
+judgments upon a professing people." 6. "As to what concerns families
+and Government thereof, there is much amiss." "Children and servants ...
+are not kept in due subjection." "This is a sin which brings great
+judgments, as we see in Eli's and David's family." 7. "Inordinate
+passions, sinful heats and hatreds, and that amongst church members." 8.
+"There is much intemperance:" "it is a common practice for
+town-dwellers, yea, and church members, to frequent public houses, and
+there to misspend precious time." 9. "There is much want of truth
+amongst men." "The Lord is not wont to suffer such an iniquity to pass
+unpunished." 10. "Inordinate affection unto the world." "There hath been
+in many professors an insatiable desire after land and worldly
+accommodations; yea, so as to forsake churches and ordinances, and to
+live like heathen, only so that they might have elbow-room in the world.
+Farms and merchandisings have been preferred before the things of God."
+"Such iniquity causeth war to be in the gate, and cities to be burned
+up." "When Lot did forsake the land of Canaan and the church which was
+in Abraham's family, that so he might have better worldly accommodations
+in Sodom, God fired him out of all." "There are some traders that sell
+their goods at excessive rates; day-laborers and mechanics are
+unreasonable in their demands." 11. "There hath been opposition to the
+work of reformation." 12. "A public spirit is greatly wanting in the
+most of men." 13. "There are sins against the gospel, whereby the Lord
+has been provoked." "Christ is not prized and embraced in all his
+offices and ordinances as ought to be."
+
+[2] In 1646, Mr. Samuel Symonds wrote to Governor Winthrop, as follows:
+"I will also mention the text preached upon at our last fast, and the
+propositions raised thereupon, because it was so seasonable to New
+England's condition. Jeremiah 30:17; For I will restore health to thee,
+and heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord; because they called thee an
+outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom noe man careth for.
+
+"1. Prop. That sick tymes doe passe over Zion.
+
+"2. That sad and bitter neglect is the portion, aggravation and
+affliction of Zion in the tyme of his sicknesse and wounds, but
+especially in the neglect of those that doe neglect it, and yet,
+notwithstanding, doe acknowledge it to be Zion.
+
+"3. That the season of penitent Zion's passion, is the season of God's
+compassion.
+
+"This sermon tended much to the settling of Godly minds here in God's
+way, and to raise their spirits, and, as I conceive, hath suitable
+effects."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE MOST CHRISTIAN USE OF THE SUNDAY.--A SERMON
+PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 1848.
+
+MARK II. 27.
+
+    The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
+
+
+From past ages we have received many valuable institutions, that have
+grown out of the transient wants or the permanent nature of man. Amongst
+these are two which have done a great service in promoting the
+civilization of mankind, which still continue amongst us. I speak now of
+the institution of Sunday, and that of preaching. By the one, a seventh
+part of the time is separated from the common pursuits of life, in order
+that it may be devoted to bodily relaxation, and to the culture of the
+spiritual powers of man; by the other, a large body of men, in most
+countries the best educated class, are devoted to the cultivation of
+these spiritual powers. Such at least is the theory of those two
+institutions, be their effect in practice what it may. This morning,
+let us look at one of them, and so I invite your attention to some
+thoughts relative to the Sunday--to the most Christian and profitable
+use of that day.
+
+There is a stricter party of Christians amongst us, who speak out their
+opinions concerning the Sunday; this comprises what are commonly called
+the more "evangelical" sects. There is a party less strict in many
+particulars, comprising what are commonly called the more "liberal"
+sects. They have hitherto been comparatively silent on this theme. Their
+opinions about the Sunday have not usually been so plainly spoken out,
+but have been made apparent by their actions, by occasional and passing
+words, rather than by full, distinct, and emphatic declarations. The
+stricter party, of late years, have been growing a little more strict;
+the party less strict likewise advance in the opposite direction.
+Recently, a call has been published by a few men, for a convention to
+consult and take some steps towards the less rigid course, for the
+purpose, as I understand it, of making the Sunday even more valuable
+than it is now. I take it for granted that both parties desire to make
+the best possible use of the Sunday--the use most conducive to the
+highest interests of mankind; that they desire this equally. There are
+good men on both sides, the more and the less strict; pious men, in the
+best sense of that word, may be found on both sides. There is no need
+of imputing bad motives to either party in order to explain the
+difference between the two.
+
+Such is the aspect of the two parties in the field, looking opposite
+ways, but at one another. It seems likely that there will be a quarrel,
+and, as is usual in such cases, hard words on each side, hard thoughts
+and unkind feelings on both sides. Before the quarrel begins, and our
+eyes are blinded by the dust of controversy; before our blood is fired,
+and we become wholly incapable of judgment--let us look coolly at the
+matter, and ask, Do we need any change in respect to the observance of
+the Sunday? Are the present opinions respecting the origin, nature, and
+original design of that institution just and true? Is the present mode
+of observing it the most profitable that can be devised? The inquiry is
+one of great importance.
+
+To answer these questions, it is necessary to go back a little into the
+history of the Hebrew Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. However, it is
+not needful to go much into detail, or consume this precious hour in a
+learned discussion on antiquarian matters which concern none but
+scholars.
+
+With the Hebrews the actual observance of Saturday--the Sabbath--as a
+day rest, seems to be of pretty late origin. The first mention of it in
+authentic Hebrew history, as actually observed, occurs about two hundred
+years after Samuel, and about six hundred after Moses--a little less
+than nine hundred before Christ. The passage is found in 2 Kings 4: 23;
+a child had died, as the narrative relates--the mother wished to send
+for Elisha, "the man of God." Her husband objects, saying, "Wherefore
+wilt thou go to him to-day? it is neither new moon nor Sabbath." This
+connection with the new moon is significant. In the earlier historical
+books of Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and the first of
+Kings, there is no mention of the Sabbath, not the least allusion to it.
+
+This seems to have been the origin of its observance:--The worship of
+one God, with the distinctive name Jehovah, gradually got established in
+the Hebrew nation; for this they seem largely indebted to Moses.
+Gradually this worship of Jehovah became connected with a body of
+priests, who were regularly organized at length, and claimed descent
+from Levi--some of them from Aaron, his celebrated descendant, the elder
+brother of Moses. The rise of the Levitical priesthood is remarkable,
+and easily traced in the Old Testament. Some books are entirely
+destitute of a Levitical spirit, such as Genesis and Judges; others are
+filled with it, as Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the books of Chronicles.
+With the priesthood it seems there came the observance of certain days
+for religious or festal purposes--New Moon days, Full Moon days, and the
+like. These seem to have been derived from the nations about them, with
+whom the moon--deified as Astarte, the Queen and Mother of Heaven, and
+under other names--was long an object of worship. The observance of
+those days points back to the period when Fetichism, the worship of
+Nature, was the prominent form of religion. With the other days of
+religious observance came the seventh day, called the Sabbath. No one
+knows its true historical origin. The statement respecting its origin,
+in the fourth commandment, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, can
+hardly be accepted as literally true by any one in this century. No
+scientific man, in the present stage of philosophic inquiry, will
+believe that God created the universe in six days, and then rested on
+the seventh. Did other nations observe this day before the Hebrews; was
+it also connected with some Fetichistic form of worship; what was the
+historical event which led to the selection of that day in special? This
+it is easy to ask, but perhaps not possible to answer. These are curious
+questions; they are of little practical importance to us at this moment.
+
+After the Hebrew institutions of religion got fixed--the worship of
+Jehovah, the Levitical priesthood, and the peculiar forms of
+sacrifice--it became common to refer their origin back to the time of
+Moses, who lived fourteen or fifteen hundred years before Christ. Since
+few memorials from his age have come down to us, it is plain we can know
+little of him. But from the impression which his character left on his
+nation, and through them on the whole world; from the myths so early
+connected with his name, it seems pretty clear that he was one of the
+greatest and most extraordinary men that ever lived. Mankind seldom tell
+great things of little men. It is difficult to say what share he had in
+making the laws of the Hebrew nation which are commonly referred to
+him,--and, as it is popularly taught, revealed to him directly by
+Jehovah. Perhaps we are not safe in referring to him even the whole of
+the ten commandments; surely not in any one of their present forms.[3]
+Was the Sabbath observed as a day of rest before Moses? Was its
+observance enforced by him? Was it even known to him? These questions
+are not easily answered. This is only certain: from the time of Moses to
+that of Jehoram, a period of about six hundred years, there is no
+historical mention of its observance, not the least allusion to it. Yet
+we have documents which treat of that period,--the books of Joshua,
+Judges, Samuel, and the Kings,--some of them historical documents, which
+go into the minute detail of the national peculiarities, and were
+evidently written with a good deal of concern for strict integrity and
+truth; they refer to the national rite of circumcision. Now, if the
+Sabbath had been observed during that period, it is difficult to believe
+it would have received no passing notice in those historical books. But
+not only is there no mention of it therein, none even in the times of
+David and Solomon, who favored the priesthood so strongly; but in the
+book of Chronicles, the most Levitical book in the Bible, at a date more
+than two hundred years later than the time of Jehoram, it is distinctly
+declared that the Sabbath had not been kept for nearly five hundred
+years.[4] But even if this statement is true, which is scarcely
+probable, it is plain from the frequent mention of the Sabbath in the
+writings of the latter part of that period--Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
+others--that the institution was one well known and highly regarded by
+religious men. After the return from the Babylonian exile, it seems to
+have been kept with considerable rigor; this we learn from the book of
+Nehemiah.
+
+The Hebrew law, as it is contained in the Pentateuch, is a singular
+mixture of conflicting statutes, evidently belonging to different ages,
+many of them wholly unsuitable to the condition of the people when the
+laws are alleged to have been given. However, they are all referred back
+to the time of Moses in the Pentateuch itself, and by the popular
+theology at the present day. In the law the command is given to keep
+the seventh day as a day of rest, and that command is referred
+distinctly to Jehovah himself. The reason is given for choosing that
+day:--"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the
+seventh day he rested and was refreshed;" the Sabbath, therefore, was to
+be kept in commemoration of the fact, that after Jehovah had spent the
+week in creating the world, "he rested and was refreshed." It was to be
+a day of rest for master and slave, for man and beast. A special
+sacrifice was offered on that day, in addition to the usual ceremonies,
+but no provision was made for the religious instruction of the people.
+The Sabbath was what its Hebrew name implies, a rest from all labor. The
+law, in general terms, forbade all work; but, not content with that, it
+descends to minute details, specifically prohibiting by statute the
+gathering or preparation of food on the Sabbath, even of food to be
+consumed on that day itself; the lighting of a fire, or the removal from
+one's place; and, by a decision where the statute did not apply, forbade
+the gathering of sticks of wood. The punishment for violating the
+Sabbath in general, or in any one of these particulars, was death:
+"Whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death." However, amusement
+was not prohibited, nor eating and drinking, only work. The command,
+"Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day," at a later period,
+was liberally interpreted, and a man was allowed to go two thousand
+cubits, a Sabbath-day's journey.
+
+Long after the time of Moses, some of the Hebrews returned from exile
+amongst a more civilized and refined people. It seems probable that only
+the stricter portion returned and established themselves in the land of
+their fathers. Nehemiah, their leader, enforced the observance of the
+Sabbath with a strictness and rigor of which earlier times afford no
+evidence. But the nation was not content with making it a day of
+idleness. They established synagogues, where the people freely assembled
+on the Sabbath and other public days, for religious instruction, and
+thus founded an excellent institution which has shown itself fruitful of
+good results. So far as I know, that is the earliest instance on record
+of provision being made for the regular religious instruction of the
+whole people. Experience has shown its value, and now all the most
+highly civilized nations of the earth have established similar
+institutions. However, in the synagogues the business of religious
+instruction was not at all in the hands of the priests, but in those of
+the people, acting in their primary character without regard to
+Levitical establishments. A priest, as such, is never an instructor of
+the people; he is to go through his ritual, not beyond it.
+
+It is easy to learn from the New Testament what were the current
+opinions about the Sabbath in the time of Christ. It was unlawful to
+gather a head of wheat on the Sabbath, as a man walked through the
+fields; it was unlawful to cure a sick man, though that cure could be
+effected by a touch or a word; unlawful for a man to walk home and carry
+the light cushion on which he had lain. What was unlawful was reckoned
+wicked also; for what is a crime in the eyes of the priest, he commonly
+pretends is likewise a sin before the eyes of God. Yet it was not
+unlawful to eat, drink, and be merry on the Sabbath; nor to lift a sheep
+out of the ditch; nor to quarrel with a man who came to deliver mankind
+from their worst enemies. It was lawful to perform the rite of
+circumcision on the Sabbath, but unlawful to cure a man of any sickness.
+Jesus once placed these two, the allowing of that ritual mutilation and
+the prohibition of the humane act of curing the sick on the Sabbath, in
+ridiculous contrast. In the fourth gospel he goes further, and actually
+denies the alleged ground for the original institution of the Sabbath;
+he denies that God had ever ceased from his work, or rested: "My father
+worketh hitherto."[5] However, in effecting these cures he committed a
+capital offence; the Pharisees so regarded it, and took measures to
+insure his punishment. It does not appear that they were illegal
+measures. It is probable they took regular and legal means to bring him
+to condign punishment as a Sabbath-breaker. He escaped by flight.
+
+Such was the Sabbath with the Hebrews, such the recorded opinion of
+Jesus concerning it. There were also other days in which labor was
+forbidden, but with them we have nothing to do at present. Jesus taught
+piety and goodness without the Hebrew limitations; of course, then, the
+new wine of Christianity could not be put into the old bottles of the
+Jews. Their fast days and Sabbath days, their rites and forms, were not
+for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, not long after the death of Christ, his followers became gradually
+divided into two parties. First, there were the Jewish Christians; that
+was the oldest portion, the old school of Christians. They are mentioned
+in ecclesiastical history as the Ebionites, Nazarines, and under yet
+other names. Peter and James were the great men in that division of the
+early Christians. Matthew, and the author of the Gospel according to the
+Hebrews, were their evangelists. The church at Jerusalem was their
+strong-hold. They kept the whole Hebrew law; all its burdensome ritual,
+its circumcision and its sacrifices, its new-moon days and its full-moon
+days, Sabbath, fasts, and feasts; the first fifteen bishops of the
+church at Jerusalem were circumcised Jews. It seems to me they
+misunderstood Jesus fatally; counting him nothing but the Messiah of the
+Old Testament, and Christianity, therefore, nothing but Judaism
+brightened up and restored to its original purity.
+
+I have often mentioned how strongly Matthew, taking him for the author
+of the first gospel, favors this way of thinking. He represents Jesus as
+commanding his disciples to observe all the Mosaic law, as the Pharisees
+interpreted that law,[6] though such a command is utterly inconsistent
+with the general spirit of Christ's teachings, and even with his plain
+declaration, as preserved in other parts of the same gospel. It is
+worthy of note, that this command is peculiar to Matthew. But there is
+another instance of the same Jewish tendency, though not so obvious at
+first sight. Matthew represents Jesus as saying, "The Son of man," that
+is, the Messiah, "is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Accordingly, he is
+competent to expound the law correctly, and determine what is lawful to
+do on that day. In Matthew, therefore, Jesus, in his character of
+Messiah, is represented as giving a judicial opinion, and ruling that it
+"is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Now, Mark and Luke represent
+it a little different. In Mark, Jesus himself declares that "The Sabbath
+was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Matthew entirely omits
+that remarkable saying. According to Mark, Jesus declares in general
+terms, that man is of more consequence than the observance of the
+Sabbath, while Matthew only considers that the Messiah is "Lord of the
+Sabbath day." The cause of this diversity is quite plain. Matthew was a
+Jewish Christian, and thought Christianity was nothing but restored
+Judaism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other party may be called liberal Christians, though they must not
+be confounded with the party which now bears that name. They were the
+new school of the early Christians. They rejected the Hebrew law, so far
+as it did not rest on human nature, and considered that Christianity was
+a new thing; Christ, not a mere Jew, but a universal man, who had thrown
+down the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles. All the old,
+artificial distinctions, therefore, were done away with at once. Paul
+was the head of the liberal party among the primitive Christians. He was
+considered a heretic; and though he was more efficient than any of the
+other early preachers of Christianity, yet the author of the Apocalypse
+thought him not worthy of a place in the foundation of the new
+Jerusalem, which rests on the twelve apostles.[7] The fourth gospel with
+peculiarities of its own, is written wholly in the interest of this
+party; James is not mentioned in it at all, and Peter plays but quite a
+subordinate part, and is thrown into the shade by John. The disciples
+are spoken of as often misunderstanding their great Teacher. These
+peculiarities cannot be considered as accidental; they are monuments of
+the controversy then going on between the two parties. Paul stood in
+direct opposition to the Jewish Christians. This is plain from the
+epistle to the Galatians, in which the heads of the rival sects appear
+very unlike the description given of them in the book of Acts. The
+observance of Jewish sacred days was one of the subjects of controversy.
+Let us look only at the matter of the Sabbath, as it came in question
+between the two parties. Paul exalts Christ far above the Messianic
+predictions of the Old Testament, calling him an image of the invisible
+God, and declaring that all the fulness of divinity dwells in him, and
+adds, that he had annulled the old Hebrew law. "Therefore," says Paul,
+"let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day,
+or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath."[8] Here he distinctly states the
+issue between the two Christian sects. Elsewhere he speaks of the Jewish
+party, as men that "would pervert the gospel of Christ," by teaching
+that a man was "justified by the works of the law;" that is, by a minute
+observance of the Hebrew ritual.[9] Paul rejects the authority of the
+Old Testament. The law of Moses was but a schoolmaster's servant, to
+bring us to Christ; man had come to Christ, and needed that servant no
+longer; the law was a taskmaster and guardian set over man in his
+minority, now he had come of age, and was free; the law was a shadow of
+good things, and they had come; it was a law of sin and death, which no
+man could bear, and now the law of the spirit of life, as revealed by
+Jesus Christ, had made men free from the law of sin and death. Such was
+the work of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Thus sweeping off
+the authority of the old law in general, he proceeds to particulars: he
+rejects circumcision, and the offering of sacrifices; rejects the
+distinction of nations as Jew and Gentile; the distinction of meats as
+clean and unclean, and all distinction of days, as holy and not holy. If
+one man thought one day holier than another day; if another man thought
+all days equally holy, he would have each man true to his conviction,
+but not seek to impose that conviction on his brothers. Such was Paul's
+opinion of "The law of Moses;" such, of the Sabbath; the Christians were
+not "subject to ordinances."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us come now to the common practice of the early Christians. The
+apostles went about and preached Christianity, as they severally
+understood it. They spoke as they found opportunity; on the Sabbath to
+the Jews in the synagogues, and on other days, as they found time and
+hearers. It does not appear from the New Testament, that they limited
+themselves to any particular day; they were missionaries, some of them
+remained but a little while in a place, making the most of their time.
+It seems that the early Christians, who lived in large towns, met every
+day for religious purposes. But as that would be found inconvenient, one
+day came to be regarded as the regular time of their meetings. The
+Jewish Christians observed the Sabbath with pharisaic rigor, while the
+liberal Christians neglected it. But both parties of Christians
+observed, at length, the first day of the week as a peculiar day. No one
+knows when this observance of the Sunday began; it is difficult to find
+proof in the New Testament, that the apostles regarded it as a peculiar
+day; it seems plain that Paul did not. But it is certain that in the
+second century after Jesus, the Christians in general did so regard it,
+and perhaps all of them.
+
+Why was the Sunday chosen as the regular day for religious meeting? It
+was regarded as the day on which Jesus rose from the dead; and,
+following the mythical account in Genesis, it was the day on which God
+began the creation, and actually created the light. Here there were two
+reasons for the selection of that day; both are frequently mentioned by
+the early Christian writers. Sunday, therefore, was to them a symbol of
+the new creation, and of the light that had come into the world. The
+liberal Christians, in separating from the Jewish Sabbath, would
+naturally exalt the new religious day. Athanasius, I think, is the first
+who ascribes a divine origin to the institution of Sunday. He says, "The
+Lord changed this day from the Sabbath to the Sunday;" but Athanasius
+lived three centuries after Christ, and seems to have known little about
+the matter.
+
+The officers and the order of services in the churches on the Sunday
+seem derived from the usages of the Jewish synagogues. The Sunday was
+thus observed: the people came together in the morning; the exercises
+consisted of readings from the Old Testament and such writings of the
+Christians as the assembly saw fit to have read to them. In respect to
+these writings there was a wide difference in the different churches,
+some accepting more and others less. The overseer, or bishop, made an
+address, perhaps an exposition of the passage of Scripture. Prayers were
+said and hymns chanted; the Lord's supper was celebrated. The form no
+doubt differed, and widely, too, in different places. It was not the
+form of servitude but the spirit of freedom, they observed. But all
+these things were done, likewise, on other days; the Lord's supper could
+be celebrated on any day, and is on every day by the Catholic church,
+even now; for the Catholics have been true to the early practices in
+more points than the Protestants are willing to admit. In some places it
+is certain there was a "communion" every day. Sunday was regarded holy
+by the early Christians, just as certain festivals are regarded holy by
+the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and the Lutherans, at this day; as the
+New Englanders regard Thanksgiving day as holy. Other days, likewise,
+were regarded as holy; were used in the same manner as the Sunday. Such
+days were observed in honor of particular events in the life of Jesus,
+or in honor of saints and martyrs, or they were days consecrated by
+older festivals belonging to the more ancient forms of religion. In the
+Catholic church such days are still numerous. It is only the Puritans
+who have completely rejected them, and they have been obliged to
+substitute new ones in their place. However, there was one peculiarity
+of the Sunday which distinguished it from most or all other days. It was
+a day of religious rejoicing. On other days the Christians knelt in
+prayer; on the Sunday they stood up on joyful feet, for light had come
+into the world. Sunday was a day of gladness and rejoicing. The early
+Christians had many fasts; they were commonly held on Wednesdays and
+Fridays, often on Saturday also, the more completely to get rid of the
+Jewish superstition which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there must
+be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is
+strictly forbidden in the "canons of the apostles;" a clergyman must be
+degraded and a layman excommunicated, for the offence. Says St.
+Ignatius, in the second century, if the epistle be genuine, "Every
+lover of Christ feasts on the Lord's day." "We deem it wicked," says
+Tertullian in the third century, "to fast on the Sunday, or to pray on
+our knees." "Oh," says St. Jerome, "that we could fast on the Sunday, as
+Paul did and they that were with him." St. Ambrose says, the "Manichees
+were damned for fasting on the Lord's day." At this day the Catholic
+church allows no fast on Sunday, save the Sunday before the crucifixion;
+even Lent ceases on that day.
+
+It does not appear that labor ceased on Sunday, in the earliest age of
+Christianity. But when Sunday became the regular and most important day
+for holding religious meetings, less labor must of course be performed
+on that day. At length it became common in some places to abstain from
+ordinary work on the Sunday. It is not easy to say how early this was
+brought about. But after Christianity had become "respectable," and
+found its way to the ranks of the wealthy, cultivated and powerful, laws
+got enacted in its favor. Now, the Romans, like all other ancient
+nations, had certain festal days in which it was not thought proper to
+labor unless work was pressing. It was disreputable to continue common
+labor on such days without an urgent reason; they were pretty numerous
+in the Roman calendar. Courts did not sit on those days; no public
+business was transacted. They were observed as Christmas and the more
+important saints' days in Catholic countries; as Thanksgiving day and
+the Fourth of July with us. In the year three hundred and twenty-one,
+Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, placed Sunday among
+their ferial days. This was perhaps the first legislative action
+concerning the day. The statute forbids labor in towns, but expressly
+excludes all prohibition of field-labor in the country.[10] About three
+hundred and sixty-six or seven, the Council of Laodicea decreed that
+Christians "ought not to Judaize and be idle on the Sabbath, but to work
+on that day; especially observing the Lord's day, and if it is possible,
+as Christians, resting from labor." Afterwards the Emperor Theodosius
+forbade certain public games on Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and the
+whole time from Easter to Pentecost. Justinian likewise forbade
+theatrical exhibitions, races in the circus, and the fights of wild
+beasts, on Sunday, under severe penalties. This was done in order that
+the religious services of the Christians might not be disturbed. By his
+laws the Sunday continued to be a day in which public business was not
+to be transacted. But the Christmas days, the fifteen days of Easter,
+and numerous other days previously observed by Christians or pagans,
+were put in the same class by the law. All this it seems was done from
+no superstitious notions respecting those days, but for the sake of
+public utility and convenience. However, the rigor of the Jewish
+Sabbatical laws was by no means followed. Labors of love, _opera
+caritatis_, were considered as suitable business for those days. The
+very statute of Theodosius recommended the emancipation of slaves on
+Sunday. All impediments to their liberation were removed on that day,
+and though judicial proceedings in all other matters were forbidden on
+Sunday, an exception was expressly made in favor of emancipating slaves.
+This statute was preserved in the code of Justinian.[11] All these laws
+go to show that there were similar customs previously established among
+the Christians, without the aid of legislation.
+
+About the middle of the sixth century the Council of Orleans forbade
+labor in the fields, though it did not forbid travelling with cattle and
+oxen, the preparation of food, or any work necessary to the cleanliness
+of the house or the person--declaring that rigors of that sort belong
+more to a Jewish than to a Christian observance of the day. That, I
+think, is the earliest ecclesiastical decree which has come down to us
+forbidding field-labor in the country; a decree unknown till five
+hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ. But before that, in the
+year three hundred and thirteen, the Council of Elvira in Spain
+decreed, that if any one in a city absented himself three Sundays
+consecutively from the church, he should be suspended from communion for
+a short time. Such a regulation, however, was founded purely on
+considerations of public utility. Many church establishments have
+thought it necessary to protect themselves from desertion by similar
+penal laws.
+
+In Catholic countries, at the present day, the morning of Sunday is
+appropriated to public worship, the people flocking to church. But the
+afternoon and evening are devoted to society, to amusement of various
+kinds. Nothing appears sombre, but every thing has a festive air; even
+the theatres are open. Sunday is like Christmas, or a Thanksgiving day
+in Boston, only the festive demonstrations are more public. It is so in
+the Protestant countries on the continent of Europe. Work is suspended,
+public and private, except what is necessary for the observance of the
+day; public lectures are suspended; public libraries closed; but
+galleries of paintings and statues are thrown open and crowded; the
+public walks are thronged. In Southern Germany, and, doubtless,
+elsewhere, young men and women have I seen in summer, of a Sunday
+afternoon, dancing on the green, the clergyman, Protestant or Catholic,
+looking on and enjoying the cheerfulness of the young people. Americans
+think their mode of keeping Sunday is unholy; they, that ours is Jewish
+and pharisaical. In Paris, sometimes, courses of scientific lectures
+are delivered after the hours of religious services, to men who are busy
+during the week with other cares, and who gladly take the hours of their
+only leisure day to gain a little intellectual instruction.
+
+When England was a Catholic country, Catholic notions of Sunday of
+course prevailed. Labor was suspended; there was service in the
+churches, and afterwards there were sports for the people, but they were
+attended with quarrelling, noise, uproar, and continual drunkenness. It
+was so after the Reformation. In the time of Elizabeth, the laws forbade
+labor except in time of harvest, when it was thought right to work, if
+need were, and "save the thing that God hath sent." Some of the
+Protestants wished to reform those disorders, and convert the Sunday to
+a higher use. The government, and sometimes the superior clergy, for a
+long time interfered to prevent the reform, often to protect the abuse.
+The "Book of Sports," appointed to be read in churches, is well known to
+us from the just indignation with which it filled our fathers.
+
+Now, it is plain, that in England, before the Reformation, the Sunday
+was not appropriated to its highest use; not to the highest interests of
+mankind; no, not to the highest concerns, which the people, at that
+time, were capable of appreciating. The attempts, made then and
+subsequently, by government, to enforce the observance of the day, for
+purposes not the highest, led to a fearful reaction; that to other and
+counter reactions. The ill consequences of those movements have not yet
+ceased on either side of the ocean.
+
+The Puritans represented the spirit of reaction against ecclesiastical
+and other abuses of their time, and the age before them. Let me do these
+men no injustice. I honor the heroic virtues of our fathers not less
+because I see their faults; see the cause of their faults, and the
+occasion which demanded such masculine and terrible virtues as the
+Puritans unquestionably possessed. I speak only of their doctrine of the
+Sunday. They were driven from one extreme to the other, for oppression
+makes wise men mad. They took mainly the notions of the Sabbath, which
+belong to the later portions of the Old Testament; they interpreted them
+with the most pharisaical rigor, and then applied them to the Sunday.
+Did they find no warrant for that rigor in the New Testament? they found
+enough in the Old; enough in their own character, and their consequent
+notions of God. They thus introduced a set of ideas respecting the
+Sunday, which the Christian church had never known before, and rigidly
+enforced an observance thereof utterly foreign both to the letter and
+spirit of the New Testament. They made Sunday a terrible day; a day of
+fear, and of fasting, and of trembling under the terrors of the Lord.
+They even called it by the Hebrew name--the Sabbath. The Catholics had
+said it was not safe to trust the Scriptures in the hands of the people,
+for an inspired Word needed an expositor also inspired. The abuse which
+the Puritans made of the Bible by their notions of the Sunday, seemed a
+fulfilment of the Catholic prophecy. But the Catholics did not see what
+is plain to all men now--that this very abuse of Sunday and Scripture
+was only the reaction against other abuses, ancient, venerated, and
+enforced by the Catholic church itself.
+
+Every sect has some institution which is the symbol of its religious
+consciousness, though not devised for that purpose. With the early
+Christians, it was their love-feasts and communion; with the Catholics,
+it is their gorgeous ritual with its ancient date and divine
+pretensions--a ritual so imposing to many; with the Quakers, who scorn
+all that is symbolic, the symbol equally appears in the plain dress and
+the plain speech, the broad brim, and _thee_ and _thou_. With the
+Puritans, this symbol was the Sabbath, not the Sunday. Their Sabbath was
+like themselves, austere, inflexible as their "divine decrees;" not
+human and of man, but Hebrew and of the Jews, stern, cold, and sad.
+
+The Puritans were possessed with the sentiment of fear before God; they
+had ideas analogous to that sentiment, and wrought out actions akin to
+those ideas. They brought to America their ideas and sentiments. Behold
+the effect of their actions. Let us walk reverently backward, with
+averted eyes to cover up their folly, their shame, and their sin, as
+they could not walk to conceal the folly of their progenitors. The
+Puritans are the fathers of New England and her descendant States; the
+fathers of the American idea; of most things in America that are good;
+surely, of most that is best. They seem made on purpose for their work
+of conquering a wilderness and founding a State. It is not with gentle
+hands, not with the dalliance of effeminate fingers, that such a task is
+done. The work required energy the most masculine, in heart, head, and
+hands. None but the Puritans could have done such a work. They could
+fast as no men; none could work like them; none preach; none pray; none
+could fight as they fought. They have left a most precious inheritance
+to men who have the same greatness of soul, but have fallen on happier
+times. Yet this inheritance is fatal to mere imitators, who will go on
+planting of vineyards, where the first planter fell intoxicated with the
+fruit of his own toil. This inheritance is dangerous to men who will be
+no wiser than their ancestors. Let us honor the good deeds of our
+fathers; and not eat, but reverently bury their honored bones.
+
+The Puritans represented the natural reaction of mankind against old
+institutions that were absurd or tyrannical. The Catholic church had
+multiplied feast days to an extreme, and taken unnecessary pains to
+promote fun and frolic. The Puritans would have none of the saints' days
+in their calendar; thought sport was wicked; cut down Maypoles, and
+punished a man who kept Christmas after the old fashion. The Catholic
+church had neglected her golden opportunities for giving the people
+moral and religious instruction; had quite too much neglected
+public prayer and preaching, but relied mainly on sensuous
+instruments--architecture, painting, music. In revenge, the Puritan had
+a meeting-house as plain as boards could make it; tore the pictures to
+pieces; thought an organ "was not of God," and had sermons long and
+numerous, and prayers full of earnestness, zeal, piety, and faith, in
+short, possessed of all desirable things except an end. Did the
+Catholics forbid the people the Bible, emphatically the book of the
+people--the Puritan would read no other book; called his children Hebrew
+names, and reenacted "the laws of God" in the Old Testament, "until we
+can make better." Did Henry and Elizabeth underrate the people and
+overvalue the monarchy, nature had her vengeance for that abuse, and the
+Puritan taught the world that kings, also, had a joint in their necks.
+
+The Puritans went to the extreme in many things: in their contempt for
+amusements, for what was graceful in man or beautiful in woman; in their
+scorn of art, of elegant literature, even of music; in their general
+condemnation of the past, from which they would preserve little
+excepting what was Hebrew, which, of course, they over-honored as much
+as they undervalued all the rest. In their notions respecting the Sunday
+they went to the same extreme. The general reason is obvious. They
+wished to avoid old abuses, and thought they were not out of the water
+till they were in the fire. But there was a special reason, also: the
+English are the most empirical of all nations. They love a fact more
+than an idea, and often cling to an historical precedent rather than
+obey a great truth which transcends all precedents. The national
+tendency to external things, perhaps, helped lead them to these peculiar
+notions of the Sabbath. The precedent they found in "The chosen people,"
+and established, as they thought, by God himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ideas of the Puritans respecting the Sunday are still cherished in
+the popular theology of New England. There is one party in our churches
+possessed of many excellences, which has always had the merit of
+speaking out fully what it thinks and feels. At this day that party
+still represents the Puritanic opinions about the Sunday, though a
+little modified. They teach that God created the world in six days, and
+rested the seventh; that he commanded mankind, also, to rest on that
+day; commanded a man to be stoned to death for picking up sticks of a
+Saturday; that by divine authority the first day of the week was
+substituted for the seventh, and therefore that it is the religious duty
+of all men to rest from work on that day, for the Hebrew law of the
+Sabbath is binding on Christians for ever. It is maintained that
+abstinence from work on Sunday is as much a religious duty as abstinence
+from theft or hatred; that the day must be exclusively devoted to
+religion, in the technical sense of that word, to public or private
+worship, to religious reading, thought, or conversation. To attend
+church on that day is thought to be a good in itself, though it should
+lead to no further good, and therefore a duty as imperative as the duty
+of loving man and God. The preacher may not edify, still the duty of
+attending to his ministration of the word remains the same; for the
+attendance is a good in itself. It is taught that work, that amusement,
+common conversation, the reading of a book not technically religious, is
+a sin, just as clearly a sin as theft or hatred, though perhaps not so
+great. Writing a letter, even, is denounced as a sin, though the letter
+be written for the purpose of arresting the progress of a war, and
+securing life and freedom to millions of men.
+
+Now, it is very plain that such ideas are not consistent with the truth.
+In the language of the church, they are a heresy. As we learn the facts
+of the case we must give up such ideas concerning the Sunday. It is like
+any other day. Christianity knows no classes of days, as holy or
+profane; all days are the Lord's days, all time holy time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But then comes the other question, What is the best use to be made of
+the day; the use most conducive to the highest interests of mankind?
+Will it be most profitable to "give up the Sunday," to use it as the
+Catholics do, as the Puritans did, or to adopt some other method? To
+answer these questions fairly, let us look and see the effects of the
+present notions about the Sunday, and the stricter mode of observing it
+here in New England. The experience of two hundred years is worth
+looking at. Let us look at the good effects first.
+
+The good and evil of any age are commonly bound so closely together,
+that in plucking up the tares, there is danger lest the wheat also be
+uprooted, at least trodden down. In America, especially in New England,
+every thing is intense, with of course a tendency to extravagance, to
+fanaticism. Look at some of the most obvious signs of that intensity. No
+conservatism in the world is so bigoted as American conservatism; no
+democracy so intense. Nowhere else can you find such thorough-going
+defenders of the existing state of things, social, ecclesiastical,
+civil; such defenders of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery,
+and war; nowhere such radical enemies to the existing state of things;
+such foes of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery, and war. No
+"Revivals of religion" are like the American; none of old were like
+these. See how the American soldiers fight; how the American men will
+work. Puritanism was intense enough in England; in the New World it was
+yet more so. Our fathers were intense Calvinists; more Calvinistic than
+Calvin--they became Hopkinsian. They hated the Pope; kings and bishops
+were their aversion. They feared God. Did they love him--love him as
+much? They had an intense religious activity, but they had another
+intensity. It is better that we should say it, rather than men who do
+not honor them. That intensity of action, when turned towards material
+things, or, as they called them, "carnal things," needed some powerful
+check. It was found in their bigotry and superstition. In such an age as
+theirs, when the Reformation broke down all the ordinary restraints of
+society, and rent asunder the golden ties which bound man to the past;
+when the Anglican church ended in fire, and the English monarchy in
+blood; when men full of piety thanked God for the fire and the
+bloodshed, and felt the wrongs of a thousand years driving them almost
+to madness--what was there to keep such men within bounds, and restrain
+them from the wildest license and unbridled anarchy? Nothing but
+superstition; nothing short of fear of hell. They broke down the
+monarchy; they trod the church under their feet. She who had once been
+counted as the queen and mother of society, was now to be regarded only
+as the Apocalyptical woman in scarlet, the mother of abominations, bride
+of the devil, and queen of hell. The Old Testament wrought on the minds
+of these men like a charm, to stimulate and to soothe. "One day," said
+they, "is made holy by God; in it shall no work be done by man or beast,
+or thing inanimate. On that day all must attend church as an act of
+religion." Here, then, was a bar extending across the stream of
+worldliness, filling one seventh part of its channel, wide and deep, and
+wonderfully interrupting its whelming tide. I admire the divine skill
+which compounds the gases in the air; which balances centripetal and
+centrifugal forces into harmonious proportions,--those fair ellipses in
+the unseen air; but still more marvellous is that same skill, diviner
+now, which compounds the folly and the wisdom of mankind; balances
+centripetal and centrifugal forces here, stilling the noise of kings and
+the tumult of the people, making their wrath to serve him, and the
+remnant thereof restraining forever.
+
+On Sunday, master and man, the slave stolen from the wilderness, the
+servant--a Christian man bought from some Christian conqueror,--must
+cease from their work. Did the covetous, the cruel, the strong, oppress
+the weak for six days, the Sabbath said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but
+no further." The servant was free from his master, and the weary was at
+rest. The plough stood still in the furrow; the sheaf lay neglected in
+the field; the horse and the ox enjoyed their master's Sabbath of rest,
+all heedless of the divine decrees, of election or reprobation, yet not
+the less watched over by that dear Providence which numbered the hairs
+of the head, and overruled the falling of a sparrow for the sparrow's
+good. All must attend church, master and man, rich and poor, oppressor
+and oppressed. Good things and great things got read out of the Bible,
+it was the book of the people, the New Testament, written much of it in
+the interest of all mankind, with special emphasis laid on the rights of
+the weak and the duties of the strong. Good things got said in sermon
+and in prayer. The speakers must think, the hearers think, as well as
+tremble. Begin to think in a circle narrow as a lady's ring, or the
+Assembly's Catechism, you will think out; for thought, like all
+movement, tends to the right line. Calvinism has always bred thinkers,
+and when barbarism was the first danger was perhaps the only thing which
+could do it. Calvinism, too, has always shown itself in favor of popular
+liberty to a certain degree, and though it stops far short of the mark,
+yet goes far beyond the Catholic or Episcopalian.
+
+Sunday, thus enforced by superstition, has yet been the education-day of
+New England; the national school-time for the culture of man's highest
+powers; therein have the clergy been our educators, and done a vast
+service which mankind will not soon forget. It was good seed they sowed
+on this soil of the New World; the harvest is proof of that. They
+builded wiser than they knew. Their unconscious hands constructed the
+thought of God. Even their superstition and bigotry did much to preserve
+church and clergy to us; much also to educate and develop the highest
+powers of man. But for that superstition we might have seen the same
+anarchy, the same unbridled license in the seventeenth century, which we
+saw in the eighteenth, as a consequence of a similar revolution, a
+similar reaction; only it would have been carried out with the intensity
+of that most masculine and earnest race of men. How much further English
+atrocities would have gone than the French did go; how long it would
+have taken mankind, by their proper motion, to reascend from a fall so
+adverse and so low, I cannot tell. I see what saved them from the
+plunge.
+
+True, the Sunday was not what it should be, more than the week;
+preaching was not what it should be, more than practice. But without
+that Sunday, and without that preaching, New England would have been a
+quite different land; America another nation altogether; the world by no
+means so far advanced as now. New England with her descendants has
+always been the superior portion of America. I flatter no man's
+prejudice, but speak a plain truth. She is superior in intelligence, in
+morality--that is too plain for proof. The prime cause of that
+superiority must be sought in the character of the fathers of New
+England; but a secondary and most powerful cause is to be found also in
+those two institutions--Sunday and preaching. Why is it that all great
+movements, from the American Revolution down to anti-slavery, have begun
+here? Why is it that education societies, missionary societies, Bible
+societies, and all the movements for the advance of mankind, begin here?
+Why, it is no more an accident than the rising of the tide. Find much of
+the cause in the superior character, and therefore in the superior aims
+of the forefathers, much also will be found due to this--Once in the
+week they paused from all work; they thought of their God, who had
+delivered them from the iron house and yoke of bondage; they listened to
+the words of able men, exhorting them to justice, piety, and a heavenly
+walk with God; they trembled at fear of hell; they rejoiced at hope of
+heaven. The church--no, the "meeting-house"--was the common property of
+all; the minister the common friend. The slave looked up to him; the
+chief magistrate dared not look down on him. For more than a hundred
+years the ablest men of New England went into the pulpit. No talent was
+thought too great, no learning too rich and profound, no genius too holy
+and divine, for the work of teaching men their highest duty, and
+helping to their highest bliss. He was the minister to all. There was
+not then a church for the rich, and a chapel for the poor; the rich and
+the poor met together, for one God was the maker of them all--their
+Father too; they had one Gospel, one Redeemer,--their Brother not less
+than their God; they journeyed toward the same heaven, which had but one
+entrance for great and little; they prayed all the same prayer. The
+effect of this socialism of religion is seldom noticed; so we walk on
+moist earth, not thinking that we tread on the thunder-cloud and the
+lightning. But it is not in human nature for men of intense religious
+activity to meet in the same church, sing the same psalm, pray the same
+prayer, partake the same elements of communion, and not be touched with
+compassion--each for all, and all for each. The same causes which built
+up religion in New England, built up democracy along with it. Is it not
+easy to see the cause which made the rich men of New England the most
+benevolent of rich men; gave them their character for generosity and
+public spirit--yes, for eminent humanity? The acorn is not more
+obviously the parent of the oak than those two institutions of New
+England the parent of such masculine virtues as distinguish her sons.
+
+Regarded merely as a day of rest from labor, the Sunday has been of
+great value to us. Considering the intense character of the nation, our
+tendency to material things, and our restless love of work, it seems as
+if a Moses of the nineteenth century, legislating for us, would enact
+two rest-days in the week, rather than one. It is a good thing that a
+man once a week pauses from his work, arrays himself in clean garments,
+and is at rest.
+
+Regarded in its other aspects, Sunday has aided the intellectual culture
+of the people to a degree not often appreciated. To many a man, yes, to
+most men, it is their only reading day, and they will read "secular"
+books, spite of the clerical admonition. Many a poor boy in New England,
+who has toiled all the week, and would gladly have studied all the
+night, did not obstinate Nature forbid, has studied stealthily all
+Sunday, not Jeremiah and the prophets, but Homer and the mathematics,
+and risen at length to eminence amongst cultivated men;--he has to thank
+the Sunday for the beginnings of that manly growth.
+
+The moral and religious effect of the day is yet more important. One
+seventh part of the time was to be devoted to moral and religious
+culture. The clergy watched diligently over Sunday, as their own day.
+Work was then the accident; religion was the business. Every thing with
+us becomes earnest; Sunday as earnest as the week. It must not be spent
+idly. Perhaps no body of clergymen, for two hundred years, on the whole,
+were ever so wakeful and active as the American. They also are earnest
+and full of intensity, especially in the more serious sects. I think I
+am not very superstitious; not often inclined to lean on my father's
+staff rather than walk on my own feet; not over-much accustomed to take
+things on trust because they have been trusted to all along: but I must
+confess that I see a vast amount of good achieved by the aid of these
+two institutions, the Sunday and preaching, which could not have been
+done without them. I know I have my prejudices; I love the Sunday; a
+professional bias may warp me aside, for I am a preacher--the pulpit is
+my joy and my throne. Judge you how far my profession and my prejudice
+have led me astray in estimating the value of the Sunday, its preaching,
+and the good they have achieved for us in New England. I know what
+superstition, what bigotry, has been connected with both; I know it has
+kept grim and terrible guard about these institutions. I look upon that
+superstition and bigotry, as on the old New England guns which were
+fought with in the Indian wars, the French wars, and the
+Revolution;--things that did service when men knew not how to defend
+what they valued most with better tools and more Christian. I look on
+both with the same melancholy veneration, but honor them the more that
+now they are old, battered, unfit for use and covered with rust; I would
+respectfully hang them up, superstition and the musket, side by side;
+honorable, but harmless, with their muzzles down, and pray God it might
+never be my lot to handle such ungodly weapons, though in a cause never
+so humane and holy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us look a little at the ill effects of these notions of the Sunday
+and the observance which they led to. It is thought an act of religion
+to attend church and give a mere bodily presence there. Hence the
+minister often relies on this circumstance to bring his audience
+together; preaches sermons on the duty of going to church, while
+ingenuous boys blush for his weakness, and ask, "Were it not better to
+rely on your goodness, your piety, your wisdom; on your superior ability
+to teach men, even on your eloquence, rather than tell them it is an act
+of religion to come and hear you, when both they and you are painfully
+conscious that they are thereby made no wiser, no better, nor more
+Christian?" This notion is a dangerous one for a clergyman. It flatters
+his pride and encourages his sloth. It blinds him to his own defects,
+and leads him to attribute his empty benches to the perverseness of
+human nature and the carnal heart, which a few snow-flakes can frighten
+from his church, while a storm will not keep them from a lecture on
+science or literature. No doubt it is a man's duty to seek all
+opportunities of becoming wiser and better. So far as church-going helps
+that work, so far it is a duty. But to count it in itself, irrespective
+of its consequences, an act of religion, is to commit a dangerous
+error, which has proved fatal to many a man's growth in goodness and
+piety. Let us look to the end, not merely at the means.
+
+This notion has also a bad effect on the hearers. It is thought an act
+of religion to attend church, whether you are edified or not by sermon,
+by psalm, or prayer; an act of religion, though you could more
+profitably spend the time in your own closet at home, or with your own
+thoughts in the fields. Of course, then, he who attends once a day is
+thought a Christian to a certain degree; if twice, more so; if thrice,
+why that denotes an additional amount of growth in grace. In this way
+the day is often spent in a continual round of meetings. Sermon follows
+sermon; prayer treads upon the footsteps of prayer; psalm effaces psalm,
+till morning, afternoon, evening, all are gone. The Sunday is ended and
+over; the man is tired--but has he been profited and made better
+thereby? The sermons and the prayers have cancelled one another, been
+heard and forgot. They were too numerous to remember or produce their
+effect. So on a summer's lake, as the winds loiter and then pass by,
+ripple follows ripple, and wave succeeds to wave, yet the next day the
+wind has ceased and the unstable water bears no trace left there by all
+the blowings of the former day, but bares its incontinent bosom to the
+frailest and most fleeting clouds.
+
+Another ill effect follows from regarding attendance at church as an act
+of religion in itself:--It is forgotten that a man cannot teach what he
+does not know. If you have more manhood than I, more religion; if you
+are the more humane and the more divine, it is idle for me to try and
+teach you divinity and humanity; idle in you to make believe you are
+taught. The less must learn of the greater, not the greater directly of
+the less. It is too often forgotten by the preacher that his hearers may
+be capable of teaching him; that he cannot fill them out of an
+emptiness, but a fulness. Hence, it comes to pass that no one, how
+advanced soever, is allowed to graduate, so to say, from the church.
+Perhaps it may do a great man, mature in Christianity, good to sit down
+with his fellows and hear a little man talk who knows nothing of
+religion; it may increase his sympathy with mankind. It can hardly be an
+act of religion to such a man so advanced in his goodness and piety;
+perhaps not the best use he could make of the hour.
+
+The current opinion hinders social tendencies. A man must not meet with
+his friend and neighbor, or if he does, he must talk with bated breath,
+with ghostly countenance, and of a ghostly theme. From this abuse of the
+Sunday comes much of the cold and unsocial character which strangers
+charge us with. As things now go, there are many who have no opportunity
+for social intercourse except the hours of the Sunday. Then it is
+forbidden them. So they suffer and lose much of the charm of life;
+become ungenial, unsocial, stiff, and hard, and cold.
+
+This notion hinders men, also, from intellectual culture. They must read
+no book but one professedly religious. Such works are commonly poor and
+dull; written mainly by men of little ability, of little breadth of
+view; not written in the interest of mankind, but only of a sect--the
+Calvinists or Unitarians. A good man groans when he looks over the
+immense piles of sectarian books written with good motives, and read
+with the most devout of intentions, but which produce their best effect
+when they lead only to sleep. Yet it is commonly taught that it is
+religion to spend a part of Sunday in reading such works, in listening,
+or in trying to listen, or in affecting to try and listen, to the most
+watery sermons, while it is wicked to read some "secular" book,
+philosophy, history, poem, or tale, which expands the mind and warms the
+heart. Our poor but wisdom-seeking boy must read his Homer only by
+stealth. There are many men who have no time for intellectual pursuits,
+none for reading, except on Sunday. It is cruel to tell them they shall
+read none but sectarian books or listen only to sectarian words.
+
+But there are other evils yet. These notions and the corresponding
+practice tend to make religion external, consisting in obedience to
+form, in compliance with custom; while religion is and can be only
+piety and goodness, love to God and love to man. To keep the Sunday
+idle, to attend church, is not being religious. It is easy to do that;
+easy to stop there, and then to look at real, manly saints, who live in
+the odor of sanctity, whose sentiment is a prayer, their deeds religion,
+and their whole life a perpetual communion with God, and say, "Infidel!
+Unbeliever."
+
+Then, as one day is devoted to religion, it is thought that is enough;
+that religion has no more business in the world than the world in
+religion. So division is made of the territory of mortal life, in which
+partition worldliness has six days, while poor religion has only the
+Sunday, and content with her own limits, feels no salient wish to absorb
+or annex the week! It is painful to see this abuse of an institution so
+noble. No commonness of its occurrence renders it less painful. It is
+painful to be told that men of the most scrupulous sects on Sunday, are
+in the week the least scrupulous of men.
+
+But even in religious matters it is thought all things which pertain
+directly to the religious welfare of men are not proper to be discussed
+on Sunday. One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery,
+against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the
+gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on
+eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of
+mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the
+time, the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith
+to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education,
+temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not
+Christian, to do that of a Sunday! Yet wonderful to say, it is not
+thought very wicked to hold a political caucus on Sunday for the merest
+party purposes; not wicked at all to work all day at the navy-yards in
+fitting out vessels, if they are only vessels of war; not at all wicked
+to toil all Sunday, if it is only in aiming to kill men in regular
+battle. Theological newspapers can expend their cheap censure on a
+member of Congress for writing a letter on Sunday, yet have no word of
+fault to find with the order which sets hundreds to work on Sunday in
+preparing armaments of war; not a word against the war which sets men to
+butcher their Christian brothers on the day which Christians celebrate
+as the anniversary of Christ's triumph over death! These things show
+that we have not yet arrived at the most profitable and Christian mode
+of using the Sunday; and when I consider these abuses I wonder not that
+the cry of "Infidel" is met by the unchristian taunt, yet more deserved
+and biting, "Thou hypocrite!" I wonder not that some men say, "Let us
+away with the Sunday altogether; and if we have no place for rest, we
+will have none for hypocrisy."
+
+The efforts honestly made by good and honest men, to Judaize the day
+still more; to revive the sterner features of ancient worship; to put a
+yoke on us which neither we nor our fathers could bear; to transform the
+Christian Sunday into the Jewish Sabbath, must lead to a reaction. Abuse
+on one side will be met by abuse on the other; despotic asceticism by
+license; Judaism by heathenism. Superstition is the mother of denial.
+Men will scorn the Sunday; abuse its timely rest. Its hours that may be
+devoted to man's highest interests will be prostituted to low aims, and
+worldliness make an unbroken sweep from one end of the month to the
+other; and then it will take years of toil before mankind can get back
+and secure the blessings now placed within an easy reach. I put it to
+you, men whose heads time has crowned with white, or sprinkled with a
+sober gray, if you would deem it salutary to enforce on your
+grandchildren the Sabbath austerities which your parents imposed on you?
+In your youth was the Sunday a welcome day; a genial day; or only
+wearisome and sour? Was religion, dressed in her Sabbath dress, a
+welcome guest; was she lovely and to be desired? Your faces answer. Let
+us profit by your experience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How can we make the Sunday yet more valuable? If we abandon the
+superstitious notions respecting its origin and original design, the
+evils that have hitherto hindered its use will soon perish of
+themselves. They all grow out of that root. If men are not driven into
+a reaction by pretensions for the Sunday which facts will not warrant;
+if unreasonable austerities are not forced upon them in the name of the
+law, and the name of God; there is no danger in our day that men will
+abandon an institution which already has done so much service to
+mankind. Let Sunday and preaching stand on their own merits, and they
+will encounter no more opposition than the common school and the
+work-days of the week. Then men will be ready enough to appropriate the
+Sunday to the highest objects they know and can appreciate. Tell men the
+Sunday is made for man, and they will use it for its highest use. Tell
+them man is made for it, and they will war on it as a tyrant. I should
+be sorry to see the Sunday devoted to common work; sorry to hear the
+clatter of a mill, or the rattle of the wheels of business on that day.
+I look with pain on men engaged needlessly in work on that day; not with
+the pain of wounded superstition, but a deeper regret. I would not water
+my garden with perfumes when common water was at hand. We shall always
+have work enough in America; hand-work, and head-work, for common
+purposes. There is danger that we shall not have enough of rest, of
+intellectual cultivation, of refinement, of social intercourse; that our
+time shall be too much devoted to the lower interests of life, to the
+means of living and not the end.
+
+I would not consider it an act of religion to attend church: only a
+good thing to go there when the way of improvement leads through it;
+when you are made wiser and better by being there. I am pained to see a
+man spend the whole of a Sunday in going to church,--and forgetting
+himself in getting acquainted with the words of the preachers. I think
+most intelligent hearers, and most intelligent and Christian preachers,
+will confess that two sermons are better than three, and one is better
+than two. One need only look at the afternoon face of a congregation in
+the city, to be satisfied of this. If one half the day were devoted to
+public worship, the other half might be free for private studies of men
+at home, for private devotion, for social relaxation, for intercourse
+with one's own family and friends. Then Sunday afternoon and evening
+would afford an excellent opportunity for meetings for the promotion of
+the great humane movements of the day, which some would think not
+evangelical enough to be treated of in the morning. Would it be
+inconsistent with the great purposes of the day, inconsistent with
+Christianity, to have lectures on science, literature, and similar
+subjects delivered then? I do not believe the Catholic custom of
+spending the Sunday afternoon in England, before the Reformation, was a
+good one. It diverted men from the higher end to the lower. I cannot
+think that here and now we need amusement so much as society,
+instruction, refinement, and devotion. Yet it seems to me unwise to
+restrain the innocent sports of children of a Sunday, to the same degree
+that our fathers did; to make Sunday to them a day of gloom and sadness.
+Thoughtful parents are now much troubled in this matter; they cannot
+enforce the old discipline, so disastrous to themselves; they fear to
+trust their own sense of what is right;--so, perhaps, get the ill of
+both schemes, and the good of neither. There are in Boston about thirty
+thousand Catholics, twenty-five thousand of them, probably, too ignorant
+to read with pleasure or profit any book. At home, amusement formed a
+part of their Sunday service; it was a part of their religion to make a
+festive use of Sunday afternoon. What shall they do? Is it Christian in
+us by statute to interdict them from their recreation? With the
+exception of children and these most ignorant persons, it does not
+appear that there is any class amongst us who need any part of the
+Sunday for sport.
+
+I am not one of those who wish "to give up the Sunday;" indeed there are
+few such men amongst us; I would make it yet more useful and profitable.
+I would remove from it the superstition and the bigotry which have so
+long been connected with it; I would use it freely, as a Christian not
+enslaved by the letter of Judaism, but made free by an obedience to the
+law of the spirit of life. I would use the Sunday for religion in the
+wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for
+humanity, for science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it
+by impudent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the
+other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can
+make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ
+it for all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into
+libertinism.
+
+The Sunday is made for man, as are all other days; not man for the
+Sunday. Let us use it, then, not consuming its hours in a Jewish
+observance; not devote it to the lower necessities of life, but the
+higher; not squander it in idleness, sloth, frivolity, or sleep; let us
+use it for the body's rest, for the mind's culture, for head and heart
+and soul.
+
+Men and women, you have received the Sunday from your fathers, as a day
+to be devoted to the highest interests of man. It has done great service
+for them and for you. But it has come down accompanied with superstition
+which robs it of half its value. It is easy for you to make the day far
+more profitable to yourselves than it ever was to your fathers; easy to
+divest it of all bigotry, to free it from all oldness of the letter;
+easy to leave it for your children an institution which shall bless them
+for ages yet to come: or it is easy to bind on their necks unnatural
+restraints; to impose on their conscience and understanding absurdities
+which at last they must repel with scorn and contempt. It is in your
+hands to make the Sunday Jewish or Christian.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] These celebrated commandments have come down to us in three distinct
+forms; namely, in Exodus xx., in Exodus xxxiv., and in Deut. v. The
+differences between these several codes are quite remarkable and
+significant.
+
+[4] 2 Chron. 36:21.
+
+[5] John 5:1-18, and 7:19-24.
+
+[6] Matthew 23:1-3.
+
+[7] Rev. 21:14.
+
+[8] Coloss. 2:16.
+
+[9] Galat. 1:5.
+
+[10] Justinian, _Cod._ Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 3.
+
+[11] _Cod._, Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 2. See also, l. 3 and 11.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.--PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY,
+SEPTEMBER 20, 1846.
+
+WISDOM OF SOLOMON III. 1, 4.
+
+    The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God: their
+    hope is full of immortality.
+
+
+It is the belief of mankind that we shall all live forever. This is not
+a doctrine of Christianity alone. It belongs to the human race. You may
+find nations so rude that they live houseless, in caverns of the earth;
+nations that have no letters, not knowing the use of bows and arrows,
+fire or even clothes, but no nation without a belief in immortal life.
+The form of that belief is often grotesque and absurd; the mode of proof
+ridiculous; the expectations of what the future life is to be are often
+childish and silly. But notwithstanding all that, the fact still
+remains, the belief that the soul of a man never dies.
+
+How did mankind come by this opinion? "By a miraculous revelation," says
+one. But according to the common theory of miraculous revelations, the
+race could not have obtained it in this way, for according to that
+theory the heathen had no such revelations; yet we find this doctrine
+the settled belief of the whole heathen world. The Greeks and Romans
+believed it long before Christ; the Chaldees, with no pretence to
+miraculous inspiration, taught the idea of immortality; while the Jews,
+spite of their alleged revelations, rested only in the dim sentiment
+thereof.
+
+It was not arrived at by reasoning. It requires a good deal of hard
+thinking to reason out and prove this matter. Yet you find this belief
+among nations not capable as yet of that art of thinking and to that
+degree, nations who never tried to prove it, and yet believe it as
+confidently as we. The human race did not sit down and think it out;
+never waited till they could prove it by logic and metaphysics; did not
+delay their belief till a miraculous revelation came to confirm it. It
+came to mankind by intuition; by instinctive belief, the belief which
+comes unavoidably from the nature of man. In this same way came the
+belief in God; the love of man; the sentiment of justice. Men could see,
+and knew they could see, before they proved it; before they had theories
+of vision; without waiting for a miraculous revelation to come and tell
+them they had eyes, and might see if they would look. Some faculties of
+the body act spontaneously at first--so others of the spirit.
+
+Immortality is a fact of man's nature, so it is a part of the universe,
+just as the sun is a fact in the heavens and a part of the universe.
+Both are writings from God's hand; each therefore a revelation from Him,
+and of Him; only not miraculous, but natural, regular, normal. Yet each
+is just as much a revelation from Him as if the great Soul of all had
+spoken in English speech to one of us and said, "There is a sun there in
+the heavens, and thou shalt live for ever." Yes, the fact is more
+certain than such speech would make it, for this fact speaks always--a
+perpetual revelation, and no words can make it more certain.
+
+As a man attains consciousness of himself, he attains consciousness of
+his immortality. At first he asks proof no more of his eternal existence
+than of his present life; instinctively he believes both. Nay, he does
+not separate the two; this life is one link in that golden and electric
+chain of immortality; the next life another and more bright, but in the
+same chain. Immortality is what philosophers call an ontological fact;
+it belongs essentially to the being of man, just as the eye is a
+physiological fact and belongs to the body of man. To my mind this is
+the great proof of immortality: the fact that it is written in human
+nature; written there so plain that the rudest nations have not failed
+to find it, to know it; written just as much as form is written on the
+circle, and extension on matter in general. It comes to our
+consciousness as naturally as the notions of time and space. We feel it
+as a desire; we feel it as a fact. What is thus in man is writ there of
+God who writes no lies. To suppose that this universal desire has no
+corresponding gratification, is to represent Him, not as the father of
+all but as only a deceiver. I feel the longing after immortality, a
+desire essential to my nature, deep as the foundation of my being; I
+find the same desire in all men. I feel conscious of immortality; that I
+am not to die; no, never to die, though often to change. I cannot
+believe this desire and consciousness are felt only to mislead, to
+beguile, to deceive me. I know God is my father, and the father of the
+nations. Can the Almighty deceive his children? For my own part, I can
+conceive of nothing which shall make me more certain of my immortality.
+I ask no argument from learned lips. No miracle could make me more sure;
+no, not if the sheeted dead burst cerement and shroud, and rising forth
+from their honored tombs stood here before me, the disenchanted dust
+once more enchanted with that fiery life; no, not if the souls of all my
+sires since time began came thronging round, and with miraculous speech
+told me they lived and I should also live. I could only say, "I knew all
+this before, why waste your heavenly speech!" I have now indubitable
+certainty of eternal life. Death removing me to the next state, can give
+me infallible certainty.
+
+But there are men who doubt of immortality. They say they are conscious
+of the want, not of the fact. They need a proof. The exception here
+proves the rule. You do not doubt your personal and conscious existence
+now; you ask no proof of that; you would laugh at me should I try to
+convince you that you are alive and self-conscious. Yet one of the
+leaders of modern philosophy wanted a proof of his as a basis for his
+science, and said,--"I am because I think." But his thought required
+proof as much as his being; yes, logically more, for being is the ground
+of thinking, not thinking of being. At this day there are sound men who
+deny the existence of this outward world, declaring it only a
+dreamworld. This ground, they say, and yonder sun have being but in
+fancy, like the sun and ground you perchance dreamed of last night whose
+being was only a being-dreamed. These are exceptional men, and help
+prove the common rule, that man trusts his senses and believes an
+outward world. Yet such are more common amongst philosophers than men
+who doubt of their immortal life. You cannot easily reason those men out
+of their philosophy and into their senses, nor by your own philosophy
+perhaps convince them that there is an outward world.
+
+I think few of you came to your belief in everlasting life through
+reasoning. Your belief grew out of your general state of mind and heart.
+You could not help it. Perhaps few of you ever sat down and weighed the
+arguments for and against it, and so made up your mind. Perhaps those
+who have the firmest consciousness of the fact are least familiar with
+the arguments which confirm that consciousness. If a man disbelieves it,
+if he denies it, his opinion is not often to be changed immediately or
+directly by argument. His special conviction has grown out of his
+general state of mind and heart, and is only to be removed by a change
+in his whole philosophy. I am not honoring men for their belief, nor
+blaming men who doubt or deny. I do not believe any one ever willingly
+doubted this; ever purposely reasoned himself into the denial thereof.
+Men doubt because they cannot help it; not because they will, but must.
+
+There are a great many things true which no man as yet can prove true;
+some things so true that nothing can make them plainer, or more plainly
+true. I think it is so with this doctrine, and therefore, for myself,
+ask no argument. With my views of man, of God, of the relation between
+the two, I want no proof, satisfied with my own consciousness of
+immortality. Yet there are arguments which are fair, logical, just,
+which satisfy the mind, and may, perhaps, help persuade some men who
+doubt, if such men there are amongst you. I think that immortality is a
+fact of consciousness; a fact given in the constitution of man:
+therefore a matter of sentiment. But it requires thought to pick it out
+from amongst the other facts of consciousness. Though at first merely a
+feeling, a matter of sentiment, on examination it becomes an idea--a
+matter of thought. It will bear being looked at in the sharpest and
+dryest light of logic. Truth never flinches before reason. It is so with
+our consciousness of God; that is an ontological fact, a fact given in
+the nature of man. At first it is a feeling, a matter of sentiment. By
+thought we abstract this fact from other facts; we find an idea of God.
+That is a matter of philosophy, and the analyzing mind legitimates the
+idea and at length demonstrates the existence of God, which we first
+learned without analysis, and by intuition. A great deal has been
+written to prove the existence of God, and that by the ablest men; yet I
+cannot believe that any one was ever reasoned directly into a belief in
+God, by all those able men, nor directly out of it by all the skeptics
+and scoffers. Indirectly such works affect men, change their philosophy
+and modes of thought, and so help them to one or the other conclusion.
+
+The idea of immortality, like the idea of God, in a certain sense, is
+born in us, and fast as we come to consciousness of ourselves we come to
+consciousness of God, and of ourselves as immortal. The higher we
+advance in wisdom, goodness, piety, the larger place do God and
+immortality hold in our experience and inward life. I think that is the
+regular and natural process of a man's development. Doubt of either
+seems to me an exception, an irregularity. Causes that remove the doubt
+must be general more than special.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, in order to have a basis of thought and reasoning, as well as
+of intuition and reason, let me mention some of the arguments for
+everlasting life.
+
+I. The first is drawn from the general belief of mankind. The greatest
+philosophers and the most profound and persuasive religious teachers of
+the whole world have taught this. That is an important fact, for these
+men represent the consciousness of mankind in the highest development it
+has yet reached, and in such points are the truest representatives of
+man. What is more, the human race believes it, not merely as a thing
+given by miraculous revelation, not as a matter proven by science, not
+as a thing of tradition resting on some man's authority, but believes it
+instinctively, not knowing and not asking why, or how; believes it as a
+fact of consciousness. Now in a matter of this sort the opinion of the
+human race is worth considering. I do not value very much the opinion of
+a priesthood in Rome or Judea, or elsewhere on this point, or any other,
+for they may have designs adverse to the truth. But the general
+sentiment of the human race in a matter like this is of the greatest
+importance. This general sentiment of mankind is a quite different thing
+from public opinion, which favors freedom in one country and slavery in
+another; this sentiment of mankind relates to what is a matter of
+feeling with most men. It is only a few thinkers that have made it a
+matter of thought. The opinion of mankind, so far as we know, has not
+changed on this point for four thousand years. Since the dawn of
+history, man's belief in immortality has continually been developing and
+getting deeper fixed.
+
+Still more, this belief is very dear to mankind. Let me prove that. If
+it were true that one human soul was immortal and yet was to be
+eternally damned, getting only more clotted with crime and deeper bit by
+agony as the ages went slowly by, then immortality were a curse, not to
+that man only, but to all mankind--for no amount of happiness, merited
+or undeserved, could ever atone or make up for the horrid wrong done to
+that one most miserable man. Who of you is there that could relish
+Heaven, or even bear it for a moment, knowing that a brother was doomed
+to smart with ever greatening agony, while year on year, and age on age,
+the endless chain of eternity continued to coil round the flying wheels
+of hell? I say the thought of one such man would fill even Heaven with
+misery, and the best man of men would scorn the joys of everlasting
+bliss, would spurn at Heaven and say, "Give me my brother's place; for
+me there is no Heaven while he is there!" Now it has been popularly
+taught, that not one man alone, but the vast majority of all mankind,
+are thus to be condemned; immortal only to be everlastingly wretched.
+That is the popular doctrine now in this land. It has been so taught in
+the Christian churches these sixteen centuries and more--taught in the
+name of Christ! Such an immortality would be a curse to men, to every
+man; as much so to the "saved" as to the "lost;" for who would willingly
+stay in Heaven, and on such terms? Surely not he who wept with weeping
+men! Yet in spite of this vile doctrine drawn over the world to come,
+mankind religiously believes that each shall live for ever. This shows
+how strong is the instinct which can lift up such a foul and hateful
+doctrine and still live on. Tell me not that scoffers and critics shall
+take away man's faith in endless life: it has stood a harder test than
+can ever come again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+II. The next argument is drawn from the nature of man.
+
+1. All men desire to be immortal. This desire is instinctive, natural,
+universal. In God's world such a desire implies the satisfaction thereof
+equally natural and universal. It cannot be that God has given man this
+universal desire of immortality, this belief in it, and yet made it all
+a mockery. Man loves truth; tells it; rests only in it; how much more
+God who is the trueness of truth. Bodily senses imply their objects--the
+eye light, the ear sound; the touch, the taste, the smell, things
+relative thereto. Spiritual senses likewise foretell their object,--are
+silent prophecies of endless life. The love of justice, beauty, truth,
+of man and God, points to realities unseen as yet. We are ever hungering
+after noblest things, and what we feed on makes us hunger more. The
+senses are satisfied, but the soul never.
+
+2. Then, too, while this composite body unavoidably decays, this simple
+soul which is my life decays not. Reason, the affections, all the powers
+that make the man, decay not. True, the organs by which they act become
+impaired. But there is no cause for thinking that love, conscience,
+reason, will, ever become weaker in man; but cause for thinking that all
+these continually become more strong. Was the mind of Newton gone when
+his frame, long over-tasked, refused its wonted work?
+
+3. Here on earth, every thing in its place and time matures. The acorn
+and the chestnut, things natural to this climate, ripen every year. A
+longer season would make them no better nor bigger. It is so with our
+body--that, under proper conditions, becomes mature. It is so with all
+the things of earth. But man is not fully grown as the acorn and the
+chestnut; never gets mature. Take the best man and the greatest--all his
+faculties are not developed, fully grown and matured. He is not complete
+in the qualities of a man; nay, often half his qualities lie all unused.
+Shall we conclude these are never to obtain development and do their
+work? The analogy of nature tells us that man, the new-born plant, is
+but removed by death to another soil, where he shall grow complete and
+become mature.
+
+4. Then, too, each other thing under its proper conditions not only
+ripens but is perfect also after its kind. Each clover-seed is perfect
+as a star. Every lion, as a general rule, is a common representation of
+all lionhood; the ideal of his race made real in him, a thousand years
+of life would not make him more. But where is the Adamitic man; the type
+and representative of his race, who makes actual its idea? Even Jesus
+bids you not call him good; no man has all the manhood of mankind. Yes,
+there are rudiments of greatness in us all, but abortive, incomplete,
+and stopped in embryo. Now all these elements of manhood point as
+directly to another state as the unfinished walls of yonder rising
+church intimate that the work is not complete, that the artist here
+intends a roof, a window there, here a tower, and over all a
+heaven-piercing spire. All men are abortions, our failure pointing to
+the real success. Nay, we are all waiting to be born, our whole nature
+looking to another world, and dimly presaging what that world shall be.
+Death, however we misname him, seasonable or out of time, is the
+birth-angel, that alone.
+
+5. Besides, the presence of injustice, of wrong, points the same way.
+The fact that one man goes out of this life in childhood, in manhood, at
+any time before the natural measure of his days is full; the fact that
+any one is by circumstances made wretched; that he is hindered from his
+proper growth and has not here his natural due--all intimates to me his
+future life. I know that God is just. I know His justice too shall make
+all things right, for He must have the power, the wish, the will
+therefor, to speak in human speech. I see the injustice in this city,
+its pauperism, suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by
+no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemisphere to balance
+this; another life, wherein justice shall come to all and for all. Else
+God were unjust; and an unjust God to me is no God at all, but a
+wretched chimera which my soul rejects with scorn. I see the autumn
+prefigured in the spring. The flowers of May-day foretold the harvest,
+its rosy apples and its yellow ears of corn. As the bud now lying cold
+and close upon the bark of every tree throughout our northern clime is a
+silent prophecy of yet another spring and other summers, and harvests
+too; so this instinctive love of justice scantly budding here and nipped
+by adverse fate, silently but clearly tells of a kingdom of heaven. I
+take some miserable child here in this city, squalid in dress and look,
+ignorant and wicked too as most men judge of vagrant vice, made so by
+circumstances over which that child had no control; I turn off with a
+shudder at the public wrong we have done and still are doing; but in
+that child I see proof of another world, yes, Heaven glittering from
+behind those saddened eyes. I know that child has a man's nature in him,
+perhaps a Channing's trusting piety; perhaps a Newton's mind; has surely
+rudiments of more than these; for what were Channing, Newton, both of
+them, but embryo men? I turn off with a shudder at the public wrong, but
+a faith in God's justice, in that child's eternal life, which nothing
+can ever shake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+III. A third argument is drawn from the nature of God. He, as the
+infinite, the unconditioned, the absolute, is all-powerful, all-wise,
+all-good. Therefore he must wish the best of all possible things; must
+know the best of all possible things; must will the best of all possible
+things, and so bring it to pass. Life is a possible thing; eternal life
+is possible. Neither implies a contradiction; yes, to me they seem
+necessary, more than possible. Now, then, as life, serene and happy
+life, is better than non-existence, so immortality is better than
+perpetual death. God must know that, wish that, will that, and so bring
+that about. Man, therefore, must be immortal. This argument is brief
+indeed, but I see not how it can be withstood.
+
+I do not know that one of you doubts of eternal life. If any does, I
+know not if these thoughts will ever affect his doubt. Still, I think
+each argument is powerful; to one that thinks, reasons, balances, and
+then decides, exceeding powerful. All put together form a mass of
+argument which, as it seems to me, no logic can resist. Yet I beg you to
+understand that I do not rest immortality on any reasoning of mine, but
+on reason itself; not on these logical arguments, but on man's
+consciousness, and the instinctive belief which is common to the human
+race. I believed my immortality before I proved it; believed it just as
+strongly then as now. Nay, could some doubter rise, and, to my thinking,
+vanquish all these arguments, I should still hold fast my native faith,
+nor fear the doubter's arms. The simple consciousness of men is stronger
+than all forms of proof. Still, if men want arguments--why, there they
+are.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The belief in immortality is one thing; the special form thereof, the
+definite notion of the future life, another and quite different. The
+popular doctrine in our churches I think is this: That this body which
+we lay in the dust shall one day be raised again, the living soul joined
+on anew, and both together live the eternal life. But where is the soul
+all this time, between our death-day and our day of rising? Some say it
+sleeps unconscious, dead all this time; others, that it is in Heaven
+now, or else in hell; others, in a strange and transient home, imperfect
+in its joy or woe, waiting the final day and more complete account. It
+seems to me this notion is absurd and impossible: absurd in its doctrine
+relative to the present condition of departed souls; impossible in what
+it teaches of the resurrection of this body. If my soul is to claim the
+body again, which shall it be, the body I was born into, or that I died
+out of? If I live to the common age of men, changing my body as I must,
+and dying daily, then I have worn some eight or ten bodies. So at the
+last, which body shall claim my soul, for the ten had her? The soul
+herself may claim them all. But to make the matter still more intricate,
+there is in the earth but a certain portion of matter out of which human
+bodies can be made. Considering all the millions of men now living, the
+myriads of millions that have been before, it is plain, I think, that
+all the matter suitable for human bodies has been lived over many times.
+So if the world were to end to-day, instead of each old man having ten
+bodies from which to choose the one that fits him best, there would be
+ten men, all clamoring for each body! Shall I then have a handful of my
+former dust, and that alone? That is not the resurrection of my former
+body. This whole doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh seems to me
+impossible and absurd.
+
+I know men refer this, as many other things no better, to Jesus. I find
+no satisfactory evidence that he taught the resurrection of the body;
+there is some evidence that he did not. I know it was the doctrine of
+the Pharisees of his time, of Paul, the early Christians, and more or
+less of the Christian churches to this day. In Christ's time in Judea,
+there were the Sadducees, who taught the eternal death of men; the
+Pharisees who taught the resurrection of the flesh and its reunion with
+the soul; the Essenes, who taught the immortality of the soul, but
+rejected the resurrection of the body. Paul was a Pharisee, and in his
+letters taught the resurrection of the dead, the belief of the
+Pharisees. From him it has come down to us, and in the creed of many
+churches it is still written, "I believe in the resurrection of the
+flesh." Many doubted this in early times, but the council of Nice
+declared all men accursed who dared to doubt the resurrection of the
+flesh. I mention this as absurd and impossible, because it is still, I
+fear, the popular belief, and lest some should confound the doctrine of
+immortality with this tenet of the Pharisees. Let it be remembered the
+immortality of the soul is one thing, the resurrection of the body
+another and quite different.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is this future life? what can we know of it besides its existence?
+Some men speak as if they knew the way around Heaven as around the wards
+of their native city. What we can know in detail is cautiously to be
+inferred from the nature of man and the nature of God. I will modestly
+set down what seems to me.
+
+It must be a conscious state. Man is by his nature conscious; yes,
+self-conscious. He is progressive in his self-consciousness. I cannot
+think a removal out of the body destroys this consciousness; rather that
+it enhances and intensifies this. Yet consciousness in the next life
+must differ as much from consciousness here as the ripe peach differs
+from the blossom, or the bud, or the bark, or the earthly materials out
+of which it grew. The child is no limit to the man, nor my consciousness
+now to what I may be, must be hereafter.
+
+It must be a social state. Our nature is social; our joys social. For
+our progress here, our happiness, we depend on one another. Must it not
+be so there? It must be an advance upon our nature and condition here.
+All the analogy of nature teaches that. Things advance from small to
+great; from base to beautiful. 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. Yet some rude man, tired with his
+work, lies down beneath a tree, his head upon his swarthy arm, and sleep
+shuts, one by one, these five scant portals of the soul, and what an
+artist is he made at once! How brave a sky he paints above him, with
+what golden garniture of clouds set off; what flowers and trees, what
+men and women does he not create, and moving in celestial scenes! What
+years of history does he condense in one short minute, and when he
+wakes, shakes off the purple drapery of his dream as if it were but
+worthless dust and girds him for his work anew! What other powers there
+are shut up in men less known than this artistic phantasy; powers of
+seeing the distant, recalling the past, predicting the future, feeling
+at once the character of men--of this we know little, only by rare
+glimpses at the unwonted side of things. But yet we know enough to guess
+there are strange wonders there waiting to be revealed.
+
+What form our conscious, social, and increased activity shall take, we
+know not. We know of that no more than before our birth we knew of this
+world, of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch, or the things which
+they reveal. We are not born into that world, have not its senses yet.
+This we know, that the same God, all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, rules
+there and then, as here and now. Who cannot trust him to do right and
+best for all? For my own part, I feel no wish to know how or where, or
+what I shall be hereafter. I know it will be right for my truest
+welfare; for the good of all. I am satisfied with this trust.
+
+Yet the next life must be a state of retribution. Thither we carry
+nothing but ourselves, our naked selves. Our fortune we leave behind us;
+our honors and rank return to such as gave; even our reputation, the
+good or ill men thought we were, clings to us no more. We go thither
+without our staff or scrip; nothing but the man we are. Yet that man is
+the result of all life's daily work; it is the one thing which we have
+brought to pass. I cannot believe men who have voluntarily lived mean,
+little, vulgar and selfish lives, will go out of this and into that,
+great, noble, generous, good, and holy. Can the practical saint and the
+practical hypocrite enter on the same course of being together? I know
+the sufferings of bad men here, the wrong they do their nature, and what
+comes of that wrong. I think that suffering is the best part of sin, the
+medicine to heal it with. What men suffer here from their wrong-doing is
+its natural consequence; but all that suffering is a mercy, designed to
+make them better. Every thing in this world is adapted to promote the
+welfare of God's creatures. Must it not be so in the next? How many men
+seem wicked from our point of view, who are not so from their own; how
+many become infamous through no fault of theirs; the victims of
+circumstances, born into crime, of low and corrupt parents, whom former
+circumstances made corrupt! Such men cannot be sinners before God. Here
+they suffer from the tyranny of appetites they never were taught to
+subdue; they have not the joy of a cultivated mind. The children of the
+wild Indian are capable of the same cultivation as children here; yet
+they are savages. Is it always to be so? Is God to be partial in
+granting the favors of another life? I cannot believe it. I doubt not
+that many a soul rises up from the dungeon and the gallows, yes, from
+dens of infamy amongst men, clean and beautiful before God. Christ, says
+the Gospel, assured the penitent thief of sharing heaven with him--and
+that day. Many seem inferior to me, who in God's sight must be far
+before me; men who now seem too low to learn of me here, may be too high
+to teach me there.
+
+I cannot think the future world is to be feared, even by the worst of
+men. I had rather die a sinner than live one. Doubtless justice is there
+to be done; that may seem stern and severe. But remember God's justice
+is not like a man's; it is not vengeance, but mercy; not poison, but
+medicine. To me it seems tuition more than chastisement. God is not the
+Jailer of the Universe, but the Shepherd of the people; not the Hangman
+of mankind, but their Physician; yes, our Father. I cannot fear Him as I
+fear men. I cannot fail to love. I abhor sin, I loathe and nauseate
+thereat; most of all at my own. I can plead for others and extenuate
+their guilt, perhaps they for mine; not I for my own. I know God's
+justice will overtake me, giving me what I have paid for. But I do not,
+cannot fear it. I know His justice is love; that if I suffer, it is for
+my everlasting joy. I think this is a natural state of mind. I do not
+find that men ever dread the future life, or turn pale on their
+death-bed at thought of God's vengeance, except when a priesthood has
+frightened them to that. The world's literature, which is the world's
+confession, proves what I say. In Greece, in classic days, when there
+was no caste of priests, the belief in immortality was current and
+strong. But in all her varied literature I do not remember a man dying,
+yet afraid of God's vengeance. The rude Indian of our native land did
+not fear to meet the Great Spirit, face to face. I have sat by the
+bedside of wicked men, and while death was dealing with my brother, I
+have watched the tide slow ebbing from the shore, but I have known no
+one afraid to go. Say what we will, there is nothing stronger and deeper
+in men than confidence in God, a solemn trust that He will do us good.
+Even the worst man thinks God his Father; and is he not? Tell me not of
+God's vengeance, punishing men for his own glory! There is no such
+thing. Talk not to me of endless hell, where men must suffer for
+suffering's sake, be damned for an eternity of woe. I tell you there is
+no such thing, nor can there ever be. Does not even the hireling
+shepherd, when a single lamb has gone astray, leave the ninety and nine
+safe in their fold, go forth some stormy night and seek the wanderer,
+rejoicing to bring home the lost one on his shoulders? And shall God
+forget His child, his frailest or most stubborn child; leave him in
+endless misery, a prey to insatiate Sin, that grim, bloodthirsty wolf,
+prowling about the human fold? I tell you No; not God. Why, this
+eccentric earth forsakes the sun awhile, careering fast and far away,
+but that attractive power prevails at length, and the returning globe
+comes rounding home again. Does a mortal mother desert her son, wicked,
+corrupt and loathsome though he be? If so, the wiser world cries, Shame!
+But she does not. When her child becomes loathsome and hateful to the
+world, drunk with wickedness, and when the wicked world puts him away
+out of its sight, strangling him to death, that mother forgets not her
+child. She had his earliest kiss from lips all innocent of coming ill,
+and she will have his last. Yes, she will press his cold and stiffened
+form to her own bosom; the bosom that bore and fed the innocent babe
+yearns yet with mortal longing for the murdered murderer. Infamous to
+the world, his very dust is sacred dust to her. She braves the world's
+reproach, buries her son, piously hoping, that as their lives once
+mingled, so their ashes shall. The world, cruel and forgetful oft,
+honors the mother in its deepest heart. Do you tell me that culprit's
+mother loves her son more than God can love him? Then go and worship
+her. I know that when father and mother both forsake me, in the
+extremity of my sin, I know my God loves on. Oh yes, ye sons of men,
+Indian and Greek, ye are right to trust your God. Do priests and their
+churches say No!--bid them go and be silent forever. No grain of dust
+gets lost from off this dusty globe; and shall God lose a man from off
+this sphere of souls? Believe it not.
+
+I know that suffering follows sin, lasting long as the sin. I thank God
+it is so; that God's own angel stands there to warn back the erring
+Balaams, wandering towards woe. But God, who sends the rain, the dew,
+the sun, on me as on a better man, will, at last, I doubt it not, make
+us all pure, all just, all good, and so, at last, all happy. This
+follows from the nature of God himself, for the All-good must wish the
+welfare of His child; the All-wise know how to achieve that welfare; the
+All-powerful bring it to pass. Tell me He wishes not the eternal welfare
+of all men, then I say, That is not the God of the universe. I own not
+that as God. Nay, I tell you it is not God you speak of, but some
+heathen fancy, smoking up from your unhuman heart. I would ask the worst
+of mothers, Did you forsake your child because he went astray, and
+mocked your word? "Oh no," she says; "he was but a child, he knew no
+better, and I led him right, corrected him for his good, not mine!" Are
+we not all children before God; the wisest, oldest, wickedest, God's
+child! I am sure He will never forsake me, how wicked soever I become. I
+know that he is love; love, too, that never fails. I expect to suffer
+for each conscious, wilful wrong; I wish, I hope, I long to suffer for
+it. I am wronged if I do not; what I do not outgrow, live over and
+forget here, I hope to expiate there. I fear a sin; not to outgrow a
+sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man who has lived here a manly life, must enter the next under the
+most favorable circumstances. I do not mean a man of mere negative
+goodness, starting in the road of old custom, with his wheels deep in
+the ruts, not having life enough to go aside, but a positively good man,
+one bravely good. He has lived heaven here, and must enter higher up
+than a really wicked man, or a slothful one, or one but negatively good.
+He can go from earth to heaven, as from one room to another, pass
+gradually, as from winter to spring. To such an one, no revolution
+appears needed. The next life, it seems, must be a continual progress,
+the improvement of old powers, the disclosure or accession of new ones.
+What nobler reach of thought, what profounder insight, what more
+heavenly imagination, what greater power of conscience, faith and love,
+will bless us there and then, it were vain to calculate, it is far
+beyond our span. You see men now, whose souls are one with God, and so
+His will works through them as the magnetic fire runs on along the
+unimpeding line. What happiness they have, it is they alone can say. How
+much greater must it be there; not even they can tell. Here the body
+helps us to some things. Through these five small loop-holes the world
+looks in. How much more does the body hinder us from seeing? Through the
+sickly body yet other worlds look in. He who has seen only the daylight,
+knows nothing of that heaven of stars, which all night long hang
+overhead their lamps of gold. When death has dusted off this body from
+me, who will dream for me the new powers I shall possess? It were vain
+to try. Time shall reveal it all.
+
+I cannot believe that any state in Heaven is a final state, only a
+condition of progress. The bud opens into the blossom, the flower
+matures into the fruit. The salvation of to-day is not blessedness
+enough for to-morrow. Here we are first babes of earth, with a few
+senses, and those imperfect, helpless and ignorant; then children of
+earth; then youths; then men, armed with reason, conscience, affection,
+piety, and go on enlarging these without end. So methinks it must be
+there, that we shall be first babes of Heaven, then children, next
+youths, and so go on growing, advancing and advancing--our being only a
+becoming more and more, with no possibility of ever reaching the end. If
+this be true, then there must be a continual increase of being. So, in
+some future age, the time will come, when each one of us shall have more
+mind, and heart, and soul, than Christ on earth; more than all men now
+on earth have ever had; yes, more than they and all the souls of men now
+passed to Heaven;--shall have, each one of us, more being than they all
+have had, and so more truth, more soul, more faith, more rest and bliss
+of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do men of the next world look in upon this? Are they present with us,
+conscious of our deeds or thoughts? Who knows? Who can say aye or no?
+The unborn know nothing of the life on earth; yet the born of earth know
+somewhat of them, and make ready for their coming. Who knows but men
+born to heaven are waiting for your birth to come--have gone to prepare
+a place for us? All that is fancy, and not fact; it is not philosophy,
+but poetry; no more. Of this we may be sure, that what is best will be;
+what best for saint or sinner; what most conducive to their real good.
+That is no poetry, but unavoidable truth, which all mankind may well
+believe.
+
+There are many who never attained their true stature here, yet without
+blameworthiness of theirs; men cheated of their growth. Many a Milton
+walks on his silent way, and goes down at last, not singing and unsung.
+How many a possible Newton or Descartes has dug the sewers of a city,
+and dies, giving no sign of the wealthy soul he bore!
+
+    "Chill penury repressed his noble rage,
+    And froze the genial current of the soul."
+
+What if the best of you had been born slaves in North Carolina, or among
+savages at New Zealand; nay, in some of the filthy cellars of Boston,
+and turned friendless into the streets; what might you have become?
+Surely not what you are; yet, before God, you might, perhaps, be more
+deserving, and, at death, go to a far higher place. What is so terribly
+wrong here, must be righted there. It cannot be that God will thrust a
+man out of Heaven, because his mother was a savage, a slave, a pauper,
+or a criminal. It is men's impiety which does so here, not Heaven's
+justice there! How the wrong shall be righted I know not, care not now
+to know; of the fact I ask no further certainty. Many that are last
+shall be first. It may be that the pirate, in heaven, having outgrown
+his earthly sins, shall teach justice to the judge who hanged him here.
+They who were oppressed and trampled on, kept down, dwarfed, stinted and
+emaciate in soul, must have justice done them there, and will doubtless
+stand higher in Heaven than we, who, having many talents, used them
+poorly, or hid them idle in the dirt, knowing our Father's will, yet
+heeding not. It was Jesus that said, Many shall come from the east and
+the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, and men, calling
+themselves saints, be thrust out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shall we remember the deeds of the former life; this man that he picked
+rags out of the mud in the streets, and another that he ruled nations?
+Who can tell; nay, who need care to ask? Such a remembrance seems not
+needed for retribution's sake. The oak remembers not each leaf it ever
+bore, though each helped to form the oak, its branch and bole. How much
+has gone from our bodies! we know not how it came or went! How much of
+our past life is gone from our memory, yet its result lives in our
+character! The saddler remembers not every stitch he took while an
+apprentice, yet each stitch helped form the saddle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shall we know our friends again? For my own part I cannot doubt it;
+least of all when I drop a tear over their recent dust. Death does not
+separate them from us here. Can life in heaven do it? They live in our
+remembrance; memory rakes in the ashes of the dead, and the virtues of
+the departed flame up anew, enlightening the dim cold walls of our
+consciousness. Much of our joy is social here; we only half enjoy an
+undivided good. God made mankind, but sundered that into men, that they
+might help one another. Must it not be so there, and we be with our
+real friends? Man loves to think it; yet to trust is wiser than to
+prophesy. But the girl who went from us a little one may be as parent to
+her father when he comes, and the man who left us have far outgrown our
+dream of an angel when we meet again. I cannot doubt that many a man who
+not long ago left his body here, now far surpasses the radiant manliness
+which Jesus won and wore; yes, is far better, greater, too, than many
+poorly conceive of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are times when we think little of a future life. In a period of
+success, serene and healthy life; the day's good is good enough for that
+day. But there comes a time when this day's good is not enough; its ill
+too great to bear. When death comes down and wrenches off a friend from
+our side; wife, child, brother, father, a dear one taken; this life is
+not enough. Oh, no, not to the coldest, coarsest, and most sensual man.
+I put it to you, to the most heartless of you all, or the most cold and
+doubting--When you lay down in the earth your mother, sister, wife, or
+child, remembering that you shall see their face no more, is life
+enough? Do you not reach out your arms for heaven, for immortality, and
+feel you cannot die? When I see men at a feast, or busy in the street, I
+do not think of their eternal life; perhaps feel not my own. But when
+the stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, remorseless, I
+feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall
+cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place, the man to his own.
+It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven.
+I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me. I ask no risen dust to
+teach me immortality. I am conscious of eternal life.
+
+But there are worse hours than these: seasons bitterer than death,
+sorrows that lie a latent poison in the heart, slowly sapping the
+foundations of our peace. There are hours when the best life seems a
+sheer failure to the man who lived it, his wisdom folly, his genius
+impotence, his best deed poor and small; when he wonders why he was
+suffered to be born; when all the sorrows of the world seem poured upon
+him; when he stands in a populous loneliness, and though weak, can only
+lean in upon himself. In such hour he feels the insufficiency of this
+life. It is only his cradle-time, he counts himself just born; all
+honors, wealth and fame are but baubles in his baby hand; his deep
+philosophy but nursery rhymes. Yet he feels the immortal fire burning in
+his heart. He stretches his hands out from the swaddling-clothes of
+flesh, reaching after the topmost star, which he sees, or dreams he
+sees, and longs to go alone. Still worse, the consciousness of sin comes
+over him; he feels that he has insulted himself. All about him seems
+little; himself little, yet clamoring to be great. Then we feel our
+immortality; through the gairish light of day we see a star or two
+beyond. The soul within us feels her wings, contending to be born,
+impatient for the sky, and wrestles with the earthly worm that folds us
+in.
+
+    "Mysterious Night! when our first Parent knew
+      Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
+    Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
+      This glorious canopy of light and blue?
+    Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
+      Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
+    Hesperus with the host of heaven came;
+      And lo, Creation widened in man's view.
+    Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
+      Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
+    Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
+      That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
+    Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
+      If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"
+
+I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its day and night. Its
+flowers and its fruits are dear to me. I would not wilfully lose sight
+of a departing cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star; or in a
+purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws too of matter seem more
+wonderful the more I study them, in the whirling eddies of the dust, in
+the curious shells of former life buried by thousands in a grain of
+chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light above my head. Even the ugly
+becomes beautiful when truly seen. I see the jewel in the bunchy toad.
+The more I live, the more I love this lovely world; feel more its Author
+in each little thing; in all that is great. But yet I feel my
+immortality the more. In childhood the consciousness of immortal life
+buds forth feeble, though full of promise. In the man it unfolds its
+fragrant petals, his most celestial flower, to mature its seed
+throughout eternity. The prospect of that everlasting life, the perfect
+justice yet to come, the infinite progress before us, cheer and comfort
+the heart. Sad and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not be
+so forever. The light of heaven breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow,
+sin; the sombre clouds which overhung the east, grown purple now, tell
+us the dawn of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by that, smile
+in the new-born glow; we are beguiled of our sadness before we are
+aware. The certainty of this provokes us to patience, it forbids us to
+be slothfully sorrowful. It calls us to be up and doing. The thought
+that all will at last be right with the slave, the poor, the weak, and
+the wicked, inspires us with zeal to work for them here, and make it all
+right for them even now.
+
+There is small merit in being willing to die; it seems almost sinful in
+a good man to wish it when the world needs him here so much. It is weak
+and unmanly to be always looking and sighing voluptuously for that. But
+it is of great comfort to have in your soul a sure trust in
+immortality; of great value here and now to anticipate time and live
+to-day the eternal life. That we may all do. The joys of heaven will
+begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven and do its duties.
+That may begin to-day. It is everlasting life to know God, to have His
+Spirit dwelling in you, yourself at one with Him. Try that and prove its
+worth. Justice, usefulness, wisdom, religion, love, are the best things
+we hope for in Heaven. Try them on--they will fit you here not less
+becomingly. They are the best things of earth. Think no outlay of
+goodness and piety too great. You will find your reward begin here. As
+much goodness and piety, so much Heaven. Men will not pay you--God will;
+pay you now; pay you hereafter and for ever.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.--AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE
+ONONDAGA TEACHERS' INSTITUTE, AT SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 4, 1849.
+
+
+Education is the developing and furnishing of the faculties of man. To
+educate the people is one of the functions of the State. It is generally
+allowed in the free States of America, that the community owes each
+child born into it a chance for education, intellectual, moral, and
+religious. Hence the child has a just and recognized claim on the
+community for the means of this education, which is to be afforded him,
+not as a charity, but as a right.
+
+The fact indicates the progress mankind has made in not many years. Once
+the state only took charge of the military education of the people; not
+at all of their intellectual, moral, or religious culture. They received
+their military discipline, not for the special and personal advantage of
+the individuals, Thomas and Oliver, but for the benefit of the state.
+They received it, not because they were men claiming it in virtue of
+their manhood, but as subjects of the state, because their military
+training was needful for the state, or for its rulers who took the name
+thereof. Then the only culture which the community took public pains to
+bestow on its members, was training them to destroy. The few, destined
+to command, learned the science of destruction, and the kindred science
+of defence; the many, doomed to obey, learned only the art to destroy,
+and the kindred art of defence.
+
+The ablest men of the nation were sought out for military teachers,
+giving practical lessons of the science and the art; they were covered
+with honor and loaded with gold. The wealth of the people and their
+highest science went to this work. Institutions were founded to promote
+this education, and carefully watched over by the state, for it was
+thought the Commonwealth depended on disciplined valor. The soldier was
+thought to be the type of the state, the archetype of man; accordingly
+the highest spiritual function of the state was the production of
+soldiers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Most of the civilized nations have passed through that stage of their
+development: though the few or the many are still taught the science or
+the art of war in all countries called Christian, there is yet a class
+of men for whom the state furnishes the means of education that is not
+military; means of education which the individuals of that class could
+not provide for themselves. This provision is made at the cost of the
+state; that is, at the cost of every man in the state, for what the
+public pays, you pay and I pay, rich or poor, willingly and consciously,
+or otherwise. This class of men is different in different countries, and
+their education is modified to suit the form of government and the idea
+of the state. In Rome the state provides for the public education of
+priests. Rome is an ecclesiastical state; her government is a
+Theocracy--a government of all the people, but by the priests, for the
+sake of the priests, and in the name of God. Place in the church is
+power, bringing honor and wealth; no place out of the church is of much
+value. The offices are filled by priests, the chief magistrate is a
+priest, supposed to derive his power and right to rule, not
+democratically, from the people, or royally, by inheritance,--for in
+theory the priest is as if he had no father, as theoretically he has no
+child,--but theocratically from God.
+
+In Rome the priesthood is thought to be the flower of the state. The
+most important spiritual function of the state, therefore, is the
+production of priests; accordingly the greatest pains are taken with
+their education. Institutions are founded at the public cost, to make
+priests out of men; these institutions are the favorites of government,
+well ordered, well watched over, well attended, and richly honored.
+Institutions for the education of the people are of small account, ill
+endowed, watched over but poorly, thinly attended, and not honored at
+all. The people are designed to be subjects of the church, and as little
+culture is needed for that, though much to make them citizens thereof,
+so little is given.
+
+As there are institutions for the education of the priests, so there is
+a class of men devoted to that work; able men, well disciplined,
+sometimes men born with genius, and always men furnished with the
+accomplishments of sacerdotal and scientific art; very able men, very
+well disciplined, the most learned and accomplished men in the land.
+These men are well paid and abundantly honored, for on their
+faithfulness the power of the priesthood, and so the welfare of the
+state, is thought to depend. Without the allurement of wealth and
+honors, these able men would not come to this work; and without the help
+of their ability, the priests could not be well educated. Hence their
+power would decline; the class, tonsured and consecrated but not
+instructed, would fall into contempt; the theocracy would end. So the
+educators of the priests are held in honor, surrounded by baits for
+vulgar eyes; but the public educators of the people, chiefly women or
+ignorant men, are held in small esteem. The very buildings destined to
+the education of the priests are conspicuous and stately; the colleges
+of the Jesuits, the Propaganda, the seminaries for the education of
+priests, the monasteries for training the more wealthy and _regular_
+clergy, are great establishments, provided with libraries, and furnished
+with all the apparatus needful for their important work. But the
+school-houses for the people are small and mean buildings, ill made, ill
+furnished, and designed for a work thought to be of little moment. All
+this is in strict harmony with the idea of the theocracy, where the
+priesthood is mighty and the people are subjects of the Church; where
+the effort of the state is toward producing a priest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In England the state takes charge of the education of another class, the
+nobility and gentry; that is, of young men of ancient and historical
+families, the nobility, and young men of fortune, the gentry. England is
+an oligarchical state; her government an aristocracy, the government of
+all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the
+name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a
+noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There,
+nobility is the blossom of the state; aristocratic birth brings wealth,
+office, and their consequent social distinction. Political offices are
+chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king,
+the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and
+the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of
+birth. He is not merely noble but royal; his right to rule is not at
+all derived from the people, but from his birth. Thus he has the two
+essentials of aristocratic influence, birth and wealth, not merely in
+the heroic degree, but in the supreme degree.
+
+As the state is an aristocracy, its most important spiritual function is
+the production of aristocrats; each noble family transmits the full
+power of its blood only to a single person--the oldest son; of the
+highest form, the royal, only one is supposed to be born in a
+generation, only one who receives and transmits in full the blood royal.
+
+As the nobility are the blossom of the state, great pains must be taken
+with the education of those persons born of patrician or wealthy
+families. As England is not merely a military or ecclesiastical state,
+though partaking largely of both, but commercial, agricultural and
+productive in many ways; as she holds a very prominent place in the
+politics of the world, so there must be a good general education
+provided for these persons; otherwise their power would decline, the
+nobility and gentry sink into contempt, and the government pass into
+other hands,--for though a man may be born to rank and wealth, he is not
+born to knowledge, nor to practical skill. Hence institutions are
+founded for the education of the aristocratic class: Oxford and
+Cambridge, "those twins of learning," with their preparatories and
+help-meets.
+
+The design of these institutions is to educate the young men of family
+and fortune. The aim in their academic culture is not as in Pagan Rome,
+a military state, to make soldiers, nor as in Christian Rome, to turn
+out priests; it is not, as in the German universities, to furnish the
+world with scholars and philosophers, men of letters and science, but to
+mature and furnish the gentleman, in the technical sense of that word, a
+person conventionally fitted to do the work of a complicated
+aristocratic state, to fill with honor its various offices, military,
+political, ecclesiastical or social, and enjoy the dignity which comes
+thereof. These universities furnish the individual who resorts thither
+with opportunities not otherwise to be had; they are purchased at the
+cost of the state, at the cost of each man in the state. The alumnus at
+Oxford pays his term-bills, indeed, but the amount thereof is a trifle
+compared to the actual cost of his residence there; mankind pays the
+residue.
+
+These institutions are continually watched over by the state, which is
+the official guardian of aristocratic education; they are occasionally
+assisted by grants from the public treasury, though they are chiefly
+endowed by the voluntary gifts of individual men. But these private
+gifts, like the public grants, come from the earnings of the whole
+nation. They are well endowed, superintended well, and richly honored;
+their chancellors and vice-chancellors are men of distinguished social
+rank; they have their representatives in Parliament; able men are sought
+out for teachers, professors, heads of houses; men of good ability, of
+masterly education, and the accomplishments of a finished gentleman;
+they are well paid, and copiously rewarded with honors and social
+distinction. Gentility favors these institutions; nobility watches over
+them, and royalty smiles upon them. In this threefold sunlight, no
+wonder that they thrive. The buildings at their service are among the
+most costly and elegant in the land; large museums are attached to them,
+and immense libraries; every printer in England, at his own cost, must
+give a copy of each book he publishes to Cambridge and Oxford. What
+wealth can buy, or artistic genius can create, is there devoted to the
+culture of this powerful class.
+
+But while the nobility and gentry are reckoned the flower of the state,
+the common people are only the leaves, and therefore thought of small
+importance in the political botany of the nation. Their education is
+amazingly neglected; is mainly left to the accidental piety of private
+Christians, to the transient charity of philanthropic men, or the
+"enlightened self-interest" of mechanics and small-traders, who now and
+then found institutions for the education of some small fraction of the
+multitude. But such institutions are little favored by the government,
+or the spirit of the dominant class; gentility does not frequent them,
+nor nobility help them, nor royalty watch over to foster and to bless.
+The Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's
+money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to
+spare for the education of her people. No honor attends the educators of
+the people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are
+erected for their use; no great libraries got ready at the public
+charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and
+collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge; at the magnificence of
+public edifices in London, new or ancient--the House of Parliament, the
+Bank, the palaces of royal and noble men, the splendor of the
+churches--but you ask, where are the school-houses for the people? You
+go to Bridewell and Newgate for the answer. All this is consistent with
+the idea of an aristocracy. The gentleman is the type of the state; and
+the effort of the state is towards producing him. The people require
+only education enough to become the servants of the gentleman, and seem
+not to be valued for their own sake, but only as they furnish pabulum
+for the flower of the oligarchy.
+
+In Rome and England, great sums have been given by wealthy men, and by
+the state itself, to furnish the means of a theocratic or aristocratic
+education to a certain class; and to produce the national priests, and
+the national gentlemen. There public education is the privilege of a
+few, but bought at the cost of the many; for the plough-boy in
+Yorkshire, who has not culture enough to read the petition for daily
+bread in the Lord's Prayer, helps pay the salary of the Master of
+Trinity, and the swine-herd in the Roman Campagna, who knows nothing of
+religion, except what he learns at Christmas and Easter, by seeing the
+Pope carried on men's shoulders into St. Peter's, helps support the
+Propaganda and the Roman College. The privileged classes are to receive
+an education under the eye of the state, which considers itself bound to
+furnish them the means of a public education, partly at the individual's
+cost, chiefly at the cost of the public. The amount of education depends
+on three things:--on the educational attainments of the human race; on
+the wealth and tranquillity of the special nation, enabling it to avail
+itself of that general attainment; and on the natural powers and
+industry of the particular individual in the nation. Such is the
+solidarity of mankind that the development of the individual thus
+depends on that of the race, and the education of a priest in Rome or a
+gentleman in England is the resultant of these three forces,--the
+attainment of mankind, the power of the nation, and the private
+character and conduct of the man himself. Each of these three is a
+variable and not a constant quantity. So the amount of education which a
+man can receive at Oxford or at Rome fluctuates and depends on the
+state of the nation and of the world; but as the attainments of mankind
+have much increased within a few years, as the wealth of England has
+increased, and her tranquillity become more secure, you see how easy it
+becomes for the state to offer each gentleman an amount of education
+which it would have been quite impossible to furnish in the time of the
+Yorks and the Lancasters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In America things are quite other and different. I speak of the Free
+States of the North; the Slave States have the worst features of an
+oligarchy combined with a theocratic pride of caste, which generates
+continual unkindness; there the idea of the state is found inconsistent
+with the general and public education of the people; it is as much so in
+South Carolina as in England or Rome; even more so, for the public and
+general culture of all is only dangerous to a theocracy or aristocracy
+while it is directly fatal to slavery. In England, and still more in
+Catholic Rome, the churches--themselves a wonderful museum of
+curiosities, and open all the day to all persons--form an important
+element for the education of the most neglected class. But slavery and
+education of the people are incommensurable quantities. No amount of
+violence can be their common measure. The republic, where master and
+slave were equally educated, would soon be a red-republic. The
+slave-master knows this, and accordingly puts education to the ban, and
+glories in keeping three million barbarians in the land, and, of course,
+suffers the necessary degradation which comes thereof. But in the free
+states of the North the government is not a theocracy, or an
+aristocracy; the state, in theory is not for the few, nor even for the
+majority, but for all; classes are not recognized, and therefore not
+protected in any privilege. The government is a democracy, the
+government of all, by all, for all, and in the name of all. A man is
+born to all the rights of mankind; all are born to them, so all are
+equal. Therefore, what the state pays for, not only comes at the cost of
+all, but must be for the use and benefit of all. Accordingly, as a
+theocracy demands the education of priests, and an aristocracy that of
+the nobility and the gentry, so a democracy demands the education of
+all. The aim must be, not to make priests and gentlemen of a few, a
+privileged class, but to make men of all; that is, to give a normal and
+healthy development of their intellectual, moral, affectional and
+religious faculties, to furnish and instruct them with the most
+important elementary knowledge, to extend this development and
+furnishing of the faculties as far as possible.
+
+Institutions must be founded for this purpose--to educate all, rich and
+poor, men well-born with good abilities, men ill-born with slender
+natural powers. In New England, these institutions have long since been
+founded at the public cost, and watched over with paternal care, as the
+ark of our covenant, the palladium of our nation. It has been recognized
+as a theory, and practised on as a fact, that all the property in the
+land is held by the state for the public education of the people, as it
+is for their defence; that property is amenable to education as to
+military defence.
+
+In a democracy there are two reasons why this theory and practice
+prevail. One is a political reason. It is for the advantage of the
+state; for each man that keeps out of the jail and the poor-house,
+becomes a voter at one-and-twenty; he may have some office of trust and
+honor; the highest office is open before him. As so much depends on his
+voting wisely, he must have a chance to qualify himself for his right of
+electing and of being elected. It is as necessary now in a democracy,
+and as much demanded by the idea thereof, that all should be thus
+qualified by education, as it once was in a military state, that all
+should be bred up soldiers.
+
+The other is a philosophical reason. It is for the advantage of the
+individual himself, irrespective of the state. The man is a man, an
+integer, and the state is for him; as well as a fraction of the state,
+and he for it. He has a man's rights; and, however inferior in might to
+any other man, born of parentage how humble soever, to no wealth at all,
+with a body never so feeble, he is yet a man, and so equal in rights to
+any other man born of a famous line, rich and able; of course he has a
+right to a chance for the best culture which the educational attainment
+of mankind, and the circumstances of the nation render possible to any
+man; to so much thereof as he has the inborn power and the voluntary
+industry to acquire. This conclusion is getting acted on in New England,
+and there are schools for the dumb and the blind, even for the idiot and
+the convict.
+
+So, then, as the idea of our government demands the education of all,
+the amount of education must depend on the same three variables
+mentioned before; it must be as good as it is possible for them to
+afford. The democratic state has never done its political and
+educational duty, until it affords every man a chance to obtain the
+greatest amount of education which the attainment of mankind renders it
+possible for the nation, in its actual circumstances, to command, and
+the man's nature and disposition render it possible for him to take.
+
+Looking at the matter politically, from the point of view of the State,
+each man must have education enough to exercise his rights of electing
+and being elected. It is not easy to fix the limits of the amount; it is
+also a variable continually increasing. Looking at the matter
+philosophically, from the point of view of the individual, there is no
+limit but the attainment of the race and the individual's capacity for
+development and growth. Only a few men will master all which the
+circumstances of the nation and the world render attainable; some will
+come short for lack of power, others for lack of inclination. Make
+education as accessible as it can now be made, as attractive as the
+teachers of this age can render it, the majority will still get along
+with the smallest amount that is possible or reputable. Only a few will
+strive for the most they can get. There will be many a thousand farmers,
+traders, and mechanics in their various callings, manual and
+intellectual, to a single philosopher. This also is as it should be, and
+corresponds with the nature of man and his function on the earth. Still
+all have the natural right to the means of education to this extent, by
+fulfilling its condition.
+
+To accomplish this work, the democratic education of the whole people,
+with the aim of making them men, we want public institutions founded by
+the people, paid for by the public money; institutions well endowed,
+well attended, watched over well, and proportionably honored; we want
+teachers, able men, well disciplined, well paid, and honored in
+proportion to their work. It is a good thing to educate the privileged
+classes, priests in a theocracy, and gentlemen in an aristocracy. Though
+they are few in number, it is a great work; the servants thereof are not
+too well paid, nor too much held in esteem in England, nor in Rome, nor
+too well furnished with apparatus. But the public education of a whole
+people is a greater work, far more difficult, and should be attended
+with corresponding honor, and watched over even more carefully by the
+state.
+
+After the grown men of any country have provided for their own physical
+wants, and insured the needful physical comforts, their most important
+business is to educate themselves still further, and train up the rising
+generation to their own level. It is important to leave behind us
+cultivated lands, houses and shops, railroads and mills, but more
+important to leave behind us men grown, men that are men; such are the
+seed of material wealth,--not it of them. The highest use of material
+wealth is its educational function.
+
+Now the attainments of the human race increase with each generation; the
+four leading nations of Christendom, England, France, Germany, and the
+United States, within a hundred years, have apparently, at the least,
+doubled their spiritual attainments; in the free states of America,
+there is a constant and rapid increase of wealth, far beyond the
+simultaneous increase of numbers; so not only does the educational
+achievement of mankind become greater each age, but the power of the
+state to afford each man a better chance for a better education,
+greatens continually, the educational ability of the state enlarging as
+those two factors get augmented. The generation now grown up, is,
+therefore, able and bound to get a better culture than their fathers,
+and leave to their own children a chance still greater.
+
+Each child of genius, in the nineteenth century, is born at the foot of
+the ladder of learning, as completely as the first child, with the same
+bodily and spiritual nakedness; though of the most civilized race, with
+six, or sixty thousands of years behind him, he must begin with nothing
+but himself. Yet such is the union of all mankind, that, with the aid of
+the present generation, in a few years he will learn all that mankind
+has learned in its long history; next go beyond that, discovering and
+creating anew; and then draw up to the same height the new generation,
+which will presently surpass him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man's education never ends, but there are two periods thereof, quite
+dissimilar, the period of the Boy, and that of the Man. Education in
+general is the developing and instructing the faculties, and is,
+therefore, the same in kind to both man and boy, though it may be
+brought about by different forces. The education of the boy, so far as
+it depends on institutions, and conscious modes of action, must be so
+modified as to enable him to meet the influences which will surround him
+when he is a man; otherwise, his training will not enable him to cope
+with the new forces he meets, and so will fail of the end of making him
+a man. I pass over the influence of the family, and of nature, which do
+not belong to my present theme. In America, the public education of men
+is chiefly influenced by four great powers, which I will call
+educational forces, and which correspond to four modes of national
+activity:
+
+I. The political action of the people, represented by the State;
+
+II. The industrial action of the people, represented by Business;
+
+III. The ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Church;
+
+IV. The literary action of the people, represented by the Press.
+
+I now purposely name them in this order, though I shall presently refer
+to them several times, and in a different succession. These forces act
+on the people, making us such men as we are; they act indirectly on the
+child before he comes to consciousness; directly, afterwards, but most
+powerfully on the man. What is commonly and technically called
+education--the development and instruction of the faculties of children,
+is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but
+introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this
+preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of
+the school-masters. Their business is to give the child such a
+development of his faculties, and such furniture of preliminary
+knowledge, that he can secure the influence of all these educational
+forces, appreciating and enhancing the good, withstanding,
+counteracting, and at last ending the evil thereof, and so continue his
+education; and at the same time that he can work in one or more of those
+modes of activity, serving himself and mankind, politically by the
+state, ecclesiastically by the church, literarily by the press, or at
+any rate, industrially by his business. To give children the preparatory
+education necessary for this fourfold receptivity, or activity, we need
+three classes of public institutions:
+
+I. Free common schools;
+
+II. Free high schools;
+
+III. Free colleges.
+
+Of these I will presently speak in detail, but now, for the sake of
+shortness, let me call them all collectively by their generic name--the
+School. It is plain the teachers who work by this instrument ought to
+understand the good and evil of the four educational forces which work
+on men grown, in order to prepare their pupils to receive the good
+thereof, and withstand the evil. So then let us look a moment at the
+character of these educational forces, and see what they offer us, and
+what men they are likely to make of their unconscious pupils. Let us
+look at the good qualities first, and next at the evil.
+
+It is plain that business, the press, and politics all tend to promote a
+great activity of body and mind. In business, the love of gain, the
+enterprising spirit of our practical men in all departments, their
+industry, thrift and forecast, stimulate men to great exertions, and
+produce a consequent development of the faculties called out. Social
+distinction depends almost wholly on wealth; that never is accumulated
+by mere manual industry, such is the present constitution of society,
+but it is acquired by the higher forms of industry, in which the powers
+of nature serve the man, or he avails himself of the creations of mere
+manual toil. Hence there is a constant pressure towards the higher modes
+of industry for the sake of money; of course, a constant effort to be
+qualified for them. So in the industrial departments the mind is more
+active than the hand. Accordingly it has come to pass that most of the
+brute labor of the free states is done by cattle, or by the forces of
+nature--wind, water, fire--which we have harnessed by our machinery, and
+set to work. In New England most of the remaining work which requires
+little intelligence is done by Irishmen, who are getting a better
+culture by that very work. Men see the industrial handiwork of the
+North, and wonder; they do not always see the industrial head-work,
+which precedes, directs and causes it all; they seldom see the complex
+forces of which this enterprise and progress are the resultant.
+
+There is no danger that we shall be sluggards. Business now takes the
+same place in the education of the people that was once held by war: it
+stimulates activity, promotes the intercourse of man with man, nation
+with nation; assembling men in masses, it elevates their temperature, so
+to say; it leads to new and better forms of organization; it excites men
+to invention, so that thereby we are continually acquiring new power
+over the elements, peacefully annexing to our domain new provinces of
+nature--water, wind, fire, lightning--setting them to do our work,
+multiplying the comforts of life, and setting free a great amount of
+human time. It is not at all destructive; not merely conservative, but
+continually creates anew. Its creative agent is not brute force, but
+educated mind. A man's trade is always his teacher, and industry keeps a
+college for mankind, much of our instruction coming through our hands;
+with us, where the plough is commonly in the hands of him who owns the
+land it furrows, business affords a better education than in most other
+countries, and develops higher qualities of mind. There is a marked
+difference in this respect between the North and South. There was never
+before such industry, such intense activity of head and hand in any
+nation in a time of peace.
+
+The press encourages the same activity, enterprise, perseverance. Both
+of these encourage generosity; neither honors the miser, who gets for
+the sake of getting, or "starves, cheats, and pilfers to enrich an
+heir;" he does not die respectably in Boston, who dies rich and
+bequeaths nothing to any noble public charity. It encourages industry
+which accumulates with the usual honesty, and for a rather generous
+use.
+
+The press furnishes us with books exceedingly cheap. We manufacture
+literature cheaper than any nation except the Chinese. Even the best
+books, the works of the great masters of thought, are within the reach
+of an industrious farmer or mechanic, if half a dozen families combine
+for that purpose. The educational power of a few good books scattered
+through a community, is well known.
+
+Then the press circulates, cheap and wide, its newspapers, emphatically
+the literature of men who read nothing else: they convey intelligence
+from all parts of the world, and broaden the minds of home-keeping
+youths, who need not now have homely wits.
+
+The state, also, promotes activity, enterprise, hardihood, perseverance
+and thrift. The American Government is eminently distinguished by these
+five qualities. The form of government stimulates patriotism, each man
+has a share in the public lot. The theocracies, monarchies, and
+aristocracies of old time have produced good and great examples of
+patriotism, in the few or the many; but the nobler forms of love of
+country, of self-denial and disinterested zeal for its sake, are left
+for a democracy to bring to light.
+
+Here all men are voters, and all great questions are, apparently and in
+theory, left to the decision of the whole people. This popular form of
+government is a great instrument in developing and instructing the mind
+of the nation. It helps extend and intensify the intelligent activity
+which is excited by business and the press. Such is the nature of our
+political institutions that, in the free states, we have produced the
+greatest degree of national unity of action, with the smallest
+restriction of personal freedom, have reconciled national unity with
+individual variety, not seeking uniformity; thus room is left for as
+much individualism as a man chooses to take; a vast power of talent,
+enterprise and invention is left free for its own work. Elsewhere, save
+in England, this is latent, kept down by government. Since this power is
+educated and has nothing to hold it back; since so much brute work is
+done by cattle and the forces of nature, now domesticated and put in
+harness, and much time is left free for thought, more intelligence is
+demanded, more activity, and the citizens of the free states have become
+the most active, enterprising and industrious people in the world; the
+most inventive in material work.
+
+In all these three forms of action there is much to stir men to love of
+distinction. The career is open to talent, to industry; open to every
+man; the career of letters, business, and politics. Our rich men were
+poor men; our famous men came of sires else not heard of. The laurel,
+the dollar, the office, and the consequent social distinction of men
+successful in letters, business and politics, these excite the obscure
+or needy youth to great exertions, and he cannot sleep; emulation wakes
+him early, and keeps him late astir. Behind him, scattering "the rear of
+darkness," stalk poverty and famine, gaunt and ugly forms, with scorpion
+whip to urge the tardier, idler man. The intense ambition for money, for
+political power, and the social results they bring, keeps men on the
+alert. So ambition rises early, and works with diligence that never
+tires.
+
+The Church, embracing all the churches under that name, cultivates the
+memory of men, and teaches reverence for the past; it helps keep
+activity from wandering into unpopular forms of wickedness or of
+unbelief. Men who have the average intelligence, goodness and piety, it
+keeps from slipping back, thus blocking to rearward the wheels of
+society, so that the ascent gained shall not be lost; men who have less
+than this average it urges forward, addressing them in the name of God,
+encouraging by hope of heaven, and driving with fear of hell. It turns
+the thought of the people towards God; it sets before us some facts in
+the life, and some parts of the doctrine, of the noblest One who ever
+wore the form of man, bidding us worship him. The ecclesiastical worship
+of Jesus of Nazareth is, perhaps, the best thing in the American church.
+It has the Sunday and the institution of preaching under its control. A
+body of disciplined men are its servants; they praise the ordinary
+virtues; oppose and condemn the unpopular forms of error and of sin.
+Petty vice, the vice of low men, in low places, is sure of their lash.
+They promote patriotism in its common form. Indirectly, they excite
+social and industrial rivalry, and favor the love of money by the honor
+they bestow upon the rich and successful. But at the same time they
+temper it a little, sometimes telling men, as business or the state does
+not, that there is in man a conscience, affection for his brother-man,
+and a soul which cannot live by bread alone; no, not by wealth, office,
+fame and social rank. They tell us, also, of eternity, where worldly
+distinctions, except of orthodox and heterodox, are forgotten, where
+wealth is of no avail; they bid us remember God.
+
+Such are the good things of these great national forces; the good things
+which in this fourfold way we are teaching ourselves. The nation is a
+monitorial school, wonderfully contrived for the education of the
+people. I do not mean to say that it is by the forethought of men that
+the American democracy is at the same time a great practical school for
+the education of the human race. This result formed no part of our plan,
+and is not provided for by the Constitution of the United States; it
+comes of the forethought of God, and is provided for in the Constitution
+of the Universe.
+
+Now each of these educational forces has certain defects, negative
+evils, and certain vices, positive evils, which tend to misdirect the
+nation, and so hinder the general education of the people: of these,
+also, let me speak in detail.
+
+The state appeals to force, not to justice; this is its last appeal; the
+force of muscles aided by force of mind, instructed by modern science in
+the art to kill. The nation appeals to force in the settlement of
+affairs out of its borders. We have lately seen an example of this, when
+we commenced war against a feeble nation, who, in that special
+emergency, had right on her side, about as emphatically as the force was
+on our side. The immediate success of the enterprise, the popular
+distinction acquired by some of the leaders, the high honor bestowed on
+one of its heroes, all this makes the lesson of injustice attractive. It
+may be that a similar experiment will again be tried, and doubtless with
+like success. Certainly there is no nation this side of the water which
+can withstand the enterprise, the activity, the invention, industry and
+perseverance of a people so united, and yet so free and intelligent.
+Another successful injustice of this character, on a large scale, will
+make right still less regarded, and might honored yet more.
+
+The force we employ out of our borders, might opposed to right, we
+employ also at home against our brethren, and keep three millions of
+them in bondage; we watch for opportunities to extend the institution of
+slavery over soil unpolluted by that triple curse, and convert the
+Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, into an instrument for
+the defence of slavery.
+
+The men we honor politically, by choosing them to offices in the state,
+are commonly men of extraordinary force, sometimes, it is true, only of
+extraordinary luck, but of only ordinary justice; men who, perhaps, have
+mind in the heroic degree, but conscience of the most vulgar pattern.
+They are to keep the law of the United States when it is wholly hostile
+to the law of the universe, to the everlasting justice of God.
+
+I am not speaking to politicians, professional representatives of the
+state; not speaking for political effect; not of the state as a
+political machine for the government of the people. I am speaking to
+teachers, for an educational purpose; of the state as an educational
+machine, as one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the
+people. Now by this preference of force and postponement of justice at
+home and abroad, in the selection of men for office, with its wealth,
+and rank, and honor, by keeping the law of the land to the violation of
+the law of God, it is plain we are teaching ourselves to love wrong; at
+least to be insensible to the right. What we practise on a national
+scale as a people, it is not easy to think wrong when practised on a
+personal scale, by this man and that.
+
+The patriotism, also, which the state nurses, is little more than that
+Old Testament patriotism which loves your countryman, and hates the
+stranger; the affection which the Old Testament attributes to Jehovah,
+and which makes him say, "I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau;" a patriotism
+which supports our country in the wrong as readily as in the right, and
+is glad to keep one sixth part of the nation in bondage without hope. It
+is not a patriotism which, beginning here, loves all the children of
+God, but one that robs the Mexican, enslaves the African, and
+exterminates the Indian.
+
+These are among the greater evils taught us by the political action of
+the people as a whole. If you look at the action of the chief political
+parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either
+party, than in the politics of the nation, the resultant of both; no
+more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively
+at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for
+that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It
+legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth, than
+for the laboring man who now accumulates. This party goes for the
+dollar; the other for the majority, and aims at the greatest good of the
+greatest number, leaving the good of the smaller number to most
+uncertain mercies. Neither party seems to aim at justice, which protects
+both the wealth that labor has piled up, and the laborer who now creates
+it; justice, which is the point of morals common to man and God, where
+the interests of all men, abroad and at home, electing and elected,
+greatest number and smallest number, exactly balance. Falsehood, fraud,
+a willingness to deceive, a desire for the power and distinction of
+office, a readiness to use base means in obtaining office--these vices
+are sown with a pretty even hand upon both parties, and spring up with
+such blossoms and such a fruitage as we all see. The third political
+party has not been long enough in existence to develop any distinctive
+vices of its own.
+
+I shall not speak of the public or private character of the politicians
+who direct the state; no doubt that is a powerful element in our
+national education; but as a class, they seem no better and no worse
+than merchants, mechanics, ministers and farmers, as a class; so in
+their influence there is nothing peculiar, only their personal character
+ceases to be private, and becomes a public force in the education of the
+people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Churches have the same faults as the State. There is the same
+postponement of justice and preference of force, the same neglect of the
+law of God in their zeal for the statutes of men; the same crouching to
+dollars or to numbers. However, in the churches these faults appear
+negatively, rather than as an affirmation. The worldliness of the church
+is not open, self-conscious and avowed; it is not, as a general thing,
+that human injustice is openly defended, but rather justice goes by
+default. But if the churches do not positively support and teach
+injustice, as the state certainly does, they do not teach the opposite,
+and, so far as that goes, are allies of the state in its evil influence.
+The fact that the churches, as such, did not oppose the war, and do not
+oppose slavery, its continuance, or its extension; nay, that they are
+often found its apologists and defenders, seldom its opponents; that
+they not only pervert the sacred books of the Christians to its defence,
+but wrest the doctrines of Christianity to justify it; the fact that
+they cannot, certainly do not, correct the particularism of the
+political parties, the love of wealth in one, of mere majorities in the
+other; that they know no patriotism not bounded by their country, none
+coextensive with mankind; that they cannot resist the vice of party
+spirit--these are real proofs that the church is but the ally of the
+state in this evil influence.
+
+But the church has also certain specific faults of its own. It teaches
+injustice by continually referring to the might of God, not His justice;
+to His ability and will to damn mankind, not asking if He has the right?
+It teaches that in virtue of His infinite power, He is not amenable to
+infinite justice, and to infinite love. Thus, while the state teaches,
+in the name of expediency and by practice, that the strong may properly
+be the tyrants of the weak, the mighty nation over the feeble, the
+strong race over the inferior, that the government may dispense with
+right at home and abroad--the church, as theory in Christ's name,
+teaches that God may repudiate His own justice and His own love.
+
+The churches have little love of truth, as such, only of its uses. It
+must be such a truth as they can use for their purposes; canonized
+truth; truth long known; that alone is acceptable and called "religious
+truth;" all else is "profane and carnal," as the reason which discovers
+it. They represent the average intelligence of society; hence, while
+keeping the old, they welcome not the new. They promote only popular
+forms of truth, popular in all Christendom, or in their special sect.
+They lead in no intellectual reforms; they hinder the leaders.
+Negatively and positively, they teach, that to believe what is
+clerically told you in the name of religion, is better than free,
+impartial search after the truth. They dishonor free thinking, and
+venerate constrained believing. When the clergy doubt, they seldom give
+men audience of their doubt. Few scientific men not clerical believe the
+Bible account of creation,--the universe made in six days, and but a few
+thousand years ago,--or that of the formation of woman, and of the
+deluge. Some clerical men still believe these venerable traditions,
+spite of the science of the times; but the clerical men who have no
+faith in these stories not only leave the people to think them true and
+miraculously taught, but encourage men in the belief, and calumniate the
+men of science who look the universe fairly in the face and report the
+facts as they find them.
+
+The church represents only the popular morality, not any high and
+aboriginal virtue. It represents not the conscience of human nature,
+reflecting the universal and unchangeable moral laws of God, touched and
+beautified by his love, but only the conscience of human history,
+reflecting the circumstances man has passed by, and the institutions he
+has built along the stream of time. So, while it denounces unpopular
+sins, vices below the average vice of society, it denounces also
+unpopular excellence, which is above the average virtue of society. It
+blocks the wheels rearward, and the car of humanity does not roll down
+hill; but it blocks them forward also. No great moral movement of the
+age is at all dependent directly on the church for its birth; very
+little for its development. It is in spite of the church that reforms go
+forward; it holds the curb to check more than the rein to guide. In
+morals, as in science, the church is on the anti-liberal side, afraid of
+progress, against movement, loving "yet a little sleep, a little
+slumber;" conservative and chilling, like ice, not creative, nor even
+quickening, as water. It doffs to use and wont; has small confidence in
+human nature, much in a few facts of human history. It aims to separate
+Piety from Goodness, her natural and heaven-appointed spouse, and marry
+her to Bigotry, in joyless and unprofitable wedlock. The church does
+not lead men to the deep springs of human nature, fed ever from the far
+heights of the Divine nature, whence flows that river of God, full of
+living water, where weary souls may drink perennial supply. While it
+keeps us from falling back, it does little directly to advance mankind.
+In common with the state, this priest and Levite pass by on the other
+side of the least developed classes of society, leaving the slave, the
+pauper, and the criminal, to their fate, hastening to strike hands with
+the thriving or the rich.
+
+These faults are shared in the main by all sects; some have them in the
+common, and some in a more eminent degree, but none is so distinguished
+from the rest as to need emphatic rebuke, or to deserve a special
+exemption from the charge. Such are the faults of the church of every
+land, and must be from the nature of the institution; like the state, it
+can only represent the average of mankind.
+
+I am not speaking to clergymen, professional representatives of the
+church, not of the church as an ecclesiastical machine for keeping and
+extending certain opinions and symbols; not for an ecclesiastical
+purpose; I speak to teachers, for an educational purpose, of the church
+as an educational machine, one of the great forces for the spiritual
+development of the people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Business of the land has also certain vices of its own; while it
+promotes the virtues I have named before, it does not tend to promote
+the highest form of character. It does not promote justice and humanity,
+as one could wish; it does not lead the employer to help the operative
+as a man, only to use him as a tool, merely for industrial purposes. The
+average merchant cares little whether his ship brings cloth and cotton,
+or opium and rum. The average capitalist does not wish the stock of his
+manufacturing company divided into small shares, so that the operatives
+can invest their savings therein and have a portion of the large
+dividends of the rich; nor does he care whether he takes a mortgage on a
+ship or a negro slave, nor whether his houses are rented for sober
+dwellings, or for drunkeries; whether the state hires his money to build
+harbors at home, or destroy them abroad. The ordinary manufacturer is as
+ready to make cannons and cannon-balls to serve in a war which he knows
+is unjust, as to cast his iron into mill-wheels, or forge it into
+anchors. The common farmer does not care whether his barley feeds
+poultry for the table, or, made into beer, breeds drunkards for the
+almshouse and the jail; asks not whether his rye and potatoes become the
+bread of life, or, distilled into whiskey, are deadly poison to men and
+women. He cares little if the man he hires become more manly or not; he
+only asks him to be a good tool. Whips for the backs of negro slaves are
+made, it is said, in Connecticut with as little compunction as Bibles
+are printed there; "made to order," for the same purpose--for the
+dollar. The majority of blacksmiths would as soon forge fetter-chains to
+enslave the innocent limbs of a brother-man, as draught-chains for oxen.
+Christian mechanics and pious young women, who would not hurt the hair
+of an innocent head, have I seen at Springfield, making swords to
+slaughter the innocent citizens of Vera Cruz and Jalapa. The ships of
+respectable men carry rum to intoxicate the savages of Africa, powder
+and balls to shoot them with; they carry opium to the Chinese; nay,
+Christian slaves from Richmond and Baltimore to New Orleans and
+Galveston. In all commercial countries, the average vice of the age is
+mixed up with the industry of the age, and unconsciously men learn the
+wickedness long intrenched in practical life. It is thought industrial
+operations are not amenable to the moral law, only to the law of trade.
+"Let the supply follow the demand" is the maxim. A man who makes as
+practical a use of the golden rule as of his yard-stick, is still an
+exception in all departments of business.
+
+Even in the commercial and manufacturing parts of America, money
+accumulates in large masses; now in the hands of an individual, now of a
+corporation. This money becomes an irresponsible power, acting by the
+laws, but yet above them. It is wielded by a few men, to whom it gives a
+high social position and consequent political power. They use this
+triple form of influence, pecuniary, social and political, in the spirit
+of commerce, not of humanity, not for the interest of mankind; thus the
+spirit of trade comes into the state. Hence it is not thought wrong in
+politics to buy a man, more than in commerce to buy a ship; hence the
+rights of a man, or a nation, are looked on as articles of trade, to be
+sold, bartered, and pledged; and in the Senate of the United States, we
+have heard a mass of men, more numerous than all our citizens seventy
+years ago, estimated as worth twelve hundred millions of dollars.
+
+In most countries business comes more closely into contact with men than
+the state, or the church, or the press, and is a more potent educator.
+Here it not only does this, but controls the other three forces, which
+are mainly instruments of this; hence this form of evil is more
+dangerous than elsewhere, for there is no power organized to resist it
+as in England or Rome; so it subtly penetrates everywhere, bidding you
+place the accidents before the substance of manhood, and value money
+more than man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Notwithstanding the good qualities of the Press, the books it
+multiplies, and the great service it renders, it also has certain vices
+of its own. From the nature of the thing the greater part of literature
+represents only the public opinion of the time. It must therefore teach
+deference to that, not deference to truth and justice. It is only the
+eminent literature which can do more than this; books, which at first
+fall into few hands though fit, and like the acorns sown with the
+mulleins and the clover, destined to germinate but slowly, long to be
+over-topped by an ephemeral crop, at last, after half an hundred years,
+shall mature their own fruit for other generations of men. The current
+literature of this age only popularizes the thought of the eminent
+literature of the past. Great good certainly comes from this, but also
+great evil.
+
+Of all literature, the newspapers come most into contact with men--they
+are the literature of the people, read by such as read nothing else;
+read also by such as read all things beside. Taken in the mass, they
+contain little to elevate men above the present standard. The political
+journals have the general vice of our politics, and the special faults
+of the particular party; the theological journals have the common
+failings of the church, intensified by the bigotry of the sects they
+belong to; the commercial journals represent the bad qualities of
+business. Put all three together, and it is not their aim to tell the
+truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, nor to promote
+justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular
+literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and ideas which
+prevail in the state, the church, and business. It brings those
+sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing
+them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little
+directly to promote a higher form of human character.
+
+So, notwithstanding the good influence of these four modes of national
+activity in educating the grown men of America, they yet do not afford
+the highest teaching which the people require, to realize individually
+the idea of a man, and jointly that of a democracy. The state does not
+teach perfect justice; the church does not teach that, or love of truth.
+Business does not teach perfect morality, and the average literature,
+which falls into the hands of the million, teaches men to respect public
+opinion more than the word of God, which transcends that. Thus these
+four teach only the excellence already organized or incorporated in the
+laws, the theology, the customs, and the books of the land. I cannot but
+think these four teachers are less deficient here than in other lands,
+and have excellences of their own, but the faults mentioned are
+inseparable from such institutions. An institution is an organized
+thought; of course, no institution can represent a truth which is too
+new or too high for the existing organizations, yet that is the truth
+which it is desirable to teach. So there will always be exceptional men,
+with more justice, truth and love than is represented by the
+institutions of the time, who seem therefore hostile to these
+institutions, which they seek to improve and not destroy. Contemporary
+with the priests of Judah and Israel were the prophets thereof,
+antithetic to one another as the centripetal and centrifugal forces,
+but, like them, both necessary to the rhythmic movement of the orbs in
+heaven, and the even poise of the world.
+
+In Rome and in England the idea of a theocracy and an aristocracy has
+become a fact in the institutions of the land, which accordingly favor
+the formation of priests and gentlemen. The teachers of the educated
+class, therefore, may trust to the machinery already established to do
+their work, only keeping off the spirit of the age which would make
+innovations; and such is the respectability and popular esteem of the
+institutions, that this is done easier than men think, by putting an
+exceptional book in the index at Rome or in the academical fire at
+Oxford. But here, the idea of a democracy is by no means so well
+established and organized in institutions. It is new, and while a
+theocrat and an aristocrat are respected everywhere, a democrat is held
+in suspicion; accordingly, to make men, the teacher cannot trust his
+educational machinery, he must make it, and invent anew as well as turn
+his mill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These things being so, it is plain the teachers in the schools should be
+of such a character that they can give the children what they will most
+want when they become men; such an intellectual and moral development
+that they can appreciate and receive the good influence of these four
+educational forces, and withstand, resist, and exterminate the evil
+thereof. In the schools of a democracy which are to educate the people
+and make them men, you need more aboriginal virtue than in the schools
+of an aristocracy or a theocracy, where a few are to be educated as
+gentlemen or priests. Since the institutions of the land do not
+represent the idea of a democracy, and the average spirit of the people,
+which makes the institutions, represents it no more, if the children of
+the people are to become better than their fathers, it is plain their
+teachers must be prophets, and not priests merely; must animate them
+with a spirit higher, purer and more holy than that which inspires the
+state, the church, business, or the common literature of the times. As
+the teacher cannot impart and teach what he does not possess and know,
+it is also plain that the teacher must have this superior spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To accomplish the public education of the children of the people, we
+need the three classes of institutions just mentioned: free Common
+Schools, free High Schools and free Colleges. Let me say a word of each.
+
+The design of the Common School is to take children at the proper age
+from their mothers, and give them the most indispensable development,
+intellectual, moral, affectional and religious; to furnish them with as
+much positive, useful knowledge as they can master, and, at the same
+time, teach them the three great scholastic helps or tools of
+education--the art to read, to write and calculate.
+
+The children of most parents are easily brought to school, by a little
+diligence on the part of the teachers and school committee; but there
+are also children of low and abandoned, or, at least, neglected parents,
+who live in a state of continual truancy; they are found on the banks of
+your canals; they swarm in your large cities. When those children become
+men, through lack of previous development, instruction and familiarity
+with these three instruments of education, they cannot receive the full
+educational influence of the state and church, of business and the
+press: they lost their youthful education, and therefore they lose, in
+consequence, their manly culture. They remain dwarfs, and are barbarians
+in the midst of society; there will be exceptional men whom nothing can
+make vulgar; but this will be the lot of the mass. They cannot perform
+the intelligent labor which business demands, only the brute work, so
+they lose the development which comes through the hand that is active in
+the higher modes of industry, which, after all, is the greatest
+educational force; accordingly, they cannot compete with ordinary men,
+and remain poor; lacking also that self-respect which comes of being
+respected, they fall into beggary, into intemperance, into crime; so,
+from being idlers at first, a stumbling-block in the way of society,
+they become paupers, a positive burden which society must take on its
+shoulders; or they turn into criminals, active foes to the industry, the
+order, and the virtue of society.
+
+Now if a man abandons the body of his child, the state adopts that body
+for a time; takes the guardianship thereof, for the child's own sake;
+sees that it is housed, fed, clad, and cared for. If a man abandons his
+child's spirit, and the child commits a crime, the state, for its own
+sake, assumes the temporary guardianship thereof, and puts him in a
+jail. When a man deserts his child, taking no concern about his
+education, I venture to make the suggestion, whether it would not be
+well, as a last resort, for the State to assume the guardianship of the
+child for its own sake, and for the child's sake. We allow no one, with
+ever so thick a skin, to grow up in nakedness; why should we suffer a
+child, with however so perverse a parent, to grow up in ignorance and
+degenerate into crime? Certainly, a naked man is not so dangerous to
+society as an ignorant man, nor is the spectacle so revolting. I should
+have less hope of a state where the majority were so perverse as to
+continue ignorant of reading, writing and calculating, than of one where
+they were so thick-skinned as to wear no clothes. In Massachusetts,
+there is an Asylum for juvenile offenders, established by the city of
+Boston, a Farm School for bad boys, established by the characteristic
+benevolence of the rich men of that place, and a State Reform School
+under the charge of the Commonwealth: all these are for lads who break
+the laws of the land. Would it not be better to take one step more,
+adopt them before they offended, and allow no child to grow up in the
+barbarism of ignorance? Has any man an unalienable right to live a
+savage in the midst of civilization?
+
+We need also public High Schools, to take children where the common
+schools leave them, and carry them further on. Some States have done
+something towards establishing such institutions; they are common in New
+England. Some have established Normal Schools, special High Schools for
+the particular and professional education of public teachers. Without
+these, it is plain there would not be a supply of competent educators
+for the public service.
+
+Then we need free Colleges, conducted by public officers, and paid for
+by the public purse. Without these the scheme is not perfect. The idea
+which lies at the basis of the public education of a people in a
+democracy, is this: Every man, on condition of doing his duty, has a
+right to the means of education, as much as a right, on the same
+condition, to the means of defence from a public enemy in time of war,
+or from starvation in time of plenty and of peace. I say every man, I
+mean every woman also. The amount of education must depend on the three
+factors named before,--on the general achievement of mankind, the
+special ability of the state, and the particular power of the
+individual.
+
+If all is free, common schools, high schools, and colleges, boys and
+girls of common ability and common love of learning, will get a common
+education; those of greater ability, a more extended education, and
+those of the highest powers, the best culture which the race can now
+furnish, and the state afford. Hitherto no nation has established a
+public college, wholly at the public cost, where the children of the
+poor and the rich could enjoy together the great national charity of
+superior education. To do this is certainly not consistent with the idea
+of a theocracy or an aristocracy, but it is indispensable to the
+complete realization of a democracy. Otherwise the children of the rich
+will have a monopoly of superior education, which is the case with the
+girls everywhere--for only the daughters of rich men can get a superior
+education, even in the United States--and with boys in England and
+France, and of course the offices, emoluments and honors which depend on
+a superior education; or else the means thereof will be provided for
+poor lads by private benefactions, charity-funds and the like, which
+some pious and noble man has devoted to this work. In this case the
+institutions will have a sectarian character, be managed by narrow,
+bigoted men, and the gift of the means of education be coupled with
+conditions which must diminish its value, and fetter the free spirit of
+the young man. This takes place in many of the collegiate establishments
+of the North, which, notwithstanding those defects, have done a great
+good to mankind.
+
+The Common Schools giving their pupil the power of reading, writing and
+calculating, developing his faculties and furnishing him with much
+elementary knowledge, put him in communication with all that is written
+in a common form, in the English tongue; its treasures lie level to his
+eye and hand. The High School and the College, teaching him also other
+languages, afford him access to the treasures contained there; teaching
+him the mathematics and furnishing him with the discipline of science,
+they enable him to understand all that has hitherto been recorded in the
+compendious forms of philosophy, and thus place the child of large
+ability in connection with all the spiritual treasures of the world. In
+the mean time, for all these pupils, there is the material and the human
+world about them, the world of consciousness within. They can study both
+and add what they may to the treasures of human discovery or invention.
+
+It seems to me that it is the duty of the state to place the means of
+this education within the reach of all children of superior ability,--a
+duty that follows from the very idea of a democracy, not to speak of
+the idea of Christianity. It is not less the interest of the state to do
+so, for then, youths, well born, with good abilities, will not be
+hindered from getting a breeding proportionate to their birth, and from
+occupying the stations which are adequately filled only by men of
+superior native abilities, enriched by culture, and developed to their
+highest power. Then the work of such stations will fall to the lot of
+such men, and of course be done. Eminent ability, talent, or genius,
+should have eminent education, and so serve the nation in its eminent
+kind; for when God makes a million-minded man, as once or twice in the
+ages, or a myriad-minded man, as He does now and then, it is plain that
+this gift also is to be accounted precious, and used for the advantage
+of all.
+
+I say no state has ever attempted to establish such institutions; yet
+the Government of the United States has a seminary for the public
+education of a few men at the public cost. But it is a school to qualify
+men to fight; they learn the science of destruction, the art thereof,
+the kindred art and science of defence. If the same money we now pay for
+military education at West Point were directed to the education of
+teachers of the highest class, say professors and presidents of
+colleges; if the same pains were taken to procure able men, to furnish
+them with the proper instruction for their special work, and give them
+the best possible general development of their powers, not forgetting
+the moral, the affectional and the religious, and animating them with
+the philanthropic spirit needed for such a work, how much better results
+would appear! But in the present intellectual condition of the people it
+would be thought unworthy of a nation to train up school-masters! But is
+it only soldiers that we need?
+
+All these institutions are but introductory, a preparatory school, in
+three departments, to fit youths for the great educational establishment
+of practical life. This will find each youth and maiden as the schools
+leave him, moulding him to their image, or moulded by him to a better.
+So it is plain what the teachers are to do:--besides teaching the
+special branches which fall to their lot, they are to supply for the
+pupils, the defects of the State, of the Church, of Business, and the
+Press, especially the moral defects. For this great work of mediating
+between the mother and the world, for so furnishing and fitting the
+rising generation, introducing them into practical life, that they shall
+receive all the good of these public educational forces with none of the
+ill, but enhance the one while they withstand the other, and so each in
+himself realize the idea of man, and all in their social capacity, the
+idea of a democracy--it is also plain what sort of men we need for
+teachers: we need able men, well endowed by nature, well disciplined by
+art; we need superior men--men juster than the state, truer and better
+than the churches, more humane than business, and higher than the common
+literature of the press. There are always men of that stamp born into
+the world; enough of them in any age to do its work. How shall we bring
+them to the task? Give young men and women the opportunity to fit
+themselves for the work, at free common schools, high schools, normal
+schools, and colleges; give them a pay corresponding to their services,
+as in England and Rome; give them social rank and honor in that
+proportion, and they will come; able men will come; men well disciplined
+will come; men of talent and even genius for education will come.
+
+In the state you pay a man of great political talents large money and
+large honors; hence there is no lack of ability in politics, none of
+competition for office. In the church you pay a good deal for a "smart
+minister," one who can preach an audience into the pews and not himself
+out of the pulpit. Talent enough goes to business; educated talent too,
+at least with a special education for this, honor, and social
+distinction. Private colleges and theological schools, often, have
+powerful men for their professors and presidents; sometimes, men of much
+talent for education; commonly, men of ripe learning and gentlemanly
+accomplishments. Even men of genius seek a place as teachers in some
+private college, where they are under the control of the leaders of a
+sect--and must not doubt its creed, nor set science a-going freely lest
+it run over some impotent theological dogma--or else of a little
+coterie, or close corporation of men selected because radical or because
+conservative, men chosen not on account of any special fitness for
+superintending the superior education of the people, but because they
+were one-sided, and leaned this way in Massachusetts and that in
+Virginia. Able men seek such places because they get a competent pay,
+competent honors, competent social rank. Senators and ambassadors are
+not ashamed to be presidents of a college, and submit to the control of
+a coterie, or a sect, and produce their results. If such men can be had
+for private establishments to educate a few to work in such trammels and
+such company, certainly, it is not difficult to get them for the public
+and for the education of all. As the state has the most children to
+educate, the most money to pay with, it is clear, not only that they
+need the best ability for this work, but that they can have it soon as
+they make the teacher's calling gainful and respectable.
+
+In England and Rome, the most important spiritual function of the state
+is the production of the gentleman and the priest; in democratic America
+it is the production of the man. Some nations have taken pains with the
+military training of all the people, for the sake of the state, and made
+every man a soldier. No nation has hitherto taken equivalent pains with
+the general education of all, for the sake of the state and the sake of
+the citizens;--"the heathens of China" have done more than any Christian
+people, for the education of all. This was not needed in a theocracy,
+nor an aristocracy; it is essential to a democracy. This is needed
+politically; for where all men are voters, the ignorant man, who cannot
+read the ballot which he casts; the thief, the pirate, and the murderer,
+may, at any time, turn the scale of an election, and do us a damage
+which it will take centuries to repair. Ignorant men are the tools of
+the demagogue; how often he uses them, and for what purposes, we need
+not go back many years to learn. Let the people be ignorant and suffrage
+universal, a very few men will control the state, and laugh at the folly
+of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks
+they ride to insolence and miserable fame.
+
+America has nothing to fear from any foreign foe; for nearly forty years
+she has had no quarrel but of her own making. Such is our enterprise and
+our strength, that few nations would, carelessly, engage in war with us;
+none, without great provocation. In the midst of us, is our danger; not
+in foreign arms, but in the ignorance and the wickedness of our own
+children, the ignorance of the many, the wickedness of the few who will
+lead the many to their ruin. The bulwark of America is not the army and
+navy of the United States, with all the men at public cost instructed
+in the art of war; it is not the swords and muskets idly bristling in
+our armories; it is not the cannon and the powder carefully laid by; no,
+nor is it yet the forts, which frown in all their grim barbarity of
+stone along the coast, defacing the landscape, else so fair: these might
+all be destroyed to-night, and the nation be as safe as now. The more
+effectual bulwark of America is her schools. The cheap spelling-book, or
+the vane on her school-house is a better symbol of the nation than "The
+star-spangled banner;" the printing press does more than the cannon; the
+press is mightier than the sword. The army that is to keep our
+liberties--you are part of that, the noble army of teachers. It is you,
+who are to make a great nation greater, even wise and good,--the next
+generation better than their sires.
+
+Europe shows us, by experiment, that a republic cannot be made by a few
+well-minded men, however well-meaning. They tried for it at Rome, full
+of enlightened priests; in Germany, the paradise of the scholar, but
+there was not a people well educated, and a democracy could not stand
+upright long enough to be set a-going. In France, where men are better
+fitted for the experiment than elsewhere in continental Europe, you see
+what comes of it--the first step is a stumble, and for their president,
+the raw republicans chose an autocrat, not a democrat; not a mere
+soldier, but only the name of a soldier; one that thinks it an insult
+if liberty, equality, and fraternity be but named!
+
+Think you a democracy can stand without the education of all; not barely
+the smallest pittance thereof which will keep a live soul in a live
+body, but a large, generous cultivation of mind and conscience, heart
+and soul? A man, with half an eye, can see how we suffer continually in
+politics for lack of education among the people. Some nations are
+priest-ridden, some king-ridden, some ridden of nobles; America is
+ridden by politicians, a heavy burden for a foolish neck.
+
+Our industrial interests demand the same education. The industrial
+prosperity of the North, our lands yearly enriching, while they bear
+their annual crop; our railroads, mills and machines, the harness with
+which we tackle the elements,--for we domesticate fire and water, yes,
+the very lightning of heaven--all these are but material results of the
+intelligence of the people. Our political success and our industrial
+prosperity, both come from the pains taken with the education of the
+people. Halve this education, and you take away three fourths of our
+political welfare, three fourths of our industrial prosperity; double
+this education, you greaten the political welfare of the people, you
+increase their industrial success fourfold. Yes, more than that, for the
+results of education increase by a ratio of much higher powers.
+
+It seems strange that so few of the great men in politics have cared
+much for the education of the people; only one of those, now prominent
+before the North, is intimately connected with it. He, at great personal
+sacrifice of money, of comfort, of health, even of respectability,
+became superintendent of the common schools of Massachusetts, a place
+whence we could ill spare him, to take the place of the famous man he
+succeeds. Few of the prominent scholars of the land interest themselves
+in the public education of the people. The men of superior culture think
+the common school beneath their notice; but it is the mother of them
+all.
+
+None of the States of the North has ever given this matter the attention
+it demands. When we legislate about public education, this is the
+question before us:--Shall we give our posterity the greatest blessing
+that one generation can bestow upon another? Shall we give them a
+personal power which will create wealth in every form, multiply ships,
+and roads of earth, or of iron; subdue the forest, till the field, chain
+the rivers, hold the winds as its vassals, bind with an iron yoke the
+fire and water, and catch and tame the lightning of God? Shall we give
+them a personal power which will make them sober, temperate, healthy,
+and wise; that shall keep them at peace, abroad and at home, organize
+them so wisely that all shall be united, and yet, each left free, with
+no tyranny of the few over the many, or the little over the great?
+Shall we enable them to keep, to improve, to double manifold the
+political, social, and personal blessings they now possess; shall we
+give them this power to create riches, to promote order, peace,
+happiness--all forms of human welfare, or shall we not? That is the
+question. Give us intelligent men, moral men, men well developed in mind
+and conscience, heart and soul, men that love man and God, industrial
+prosperity, social prosperity, and political prosperity, are sure to
+follow. But without such men, all the machinery of this threefold
+prosperity is but a bauble in a child's hand, which he will soon break
+or lose, which he cannot replace when gone, nor use while kept.
+
+Rich men, who have intelligence and goodness, will educate their
+children, at whatever cost. There are some men, even poor men's sons,
+born with such native power that they will achieve an education, often a
+most masterly culture; men whom no poverty can degrade, or make vulgar,
+whom no lack of means of culture can keep from being wise and great.
+Such are exceptional men; the majority, nine tenths of the people, will
+depend, for their culture, on the public institutions of the land. If
+there had never been a free public school in New England, not half of
+her mechanics and farmers would now be able to read, not a fourth part
+of her women. I need not stop to tell what would be the condition of her
+agriculture, her manufactures, her commerce; they would have been,
+perhaps, even behind the agriculture, commerce and manufactures of South
+Carolina. I need not ask what would be the condition of her free
+churches, or the republican institutions which now beautify her rugged
+shores and sterile soil; there would be no such churches, no such
+institutions. If there had been no such schools in New England, the
+Revolution would yet remain to be fought. Take away the free schools,
+you take away the cause of our manifold prosperity; double their
+efficiency and value, you not only double and quadruple the prosperity
+of the people, but you will enlarge their welfare--political, social,
+personal--far more than I now dare to calculate. I know men object to
+public schools; they say, education must be bottomed on religion, and
+that cannot be taught unless we have a State religion, taught "by
+authority" in all our schools; we cannot teach religion, without
+teaching it in a sectarian form. This objection is getting made in New
+York; we have got beyond it in New England. It is true, all manly
+education must be bottomed on religion; it is essential to the normal
+development of man, and all attempts at education, without this, must
+fail of the highest end. But there are two parts of religion which can
+be taught in all the schools, without disturbing the denominations, or
+trenching upon their ground, namely, piety, the love of God, and
+goodness, the love of man. The rest of religion, after piety and
+goodness are removed, may safely be left to the institutions of any of
+the sects, and so the state will not occupy their ground.
+
+It is often said that superior education is not much needed; the common
+schools are enough, and good enough, for it is thought that superior
+education is needed for men as lawyers, ministers, doctors, and the
+like, not for men as men. It is not so. We want men cultivated with the
+best discipline, everywhere, not for the profession's sake, but for
+man's sake. Every man with a superior culture, intellectual, moral, and
+religious, every woman thus developed, is a safeguard and a blessing. He
+may sit on the bench of a judge or a shoemaker, be a clergyman or an
+oysterman, that matters little, he is still a safeguard and a blessing.
+The idea that none should have a superior education but professional
+men--they only for the profession's sake--belongs to dark ages, and is
+unworthy of a democracy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is the duty of all men to watch over the public education of the
+people, for it is the most important work of the state. It is
+particularly the duty of men who, hitherto, have least attended to it,
+men of the highest culture, men, too, of the highest genius. If a man
+with but common abilities has attained great learning, he is one of the
+"public administrators," to distribute the goods of men of genius, from
+other times and lands, to mankind, their legal heirs. Why does God
+sometimes endow a man with great intellectual power, making, now and
+then, a million-minded man? Is that superiority of gift solely for the
+man's own sake? Shame on such a thought. It is of little value to him
+unless he use it for me; it is for your sake and my sake, more than for
+his own. He is a precious almoner of wisdom; one of the public guardians
+of mankind, to think for us, to help us think for ourselves; born to
+educate the world of feebler men. I call on such men, men of culture,
+men of genius, to help build up institutions for the education of the
+people. If they neglect this, they are false to their trust. The culture
+which hinders a man from sympathy with the ignorant, is a curse to both,
+and the genius which separates a man from his fellow-creatures, lowlier
+born than he, is the genius of a demon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in
+your hands; nine tenths of the children of the people depend on you for
+their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever
+get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon,
+all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will
+easily learn from state and church, from business and the press. It is
+for you to give them such a developing and such a furnishing of their
+powers, that they will withstand, counteract and exterminate that evil.
+Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better
+than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own
+nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing
+of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the
+inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith
+their works.
+
+The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your
+image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these
+children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties.
+Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country,
+not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective
+tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the
+extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage--not a question of
+this sort has come up before Congress, or the people, which could not
+have been better decided by seven men, honest, intelligent, and just,
+who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right
+in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative,
+a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make
+a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not
+too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions,
+all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of
+self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head
+of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the
+"Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land,
+the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice,
+unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years'
+time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of
+development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall
+double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land.
+You can, if you will. I ask If you will? If your works say "Yes," then
+you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a
+charity far nobler yet, education, the greatest charity. You will help
+fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and
+help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of
+that noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the
+Christians still worship as their God. Yes, you will work with God
+himself; He will work with you, work for you, and bless you with
+everlasting life.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA AND THE SIGNS OF THE
+TIMES.--DELIVERED BEFORE SEVERAL LITERARY SOCIETIES, 1848.
+
+
+Every nation has a peculiar character, in which it differs from all
+others that have been, that are, and possibly from all that are to come;
+for it does not yet appear that the Divine Father of the nations ever
+repeats himself and creates either two nations or two men exactly alike.
+However, as nations, like men, agree in more things than they differ,
+and in obvious things too, the special peculiarity of any one tribe does
+not always appear at first sight. But if we look through the history of
+some nation which has passed off from the stage of action, we find
+certain prevailing traits which continually reappear in the language and
+laws thereof; in its arts, literature, manners, modes of religion--in
+short, in the whole life of the people. The most prominent thing in the
+history of the Hebrews is their continual trust in God, and this marks
+them from their first appearance to the present day. They have
+accordingly done little for art, science, philosophy, little for
+commerce and the useful arts of life, but much for religion; and the
+psalms they sung two or three thousand years ago are at this day the
+hymns and prayers of the whole Christian world. Three great historical
+forms of religion, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, all have
+proceeded from them.
+
+He that looks at the Ionian Greeks finds in their story always the same
+prominent characteristic, a devotion to what is beautiful. This appears
+often to the neglect of what is true, right, and therefore holy. Hence,
+while they have done little for religion, their literature,
+architecture, sculpture, furnish us with models never surpassed, and
+perhaps not equalled. Yet they lack the ideal aspiration after religion
+that appears in the literature and art, and even language of some other
+people, quite inferior to the Greeks in elegance and refinement.
+Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks
+for truth is one form of loveliness.
+
+If we take the Romans, from Romulus their first king, to Augustulus the
+last of the Caesars, the same traits of national character appear, only
+the complexion and dress thereof changed by circumstances. There is
+always the same hardness and materialism, the same skill in organizing
+men, the same turn for affairs and genius for legislation. Rome borrowed
+her theology and liturgical forms; her art, science, literature,
+philosophy, and eloquence; even her art of war was an imitation. But
+law sprung up indigenous in her soil; her laws are the best gift she
+offers to the human race,--the "monument more lasting than brass," which
+she has left behind her.
+
+We may take another nation, which has by no means completed its history,
+the Saxon race, from Hengist and Horsa to Sir Robert Peel: there also is
+a permanent peculiarity in the tribe. They are yet the same bold, handy,
+practical people as when their bark first touched the savage shores of
+Britain; not over religious; less pious than moral; not so much upright
+before God, as downright before men; servants of the understanding more
+than children of reason; not following the guidance of an intuition, and
+the light of an idea, but rather trusting to experiment, facts,
+precedents, and usages; not philosophical, but commercial; warlike
+through strength and courage, not from love of war or its glory;
+material, obstinate, and grasping, with the same admiration of horses,
+dogs, oxen, and strong drink; the same willingness to tread down any
+obstacle, material, human or divine, which stands in their way; the same
+impatient lust of wealth and power; the same disposition to colonize and
+reannex other lands; the same love of liberty and love of law; the same
+readiness in forming political confederations.
+
+In each of these four instances, the Hebrews, the Ionians, the Romans,
+and the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a nationality so strong, that while
+they have mingled with other nations in commerce and in war, as victors
+and vanquished, they have stoutly held their character through all; they
+have thus modified feebler nations joined with them. To take the last,
+neither the Britons nor the Danes affected very much the character of
+the Anglo-Saxons; they never turned it out of its course. The Normans
+gave the Saxon manners, refinement, letters, elegance. The Anglo-Saxon
+bishop of the eleventh century, dressed in untanned sheep-skins, "the
+woolly side out and the fleshy side in;" he ate cheese and flesh, drank
+milk and mead. The Norman taught him to wear cloth, to eat also bread
+and roots, to drink wine. But in other respects the Norman left him as
+he found him. England has received her kings and her nobles from
+Normandy, Anjou, the Provence, Scotland, Holland, Hanover, often seeing
+a foreigner ascend her throne; yet the sturdy Anglo-Saxon character held
+its own, spite of the new element infused into its blood: change the
+ministries, change the dynasties often as they will, John Bull is
+obstinate as ever, and himself changes not; no philosophy or religion
+makes him less material. No nation but the English could have produced a
+Hobbes, a Hume, a Paley, or a Bentham; they are all instantial and not
+exceptional men in that race.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now this idiosyncrasy of a nation is a sacred gift; like the genius of a
+Burns, a Thorwaldsen, a Franklin, or a Bowditch, it is given for some
+divine purpose, to be sacredly cherished and patiently unfolded. The
+cause of the peculiarities of a nation or an individual man we cannot
+fully determine as yet, and so we refer it to the chain of causes which
+we call Providence. But the national persistency in a common type is
+easily explained. The qualities of father and mother are commonly
+transmitted to their children, but not always, for peculiarities may lie
+latent in a family for generations, and reappear in the genius or the
+folly of a child--often in the complexion and features: and besides,
+father and mother are often no match. But such exceptions are rare, and
+the qualities of a race are always thus reproduced, the deficiency of
+one man getting counterbalanced by the redundancy of the next: the
+marriages of a whole tribe are not far from normal.
+
+Some nations, it seems, perish through defect of this national
+character, as individuals fail of success through excess or deficiency
+in their character. Thus the Celts, that great flood of a nation which
+once swept over Germany, France, England, and, casting its spray far
+over the Alps, at one time threatened destruction to Rome itself, seem
+to have been so filled with love of individual independence that they
+could never accept a minute organization of human rights and duties, and
+so their children would not group themselves into a city, as other
+races, and submit to a strong central power, which should curb
+individual will enough to insure national unity of action. Perhaps this
+was once the excellence of the Celts, and thereby they broke the
+trammels and escaped from the theocratic or despotic traditions of
+earlier and more savage times, developing the power of the individual
+for a time, and the energy of a nation loosely bound; but when they came
+in contact with the Romans, Franks and Saxons, they melted away as snow
+in April--only, like that, remnants thereof yet lingering in the
+mountains and islands of Europe. No external pressure of famine or
+political oppression now holds the Celts in Ireland together, or gives
+them national unity of action enough to resist the Saxon foe. Doubtless
+in other days this very peculiarity of the Irish has done the world some
+service. Nations succeed each other as races of animals in the
+geological epochs, and like them, also, perish when their work is done.
+
+The peculiar character of a nation does not appear nakedly, without
+relief and shadow. As the waters of the Rhone, in coming from the
+mountains, have caught a stain from the soils they have traversed which
+mars the cerulean tinge of the mountain snow that gave them birth, so
+the peculiarities of each nation become modified by the circumstances to
+which it is exposed, though the fundamental character of a nation, it
+seems, has never been changed. Only when the blood of the nation is
+changed by additions from another stock is the idiosyncrasy altered.
+
+Now, while each nation has its peculiar genius or character which does
+not change, it has also and accordingly a particular work to perform in
+the economy of the world, a certain fundamental idea to unfold and
+develop. This is its national task, for in God's world, as in a shop,
+there is a regular division of labor. Sometimes it is a limited work,
+and when it is done the nation may be dismissed, and go to its repose.
+_Non omnia possumus omnes_ is as true of nations as of men; one has a
+genius for one thing, another for something different, and the idea of
+each nation and its special work will depend on the genius of the
+nation. Men do not gather grapes of thorns.
+
+In addition to this specific genius of the nation and its corresponding
+work, there are also various accidental or subordinate qualities, which
+change with circumstances, and so vary the nation's aspect that its
+peculiar genius and peculiar duty are often hid from its own
+consciousness, and even obscured to that of the philosophic looker-on.
+These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar
+genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient
+circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which
+the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of
+the present age, and they the character of the men now living. Thus new
+modifications of the national type continually take place; new
+variations are played, but on the same old strings and of the same old
+tune. Once circumstances made the Hebrews entirely pastoral, now as
+completely commercial; but the same trust in God, the same national
+exclusiveness appear, as of old. As one looks at the history of the
+Ionians, Romans, Saxons, he sees unity of national character, a
+continuity of idea and of work; but it appears in the midst of variety,
+for while these remained ever the same to complete the economy of the
+world, subordinate qualities--sentiments, ideas, actions--changed to
+suit the passing hour. The nation's _course_ was laid towards a certain
+point, but they stood to the right hand or the left, they sailed with
+much canvas or little, and swift or slow, as the winds and waves
+compelled: nay, sometimes the national ship "heaves to," and lies with
+her "head to the wind," regardless of her destination; but when the
+storm is overblown resumes her course. Men will carelessly think the
+ship has no certain aim, but only drifts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most marked characteristic of the American nation is Love of
+Freedom; of man's natural rights. This is so plain to a student of
+American history, or of American politics, that the point requires no
+arguing. We have a genius for liberty: the American idea is freedom,
+natural rights. Accordingly, the work providentially laid out for us to
+do seems this,--to organize the rights of man. This is a problem
+hitherto unattempted on a national scale, in human history. Often
+enough attempts have been made to organize the powers of priests, kings,
+nobles, in a theocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, powers which had no
+foundation in human duties or human rights, but solely in the
+selfishness of strong men. Often enough have the mights of men been
+organized, but not the rights of man. Surely there has never been an
+attempt made on a national scale to organize the rights of man as man;
+rights resting on the nature of things; rights derived from no
+conventional compact of men with men; not inherited from past
+generations, nor received from parliaments and kings, nor secured by
+their parchments; but rights that are derived straightway from God, the
+Author of Duty and the Source of Right, and which are secured in the
+great charter of our being.
+
+At first view it will be said, the peculiar genius of America is not
+such, nor such her fundamental idea, nor that her destined work. It is
+true that much of the national conduct seems exceptional when measured
+by that standard, and the nation's course as crooked as the Rio Grande;
+it is true that America sometimes seems to spurn liberty, and sells the
+freedom of three million men for less than three million annual bales of
+cotton; true, she often tramples, knowingly, consciously, tramples on
+the most unquestionable and sacred rights. Yet, when one looks through
+the whole character and history of America, spite of the exceptions,
+nothing comes out with such relief as this love of freedom, this idea of
+liberty, this attempt to organize right. There are numerous subordinate
+qualities which conflict with the nation's idea and work, coming from
+our circumstances, not our soul, as well as many others which help the
+nation perform her providential work. They are signs of the times, and
+it is important to look carefully among the most prominent of them,
+where, indeed, one finds striking contradictions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first is an impatience of authority. Every thing must render its
+reason, and show cause for its being. We will not be commanded, at least
+only by such as we choose to obey. Does some one say, "Thou shalt," or
+"Thou shalt not," we ask, "Who are you?" Hence comes a seeming
+irreverence. The shovel hat, the symbol of authority, which awed our
+fathers, is not respected unless it covers a man, and then it is the man
+we honor, and no longer the shovel hat. "I will complain of you to the
+government!" said a Prussian nobleman to a Yankee stage-driver, who
+uncivilly threw the nobleman's trunk to the top of the coach. "Tell the
+government to go to the devil!" was the symbolical reply.
+
+Old precedents will not suffice us, for we want something anterior to
+all precedents; we go beyond what is written, asking the cause of the
+precedent and the reason of the writing. "Our fathers did so," says
+some one. "What of that?" say we. "Our fathers--they were giants, were
+they? Not at all, only great boys, and we are not only taller than they,
+but mounted on their shoulders to boot, and see twice as far. My dear
+wise man, or wiseacre, it is we that are the ancients, and have
+forgotten more than all our fathers knew. We will take their wisdom
+joyfully, and thank God for it, but not their authority, we know better;
+and of their nonsense not a word. It was very well that they lived, and
+it is very well that they are dead. Let them keep decently buried, for
+respectable dead men never walk."
+
+Tradition does not satisfy us. The American scholar has no folios in his
+library. The antiquary unrolls his codex, hid for eighteen hundred years
+in the ashes of Herculaneum, deciphers its fossil wisdom, telling us
+what great men thought in the bay of Naples, and two thousand years ago.
+"What do you tell of that for?" is the answer to his learning. "What has
+Pythagoras to do with the price of cotton? You may be a very learned
+man; you can read the hieroglyphics of Egypt, I dare say, and know so
+much about the Pharaohs, it is a pity you had not lived in their time,
+when you might have been good for something; but you are too
+old-fashioned for our business, and may return to your dust." An eminent
+American, a student of Egyptian history, with a scholarly indignation
+declared, "There is not a man who cares to know whether Shoophoo lived
+one thousand years before Christ, or three."
+
+The example of other and ancient States does not terrify or instruct us.
+If slavery were a curse to Athens, the corruption of Corinth, the
+undoing of Rome, and all history shows it was so, we will learn no
+lesson from that experience, for we say, "We are not Athenians, men of
+Corinth, nor pagan Romans, thank God, but free republicans, Christians
+of America. We live in the nineteenth century, and though slavery worked
+all that mischief then and there, we know how to make money out of it,
+twelve hundred millions of dollars, as Mr. Clay counts the cash."
+
+The example of contemporary nations furnishes us little warning or
+guidance. We will set our own precedents, and do not like to be told
+that the Prussians or the Dutch have learned some things in the
+education of the people before us, which we shall do well to learn after
+them. So when a good man tells us of their schools and their colleges,
+"patriotic" school-masters exclaim, "It is not true; our schools are the
+best in the world! But if it were true, it is unpatriotic to say so; it
+aids and comforts the enemy." Jonathan knows little of war; he has heard
+his grandfather talk of Lexington and Saratoga; he thinks he should like
+to have a little touch of battle on his own account: so when there is
+difficulty in setting up the fence betwixt his estate and his neighbors,
+he blusters for awhile, talks big, and threatens to strike his father;
+but, not having quite the stomach for that experiment, falls to beating
+his other neighbor, who happens to be poor, weak, and of a sickly
+constitution; and when he beats her at every step,--
+
+    "For 'tis no war, as each one knows,
+    When only one side deals the blows,
+    And t' other bears 'em,"--
+
+Jonathan thinks he has covered himself "with imperishable honors," and
+sets up his general for a great king. Poor Jonathan--he does not know
+the misery, the tears, the blood, the shame, the wickedness, and the sin
+he has set a-going, and which one day he is to account for with God who
+forgets nothing!
+
+Yet while we are so unwilling to accept the good principles, to be
+warned by the fate, or guided by the success, of other nations, we
+gladly and servilely copy their faults, their follies, their vice and
+sin. Like all upstarts, we pique ourselves on our imitation of
+aristocratic ways. How many a blusterer in Congress,--for there are two
+denominations of blusterers, differing only in degree, your great
+blusterer in Congress and your little blusterer in a bar-room,--has
+roared away hours long against aristocratic influence, in favor of the
+"pure democracy," while he played the oligarch in his native village,
+the tyrant over his hired help, and though no man knows who his
+grandfather was, spite of the herald's office, conjures up some
+trumpery coat of arms! Like a clown, who, by pinching his appetite, has
+bought a gaudy cloak for Sabbath wearing, we chuckle inwardly at our
+brave apery of foreign absurdities, hoping that strangers will be
+astonished at us--which, sure enough, comes to pass. Jonathan is as vain
+as he is conceited, and expects that the Fiddlers, and the Trollopes,
+and others, who visit us periodically as the swallows, and likewise for
+what they can catch, shall only extol, or at least stand aghast at the
+brave spectacle we offer, of "the freest and most enlightened nation in
+the world;" and if they tell us that we are an ill-mannered set, raw and
+clownish, that we pick our teeth with a fork, loll back in our chairs,
+and make our countenance hateful with tobacco, and that with all our
+excellences we are a nation of "rowdies,"--why, we are offended, and our
+feelings are hurt. There was an African chief, long ago, who ruled over
+a few miserable cabins, and one day received a French traveller from
+Paris, under a tree. With the exception of a pair of shoes, our chief
+was as naked as a pestle, but with great complacency he asked the
+traveller, "What do they say of me at Paris?"
+
+Such is our dread of authority, that we like not old things; hence we
+are always a-changing. Our house must be new, and our book, and even our
+church. So we choose a material that soon wears out, though it often
+outlasts our patience. The wooden house is an apt emblem of this sign
+of the times. But this love of change appears not less in important
+matters. We think "Of old things all are over old, of new things none
+are new enough." So the age asks of all institutions their right to be:
+What right has the government to existence? Who gave the majority a
+right to control the minority, to restrict trade, levy taxes, make laws,
+and all that? If the nation goes into a committee of the whole and makes
+laws, some little man goes into a committee of one and passes his
+counter resolves. The State of South Carolina is a nice example of this
+self-reliance, and this questioning of all authority. That little brazen
+State, which contains only about half so many free white inhabitants as
+the single city of New York, but which none the less claims to have
+monopolized most of the chivalry of the nation, and its patriotism, as
+well as political wisdom--that chivalrous little State says, "If the
+nation does not make laws to suit us; if it does not allow us to
+imprison all black seamen from the North; if it prevents the extension
+of Slavery wherever we wish to carry it--then the State of South
+Carolina will nullify, and leave the other nine-and-twenty States to go
+to ruin!"
+
+Men ask what right have the churches to the shadow of authority which
+clings to them--to make creeds, and to bind and to loose! So it is a
+thing which has happened, that when a church excommunicates a young
+stripling for heresy, he turns round, fulminates his edict, and
+excommunicates the church. Said a sly Jesuit to an American Protestant
+at Rome, "But the rites and customs and doctrines of the Catholic church
+go back to the second century, the age after the apostles!" "No doubt of
+it," said the American, who had also read the Fathers, "they go back to
+the times of the apostles themselves; but that proves nothing, for there
+were as great fools in the first century as the last. A fool or a folly
+is no better because it is an old folly or an old fool. There are fools
+enough now, in all conscience. Pray don't go back to prove their
+apostolical succession."
+
+There are always some men who are born out of due season, men of past
+ages, stragglers of former generations, who ought to have been born
+before Dr. Faustus invented printing, but who are unfortunately born
+now, or, if born long ago, have been fraudulently and illegally
+concealed by their mothers, and are now, for the first time, brought to
+light. The age lifts such aged juveniles from the ground, and bids them
+live, but they are sadly to seek in this day; they are old-fashioned
+boys; their authority is called in question; their traditions and old
+wives' fables are laughed at, at any rate disbelieved; they get
+profanely elbowed in the crowd--men not knowing their great age and
+consequent venerableness; the shovel hat, though apparently born on
+their head, is treated with disrespect. The very boys laugh pertly in
+their face when they speak, and even old men can scarce forbear a
+smile, though it may be a smile of pity. The age affords such men a
+place, for it is a catholic age, large-minded, and tolerant,--such a
+place as it gives to ancient armor, Indian Bibles, and fossil bones of
+the mastodon; it puts them by in some room seldom used, with other old
+furniture, and allows them to mumble their anilities by themselves; now
+and then takes off its hat; looks in, charitably, to keep the mediaeval
+relics in good heart, and pretends to listen, as they discourse of what
+comes of nothing and goes to it; but in matters which the age cares
+about, commerce, manufactures, politics, which it cares much for, even
+in education, which it cares far too little about, it trusts no such
+counsellors, nor tolerates, nor ever affects to listen.
+
+Then there is a philosophical tendency, distinctly visible; a groping
+after ultimate facts, first principles, and universal ideas. We wish to
+know first the fact, next the law of that fact, and then the reason of
+the law. A sign of this tendency is noticeable in the titles of books;
+we have no longer "treatises" n the eye, the ear, sleep, and so forth,
+but in their place we find works professing to treat of the "philosophy"
+of vision, of sound, of sleep. Even in the pulpits, men speak about the
+"philosophy" of religion; we have philosophical lectures, delivered to
+men of little culture, which would have amazed our grandfathers, who
+thought a shoemaker should never go beyond his last, even to seek for
+the philosophy of shoes. "What a pity," said a grave Scotchman, in the
+beginning of this century, "to teach the beautiful science of geometry
+to weavers and cobblers." Here nothing is too good or high for any one
+tall and good enough to get hold of it. What audiences attend the Lowell
+lectures in Boston--two or three thousand men, listening to twelve
+lectures on the philosophy of fish! It would not bring a dollar or a
+vote, only thought to their minds! Young ladies are well versed in the
+philosophy of the affections, and understand the theory of attraction,
+while their grandmothers, good easy souls, were satisfied with the
+possession of the fact. The circumstance, that philosophical lectures
+get delivered by men like Walker, Agassiz, Emerson, and their
+coadjutors, men who do not spare abstruseness, get listened to, and even
+understood, in town and village, by large crowds of men, of only the
+most common culture; this indicates a philosophical tendency, unknown in
+any other land or age. Our circle of professed scholars, men of culture
+and learning, is a very small one, while our circle of thinking men is
+disproportionately large. The best thought of France and Germany finds a
+readier welcome here than in our parent land: nay, the newest and the
+best thought of England, finds its earliest and warmest welcome in
+America. It was a little remarkable, that Bacon and Newton should be
+reprinted here, and La Place should have found his translator and
+expositor coming out of an insurance office in Salem! Men of no great
+pretensions object to an accomplished and eloquent politician: "That is
+all very well; he made us cry and laugh, but the discourse was not
+philosophical; he never tells us the reason of the thing; he seems not
+only not to know it, but not to know that there is a reason for the
+thing, and if not, what is the use of this bobbing on the surface?"
+Young maidens complain of the minister, that he has no philosophy in his
+sermons, nothing but precepts, which they could read in the Bible as
+well as he; perhaps in heathen Seneca. He does not feed their souls.
+
+One finds this tendency where it is least expected: there is a
+philosophical party in politics, a very small party it may be, but an
+actual one. They aim to get at everlasting ideas and universal laws, not
+made by man, but by God, and for man, who only finds them; and from them
+they aim to deduce all particular enactments, so that each statute in
+the code shall represent a fact in the universe; a point of thought in
+God; so, indeed, that legislation shall be divine in the same sense that
+a true system of astronomy is divine--or the Christian religion--the law
+corresponding to a fact. Men of this party, in New England, have more
+ideas than precedents, are spontaneous more than logical; have
+intuitions, rather than intellectual convictions, arrived at by the
+process of reasoning. They think it is not philosophical to take a
+young scoundrel and shut him up with a party of old ones, for his
+amendment; not philosophical to leave children with no culture,
+intellectual, moral, or religious, exposed to the temptations of a high
+and corrupt civilization, and then, when they go astray--as such
+barbarians needs must, in such temptations--to hang them by the neck for
+the example's sake. They doubt if war is a more philosophical mode of
+getting justice between two nations, than blows to settle a quarrel
+between two men. In either case, they do not see how it follows, that he
+who can strike the hardest blow is always in the right. In short, they
+think that judicial murder, which is hanging, and national murder, which
+is war, are not more philosophical than homicide, which one man commits
+on his own private account.
+
+Theological sects are always the last to feel any popular movement. Yet
+all of them, from the Episcopalians to the Quakers, have each a
+philosophical party, which bids fair to outgrow the party which rests on
+precedent and usage, to overshadow and destroy it. The Catholic church
+itself, though far astern of all the sects, in regard to the great
+movements of the age, shares this spirit, and abroad, if not here, is
+wellnigh rent asunder by the potent medicine which this new Daniel of
+philosophy has put into its mouth. Everywhere in the American churches
+there are signs of a tendency to drop all that rests merely on
+tradition and hearsay, to cling only to such facts as bide the test of
+critical search, and such doctrines as can be verified in human
+consciousness here and to-day. Doctors of divinity destroy the faith
+they once preached.
+
+True, there are antagonistic tendencies, for, soon as one pole is
+developed, the other appears; objections are made to philosophy, the old
+cry is raised--"Infidelity," "Denial," "Free-thinking." It is said that
+philosophy will corrupt the young men, will spoil the old ones, and
+deceive the very elect. "Authority and tradition," say some, "are all we
+need consult; reason must be put down, or she will soon ask terrible
+questions." There is good cause for these men warring against reason and
+philosophy; it is purely in self-defence. But this counsel and that cry
+come from those quarters before mentioned, where the men of past ages
+have their place, where the forgotten is re-collected, the obsolete
+preserved, and the useless held in esteem. The counsel is not dangerous;
+the bird of night, who overstays his hour, is only troublesome to
+himself, and was never known to hurt a dovelet or a mouseling after
+sun-rise. In the night only is the owl destructive. Some of those who
+thus cry out against this tendency, are excellent men in their way, and
+highly useful, valuable as conveyancers of opinions. So long as there
+are men who take opinions as real estate, "to have and to hold for
+themselves and their heirs forever," why should there not be such
+conveyancers of opinions, as well as of land? And as it is not the duty
+of the latter functionary to ascertain the quality or the value of the
+land, but only its metes and bounds, its appurtenances and the title
+thereto; to see if the grantor is regularly seized and possessed
+thereof, and has good right to convey and devise the same, and to make
+sure that the whole conveyance is regularly made out,--so is it with
+these conveyancers of opinion; so should it be, and they are valuable
+men. It is a good thing to know that we hold under Scotus, and Ramus,
+and Albertus Magnus, who were regularly seized of this or that opinion.
+It gives an absurdity the dignity of a relic. Sometimes these worthies,
+who thus oppose reason and her kin, seem to have a good deal in them,
+and, when one examines, he finds more than he looked for. They are like
+a nest of boxes from Hingham and Nuremburg, you open one, and behold
+another; that, and lo! a third. So you go on, opening and opening, and
+finding and finding, till at last you come to the heart of the matter,
+and then you find a box that is very little, and entirely empty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, with all this tendency--and it is now so strong that it cannot be
+put down, nor even howled down, much as it may be howled over--there is
+a lamentable want of first principles, well known and established; we
+have rejected the authority of tradition, but not yet accepted the
+authority of truth and justice. We will not be treated as striplings,
+and are not old enough to go alone as men. Accordingly, nothing seems
+fixed. There is a perpetual see-sawing of opposite principles. Somebody
+said ministers ought to be ordained on horseback, because they are to
+remain so short a time in one place. It would be as emblematic to
+inaugurate American politicians, by swearing them on a weathercock. The
+great men of the land have as many turns in their course as the Euripus
+or the Missouri. Even the facts given in the spiritual nature of man are
+called in question. An eminent Unitarian divine regards the existence of
+God as a matter of opinion, thinks it cannot be demonstrated, and
+publicly declares that it is "not a certainty." Some American
+Protestants no longer take the Bible as the standard of ultimate appeal,
+yet venture not to set up in that place reason, conscience, the soul
+getting help of God; others, who affect to accept the Scripture as the
+last authority, yet, when questioned as to their belief in the
+miraculous and divine birth of Jesus of Nazareth, are found unable to
+say yes or no, not having made up their minds.
+
+In politics, it is not yet decided whether it is best to leave men to
+buy where they can buy cheapest, and sell where they can sell dearest,
+or to restrict that matter.
+
+It was a clear case to our fathers, in '76, that all men were "created
+equal," each with "Unalienable Rights." That seemed so clear, that
+reasoning would not make it appear more reasonable; it was taken for
+granted, as a self-evident proposition. The whole nation said so. Now,
+it is no strange thing to find it said that negroes are not "created
+equal" in unalienable rights with white men. Nay, in the Senate of the
+United States, a famous man declares all this talk a dangerous mistake.
+The practical decision of the nation looks the same way. So, to make our
+theory accord with our practice, we ought to recommit the Declaration to
+the hands which drafted that great State-paper, and instruct Mr.
+Jefferson to amend the document, and declare that "All men are created
+equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, if
+born of white mothers; but if not, not."
+
+In this lack of first principles, it is not settled in the popular
+consciousness, that there is such a thing as an absolute right, a great
+law of God, which we are to keep, come what will come. So the nation is
+not upright, but goes stooping. Hence, in private affairs, law takes the
+place of conscience, and, in public, might of right. So the bankrupt
+pays his shilling in the pound, and gets his discharge, but afterwards,
+becoming rich, does not think of paying the other nineteen shillings. He
+will tell you the law is his conscience; if that be satisfied, so is
+he. But you will yet find him letting money at one or two per cent. a
+month, contrary to law; and then he will tell you that paying a debt is
+a matter of law, while letting money is only a matter of conscience. So
+he rides either indifferently--now the public hack, and now his own
+private nag, according as it serves his turn.
+
+So a rich State borrows money and "repudiates" the debt, satisfying its
+political conscience, as the bankrupt his commercial conscience, with
+the notion that there is no absolute right; that expediency is the only
+justice, and that King People can do no wrong. No calm voice of
+indignation cries out from the pulpit and the press and the heart of the
+people, to shame the repudiators into decent morals; because it is not
+settled in the popular mind that there is any absolute right. Then,
+because we are strong and the Mexicans weak, because we want their land
+for a slave-pasture and they cannot keep us out of it, we think that is
+reason enough for waging an infamous war of plunder. Grave men do not
+ask about "the natural justice" of such an undertaking, only about its
+cost. Have we not seen an American Congress vote a plain lie, with only
+sixteen dissenting voices in the whole body; has not the head of the
+nation continually repeated that lie; and do not both parties, even at
+this day, sustain the vote?
+
+Now and then there rises up an honest man, with a great Christian heart
+in his bosom, and sets free a score or two of slaves inherited from his
+father; watches over and tends them in their new-found freedom: or
+another, who, when legally released from payment of his debts, restores
+the uttermost farthing. We talk of this and praise it, as an
+extraordinary thing. Indeed it is so; justice is an unusual thing, and
+such men deserve the honor they thus win. But such praise shows that
+such honesty is a rare honesty. The northern man, born on the
+battle-ground of freedom, goes to the South and becomes the most
+tyrannical of slave-drivers. The son of the Puritan, bred up in austere
+ways, is sent to Congress to stand up for truth and right, but he turns
+out a "dough-face," and betrays the duty he went to serve. Yet he does
+not lose his place, for every dough-faced representative has a
+dough-faced constituency to back him.
+
+It is a great mischief that comes from lacking first principles, and the
+worst part of it comes from lacking first principles in morals. Thereby
+our eyes are holden so that we see not the great social evils all about
+us. We attempt to justify slavery, even to do it in the name of Jesus
+Christ. The whig party of the North loves slavery; the democratic party
+does not even seek to conceal its affection therefor. A great politician
+declares the Mexican war wicked, and then urges men to go and fight it;
+he thinks a famous general not fit to be nominated for President, but
+then invites men to elect him. Politics are national morals, the morals
+of Thomas and Jeremiah, multiplied by millions. But it is not decided
+yet that honesty is the best policy for a politician; it is thought that
+the best policy is honesty, at least as near it as the times will allow.
+Many politicians seem undecided how to turn, and so sit on the fence
+between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. Facing-both-ways is a popular
+politician in America just now, sitting on the fence between honesty and
+dishonesty, and, like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testaments,
+belonging to neither dispensation. It is a little amusing to a trifler
+to hear a man's fitness for the Presidency defended on the ground that
+he has no definite convictions or ideas!
+
+There was once a man who said he always told a lie when it would serve
+his special turn. It is a pity he went to his own place long ago. He
+seemed born for a party politician in America. He would have had a large
+party, for he made a great many converts before he died, and left a
+numerous kindred busy in the editing of newspapers, writing addresses
+for the people, and passing "resolutions."
+
+It must strike a stranger as a little odd, that a republic should have a
+slaveholder for President five sixths of the time, and most of the
+important offices be monopolized by other slaveholders; a little
+surprising that all the pulpits and most of the presses should be in
+favor of slavery, at least not against it. But such is the fact.
+Everybody knows the character of the American government for some years
+past, and of the American parties in politics. "Like master, like man,"
+used to be a true proverb in old England, and "Like people, like ruler,"
+is a true proverb in America; true now. Did a decided people ever choose
+dough-faces?--a people that loved God and man, choose representatives
+that cared for neither truth nor justice? Now and then, for dust gets
+into the brightest eyes; but did they ever choose such men continually?
+The people are always fairly represented; our representatives do
+actually represent us, and in more senses than they are paid for.
+Congress and the Cabinet are only two thermometers hung up in the
+capital, to show the temperature of the national morals.
+
+But amid this general uncertainty there are two capital maxims which
+prevail amongst our huxters of politics: To love your party better than
+your country, and yourself better than your party. There are, it is
+true, real statesmen amongst us, men who love justice and do the right,
+but they seem lost in the mob of vulgar politicians and the dust of
+party editors.
+
+Since the nation loves freedom above all things, the name democracy is a
+favorite name. No party could live a twelvemonth that should declare
+itself anti-democratic. Saint and sinner, statesman and politician,
+alike love the name. So it comes to pass that there are two things
+which bear that name; each has its type and its motto. The motto of one
+is, "You are as good as I, and let us help one another." That represents
+the democracy of the Declaration of Independence, and of the New
+Testament; its type is a free school, where children of all ranks meet
+under the guidance of intelligent and Christian men, to be educated in
+mind, and heart, and soul. The other has for its motto, "I am as good as
+you, so get out of my way." Its type is the bar-room of a tavern--dirty,
+offensive, stained with tobacco, and full of drunken, noisy, quarrelsome
+"rowdies," just returned from the Mexican war, and ready for a "buffalo
+hunt," for privateering, or to go and plunder any one who is better off
+than themselves, especially if also better. That is not exactly the
+democracy of the Declaration, or of the New Testament; but of--no matter
+whom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, again, there is a great intensity of life and purpose. This
+displays itself in our actions and speeches; in our speculations; in the
+"revivals" of the more serious sects; in the excitements of trade; in
+the general character of the people. All that we do we overdo. It
+appears in our hopefulness; we are the most aspiring of nations. Not
+content with half the continent, we wish the other half. We have this
+characteristic of genius: we are dissatisfied with all that we have
+done. Somebody once said we were too vain to be proud. It is not wholly
+so; the national idea is so far above us that any achievement seems
+little and low. The American soul passes away from its work soon as it
+is finished. So the soul of each great artist refuses to dwell in his
+finished work, for that seems little to his dream. Our fathers deemed
+the Revolution a great work; it was once thought a surprising thing to
+found that little colony on the shores of New England; but young America
+looks to other revolutions, and thinks she has many a Plymouth colony in
+her bosom. If other nations wonder at our achievements, we are a
+disappointment to ourselves, and wonder we have not done more. Our
+national idea out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began
+our national career by setting all history at defiance--for that said,
+"A republic on a large scale cannot exist." Our progress since has shown
+that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The political
+ideas of the nation are transcendant, not empirical. Human history could
+not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of
+the new idea: the nation went behind human history and appealed to human
+nature.
+
+We are more spontaneous than logical; we have ideas, rather than facts
+or precedents. We dream more than we remember, and so have many orators
+and poets, or poetasters, with but few antiquaries and general
+scholars. We are not so reflective as forecasting. We are the most
+intuitive of modern nations. The very party in politics which has the
+least culture, is richest in ideas which will one day become facts.
+Great truths--political, philosophical, religious--lie a-burning in many
+a young heart which cannot legitimate nor prove them true, but none the
+less feels, and feels them true. A man full of new truths finds a ready
+audience with us. Many things which come disguised as truths under such
+circumstances pass current for a time, but by and by their bray
+discovers them. The hope which comes from this intensity of life and
+intuition of truths is a national characteristic. It gives courage,
+enterprise, and strength. They can who think they can. We are confident
+in our star; other nations may see it or not, we know it is there above
+the clouds. We do not hesitate at rash experiments--sending fifty
+thousand soldiers to conquer a nation with eight or nine millions of
+people. We are up to every thing, and think ourselves a match for any
+thing. The young man is rash, for he only hopes, having little to
+remember; he is excitable, and loves excitement; change of work is his
+repose; he is hot and noisy, sanguine and fearless, with the courage
+that comes from warm blood and ignorance of dangers; he does not know
+what a hard, tough, sour old world he is born into. We are a nation of
+young men. We talked of annexing Texas and northern Mexico, and did
+both; now we grasp at Cuba, Central America,--all the continent,--and
+speak of a railroad to the Pacific as a trifle for us to accomplish. Our
+national deeds are certainly great, but our hope and promise far
+outbrags them all.
+
+If this intensity of life and hope have its good side, it has also its
+evil; with much of the excellence of youth we have its faults--rashness,
+haste, and superficiality. Our work is seldom well done. In English
+manufactures there is a certain solid honesty of performance; in the
+French a certain air of elegance and refinement: one misses both these
+in American works. It is said America invents the most machines, but
+England builds them best. We lack the phlegmatic patience of older
+nations. We are always in a hurry, morning, noon and night. We are
+impatient of the process, but greedy of the result; so that we make
+short experiments but long reports, and talk much though we say little.
+We forget that a sober method is a short way of coming to the end, and
+that he who, before he sets out, ascertains where he is going and the
+way thither, ends his journey more prosperously than one who settles
+these matters by the way. Quickness is a great desideratum with us. It
+is said an American ship is known far off at sea by the quantity of
+canvas she carries. Rough and ready is a popular attribute. Quick and
+off would be a symbolic motto for the nation at this day, representing
+one phase of our character. We are sudden in deliberation; the
+"one-hour rule" works well in Congress. A committee of the British
+Parliament spends twice or thrice our time in collecting facts,
+understanding and making them intelligible, but less than our time in
+speech-making after the report; speeches there commonly being for the
+purpose of facilitating the business, while here one sometimes is half
+ready to think, notwithstanding our earnestness, that the business is to
+facilitate the speaking. A State revises her statutes with a rapidity
+that astonishes a European. Yet each revision brings some amendment, and
+what is found good in the constitution or laws of one State gets
+speedily imitated by the rest; each new State of the North becoming more
+democratic than its predecessor.
+
+We are so intent on our purpose that we have no time for amusement. We
+have but one or two festivals in the year, and even then we are serious
+and reformatory. Jonathan thinks it a very solemn thing to be merry. A
+Frenchman said we have but two amusements in America--Theology for the
+women and politics for the men; preaching and voting. If this be true,
+it may help to explain the fact that most men take their theology from
+their wives, and women politics from their husbands. No nation ever
+tried the experiment of such abstinence from amusement. We have no time
+for sport, and so lose much of the poetry of life. All work and no play
+does not always make a dull boy, but it commonly makes a hard man.
+
+We rush from school into business early; we hurry while in business; we
+aim to be rich quickly, making a fortune at a stroke, making or losing
+it twice or thrice in a lifetime. "Soft and fair, goes safe and far," is
+no proverb to our taste. We are the most restless of people. How we
+crowd into cars and steamboats; a locomotive would well typify our
+fuming, fizzing spirit. In our large towns life seems to be only a
+scamper. Not satisfied with bustling about all day, when night comes we
+cannot sit still, but alone of all nations have added rockers to our
+chairs.
+
+All is haste, from the tanning of leather to the education of a boy, and
+the old saw holds its edge good as ever--"the more haste the worse
+speed." The young stripling, innocent of all manner of lore, whom a
+judicious father has barrelled down in a college, or law-school, or
+theological seminary, till his beard be grown, mourns over the few years
+he must spend there awaiting that operation. His rule is, "to make a
+spoon or spoil a horn;" he longs to be out in the world "making a
+fortune," or "doing good," as he calls what his father better names
+"making noisy work for repentance, and doing mischief." So he rushes
+into life not fitted, and would fly towards heaven, this young Icarus,
+his wings not half fledged. There seems little taste for thoroughness.
+In our schools as our farms, we pass over much ground but pass over it
+poorly.
+
+In education the aim is not to get the most we can, but the least we can
+get along with. A ship with over-much canvas and over-little ballast
+were no bad emblem of many amongst us. In no country is it so easy to
+get a reputation for learning--accumulated thought, because so few
+devote themselves to that accumulation. In this respect our standard is
+low. So a man of one attainment is sure to be honored, but a man of many
+and varied abilities is in danger of being undervalued. A Spurzheim
+would be warmly welcomed, while a Humboldt would be suspected of
+superficiality, as we have not the standard to judge him by. Yet in no
+country in the world is it so difficult to get a reputation for
+eloquence, as many speak and that well. It is surprising with what
+natural strength and beauty the young American addresses himself to
+speak. Some hatter's apprentice, or shoemaker's journeyman, at a
+temperance or anti-slavery meeting, will speak words like the blows of
+an axe, that cut clean and deep. The country swarms with orators, more
+abundantly where education is least esteemed--in the West or South.
+
+We have secured national unity of action for the white citizens, without
+much curtailing individual variety of action, so we have at the North
+pretty well solved that problem which other nations have so often
+boggled over; we have balanced the centripetal power, the government and
+laws, with the centrifugal power, the mass of individuals, into
+harmonious proportions. If one were to leave out of sight the three
+million slaves, one sixth part of the population, the problem might be
+regarded as very happily solved. As the consequences of this, in no
+country is there more talent, or so much awake and active. In the South
+this unity is attained by sacrificing all the rights of three million
+slaves, and almost all the rights of the other colored population. In
+despotic countries this unity is brought about by the sacrifice of
+freedom, individual variety of action, in all except the despot and his
+favorites; so, much of the nation's energy is stifled in the chains of
+the State, while here it is friendly to institutions which are friendly
+to it, goes to its work, and approves itself in the vast increase of
+wealth and comfort throughout the North, where there is no class of men
+which is so oppressed that it cannot rise. One is amazed at the amount
+of ready skill and general ability which he finds in all the North,
+where each man has a little culture, takes his newspaper, manages
+his own business, and talks with some intelligence of many
+things--especially of politics and theology. In respect to this general
+intellectual ability and power of self-help, the mass of people seem far
+in advance of any other nation. But at the same time our scholars, who
+always represent the nation's higher modes of consciousness, will not
+bear comparison with the scholars of England, France, and Germany, men
+thoroughly furnished for their work. This is a great reproach and
+mischief to us, for we need most accomplished leaders, who by their
+thought can direct this national intensity of life. Our literature does
+not furnish them; we have no great men there; Irving, Channing, Cooper,
+are not names to conjure with in literature. One reads thick volumes
+devoted to the poets of America, or her prose writers, and finds many
+names which he wonders he never heard of before, but when he turns over
+their works, he finds consolation and recovers his composure.
+
+American literature may be divided into two departments: the permanent
+literature, which gets printed in books, that sometimes reach more than
+one edition; and the evanescent literature, which appears only in the
+form of speeches, pamphlets, reviews, newspaper articles, and the like
+extempore productions. Now our permanent literature, as a general thing,
+is superficial, tame, and weak; it is not American; it has not our
+ideas, our contempt of authority, our philosophical turn, nor even our
+uncertainty as to first principles, still less our national intensity,
+our hope, and fresh intuitive perceptions of truth. It is a miserable
+imitation. Love of freedom is not there. The real national literature is
+found almost wholly in speeches, pamphlets, and newspapers. The latter
+are pretty thoroughly American; mirrors in which we see no very
+flattering likeness of our morals or our manners. Yet the picture is
+true: that vulgarity, that rant, that bragging violence, that
+recklessness of truth and justice, that disregard of right and duty, are
+a part of the nation's everyday life. Our newspapers are low and "wicked
+to a fault;" only in this weakness are they un-American. Yet they
+exhibit, and abundantly, the four qualities we have mentioned as
+belonging to the signs of our times. As a general rule, our orators are
+also American, with our good and ill. Now and then one rises who has
+studied Demosthenes in Leland or Francis, and got a second-hand
+acquaintance with old models: a man who uses literary commonplaces, and
+thinks himself original and classic because he can quote a line or so of
+Horace, in a Western House of Representatives, without getting so many
+words wrong as his reporter; but such men are rare, and after making due
+abatement for them, our orators all over the land are pretty thoroughly
+American, a little turgid, hot, sometimes brilliant, hopeful, intuitive,
+abounding in half truths, full of great ideas; often inconsequent;
+sometimes coarse; patriotic, vain, self-confident, rash, strong, and
+young-mannish. Of course the most of our speeches are vulgar, ranting,
+and worthless, but we have produced some magnificent specimens of
+oratory, which are fresh, original, American, and brand new.
+
+The more studied, polished, and elegant literature is not so; that is
+mainly an imitation. It seems not a thing of native growth. Sometimes,
+as in Channing, the thought and the hope are American, but the form and
+the coloring old and foreign. We dare not be original; our American pine
+must be cut to the trim pattern of the English yew, though the pine
+bleed at every clip. This poet tunes his lyre at the harp of Goethe,
+Milton, Pope, or Tennyson. His songs might be better sung on the Rhine
+than the Kennebec. They are not American in form or feeling; they have
+not the breath of our air; the smell of our ground is not in them. Hence
+our poet seems cold and poor. He loves the old mythology; talks about
+Pluto--the Greek devil, the fates and furies--witches of old time in
+Greece, but would blush to use our mythology, or breathe the name in
+verse of our devil, or our own witches, lest he should be thought to
+believe what he wrote. The mother and sisters, who with many a pinch and
+pain sent the hopeful boy to college, must turn over the classical
+dictionary before they can find out what the youth would be at in his
+rhymes. Our poet is not deep enough to see that Aphrodite came from the
+ordinary waters, that Homer only hitched into rhythm and furnished the
+accomplishment of verse to street-talk, nursery tales, and old men's
+gossip in the Ionian towns; he thinks what is common is unclean. So he
+sings of Corinth and Athens, which he never saw, but has not a word to
+say of Boston, and Fall River, and Baltimore, and New York, which are
+just as meet for song. He raves of Thermopylae and Marathon, with never a
+word for Lexington and Bunker-hill, for Cowpens, and Lundy's Lane, and
+Bemis's Heights. He loves to tell of the Ilyssus, of "smooth-sliding
+Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds," yet sings not of the Petapsco, the
+Susquehanna, the Aroostook, and the Willimantick. He prates of the
+narcissus and the daisy, never of American dandelions and blue-eyed
+grass; he dwells on the lark and the nightingale, but has not a thought
+for the brown thrasher and the bobolink, who every morning in June rain
+down such showers of melody on his affected head. What a lesson Burns
+teaches us, addressing his "rough bur-thistle," his daisy, "wee crimson
+tippit thing," and finding marvellous poetry in the mouse whose nest his
+plough turned over! Nay, how beautifully has even our sweet poet sung of
+our own Green river, our waterfowl, of the blue and fringed gentian, the
+glory of autumnal days.
+
+Hitherto, spite of the great reading public, we have no permanent
+literature which corresponds to the American idea. Perhaps it is not
+time for that; it must be organized in deeds before it becomes classic
+in words; but as yet we have no such literature which reflects even the
+surface of American life, certainly nothing which portrays our intensity
+of life, our hope, or even our daily doings and drivings, as the
+Odyssey paints old Greek life, or Don Quixote and Gil Bias portray
+Spanish life. Literary men are commonly timid; ours know they are but
+poorly fledged as yet, so dare not fly away from the parent tree, but
+hop timidly from branch to branch. Our writers love to creep about in
+the shadow of some old renown, not venturing to soar away into the
+unwinged air, to sing of things here and now, making our life classic.
+So, without the grace of high culture, and the energy of American
+thought, they become weak, cold, and poor; are "curious, not knowing,
+not exact, but nice." Too fastidious to be wise, too unlettered to be
+elegant, too critical to create, they prefer a dull saying that is old
+to a novel form of speech, or a natural expression of a new truth. In a
+single American work,--and a famous one too,--there are over sixty
+similes, not one original, and all poor. A few men, conscious of this
+defect, this sin against the Holy Spirit of Literature, go to the
+opposite extreme, and are American-mad; they wilfully talk rude, write
+in-numerous verse, and play their harps all jangling, out of tune. A yet
+fewer few are American without madness. One such must not here be passed
+by, alike philosopher and bard, in whose writings "ancient wisdom shines
+with new-born beauty," and who has enriched a genius thoroughly American
+in the best sense, with a cosmopolitan culture and literary skill, which
+were wonderful in any land. But of American literature in general, and
+of him in special, more shall be said at another time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another remarkable feature is our excessive love of material things.
+This is more than a Utilitarianism, a preference of the useful over the
+beautiful. The Puritan at Plymouth had a corn-field, a cabbage-garden,
+and a patch for potatoes, a school-house, and a church, before he sat
+down to play the fiddle. He would have been a fool to reverse this
+process. It were poor economy and worse taste to have painters,
+sculptors, and musicians, while the rude wants of the body are uncared
+for. But our fault in this respect is, that we place too much the charm
+of life in mere material things,--houses, lands, well-spread tables, and
+elegant furniture,--not enough in man, in virtue, wisdom, genius,
+religion, greatness of soul, and nobleness of life. We mistake a
+perfection of the means of manliness for the end--manhood itself. Yet
+the housekeeping of a Shakspeare, Milton, Franklin, had only one thing
+worth boasting of. Strange to say, that was the master of the house. A
+rich and vulgar man once sported a coach and four, and at its first
+turn-out rode into the great commercial street of a large town in New
+England. "How fine you must feel with your new coach and four," said one
+of his old friends, though not quite so rich. "Yes," was the reply, "as
+fine as a beetle in a gold snuff-box." All of his kindred are not so
+nice and discriminating in their self-consciousness.
+
+This practical materialism is a great affliction to us. We think a man
+cannot be poor and great also. So we see a great man sell himself for a
+little money, and it is thought "a good operation." A conspicuous man,
+in praise of a certain painter, summed up his judgment with this: "Why,
+Sir, he has made twenty thousand dollars by his pictures." "A good deal
+more than Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael together," might have
+been the reply. But it is easier to weigh purses than artistic skill. It
+was a characteristic praise bestowed in Boston on a distinguished
+American writer, that his book brought him more money than any man had
+ever realized for an original work in this country. "Commerce," said Mr.
+Pitt, "having got into both houses of Parliament, privilege must be done
+away,"--the privilege of wit and genius, not less than rank. Clergymen
+estimate their own and their brothers' importance, not by their
+apostolical gifts, or even apostolic succession, but by the value of the
+living.
+
+All other nations have this same fault, it may be said. But there is
+this difference: in other nations the things of a man are put before the
+man himself; so a materialism which exalts the accidents of the
+man--rank, wealth, birth, and the like--above the man, is not
+inconsistent with the general idea of England or Austria. In America it
+is a contradiction. Besides, in most civilized countries, there is a
+class of men living on inherited wealth, who devote their lives to
+politics, art, science, letters, and so are above the mere material
+elegance which surrounds them. That class has often inflicted a deep
+wound on society, which festers long and leads to serious trouble in the
+system, but at the same time it redeems a nation from the reproach of
+mere material vulgarity; it has been the source of refinement, and has
+warmed into life much of the wisdom and beauty which have thence spread
+over all the world. In America there is no such class. Young men
+inheriting wealth very rarely turn to any thing noble; they either
+convert their talents into gold, or their gold into furniture, wines,
+and confectionary. A young man of wealth does not know what to do with
+himself or it; a rich young woman seems to have no resource but
+marriage! Yet it must be confessed, that at least in one part of the
+United States wealth flows freely for the support of public institutions
+of education.
+
+Here it is difficult for a man of science to live by his thought. Was
+Bowditch one of the first mathematicians of his age? He must be at the
+head of an annuity office. If Socrates should set up as a dealer in
+money, and outwit the brokers as formerly the Sophists, and shave notes
+as skilfully as of old, we should think him a great man. But if he
+adopted his old plan, what should we say of him?
+
+Manliness is postponed and wealth preferred. "What a fine house is
+this," one often says; "what furniture; what feasting. But the master of
+the house!--why every stone out of the wall laughs at him. He spent all
+of himself in getting this pretty show together, and now it is empty,
+and mocks its owner. He is the emblematic coffin at the Egyptian feast."
+"Oh, man!" says the looker-on, "why not furnish thyself with a mind, and
+conscience, a heart and a soul, before getting all this brass and
+mahogany together; this beef and these wines?" The poor wight would
+answer,--"Why, Sir, there were none such in the market!"--The young man
+does not say, "I will first of all things be a man, and so being will
+have this thing and the other," putting the agreeable after the
+essential. But he says, "First of all, by hook or by crook, I will have
+money, the manhood may take care of itself." He has it,--for tough and
+hard as the old world is, it is somewhat fluid before a strong man who
+resolutely grapples with difficulty and will swim through, it can be
+made to serve his turn. He has money, but the man has evaporated in the
+process; when you look he is not there. True, other nations have done
+the same thing, and we only repeat their experiment. The old devil of
+conformity says to our American Adam and Eve, "Do this and you shall be
+as gods," a promise as likely to hold good as the devil's did in the
+beginning. A man was meant for something more than a tassel to a large
+estate, and a woman to be more than a rich housekeeper.
+
+With this offensive materialism we copy the vices of feudal aristocracy
+abroad, making our vulgarity still more ridiculous. We are ambitious or
+proud of wealth, which is but labor stored up, and at the same time are
+ashamed of labor which is wealth in process. With all our talk about
+democracy, labor is thought less honorable in Boston than in Berlin and
+Leipsic. Thriving men are afraid their children will be shoemakers, or
+ply some such honorable and useful craft. Yet little pains are taken to
+elevate the condition or improve the manners and morals of those who do
+all the manual work of society. The strong man takes care that his
+children and himself escape that condition. We do not believe that all
+stations are alike honorable if honorably filled; we have little desire
+to equalize the burdens of life, so that there shall be no degraded
+class; none cursed with work, none with idleness. It is popular to endow
+a college; vulgar to take an interest in common schools. Liberty is a
+fact, equality a word, and fraternity, we do not think of yet.
+
+In this struggle for material wealth and the social rank which is based
+thereon, it is amusing to see the shifting of the scenes; the social
+aspirations of one and the contempt with which another rebuts the
+aspirant. An old man can remember when the most exclusive of men, and
+the most golden, had scarce a penny in their purse, and grumbled at not
+finding a place where they would. Now the successful man is ashamed of
+the steps he rose by. The gentleman who came to Boston half a century
+ago, with all his worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief, and
+that not of so large a pattern as are made now-a-days, is ashamed to
+recollect that his father was a currier, or a blacksmith, or a skipper
+at Barnstable or Beverly; ashamed, also, of his forty or fifty country
+cousins, remarkable for nothing but their large hands and their
+excellent memory. Nay, he is ashamed of his own humble beginnings, and
+sneers at men starting as he once started. The generation of English
+"Snobs" came in with the Conqueror, and migrated to America at an early
+day, where they continue to thrive marvellously--the chief "conservative
+party" in the land.
+
+Through this contempt for labor, a certain affectation runs through a
+good deal of American society, and makes our aristocracy vulgar and
+contemptible. What if Burns had been ashamed of his plough, and Franklin
+had lost his recollection of the candle-moulds and the composing stick?
+Mr. Chubbs, who got rich to-day, imitates Mr. Swipes, who got rich
+yesterday, buys the same furniture, gives similar entertainments, and
+counts himself "as good a man as Swipes, any day." Nay, he goes a little
+beyond him, puts his servants in livery, with the "Chubbs arms" on the
+button; but the new-found family arms are not descriptive of the
+character of the Chubbses, or of their origin and history--only of their
+vanity. Then Mr. Swipes looks down on poor Chubbs, and curls his lip
+with scorn; calls him a "parvenu," "an upstart," "a plebeian;" speaks of
+him as one of "that sort of people," "one of your ordinary men;"
+"thrifty and well off in the world, but a little vulgar." At the same
+time Mr. Swipes looks up to Mr. Bung, who got rich the day before
+yesterday, as a gentleman of old family and quite distinguished, and
+receives from that quarter the same treatment he bestows on his
+left-hand neighbor. The real gentleman is the same all the world over.
+Such are by no means lacking here, while the pretended gentlemen swarm
+in America. Chaucer said a good word long ago:
+
+    "--This is not mine intendement
+    To clepen no wight in no age
+    Only gentle for his lineage;
+    But whoso that is virtuous,
+    And in his port not outrageous:
+    When such one thou see'st thee beforn,
+    Though he be not gentle born,
+    Thou mayest well see this in soth,
+    That he is gentle, because he doth
+    As 'longeth to a gentleman;
+    Of them none other deem I can;
+    For certainly withouten drede,
+    A churl is deemed by his deed,
+    Of high or low, as ye may see,
+    Or of what kindred that he be."
+
+It is no wonder vulgar men, who travel here and eat our dinners, laugh
+at this form of vulgarity. Wiser men see its cause, and prophesy its
+speedy decay. Every nation has its aristocracy, or controlling class: in
+some lands it is permanent, an aristocracy of blood; men that are
+descended from distinguished warriors, from the pirates and freebooters
+of a rude age. The nobility of England are proud of their fathers'
+deeds, and emblazon the symbols thereof in their family arms, emblems of
+barbarism. Ours is an aristocracy of wealth, not got by plunder, but by
+toil, thrift, enterprise; of course it is a movable aristocracy: the
+first families of the last century are now forgot, and their successors
+will give place to new names. Now earning is nobler than robbing, and
+work is before war; but we are ashamed of both, and seek to conceal the
+noble source of our wealth. An aristocracy of gold is far preferable to
+the old and immovable nobility of blood, but it has also its peculiar
+vices: it has the effrontery of an upstart, despises its own ladder, is
+heartless and lacks noble principle, vulgar and cursing. This lust of
+wealth, however, does us a service, and gives the whole nation a
+stimulus which it needs, and, low as the motive is, drives us to
+continual advancement. It is a great merit for a nation to secure the
+largest amount of useful and comfortable and beautiful things which can
+be honestly earned, and used with profit to the body and soul of man.
+Only when wealth becomes an idol, and material abundance is made the
+end, not the means, does the love of it become an evil. No nation was
+ever too rich, or overthrifty, though many a nation has lost its soul by
+living wholly for the senses.
+
+Now and then we see noble men living apart from this vulgarity and
+scramble; some rich, some poor, but both content to live for noble aims,
+to pinch and spare for virtue, religion, for truth and right. Such men
+never fail from any age or land, but everywhere they are the exceptional
+men. Still they serve to keep alive the sacred fire in the hearts of
+young men, rising amid the common mob as oaks surpass the brambles or
+the fern.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these secondary qualities of the people which mark the special signs
+of the times, there are many contradictions, quality contending with
+quality; all by no means balanced into harmonious relations. Here are
+great faults not less than great virtues. Can the national faults be
+corrected? Most certainly; they are but accidental, coming from our
+circumstances, our history, our position as a people--heterogeneous,
+new, and placed on a new and untamed continent. They come not from the
+nation's soul; they do not belong to our fundamental idea, but are
+hostile to it. One day our impatience of authority, our philosophical
+tendency, will lead us to a right method, that to fixed principles, and
+then we shall have a continuity of national action. Considering the
+pains taken by the fathers of the better portion of America to promote
+religion here, remembering how dear is Christianity to the heart of all,
+conservative and radical--though men often name as Christian what is
+not--and seeing how truth and right are sure to win at last,--it becomes
+pretty plain that we shall arrive at true principles, laws of the
+universe, ideas of God; then we shall be in unison also with it and Him.
+When that great defect--lack of first principles--is corrected, our
+intensity of life, with the hope and confidence it inspires, will do a
+great work for us. We have already secured an abundance of material
+comforts hitherto unknown; no land was ever so full of corn and cattle,
+clothing, comfortable houses, and all things needed for the flesh. The
+desire of those things, even the excessive desire thereof, performs an
+important part in the divine economy of the human race; nowhere is its
+good effect more conspicuous than in America, where in two generations
+the wild Irishman becomes a decent citizen, orderly, temperate, and
+intelligent. This done or even a-doing, as it is now, we shall go forth
+to realize our great national idea, and accomplish the great work of
+organizing into institutions the unalienable rights of man. The great
+obstacle in the way of that is African slavery--the great exception in
+the nation's history; the national sin. When that is removed, as soon it
+must be, lesser but kindred evils will easily be done away; the truth
+which the land-reformers, which the associationists, the free-traders,
+and others, have seen, dimly or clearly, can readily be carried out. But
+while this monster vice continues, there is little hope of any great and
+permanent national reform. The positive things which we chiefly need for
+this work, are first, education, next, education, and then education, a
+vigorous development of the mind, conscience, affections, religious
+power of the whole nation. The method and the means for that I shall not
+now discuss.
+
+The organization of human rights, the performance of human duties, is an
+unlimited work. If there shall ever be a time when it is all done, then
+the race will have finished its course. Shall the American nation go on
+in this work, or pause, turn off, fall, and perish? To me it seems
+almost treason to doubt that a glorious future awaits us. Young as we
+are, and wicked, we have yet done something which the world will not let
+perish. One day we shall attend more emphatically to the rights of the
+hand, and organize labor and skill; then to the rights of the head,
+looking after education, science, literature, and art; and again to the
+rights of the heart, building up the State with its laws, society with
+its families, the church with its goodness and piety. One day we shall
+see that it is a shame, and a loss, and a wrong, to have a criminal, or
+an ignorant man, or a pauper, or an idler, in the land; that the jail,
+and the gallows, and the almshouse are a reproach which need not be. Out
+of new sentiments and ideas, not seen as yet, new forms of society will
+come, free from the antagonism of races, classes, men--representing the
+American idea in its length, breadth, depth, and height, its beauty and
+its truth, and then the old civilization of our time shall seem
+barbarous and even savage. There will be an American art commensurate
+with our idea and akin to this great continent; not an imitation, but a
+fresh, new growth. An American literature also must come with democratic
+freedom, democratic thought, democratic power--for we are not always to
+be pensioners of other lands, doing nothing but import and quote; a
+literature with all of German philosophic depth, with English solid
+sense, with French vivacity and wit, Italian fire of sentiment and soul,
+with all of Grecian elegance of form, and more than Hebrew piety and
+faith in God. We must not look for the maiden's ringlets on the baby's
+brow; we are yet but a girl; the nameless grace of maturity, and
+womanhood's majestic charm, are still to come. At length we must have a
+system of education, which shall uplift the humblest, rudest, worst born
+child in all the land; which shall bring forth and bring up noble men.
+
+An American State is a thing that must also be; a State of free men who
+give over brawling, resting on industry, justice, love, not on war,
+cunning, and violence,--a State where liberty, equality, and fraternity
+are deeds as well as words. In its time the American Church must also
+appear, with liberty, holiness, and love for its watchwords, cultivating
+reason, conscience, affection, faith, and leading the world's way in
+justice, peace, and love. The Roman Church has been all men know what
+and how; the American Church, with freedom for the mind, freedom for the
+heart, freedom for the soul, is yet to be, sundering no chord of the
+human harp, but tuning all to harmony. This also must come; but hitherto
+no one has risen with genius fit to plan its holy walls, conceive its
+columns, project its towers, or lay its corner-stone. Is it too much to
+hope all this? Look at the arena before us--look at our past history.
+Hark! there is the sound of many million men, the trampling of their
+freeborn feet, the murmuring of their voice; a nation born of this land
+that God reserved so long a virgin earth, in a high day married to the
+human race,--rising, and swelling, and rolling on, strong and certain as
+the Atlantic tide; they come numerous as ocean waves when east winds
+blow, their destination commensurate with the continent, with ideas vast
+as the Mississippi, strong as the Alleghanies, and awful as Niagara;
+they come murmuring little of the past, but, moving in the brightness of
+their great idea, and casting its light far on to other lands and
+distant days--come to the world's great work, to organize the rights of
+man.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. DELIVERED AT
+THE MELODEON, IN BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1848.
+
+
+Within a few days one of the most distinguished statesmen of the age has
+passed away; a man who has long been before the public, familiarly known
+in the new world and the old. He was one of the prominent monuments of
+the age. It becomes us to look at his life, works, and public character,
+with an impartial eye; to try him by the Christian standard. Let me
+extenuate nothing, add nothing, and set down nought from any partial
+love or partial hate. His individuality has been so marked in a long
+life, his good and evil so sharply defined, that one can scarcely fail
+to delineate its most important features.
+
+God has made some men great and others little. The use of great men is
+to serve the little men; to take care of the human race, and act as
+practical interpreters of justice and truth. This is not the Hebrew
+rule, nor the heathen, nor the common rule, only the Christian. The
+great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him. Perhaps
+greatness is always the same thing in kind, differing only in mode and
+in form, as well as degree. The great man has more of human nature than
+other men, organized in him. So far as that goes, therefore, he is more
+me than I am myself. We feel that superiority in all our intercourse
+with great men, whether kings, philosophers, poets, or saints. In kind
+we are the same; different in degree.
+
+In nature we find individuals, not orders and genera; but for our own
+convenience in understanding and recollecting, we do a little violence
+to nature, and put the individuals into classes. In this way we
+understand better both the whole and each of its parts. Human nature
+furnishes us with individual great men; for convenience we put them into
+several classes, corresponding to their several modes or forms of
+greatness. It is well to look at these classes before we examine any one
+great man; this will render it easier to see where he belongs and what
+he is worth. Actual service is the test of actual greatness; he who
+renders, of himself, the greatest actual service to mankind, is actually
+the greatest man. There may be other tests for determining the potential
+greatness of men, or the essential; this is the Christian rule for
+determining the actual greatness. Let us arrange these men in the
+natural order of their work.
+
+First of all, there are great men who discover general truths, great
+ideas, universal laws, or invent methods of thought and action. In this
+class the vastness of a man's genius may be measured, and his relative
+rank ascertained by the transcendency of his ideas, by the newness of
+his truth, by its practical value, and the difficulty of attaining it in
+his time, and under his peculiar circumstances. In literature it is such
+men who originate thoughts, and put them into original forms; they are
+the great men of letters. In philosophy we meet with such; and they are
+the great men of science. Thus Socrates discovered the philosophical
+method of minute analysis that distinguished his school, and led to the
+rapid advance of knowledge in the various and even conflicting
+academies, which held this method in common, but applied it in various
+ways, well or ill, and to various departments of human inquiry; thus
+Newton discovered the law of gravitation, universal in nature, and by
+the discovery did immense service to mankind. In politics we find
+similar, or analogous men, who discover yet other laws of God, which
+bear the same relation to men in society that gravitation bears to the
+orbs in heaven, or to the dust and stones in the street; men that
+discover the first truths of politics, and teach the true method of
+human society. Such are the great men in politics.
+
+We find corresponding men in religion; men who discover an idea so
+central that all sectarianism of parties or of nations seems little in
+its light; who discover and teach the universal law which unifies the
+race, binding man to man, and men to God; who discover the true method
+of religion conducting to natural worship without limitation, to free
+piety, free goodness, free thought. To my mind such are the greatest of
+great men, when measured by the transcendency of their doctrine and the
+service they render to all. By the influence of their idea, letters,
+philosophy, and politics become nobler and more beautiful, both in their
+forms and their substance.
+
+Such is the class of discoverers; men who get truth at first hand, truth
+pertaining either especially to literature, philosophy, politics,
+religion, or at the same time to each and all of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next class consists of such as organize these ideas, methods,
+truths, and laws; they concretize the abstract, particularize the
+general; they apply philosophy to practical purposes, organizing the
+discoveries of science into a railroad, a mill, a steam-ship, and by
+their work an idea becomes fact. They organize love into families,
+justice into a state, piety into a church. Wealth is power, knowledge is
+power, religion power; they organize all these powers, wealth,
+knowledge, religion, into common life, making divinity humanity, and
+that society.
+
+This organizing genius is a very great one, and appears in various
+forms. One man spreads his thought out on the soil, whitening the land
+with bread-corn; another applies his mind to the rivers of New England,
+making them spin and weave for the human race; this man will organize
+his thought into a machine with one idea, joining together fire and
+water, iron and wood, animating them into a new creature, ready to do
+man's bidding; while that with audacious hand steals the lightning of
+heaven, organizes his plastic thought within that pliant fire, and sends
+it of his errands to fetch and carry tidings between the ends of the
+earth.
+
+Another form of this mode of greatness is seen in politics, in
+organizing men. The man spreads his thought out on mankind, puts men
+into true relations with one another and with God; he organizes
+strength, wisdom, justice, love, piety; balances the conflicting forces
+of a nation, so that each man has his natural liberty as complete as if
+the only man, yet, living in society, gathers advantages from all the
+rest. The highest degree of this organizing power is the genius for
+legislation, which can enact justice and eternal right into treaties and
+statutes, codifying the divine thought into human laws, making absolute
+religion common life and daily custom, and balancing the centripetal
+power of the mass, with the centrifugal power of the individual, into a
+well-proportioned state, as God has balanced these two conflicting
+forces into the rhythmic ellipses above our heads. It need not be
+disguised, that politics are the highest business for men of this class,
+nor that a great statesman or legislator is the greatest example of
+constructive skill. It requires some ability to manage the brute forces
+of Nature, or to combine profitably nine-and-thirty clerks in a shop;
+how much more to arrange twenty millions of intelligent, free men, not
+for a special purpose, but for all the ends of universal life!
+
+Such is the second class of great men; the organizers, men of
+constructive heads, who form the institutions of the world, the little
+and the great.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next class consists of men who administer the institutions after
+they are founded. To do this effectually and even eminently, it requires
+no genius for original organization of truths freshly discovered, none
+for the discovery of truths, outright. It requires only a perception of
+those truths, and an acquaintance with the institutions wherein they
+have become incarnate; a knowledge of details, of formulas, and
+practical methods, united with a strong will and a practised
+understanding,--what is called a turn for affairs, tact, or address; a
+knowledge of routine and an acquaintance with men. The success of such
+men will depend on these qualities; they "know the ropes" and the
+soundings, the signs of the times; can take advantage of the winds and
+the tides.
+
+In a shop, farm, ship, factory, or army, in a church or a State, such
+men are valuable; they cannot be dispensed with; they are wheels to the
+carriage; without them cannot a city be inhabited. They are always more
+numerous than both the other classes; more such are needed, and
+therefore born. The American mind, just now, runs eminently in this
+direction. These are not men of theories, or of new modes of thought or
+action, but what are called practical men, men of a few good rules, men
+of facts and figures, not so full of ideas as of precedents. They are
+called common-sense men; not having too much common-sense to be
+understood. They are not likely to be fallen in with far off at sea;
+quite as seldom out of their reckoning in ordinary weather. Such men are
+excellent statesmen in common times, but in times of trouble, when old
+precedents will not suit the new case, and men must be guided by the
+nature of man, not his history, they are not strong enough for the
+place, and get pushed off by more constructive heads.
+
+These men are the administrators, or managers. If they have a little
+less of practical sense, such men fall a little below, and turn out only
+critics, of whom I will not now stop to discourse.
+
+To have a railroad, there must have been first the discoverers, who
+found out the properties of wood and iron, fire and water, and their
+latent power to carry men over the earth; next, the organizers, who put
+these elements together, surveyed the route, planned the structure, set
+men to grade the hill, to fill the valley, and pave the road with iron
+bars; and then the administrators, who, after all that is done, procure
+the engines, engineers, conductors, ticket-distributors, and the rest of
+the "hands;" they buy the coal and see it is not wasted, fix the rates
+of fare, calculate the savings, and distribute the dividends. The
+discoverers and organizers often fare hard in the world, lean men, ill
+clad and suspected, often laughed at, while the administrator is thought
+the greater man, because he rides over their graves and pays the
+dividends, where the organizer only called for the assessments, and the
+discoverer told what men called a dream. What happens in a railroad
+happens also in a Church, or a State.
+
+Let us for a moment compare these three classes of great men. Measured
+by the test referred to, the discoverers are the greatest of all. They
+anticipate the human race, with long steps, striding before their kind.
+They learn not only from the history of man, but man's nature; not by
+empirical experience alone, but by a transcendent intuition of truth,
+now seen as a law, now as an idea. They are wiser than experience, and
+by divination through their nobler nature know at once what the human
+race has not learned in its thousands of years, kindling their lamp at
+the central fire now streaming from the sky, now rushing broad-sheeted
+and terrible as ground-lightning from the earth. Of such men there are
+but few, especially in the highest mode of this greatness. A single One
+makes a new world, and men date ages after him.
+
+Next in order of greatness comes the organizer. He, also, must have
+great intellect, and character. It is no light work to make thoughts
+things. It requires mind to make a mill out of a river, bricks, iron,
+and stone, and set all the Connecticut to spinning cotton. But to
+construct a State, to harness fittingly twenty million men, animated by
+such divergent motives, possessing interests so unlike--this is the
+greatest work of constructive skill. To translate the ideas of the
+discoverer into institutions, to yoke men together by mere
+"abstractions," universal laws, and by such yoking save the liberty of
+all and secure the welfare of each--that is the most creative of poetry,
+the most constructive of sciences. In modern times, it is said, Napoleon
+is the greatest example of this faculty; not a discoverer, but an
+organizer of the highest power and on the largest scale. In human
+history he seems to have had no superior, perhaps no equal.
+
+Some callings in life afford little opportunity to develop the great
+qualities above alluded to. How much genius lies latent no man can know;
+but he that walks familiarly with humble men often stumbles over masses
+of unsunned gold, where men proud in emptiness, looked only for common
+dust. How many a Milton sits mute and inglorious in his shop; how many a
+Cromwell rears only corn and oxen for the world's use, no man can know.
+Some callings help to light, some hide and hinder. But there is none
+which demands more ability than politics; they develop greatness, if the
+man have the germ thereof within him. True, in politics, a man may get
+along with a very little ability, without being a discoverer or an
+organizer; were it otherwise we should not be blessed with a very large
+House, or a crowded Senate. Nay, experience shows that in ordinary times
+one not even a great administrator may creep up to a high place and hang
+on there awhile. Few able administrators sit on the thrones of Europe at
+this day. But if power be in the man, the hand of politics will draw out
+the spark.
+
+In America, politics more than elsewhere demand greatness, for ours is,
+in theory, the government of all, for all, and by all. It requires
+greater range of thought to discover the law for all than for a few;
+after the discovery thereof it is more difficult to construct a
+democracy than a monarchy, or an aristocracy, and after that is
+organized, it is more difficult to administer. It requires more manhood
+to wield at will "the fierce democratie" of America than to rule England
+or France; yet the American institutions are germane to human nature,
+and by that fact are rendered more easy, complicated as they are.
+
+In politics, when the institutions are established, men often think
+there is no room for discoverers and organizers; that administrators
+alone are needed, and choose accordingly. But there are ideas well
+known, not yet organized into institutions: that of free trade, of
+peace, of universal freedom, universal education, universal comfort, in
+a word, the idea of human brotherhood. These wait to be constructed into
+a State without injustice, without war, without slavery, ignorance, or
+want. It is hardly true that Infinity is dry of truths, unseen as yet;
+there are truths enough waiting to be discovered; all the space betwixt
+us and God is full of ideas, waiting for some Columbus to disclose new
+worlds. Men are always saying there is no new thing under the sun, but
+when the discoverer comes, they see their mistake. We want the new eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, it is quite plain where we are to place the distinguished person of
+whom I speak. Mr. Adams was not a discoverer; not an organizer. He added
+no truth to mankind, not known before, and even well known; he made no
+known truth a fact. He was an administrator of political institutions.
+Taking the whole land into consideration, comparing him with his
+competitors, measuring him by his apparent works, at first sight he does
+not seem very highly eminent in this class of political administrators.
+Nay, some would set him down, not an administrator so much as a
+political critic.
+
+Here there is danger of doing him injustice, by neglecting a fact so
+obvious, that it is seldom seen. Mr. Adams was a northern man, with
+northern habits, methods, and opinions. By the North, I mean the free
+States. The chief business of the North is to get empire over nature;
+all tends to that. Young men of talents become merchants,
+merchant-manufacturers, merchant-traders. The object directly aimed at,
+is wealth; not wealth by plunder, but by productive work. Now, to get
+dominion over nature, there must be education, universal education,
+otherwise there is not enough intelligent industry, which alone insures
+that dominion. With widespread intelligence, property will be widely
+distributed, and, of course, suffrage and civil power will get
+distributed. All is incomplete without religion. I deny not that these
+peculiarities of the North, come, also, from other sources, but they all
+are necessary to attain the chief object thereof--dominion over the
+material world. The North subdues nature by thought, and holds her
+powers in thrall. As results of this, see the increase in wealth which
+is signified by northern railroads, ships, mills, and shops; in the
+colleges, schools, churches, which arise; see the skill developed in
+this struggle with nature, the great enterprises which come of that,
+the movements of commerce, manufactures, the efforts--and successful,
+too--for the promotion of education, of religion. All is democratic, and
+becomes more so continually, each descendant founding institutions more
+liberal than those of the parent State. Men designedly, and, as their
+business, become merchants, mechanics, and the like; they are
+politicians by exception, by accident, from the necessity of the case.
+Few northern men are politicians by profession; they commonly think it
+better to be a collector or a postmaster, than a Senator, estimating
+place by money, not power. Northern politicians are bred as lawyers,
+clergymen, mechanics, farmers, merchants. Political life is an accident,
+not an end.
+
+In the South, the aim is to get dominion over men; so, the whole working
+population must be in subjection, in slavery. While the North makes
+brute nature half intelligent, the South makes human nature half brutal,
+the man becoming a thing. Talent tends to politics, not trade. Young men
+of ability go to the army or navy, to the public offices, to diplomatic
+posts, in a word, to politics. They learn to manage men. To do this,
+they not only learn what men think, but why they think it. The young man
+of the North seeks a fortune; of the South, a reputation and political
+power. The politician of the South makes politics the study and work of
+his whole life; all else is accidental and subordinate. He begins low,
+but ends high; he mingles with men; has bland and agreeable manners; is
+frank, honorable, manly, and knows how to persuade.
+
+See the different results of causes so unlike. The North manages the
+commercial affairs of the land, the ships, mills, farms, and shops; the
+spiritual affairs, literature, science, morals, education,
+religion;--writes, calculates, instructs, and preaches. But the South
+manages the political affairs, and has free-trade or tariff, war or
+peace, just as she will. Of the eight Presidents who were elected in
+fifty years, only three were northern men. Each of them has retired from
+office, at the end of a single term, in possession of a fortune, but
+with little political influence. Each of the five southern Presidents
+has been twice elected; only one of them was rich. There is no accident
+in all this. The State of Rhode Island has men that can administer the
+Connecticut or the Mississippi; that can organize Niagara into a cotton
+factory; yes, that can get dominion over the ocean and the land: but the
+State of South Carolina has men that can manage the Congress, can rule
+the North and South, and make the nation do their bidding.
+
+So the South succeeds in politics, but grows poor, and the North fails
+in politics, but thrives in commerce and the arts. There great men turn
+to politics, here to trade. It is so in time of peace, but, in the day
+of trouble, of storms, of revolution like the old one, men of tall
+heads will come up from the ships and the shops, the farms and the
+colleges of the North, born discoverers and organizers, the aristocracy
+of God, and sit down in the nation's councils to control the State. The
+North made the revolution, furnished the men, the money, the ideas, and
+the occasion for putting them into form. At the making of the
+Constitution, the South out-talked the North; put in such claims as it
+saw fitting, making the best bargain it could, violating the ideas of
+the Revolution, and getting the North, not only to consent to slavery,
+but to allow it to be represented in Congress itself. Now, the South
+breaks the Constitution just when it will, puts northern sailors in its
+jails, and the North dares not complain, but bears it "with a patient
+shrug." An eastern merchant is great on a southern exchange, makes
+cotton rise or fall, but no northern politician has much weight at the
+South, none has ever been twice elected President. The North thinks it
+is a great thing to get an inoffensive northern man as Speaker, in the
+House of Representatives. The South is an aristocracy, which the
+democracy of the North would not tolerate a year, were it at the North
+itself. Now it rules the land, has the northern masses, democrats and
+whigs, completely under its thumb. Does the South say, "Go," they
+hasten; "Come," they say "Here we are;" "Do this," they obey in a
+moment; "Whist," there is not a mouse stirring in all the North. Does
+the South say "Annex," it is done; "Fight," men of the North put on the
+collar, lie lies, issue their proclamations, enroll their soldiers, and
+declare it is moral treason for the most insignificant clergyman to
+preach against the war.
+
+All this needs to be remembered in judging of Mr. Adams. True he was
+regularly bred to politics, and "to the manor born;" but he was a New
+England man, with northern notions, northern habits, and though more
+than fifty years in public life, yet he seems to have sought the object
+of New England far more than the object of the South. Measure his
+greatness by his service; but that is not to be measured by immediate
+and apparent success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a notice so brief as this, I can say but little of the details of Mr.
+Adams's life, and purposely pass over many things, dwelling mainly on
+such as are significant of his character. He was born at Quincy, the
+11th of July, 1767; in 1777 he went to Europe with his father, then
+Minister to France. He remained in Europe most of the time, his powers
+developing with rapidity and promise of future greatness, till 1785,
+when he returned and entered the junior class in Harvard College. In
+1787, he graduated with distinguished honors. He studied law at
+Newburyport, with Judge Parsons, till 1790, and was a lawyer in Boston,
+till 1794.
+
+That may be called the period of his education He enjoyed the
+advantages of a residence abroad, which enabled him to acquire a
+knowledge of foreign languages, modes of life, and habits of thought.
+His father's position brought the son in contact with the ablest men of
+the age. He was Secretary of the American minister to Russia at the age
+of fourteen. He early became acquainted with Franklin and Jefferson, men
+who had a powerful influence on his youthful mind. For three years he
+was a student with Judge Parsons, a very remarkable man. These years,
+from 1767 to 1794, form a period marked by intense mental activity in
+America and in Europe. The greatest subjects which claim human
+attention, the laws that lie at the foundation of society, the State,
+the church, and the family, were discussed as never before. Mr. Adams
+drew in liberty and religion from his mother's breast. His cradle rocked
+with the Revolution. When eight years old, from a hill-top hard by his
+house he saw the smoke of Charlestown, burning at the command of the
+oppressor. The lullaby of his childhood was the roar of cannon at
+Lexington and Bunker Hill. He was born in the gathering of the storm, of
+a family that felt the blast, but never bent thereto; he grew up in its
+tumult. Circumstances like these make their mark on the character.
+
+His attention was early turned to the most important matters. In 1793,
+he wrote several papers in the "Centinel," at Boston, on neutral rights,
+advising the American government to remain neutral in the quarrel
+between France, our ally, and others; the papers attracted the attention
+of Washington, who appointed the author Minister to Holland. He remained
+abroad in various diplomatic services in that country, in Russia and
+England, till 1801, when he was recalled by his father, and returned
+home. It was an important circumstance, that he was abroad during that
+time when the nation divided into two great parties. He was not called
+on to take sides with either; he had a vantage ground whence he could
+overlook both, approve their good and shun their evil. The effect of
+this is abundantly evident in all his life. He was not dyed in the wool
+by either political party,--the moral sense of the man drowned in the
+process of becoming a federalist or a democrat.
+
+In 1802, he was elected to the Senate of Massachusetts, yet not wholly
+by the votes of one party. In 1803, he was chosen to the Senate of the
+United States. In the Massachusetts Legislature he was not a strict
+party man; he was not elected to the Senate by a strictly party vote. In
+1806, he was inaugurated as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
+University, and continued in that office about three years. In 1808, he
+resigned his place in the Senate. In 1809, he was sent by Mr. Madison as
+Minister to Russia, and remained abroad in various ministries and
+commissions, till 1817, when he returned, and became Secretary of State
+under Mr. Monroe. This office he filled till he became President, in
+1825. In 1829, failing of reelection, he retired to private life. In
+1831, he was elected as one of the Representatives to Congress from
+Massachusetts, and continued there till his death, the first President
+that ever sat in an American Congress.
+
+It will be fifty-four years the thirtieth of next May, since he began
+his public career. What did he aim at in that long period? At first
+sight, it is easy to see the aim of some of the conspicuous men of
+America. It has obviously been the aim of Mr. Clay to build up the
+"American System," by the establishment of protective duties; that of
+Mr. Calhoun to establish free trade, leaving a man to buy where he can
+buy cheapest, and sell where he can sell dearest. In respect to these
+matters the two are exactly opposite to one another--antithetic as the
+poles. But each has also, and obviously, another aim,--to build up the
+institution of slavery in the South. In this they agree, and if I
+understand them aright, this is the most important political design of
+each; for which Mr. Calhoun would forego even free trade, and Mr. Clay
+would "compromise" even a tariff. Looked at in reference to their aims,
+there is a certain continuity of action in both these gentlemen. I speak
+not now of another object which both have equally and obviously aimed
+at; not of the personal, but the political object.
+
+At first sight, it does not appear that Mr. Adams had any definite
+scheme of measures which he aimed to establish; there is no obvious
+unity of idea, or continuity of action, that forces itself upon the
+spectator. He does not seem to have studied the two great subjects of
+our political economy, finance and trade, very deeply, or even with any
+considerable width of observation or inquiry; he had no financial or
+commercial hobby. He has worked with every party, and against every
+party; all have claimed, none held him. Now he sides with the
+federalists, then with the democrats; now he opposes France, showing
+that her policy is that of pirates; now he contends against England; now
+he works in favor of General Jackson, who put down the nullification of
+South Carolina with a rough hand; then he opposes the general in his
+action against the Bank; now he contends for the Indians, then for the
+Negroes; now attacks Masonry, and then Free trade. He speaks in favor of
+claiming and holding "the whole of Oregon;" then against annexing Texas.
+
+But there is one sentiment which runs through all his life: an intense
+love of freedom for all men; one idea, the idea that each man has
+unalienable rights. These are what may be called the American sentiment,
+and the American idea; for they lie at the basis of American
+institutions, except the "patriarchal," and shine out in all our
+history--I should say, our early history. These two form the golden
+thread on which Mr. Adams's jewels are strung. Love of human freedom in
+its widest sense is the most marked and prominent thing in his
+character. This explains most of his actions. Studied with this in mind,
+his life is pretty consistent. This explains his love of the
+Constitution. He early saw the peculiarity of the American government;
+that it rested in theory on the natural rights of man, not on a compact,
+not on tradition, but on somewhat anterior to both, on the unalienable
+rights universal in man, and equal in each. He looked on the American
+Constitution as an attempt to organize these rights; resting, therefore,
+not on force, but natural law; not on power, but right. But with him the
+Constitution was not an idol; it was a means, not an end. He did more
+than expound it; he went back of the Constitution, to the Declaration of
+Independence, for the ideas of the Constitution; yes, back of the
+Declaration to Human Nature and the Laws of God, to legitimate these
+ideas. The Constitution is a compromise between those ideas and
+institutions and prejudices existing when it was made; not an idol, but
+a servant. He saw that the Constitution is "not the work of eternal
+justice, ruling through the people," but the work "of man; frail,
+fallen, imperfect man, following the dictates of his nature, and
+aspiring to be perfect."[12] Though a "constitutionalist," he did not
+worship the Constitution. He was much more than a "defender of the
+Constitution,"--a defender of Human Rights.
+
+Mr. Adams had this American sentiment and idea in an heroic degree.
+Perhaps no political man now living has expressed them so fully. With a
+man like him, not very genial or creative, having no great constructive
+skill, and not without a certain pugnacity in his character, this
+sentiment and idea would naturally develop themselves in a negative
+form, that of opposition to Wrong, more often than in the positive form
+of direct organization of the Right; would lead to criticism oftener
+than to creation. Especially would this be the case if other men were
+building up institutions in opposition to this idea. In him they
+actually take the form of what he called "The unalienable right of
+resistance to oppression." His life furnishes abundant instances of
+this. He thought the Indians were unjustly treated, cried out against
+the wrong; when President, endeavored to secure justice to the Creeks in
+Georgia, and got into collision with Governor Troup. He saw, or thought
+he saw, that England opposed the American idea, both in the new world
+and the old. In his zeal for freedom he sometimes forgot the great
+services of England in that same cause, and hated England, hated her
+with great intensity of hatred, hated her political policy, her
+monarchy, and her aristocracy, mocked at the madness of her king, for he
+thought England stood in the way of freedom.[13] Yet he loved the
+English name and the English blood, was "proud of being himself
+descended from that stock," thinking it worth noting, "that Chatham's
+language was his mother tongue, and Wolfe's great name compatriot with
+his own." He confessed no nation had done more for the cause of human
+improvement. He loved the Common Law of England, putting it far above
+the Roman Law, perhaps not without doing a little injustice to the
+latter.[14] The common law was a rude and barbarous code. But human
+liberty was there; a trial by jury was there; the habeas corpus was
+there. It was the law of men "regardful of human rights."
+
+This sentiment led him to defend the right of petition in the House of
+Representatives, as no other man had dared to do. He cared not whether
+it was the petition of a majority, or a minority; of men or women, free
+men or slaves. It might be a petition to remove him from a committee, to
+expel him from the House, a petition to dissolve the Union--he
+presented it none the less. To him there was but one nature in all, man
+or woman, bond or free, and that was human nature, the most sacred thing
+on earth. Each human child had unalienable rights, and though that child
+was a beggar or slave, had rights, which all the power in the world,
+bent into a single arm, could not destroy nor abate, though it might
+ravish away. This induced him to attempt to procure the right of
+suffrage for the colored citizens of the District of Columbia.
+
+This sentiment led him to oppose tyranny in the House of
+Representatives, the tyranny of the majority. In one of his juvenile
+essays, published in 1791, contending against a highly popular work, he
+opposed the theory that a State has the right to do what it pleases,
+declaring it had no right to do wrong.[15] In his old age he had not
+again to encounter the empty hypothesis of Thomas Paine, but the
+substantial enactment of the "Representatives" of the people of the
+United States. The hypothesis was trying to become a fact. The South had
+passed the infamous Gag-Law, which a symbolical man from New Hampshire
+had presented, though it originated with others.[16] By that law the
+mouth of the North was completely stopped in Congress, so that not one
+word could be said about the matter of slavery.
+
+The North was quite willing to have it stopped, for it did not care to
+speak against slavery, and the gag did not stop the mouth of the
+Northern purse. You may take away from the North its honor, if you can
+find it; may take away its rights; may imprison its free citizens in the
+jails of Louisiana and the Carolinas; yes, may invade the "Sacred soil
+of the North," and kidnap a man out of Boston itself, within sight of
+Faneuil Hall, and the North will not complain; will bear it with that
+patient shrug, waiting for yet further indignities. Only when the
+Northern purse is touched, is there an uproar. If the postmaster demands
+silver for letters, there is instant alarm; the repeal of a tariff
+rouses the feelings, and an embargo once drove the indignant North to
+the perilous edge of rebellion! Mr. Adams loved his dollars as well as
+most New England men; he looked out for their income as well; guarded as
+carefully against their outgo; though conscientiously upright in all his
+dealings, kind and hospitable, he has never been proved generous, and
+generosity is the commonest virtue of the North; is said to have been
+"close," if not mean. He loved his dollars as well as most men, but he
+loved justice more; honor more; freedom more; the Unalienable Rights of
+man far more.
+
+He looked on the Constitution as an instrument for the defence of the
+Rights of man. The government was to act as the people had told how.
+The Federal government was not sovereign; the State government was not
+sovereign;[17] neither was a court of ultimate appeal;--but the People
+was sovereign; had the right of Eminent Domain over Congress and the
+Constitution, and making that, had set limits to the government. He
+guarded therefore against all violation of the Constitution, as a wrong
+done to the people; he would not overstep its limits in a bad cause; not
+even in a good one. Did Mr. Jefferson obtain Louisiana by a confessed
+violation of the Constitution, Mr. Adams would oppose the purchase of
+Louisiana, and was one of the six senators who voted against it. Making
+laws for that Territory, he wished to extend the trial by jury to all
+criminal prosecutions, while the law limited that form of trial to
+capital offences. Before that Territory had a representative in
+Congress, the American government wished to collect a revenue there. Mr.
+Adams opposed that too. It was "assuming a dangerous power;" it was
+government without the consent of the governed, and therefore an unjust
+government. "All exercise of human authority must be under the
+limitation of right and wrong." All other power is despotic, and "in
+defiance of the laws of nature and of God."[18]
+
+This love of freedom led him to hate and oppose the tyranny of the
+strong over the weak, to hate it most in its worst form; to hate
+American Slavery, doubtless the most infamous form of that tyranny now
+known amongst the nations of Christendom, and perhaps the most
+disgraceful thing on earth. Mr. Adams called slavery a vessel of
+dishonor so base that it could not be named in the Constitution with
+decency. In 1805, he wished to lay a duty on the importation of slaves,
+and was one of five senators who voted to that effect. He saw the power
+of this institution--the power of money and the power of votes which it
+gives to a few men. He saw how dangerous it was to the Union; to
+American liberty, to the cause of man. He saw that it trod three
+millions of men down to the dust, counting souls but as cattle. He hated
+nothing as he hated this; fought against nothing so manfully. It was the
+lion in the pathway of freedom, which frightened almost all the
+politicians of the North and the East and the West, so that they forsook
+that path; a lion whose roar could wellnigh silence the forum and the
+bar, the pulpit and the press; a lion who rent the Constitution,
+trampled under foot the Declaration of Independence, and tore the Bible
+to pieces. Mr. Adams was ready to rouse up this lion, and then to beard
+him in his den. Hating slavery, of course he opposed whatever went to
+strengthen its power; opposed Mr. Atherton's Gag-law; opposed the
+annexation of Texas; opposed the Mexican war; and, wonderful to tell,
+actually voted against it, and never took back his vote.
+
+When Secretary of State, this same feeling led him to oppose conceding
+to the British the right of searching American vessels supposed to be
+concerned in the slave-trade, and when Representative to oppose the
+repeal of the law giving "protection" to American sailors. It appeared
+also in private intercourse with men. No matter what was a man's
+condition, Mr. Adams treated him as an equal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This devotion to freedom and the unalienable rights of man, was the most
+important work of his life. Compared with some other political men, he
+seems inconsistent, because he now opposes one evil, then its opposite
+evil. But his general course is in this direction, and, when viewed in
+respect to this idea, seems more consistent than that of Mr. Webster, or
+Calhoun, or Clay, when measured by any great principle. This appears in
+his earlier life. In 1802, he became a member of the Massachusetts
+Senate. The majority of the General Court were federalists. It was a
+time of intense political excitement, the second year of Mr. Jefferson's
+administration. The custom is well known--to take the whole of the
+Governor's Council from the party which has a majority in the General
+Court. On the 27th of May, 1802, Mr. Adams stood up for the rights of
+the minority. He wanted some anti-federalists in the Council of
+Governor Strong, and as Senator threw his first vote to secure that
+object. Such was the first legislative action of John Quincy Adams. In
+the House of Representatives, in 1831, the first thing he did was to
+present fifteen petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District
+of Columbia, though, from constitutional scruples, opposed to granting
+the petitions. The last public act of his life was this:--The question
+was before the House on giving medals to the men distinguished in the
+Mexican war; the minority opposing it wanted more time for debate; the
+previous question was moved, Mr. Adams voted for the last time,--voted
+"No," with unusual emphasis; the great loud No of a man going home to
+God full of "The unalienable right of resistance to oppression," its
+emphatic word on his dying lips. There were the beginning, the middle,
+and the end, all three in the same spirit, all in favor of mankind; a
+remarkable unity of action in his political drama.
+
+Somebody once asked him, What are the recognized principles of politics?
+Mr. Adams answered that there were none: the recognized precepts are bad
+ones, and so not principles. But, continued the inquirer, is not this a
+good one--To seek "The greatest good of the greatest number?" No, said
+he, that is the worst of all, for it looks specious while it is ruinous.
+What shall become of the minority, in that case? This is the only
+principle,--"To seek the greatest good of all."
+
+I do not say there were no exceptions to this devotion to freedom in a
+long life; there are some passages in his history which it is impossible
+to justify, and hard to excuse. In early life he was evidently ambitious
+of place, and rank, and political power. I must confess, it seems to me,
+at some times, he was not scrupulous enough about the means of attaining
+that place and power. He has been much censured for his vote in favor of
+the Embargo, in 1807. His vote, howsoever unwise, may easily have been
+an honest vote. To an impartial spectator at this day, perhaps it will
+be evidently so. His defence of it I cannot think an honest defence, for
+in that he mentions arguments as impelling him to his vote which could
+scarcely have been present to his mind at the time, and, if they were
+his arguments then, were certainly kept in silence--they did not appear
+in the debate,[19] they were not referred to in the President's
+message.[20]
+
+I am not to praise Mr. Adams simply because he is dead; what is wrong
+before is wrong after death. It is no merit to die; shall we tell lies
+about him because he is dead? No, the Egyptian people scrutinized and
+judged their kings after death--much more should we our fellow-citizens,
+intrusted with power to serve the State. "A lavish and undistinguishing
+eulogium is not praise." I know what coals of terrible fire lie under my
+feet, as I speak of this matter, and how thin and light is the coat of
+ashes deposited there in forty years; how easily they are blown away at
+the slightest breath of "Hartford Convention," or the "Embargo," and the
+old flame of political animosity blazes forth anew, while the hostile
+forms of "federalists" and "democrats" come back to light. I would not
+disquiet those awful shades, nor bring them up again. But a word must be
+said. The story of the embargo is well known: the President sent his
+message to the Senate recommending it, and accompanied with several
+documents. The message was read and assigned to a committee; the
+ordinary rule of business was suspended; the bill was reported by the
+committee; drafted, debated, engrossed, and completely passed through
+all its stages, the whole on the same day, in secret session, and in
+about four hours! Yet it was a bill that involved the whole commerce of
+the country, and prostrated that commerce, seriously affecting the
+welfare of hundreds of thousands of men. Eight hundred thousand tons of
+shipping were doomed to lie idle and rot in port. The message came on
+Friday. Some of the Senators wanted yet further information and more
+time for debate, at least for consideration,--till Monday. It could not
+be! Till Saturday, then. No; the bill must pass now, no man sleeping on
+that question. Mr. Adams was the most zealous for passing the bill. In
+that "debate," if such it can be called, while opposing a postponement
+for further information and reflection, he said, "The President has
+recommended the measure on his high responsibility; I would _not
+consider_, I would _not deliberate_; I would _act_. Doubtless the
+_President possesses such further information as will justify the
+measure_!"[21] To my mind, that is the worst act of his public life; I
+cannot justify it. I wish I could find some reasonable excuse for it.
+What had become of the "sovereignty of the people," the "unalienable
+right of resistance to oppression?" Would _not consider_; would _not
+deliberate_; would _act_ without doing either; leave it all to the "high
+responsibility" of the President, with a "doubtless" he has "further
+information" to justify the measure! It was a shame to say so; it would
+have disgraced a Senator in St. Petersburg. Why not have the "further
+information" laid before the Senate? What would Mr. Adams have said, if
+President Jackson, Tyler, or Polk, had sent such a message, and some
+Senator or Representative had counselled submissive action, without
+considering, without deliberation? With what appalling metaphors would
+he describe such a departure from the first duty of a statesman; how
+would the tempestuous eloquence of that old patriot shake the Hall of
+Congress till it rung again, and the nation looked up with indignation
+in its face! It is well known what Mr. Adams said in 1834, when Mr.
+Polk, in the House of Representatives, seemed over-laudatory of the
+President: "I shall never be disposed to interfere with any member who
+shall rise on this floor and pronounce a panegyric upon the chief
+magistrate.
+
+    'No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
+    And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
+    Where thrift may follow fawning.'"
+
+Yet the future of Mr. Polk was not so obvious in 1834, as the reward of
+Mr. Adams in 1808.
+
+This act is particularly glaring in Mr. Adams. The North often sends men
+to Washington who might have done it without any great inconsistency;
+men, too, not so remarkable for infirmity in the head, as for that less
+pardonable weakness in the knees and the neck; men that bend to power
+"right or wrong." Mr. Adams was not afflicted with that weakness, and so
+the more to be censured for this palpable betrayal of a trust so
+important. I wish I could find some excuse for it. He was forty years
+old; not very old, but old enough to know better. His defence made the
+matter worse. The Massachusetts Legislature disapproved of his conduct;
+chose another man to succeed him in the Senate. Then Mr. Adams resigned
+his seat, and soon after was sent minister to Russia, as he himself
+subsequently declared,[22] "in consequence of the support he had for
+years given to the measures of Mr. Jefferson's administration against
+Great Britain." But his father said of that mission of his son,
+"Aristides is banished because he is too just."[23] It is easy to judge
+of the temper of the times, when such words as those of the father
+could be said on such an occasion, and that by a man who had been
+President of the United States! When a famine occurs, disease appears in
+the most hideous forms; men go back to temporary barbarism. In times of
+political strife, such diseases appear of the intellectual and moral
+powers. No man who did not live in those times can fully understand the
+obliquity of mind and moral depravity which then displayed themselves
+amongst those otherwise without reproach. Says Mr. Adams himself,
+referring to that period, "Imagination in her wildest vagaries can
+scarcely conceive the transformation of temper, the obliquities of
+intellect, the perversions of moral principle, effected by junctures of
+nigh and general excitement." However, it must be confessed that this,
+though not the only instance of injustice, is the only case of servile
+compliance with the Executive to be found in the whole life of the man.
+It was a grievous fault, but grievously did he answer it; and if a long
+life of unfaltering resistance to every attempt at the assumption of
+power is fit atonement, then the expiation was abundantly made.
+
+About the same time, Mr. Adams was chairman of a committee of the
+Senate, appointed to consider the case of a Senator from Ohio. His
+conduct, on that occasion, has been the theme of violent attack, and
+defence as violent. To the calm spectator, at this day, his conduct
+seems unjustifiable, inconsistent with the counsels of justice, which,
+though moving with her "Pace of snail," looks always towards the right,
+and will not move out of her track, though the heavens fall.
+
+While Mr. Adams was President, Hayti became free; but he did not express
+any desire that the United States should acknowledge her independence,
+and receive her minister at Washington,--an African plenipotentiary. In
+his message,[24] he says, "There are circumstances that have hitherto
+forbidden the acknowledgment," and mentions "additional reasons for
+withholding that acknowledgment." In the instructions to the American
+functionary, sent to the celebrated Congress of Panama, it is said, the
+President "is not prepared now to say that Hayti ought to be recognized
+as an independent sovereign power;" he "does not think it would be
+proper at this time to recognize it as a new State." He was unwilling to
+consent to the independence of Cuba, for fear of an insurrection of her
+slaves, and the effect at home. The duty of the United States would be
+"To defend themselves against the contagion of such near and dangerous
+examples," that would "constrain them ... to employ all means necessary
+to their security." That is, the President would be constrained to put
+down the blacks in Cuba, who were exercising "The unalienable right of
+resistance to oppression," for fear the blacks in the United States
+would discover that they also were men, and had "Unalienable rights!"
+Had he forgotten the famous words, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience
+to God?" The defence of such language on such an occasion is, that Mr.
+Adams's eyes were not yet open to the evil of slavery. That is a good
+defence, if true. To me it seems a true defence. Even great men do not
+see every thing. In 1800, Fisher Ames, while delivering the eulogy on
+General Washington, censured even the British government, because, "In
+the wilds of Africa, it obstructed the commerce in slaves!" No man is so
+wise as mankind. It must be confessed that Mr. Adams, while Secretary of
+State, and again, while President, showed no hostility to the
+institution of slavery. His influence all went the other way. He would
+repress the freedom of the blacks, in the West Indies, lest American
+slavery should be disturbed, and its fetters broke; he would not
+acknowledge the independence of Hayti, he would urge Spain to make peace
+with her descendants, for the same reason--"not for those new
+republics," but lest the negroes in Cuba and Porto Rico should secure
+their freedom. He negotiated with England, and she paid the United
+States more than a million of dollars[25] for the fugitive slaves who
+took refuge under her flag during the late war. Mr. Adams had no
+scruples about receiving the money during his administration. An attempt
+was repeatedly made by his secretary, Mr. Clay, through Mr. Gallatin,
+and then through Mr. Barbour, to induce England to restore the "fugitive
+slaves who had taken refuge in the Canadian provinces," who, escaping
+from the area of freedom, seek the shelter of the British crown.[26]
+Nay, he negotiated a treaty with Mexico, which bound her to deliver up
+fugitive slaves, escaping from the United States--a treaty which the
+Mexican Congress refused to ratify! Should a great man have known
+better? Great men are not always wise. Afterwards, public attention was
+called to the matter; humble men gave lofty counsel; Mr. Adams used
+different language, and recommended different measures. But long before
+that, on the 7th of December, 1804, Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the
+Senate of the United States, offered a resolution, for the purpose of
+amending the Constitution, so as to apportion representatives, and
+direct taxes among the States, according to their free inhabitants.
+
+But there are other things in Mr. Adams's course and conduct, which
+deserve the censure of a good man. One was, the attempt to justify the
+conduct of England, in her late war with China, when she forced her
+opium upon the barbarians with the bayonet. To make out his case, he
+contended that "In the celestial empire ... the patriarchal system of
+Sir Robert Filmer, flourished in all its glory," and the Chinese claimed
+superior dignity over all others; they refused to hold equal and
+reciprocal commercial intercourse with other nations, and "It is time
+this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and the first
+principles of the laws of nations, should cease."[27] It is true, the
+Chinese were "barbarians;" true, the English carried thither the Bible
+and Christianity, at least their own Christianity. But, even by the law
+of nations, letting alone the law of nature, the barbarians had a right
+to repel both Bible and Christianity, when they came in a contraband
+shape--that of opium and cannon balls. To justify this outrage of the
+strong against the weak, he quite forgets his old antipathy to England,
+his devotion to human freedom, and the sovereignty of the people,
+calling the cause of England "a righteous cause."
+
+He defended the American claim to the whole of Oregon, up to 54 deg. 40'.
+He did not so much undertake to make out a title to either, by the law
+of nature or of nations, but cut the matter short, and claimed the whole
+of Oregon, on the strength of the first chapter of Genesis. This was the
+argument: God gave mankind dominion over all the earth;[28] between
+Christian nations, the command of the Creator lays the foundation of all
+titles to land, of titles to territory, of titles to jurisdiction. Then
+in the Psalms,[29] God gives the "uttermost part of the earth for a
+possession" to the Messiah, as the representative of all mankind, who
+held the uttermost parts of the earth in chief. But the Pope, as head of
+the visible church, was the representative of Christ, and so, holding
+under him, had the right to give to any king or prelate, authority to
+subdue barbarous nations, possess their territory, and convert them to
+Christianity. In 1493, the Pope, in virtue of the above right, gave the
+American continent to the Spanish monarchs, who, in time, sold their
+title to the people of the United States. That title may be defective,
+as the Pope may not be the representative of Christ, and so the passage
+in the Psalms will not help the American claim, but then the United
+States will hold under the first clause in the Testament of God, that
+is, in Genesis. The claim of Great Britain is not valid, for she does
+not want the land for the purpose specified in that clause of the
+Testament, to "Replenish the earth and subdue it." She wants it, "That
+she may keep it open as a hunting-ground," while the United States want
+it, that it may grow into a great nation, and become a free and
+sovereign republic.[30]
+
+This strange hypothesis, it seems, lay at the bottom of his defence of
+the British in their invasion of China. It would have led him, if
+consistent, to claim also the greater part of Mexico. But, as he did not
+publicly declare his opinion on that matter, no more need be said
+concerning it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such was the most prominent idea in his history; such the departures
+from it. Let us look at other events in his life. While President, the
+most important object of his administration was the promotion of
+internal improvements, especially the internal communication between the
+States. For this purpose the government lent its aid in the construction
+of roads and canals, and a little more than four millions of dollars
+were devoted to this work in his administration. On the 4th of July,
+1828, he helped break ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio canal,
+thinking it an important event in his life. He then said there were
+three great steps in the progress of America. The first was the
+Declaration of Independence and the achievement thereof; the second, the
+union of the whole country under the Constitution; but the third was
+more arduous than both of the others: "It is," said he, "the adaptation
+of the powers, physical, moral, and intellectual, of the whole Union, to
+the improvement of its own condition; of its _moral_ and _political_
+condition, by wise and liberal institutions; by the cultivation of the
+understanding and the heart; by academies, schools, and learned
+institutions; by the pursuit and patronage of learning and the arts; of
+its _physical_ condition, by associated labor to improve the bounties
+and supply the deficiencies of nature; to stem the torrent in its
+course; to level the mountain with the plain; to disarm and fetter the
+raging surge of the ocean."[31] He faithfully adhered to these words in
+his administration.
+
+He was careful never to exceed the powers which the Constitution
+prescribed for him. He thought the acquisition of Louisiana was
+"accomplished by a flagrant violation of the Constitution,"[32] and
+himself guarded against such violations. He revered the God of Limits,
+who, in the Roman mythology, refused to give way or remove, even for
+Jupiter himself. No man was ever more conscientious on that ground. To
+him the Constitution meant something; his oath to keep it meant
+something.
+
+No great political event occurred in his administration; the questions
+which now vex the country had not arisen. There was no quarrel between
+freedom and slavery; no man in Congress ventured to denounce slavery as
+a crime; the African slave-trade was thought wrong, not the slavery
+which caused it. Party lines, obliterated under Mr. Monroe's
+administration, were viewed and marked with a good deal of care and
+exactness; but the old lines could not be wholly restored. Mr. Adams was
+not the President of a section of the country; not the President of a
+party, but of the nation. He favored no special interest of a class, to
+the injury of another class. He did not reward his friends, nor punish
+his foes; the party of the spoils, patent or latent at all times, got no
+spoils from him. He never debauched his country by the removal and
+appointment of officers. Had he done otherwise, done as all his
+successors have done, used his actual power to promote his own ambition,
+no doubt he might have been reelected. But he could not stoop to manage
+men in that way. No doubt he desired a reelection, and saw the method
+and means to effect that, but conscience said, "It is not right." He
+forbore, lost his election, and gained--we shall soon see what he
+gained.
+
+On the 19th of July, 1826, at a public dinner at Edgefield Court-house,
+South Carolina, Mr. McDuffie said, "Mr. Adams came into power upon
+principles utterly subversive of the republican system; substituting the
+worst species of aristocracy, that of speculating politicians and
+office-hunters, in the place of a sound and wholesome republican
+democracy." When Mr. Adams retired from office, he could remember, with
+the virtuous Athenian, that no man had put on mourning for him because
+unjustly deprived of his post. Was an office-holder or an office-wanter
+a political friend of Mr. Adams, that did not help him; a foe, that did
+not hinder. He looked only to the man's ability and integrity. I wish it
+was no praise to say these things; but it is praise I dare not apply to
+any other man since Washington. Mr. Adams once said, "There is no
+official act of the chief magistrate, however momentous, or however
+minute, but it should be traceable to a dictate of duty, pointing to the
+welfare of the people." That was his executive creed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a public servant, he had many qualities seldom united in the same
+person. He was simple, and unostentatious; he had none of the airs of a
+great man; seemed humble, modest, and retiring; caring much for the
+substance of manhood, he let the show take care of itself. He carried
+the simplicity of a plain New England man into the President's house,
+spending little in its decorations--about one fourth, it is said, of the
+amount of his successor. In his housekeeping, public or private, there
+was only one thing much to be boasted of and remarked upon: strange to
+say, that was the master of the house. He was never eclipsed by his own
+brass and mahogany. He had what are called democratic habits, and served
+himself in preference to being served by others. He treated all that
+were about him with a marked deference and courtesy, carrying his
+respect for human rights into the minutest details of common life.
+
+He was a model of diligence, though not, perhaps, very systematic. His
+State papers, prepared while he was Minister, Secretary, or Member of
+Congress, his numerous orations and speeches, though not always
+distinguished for that orderly arrangement of parts which is instinctive
+with minds of a high philosophical character, are yet astonishing for
+their number, and the wide learning they display. He was well acquainted
+with the classic and most modern languages; at home in their literature.
+He was surprisingly familiar with modern history; perhaps no political
+man was so thoroughly acquainted with the political history of America,
+and that of Christian Europe for the last two hundred years. He was
+widely read and profoundly skilled in all that relates to diplomacy, and
+to international law. He was fond of belles-lettres, and commented on
+Shakspeare more like a professor than a layman in that department. Few
+theologians in America, it is said, were so widely read in their
+peculiar lore as he. He had read much, remembered much, understood much.
+However, he seems to have paid little attention to physical science, and
+perhaps less to metaphysical. His speeches and his conversation, though
+neither brilliant, nor rich in ideas, astonished young men with an
+affluence of learning, which seemed marvellous in one all his life
+devoted to practical affairs. But this is a trifle: to achieve that,
+nothing is needed but health, diligence, memory, and a long life. Mr.
+Adams had all these requisites.
+
+He had higher qualities: he loved his country, perhaps no man more so;
+he had patriotism in an heroic degree, yet was not thereby blinded to
+humanity. He thought it a vital principle of human society, that each
+nation should contribute to the happiness of all; and, therefore, that
+no nation should "regulate its conduct by the exclusive or even the
+paramount consideration of its own interest."[33] Yet he loved his
+country, his whole country, and when she was in the wrong he told her
+so, because he loved her. This, said he, would be a good sentiment: "Our
+country! May she be always successful; but, whether successful or not,
+may she be always in the right." He saw the faults of America, saw the
+corruption of the American government. He did not make gain by this in
+private, but set an honest face against it.
+
+He was a conscientious man. This peculiarity is strongly marked in most
+of his life. He respected the limit between right and wrong. He did not
+think it unworthy of a statesman to refer to moral principles, to the
+absolutely right. I do not mean to say, that in his whole life there was
+no departure from the strict rule of duty. I have mentioned already some
+examples, but kept one more for this place: he pursued persons with a
+certain vindictiveness of spirit. I will not revive again the old
+quarrels, nor dig up his hard words, long ago consigned to oblivion; it
+would be unjust to the living. He was what is called a good hater. If he
+loved an idea, he seemed to hate the man who opposed it. He was not
+content with replying; he must also retort, though it manifestly
+weakened the force of the reply. In his attacks on persons he was
+sometimes unjust, violent, sharp, and vindictive; sometimes cruel, and
+even barbarous. Did he ever forgive an enemy? Every opponent was a foe,
+and he thrashed his foes with an iron hoof and winnowed them with a
+storm. The most awful specimens of invective which the language affords
+can be found in his words--bitter, revengeful, and unrelenting. I am
+sorry to say these things; it hurts my feelings to say them, yours not
+less to hear them. But it is not our fault they are true; it would be
+mine, if, knowing they were true, I did not on this occasion point them
+out in warning words. Mr. Adams says that Roger Williams was
+conscientious and contentious; it is equally true of himself. Perhaps
+Mr. Adams had little humor, but certainly a giant's wit; he used it
+tyrannously and like a giant. Wit has its place in debate; in
+controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive. After
+one has beaten the single barley-corn of good sense out of a whole
+wagon-load of chaff, the easiest way to be rid of the rubbish is to burn
+it up with the lightning of wit; the danger is, that the burning should
+begin before the separation is made; that the fire consume the good and
+bad indifferently. When argument is edged and pointed with wit, it is
+doubly effective; but when that edge is jagged with ill-will, poisoned,
+too, with personal spleen, then it becomes a weapon unworthy of a man.
+Sometimes Mr. Adams used his wit as fairly as his wisdom; and bags of
+wind, on which Hercules might have stamped and beaten a twelvemonth, but
+in vain--at a single puncture from that keen wit gave up their ghost and
+flattened into nothing; a vanity to all men, but a vexation of spirit to
+him who had blown them so full of his own soul. But sometimes, yes,
+often, Mr. Adams's wit performs a different part: it sits as a judge,
+unjust and unforgiving, "often deciding wrong, and when right from
+wrong motives." It was the small dagger with which he smote the fallen
+foe. It is a poor praise for a famous man, churchman, or statesman, to
+beat a blackguard with his own weapons. It must be confessed, that in
+controversy, Mr. Adams's arrows were sharp and deftly delivered; but
+they were often barbed, and sometimes poisoned.
+
+True, he encountered more political opposition than any man in the
+nation. For more than forty years he has never been without bitter and
+unrelenting enemies, public and private. No man in America, perhaps,
+ever had such provocations; surely, none had ever such opportunities to
+reply without retorting. How much better would it have been, if, at the
+end of that long life and fifty years' war, he could say he had never
+wasted a shot; had never sinned with his lips, nor once feathered his
+public arrow with private spleen! Wise as he was, and old, he never
+learned that for undeserved calumny, for personal insult and abuse,
+there is one answer, Christian, manly, and irrefutable--the dignity of
+silence. A just man can afford to wait till the storm of abuse shall
+spend its rage and vanish under the rainbow, which itself furnishes and
+leaves behind. The retorting speech of such a man may be silvern or
+iron; his silence, victorious and golden.
+
+It is easy to censure Mr. Adams for such intemperance of speech and
+persecution of persons; unfortunately, too easy to furnish other
+examples of both. We know what he spoke--God only what he repressed.
+Who knows out of how deep a fulness of indignation such torrents gush?
+Tried by the standard of other men, his fellow politicians of America
+and Europe, he was no worse than they, only abler.[34] The mouse and the
+fox have as great a proportionate anger as the lion, though the one is
+ridiculous and the other terrific. Mr. Adams must be tried by his own
+standard, the rule of right, the standard of conscience and of
+Christianity; then surely he did wrong. For such a man the vulgarity of
+the offence is no excuse.
+
+With this and the other exceptions he appears a remarkably conscientious
+man in his public life. He may often have erred, as all men, without
+violating his own sense of right.
+
+While he was President he would not consent to any "public manifestation
+of honors personal to himself." He would not accept a present, for his
+Bible taught him what experience continually enforces, that a gift
+blinds the eyes of wise men and perverts their judgment. While at St.
+Petersburg, the Russian Minister of the Interior, then an old man, felt
+uneasy on account of the presents accepted during his official service,
+and, calculating the value of all gifts received, returned it to the
+imperial treasury. This fact made an impression on Mr. Adams, and led
+to a resolution which he faithfully kept. When a bookseller sent him a
+costly Bible, he kept the book, but paid its full value. No bribes, no
+pensions in any form, ever soiled justice in his hands. He would never
+be indebted to any body of men, lest they might afterwards sway him from
+the right path.
+
+Because he was a conscientious man he would never be the servant of a
+party, and never was. It was of great advantage to him that he was
+absent while the two chief parties were forming in the United States. He
+came into the Massachusetts Legislature as a federalist, but some
+anti-federalists also voted for him. His first vote showed he was not
+limited by the common principles of a party. He was chosen to the Senate
+of the United States, not by a party vote. At first he acted mainly with
+the federalists, though not always voting with his colleague; but in
+1807 acted with the administration in the matter of the Embargo. This
+was the eventful crisis of his life; this change in his politics, while
+it gave him station and political power, yet brought upon him the
+indignation of his former friends; it has never been forgotten nor
+forgiven. Be the outward occasion and inward motive what they may, this
+led to the sundering of friendships long cherished and deservedly dear;
+it produced the most bitter experience of his life. Political men would
+naturally undertake to judge his counsel by its probable and obvious
+consequences, the favor of the Executive, rather than attribute it to
+any latent motive of patriotism in his heart.
+
+While at the head of the nation he would not be the President of a
+party, but of the people; when he became a representative in Congress he
+was not the delegate of a party, but of justice and the eternal right,
+giving his constituents an assurance that he would hold himself in
+allegiance to no party, national or political. He has often been accused
+of hatred to the South; I can find no trace of it. "I entered Congress,"
+says he, "without one sentiment of discrimination between the North and
+South." At first he acted with Mr. Jackson, to arrest the progress of
+nullification, for the democracy of South Carolina was putting in
+practice what the federalists of New England have so often been alleged
+to have held in theory, and condemned on that allegation. Here he was
+consistent. In 1834, he approved the spirit of the same President in
+demanding justice of France; but afterwards he did not hesitate to
+oppose, and perhaps abuse him.
+
+He had a high reverence for religion; none of our public men more. He
+aimed to be a Christian man. Signs of this have often been sought in his
+habits of church-going, of reading the Bible; they may be found rather
+in the general rectitude of his life, public and private, and in the
+high motives which swayed him, in his opposition to slavery, in the
+self-denial which cost him his reelection. In his public acts he seems
+animated by the thought that he stood in the presence of God. Though
+rather unphilosophical in his theology, resting to a great degree on the
+authority of tradition and the letter, and attaching much value to forms
+and times, he yet saw the peculiar excellence of Christianity,--that it
+recognized "Love as the paramount and transcendent law of human nature."
+I do not say that his life indicates the attainment of a complete
+religious repose, but that he earnestly and continually labored to
+achieve that. You shall find few statesmen, few men, who act with a more
+continual and obvious reference to religion as a motive, as a guide, as
+a comfort. He was, however, no sectarian. His devotion to freedom
+appeared, where it seldom appears, in his notions about religion. He
+thought for himself, and had a theology of his own, rather
+old-fashioned, it is true, and not very philosophical or consistent, it
+may be, and in that he was not very singular, but he allowed others to
+think also for themselves, and have a theology of their own. Mr. Adams
+was a Unitarian. It is no great merit to be a Unitarian, or a Calvinist,
+or a Catholic, perhaps no more merit to be one than the other. But he
+was not ashamed of his belief when Unitarianism was little, despised,
+mocked at, and called "Infidelity" on all sides. When the Unitarian
+church at Washington, a small and feeble body, met for worship in an
+upper room--not large, but obscure, over a public bathing-house--John
+Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State and expecting to be President, came
+regularly to worship with them. It was not fashionable; it was hardly
+respectable, for the Unitarians were not then, as now, numerous and
+rich: but he went and worshipped. It was no merit to think with any
+sect, it was a great merit to dare be true to his convictions. In his
+theology, as in politics, he feared not to stand in a minority. If there
+ever was an American who loved the praise of God more than the praise of
+men, I believe Mr. Adams was one.
+
+His devotion to freedom, his love of his country, his conscientiousness,
+his religion, are four things strong and noticeable in his character.
+You shall look long amongst our famous men before you find his equal in
+these things.[35]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Somebody says, no man ever used all his intellectual faculties as far
+as possible. If any man is an exception to this rule, it is Mr. Adams.
+He was temperate and diligent; industrious almost to a fault, though not
+orderly or systematic. His diplomatic letters, his orations, his reports
+and speeches, all indicate wide learning, the fruit of the most
+remarkable diligence. The attainments of a well-bred scholar are not
+often found in the American Congress, or the President's house. Yet he
+never gives proof that he had the mind of a great man. In his special
+department of politics he does not appear as a master. He has no great
+ideas with which to solve the riddles of commerce and finance; has done
+little to settle the commercial problems of the world,--for that work
+there is needed not only a retrospective acquaintance with the habits
+and history of men, but the foresight which comes from a knowledge of
+the nature of things and of man. His chief intellectual excellence seems
+to have been memory; his great moral merit, a conscientious and firm
+honesty; his practical strength lay in his diligence. His counsels seem
+almost always to have come from a knowledge of human history, seldom to
+have been prompted by a knowledge of the nature of man. Hence he was a
+critic of the past, or an administrator of the present, rather than a
+prophetic guide for the future. He had many facts and precedents, but
+few ideas. Few examples of great political foresight can be quoted from
+his life; and therein, to his honor be it spoken, his heart seems to
+have out-travelled his head. The public affairs of the United States
+seem generally to be conducted by many men of moderate abilities, rather
+than by a few men of great genius for politics.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Adams wrote much. Some of his works are remarkable for their beauty,
+for the graceful proportions of their style, and the felicity of their
+decoration. Such are his celebrated Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory,
+which are sufficiently learned and sagacious, not very philosophical,
+but written in an agreeable style, and at the present day not wholly
+without value. His review of the works of Fisher Ames, I speak only of
+the rhetoric, is, perhaps, the finest of his compositions. Some of his
+productions are disorderly, ill-compacted, without "joints or
+contexture," and homely to a fault: this oration is a growth out of a
+central thought, marked by an internal harmony; that, a composition, a
+piece of carpentry distinguished by only an outward symmetry of members;
+others are neither growth nor composition, only a mass of materials
+huddled and lumped together. Most of his later productions, with the
+exception of his congressional speeches, are hard, cold, and unfinished
+performances, with little order in the thoughts, and less beauty in the
+expression. His extemporaneous speeches have more of both; they are
+better finished than his studied orations. He could judge and speak
+with fury, though he wrote with phlegm. His illustrations are usually
+drawn from literature, not from nature or human life; his language is
+commonly cold, derived from the Roman stream which has been filtered
+through books, rather than from the deep and original well of our Saxon
+home. His published letters are compact, written in a cold style,
+without playfulness or wit, with no elegance, and though mostly business
+letters, they are not remarkable for strength or distinctness. His
+diligence appears in verse as well as prose. He wrote much that rhymed
+tolerably; little that was poetical. The same absence of nature, the
+same coldness and lack of inspiration, mark his poetry and prose. But in
+all that he wrote, with the exceptions mentioned above, though you miss
+the genial warmth, the lofty thought, the mind that attracts, embraces,
+warms, and inspires the reader, you find always a spirit of humanity, of
+justice, and love to God.
+
+Mr. Adams was seldom eloquent. Eloquence is no great gift. It has its
+place among subordinate powers, not among the chief. Alas for the
+statesman or preacher who has only that to save the State withal!
+Washington had none of it, yet how he ruled the land! No man in America
+has ever had a political influence so wide and permanent as Mr.
+Jefferson; yet he was a very indifferent writer, and never made a speech
+of any value. The acts of Washington, the ideas of Jefferson, made
+eloquence superfluous. True, it has its value: if a man have at command
+the electricity of truth, justice, love, the sentiments and great ideas
+thereof, it is a good thing to be able with Olympian hand to condense
+that electric fire into bolted eloquence; to thunder and lighten in the
+sky. But if a man have that electric truth, it matters little whether it
+is Moses that speaks, or only Aaron; whether or not Paul's bodily
+presence be weak and his speech contemptible: it is Moses' thought which
+thunders and lightens out of Sinai; it is Paul's idea that is powerful
+and builds up the church. Of true eloquence, the best thoughts put in
+the best words, and uttered in the best form, Mr. Adams had little, and
+that appeared mainly in the latter part of his life. Hundreds have more.
+What passes for eloquence is common in America, where the public mouth
+is always a-going. His early orations are poor in their substance and
+faulty in their form. His ability as an orator developed late; no proofs
+of it appear before he entered the House of Representatives, at a good
+old age. In his manner of speaking there was little dignity and no
+grace, though sometimes there was a terrible energy and fire. He was
+often a powerful speaker--by his facts and figures, by his knowledge,
+his fame, his age, and his position, but most of all by his independent
+character. He spoke worthily of great men, of Madison or Lafayette,
+kindling with his theme, and laying aside all littleness of a party.
+However, he was most earnest and most eloquent not when he stood up the
+champion of a neglected truth, not when he dwelt on great men now
+venerable to us all, but when he gathered his strength to attack a foe.
+Incensed, his sarcasm was terrific; colossal vanity aspiring to be a
+Ghenghis Khan, at the touch of that Ithuriel spear shrank to the
+dimensions of Tom Thumb. His invective is his masterpiece of oratoric
+skill. It is sad to say this, and to remember, that the greatest works
+of ancient or of modern rhetoric, from the thundering Philippics of
+Demosthenes down to the sarcastic and crazy rattle of Lord Brougham, are
+all of the same character, are efforts against a personal foe! Men find
+hitherto the ablest acts and speech in the same cause,--not positive and
+creating, but critical and combative,--in war.
+
+If Mr. Adams had died in 1829, he would have been remembered for awhile
+as a learned man; as an able diplomatist, who had served his country
+faithfully at home and abroad; as a President spotless and
+incorruptible, but not as a very important personage in American
+history. His mark would have been faint and soon effaced from the sands
+of time. But the last period of his life was the noblest. He had worn
+all the official honors which the nation could bestow; he sought the
+greater honor of serving that nation, who had now no added boon to give.
+All that he had done as Minister abroad, as Senator, as Secretary, and
+President, is little compared with what he did in the House of
+Representatives; and while he stood there, with nothing to hope, with
+nothing to fear, the hand of Justice wrote his name high up on the walls
+of his country. It was surprising to see at his first attendance there,
+men who, while he was President, had been the loudest to call out
+"Coalition, Bargain, Intrigue, Corruption," come forward and express the
+involuntary confidence they felt in his wisdom and integrity, and their
+fear, actual though baseless, that his withdrawal from the Committee on
+Manufactures would "endanger the very Union itself."[36] Great questions
+soon came up: nullification was speedily disposed of; the Bank and the
+tariff got ended or compromised, but slavery lay in the consciousness of
+the nation, like the one dear but appalling sin in a man's heart. Some
+wished to be rid of it, northern men and southern men. It would come up;
+to justify that, or excuse it, the American sentiment and idea must be
+denied and rejected utterly; the South, who had long known the charms of
+Bathsheba, was ready for her sake to make way with Uriah himself. To
+remove that monstrous evil, gradually but totally, and restore unity to
+the nation, would require a greater change than the adoption of the
+Constitution. To keep slavery out of sight, yet in existence,
+unjustified, unexcused, unrepented of, a contradiction in the national
+consciousness, a political and deadly sin, the sin against the Holy
+Spirit of American Liberty, known but not confessed, the public secret
+of the people--that would lead to suppressing petitions, suppressing
+debate in Congress and out of Congress, to silencing the pulpit, the
+press, and the people.
+
+Under these circumstances, Mr. Adams went to Congress, an old man, well
+known on both sides the water, the presidential laurels on his brow,
+independent and fearless, expecting no reward from men for services
+however great. In respect to the subject of slavery, he had no ideas in
+advance of the nation; he was far behind the foremost men. He
+"deprecated all discussion of slavery or its abolition, in the House,
+and gave no countenance to petitions for the abolition of slavery in the
+District of Columbia or the territories." However, he acquired new ideas
+as he went on, and became the congressional leader in the great movement
+of the American mind towards universal freedom.
+
+Here he stood as the champion of human rights; here he fought, and with
+all his might. In 1836, by the celebrated resolution, forbidding debate
+on the subject of slavery, the South drove the North to the wall, nailed
+it there into shameful silence. A "Northern man with Southern
+principles," before entering the President's chair, declared, that if
+Congress should pass a law to abolish slavery in the District of
+Columbia, he would exercise his veto to prevent the law.[37] Mr. Adams
+stood up manfully, sometimes almost alone, and contended for freedom of
+speech. Did obstinate men of the North send petitions relative to
+slavery, asking for its abolition in the District or elsewhere? Mr.
+Adams was ready to present the petitions. Did women petition? It made no
+difference with him. Did slaves petition? He stood up there to defend
+their right to be heard. The South had overcome many an obstacle, but
+that one fearless soul would not bend, and could not be broken. Spite of
+rules of order, he contrived to bring the matter perpetually before
+Congress, and sometimes to read the most offensive parts of the
+petitions. When Arkansas was made a State, he endeavored to abolish
+slavery in its domain; he sought to establish international relations
+with Hayti, and to secure the right of suffrage for the colored citizens
+of the District of Columbia. The laws which forbid blacks to vote in the
+Northern States he held "in utter abhorrence."
+
+He saw from afar the plots of southern politicians, plots for extending
+the area of slavery, for narrowing the area of freedom, and exposed
+those plots. You all remember the tumult it excited when he rose in his
+place holding a petition from slaves; that the American Congress was
+thrown into long and disgraceful confusion. You cannot have forgotten
+the uproar which followed his presenting a petition to dissolve the
+Union![38] I know few speeches more noble and manly than his on the
+right of petition,--occasioned by that celebrated attempt to stifle
+debate, and on the annexation of Texas. Some proposed to censure him,
+some clamored, "expel him," some cried out, "burn the petitions!" and
+"him with them," screamed yet others. Some threatened to have him
+indicted by the grand jury of the district, "or be made amenable to
+_another tribunal_," hoping to see "an incendiary brought to condign
+punishment." "My life on it," said a southern legislator, "if he
+presents that petition from slaves, we shall yet see him within the
+walls of the penitentiary." Some in secret threatened to assassinate him
+in the streets. They mistook their man; with justice on his side he did
+"not fear all the grand juries in the universe." He would not curl nor
+cringe, but snorted his defiance in their very face. In front of
+ridicule, of desertion, obloquy, rage, and brutal threats, stood up that
+old man, bald and audacious, and the chafed rock of Cohasset stands not
+firmer mid the yesty waves, nor more triumphant spurns back into the
+ocean's face the broken billows of the storm. That New England knee bent
+only before his God. That unpretending man--the whole power of the
+nation could not move him from his post.
+
+Men threatened to increase the slave power. Said one of the champions of
+slavery with prophetic speech, but fatal as Cassandra's in the classic
+tale, Americans "would come up in thousands to plant the lone star of
+the Texan banner on the Mexican capital.... The boundless wealth of
+captured towns and rifled churches, and a lazy, vicious, and luxurious
+priesthood, would soon enable Texas to pay her soldiery and redeem her
+State debt, and push her victorious arms to the very shores of the
+Pacific. And would not all this extend the bounds of slavery? Yes, the
+result would be, that before another quarter of a century the extension
+of slavery would not stop short of the Western ocean." Against this
+danger Mr. Adams armed himself, and fought in the holiest cause--the
+cause of human rights.
+
+I know few things in modern times so grand as that old man standing
+there in the House of Representatives, the compeer of Washington, a man
+who had borne himself proudly in kings' courts, early doing service in
+high places, where honor may be won; a man who had filled the highest
+office in any nation's gift; a President's son, himself a President,
+standing there the champion of the neediest of the oppressed: the
+conquering cause pleased others; him only, the cause of the conquered.
+Had he once been servile to the hands that wielded power? No thunderbolt
+can scare him now! Did he once make a treaty and bind Mexico to bewray
+the wandering fugitive who took his life in his hand and fled from the
+talons of the American eagle? Now he would go to the stake sooner than
+tolerate such a deed! When he went to the Supreme Court, after an
+absence of thirty years, and arose to defend a body of friendless
+negroes torn from their home and most unjustly held in thrall; when he
+asked the judges to excuse him at once both for the trembling faults of
+age and the inexperience of youth, the man having labored so long
+elsewhere that he had forgotten the rules of court; when he summed up
+the conclusion of the whole matter, and brought before those judicial
+but yet moistening eyes the great men whom he had once met there--Chase,
+Cushing, Martin, Livingston, and Marshall himself; and while he
+remembered them that were "gone, gone, all gone," remembered also the
+Eternal Justice that is never gone,--why the sight was sublime. It was
+not an old patrician of Rome who had been consul, dictator, coming out
+of his honored retirement at the Senate's call, to stand in the forum to
+levy new armies, marshal them to victory afresh, and gain thereby new
+laurels for his brow;--but it was a plain citizen of America, who had
+held an office far greater than that of consul, king, or dictator, his
+hand reddened by no man's blood, expecting no honors, but coming in the
+name of Justice to plead for the slave, for the poor barbarian negro of
+Africa, for Cinque and Grabbo, for their deeds comparing them to
+Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose classic memory made each bosom thrill.
+That was worth all his honors,--it was worth while to live fourscore
+years for that.
+
+When he stood in the House of Representatives, the champion of the
+rights of a minority, of the rights of man, he stood colossal. Frederick
+the Great seems doubly so, when, single-handed, "that son of the Dukes
+of Brandenburg" contended against Austria, France, England, Russia, kept
+them all at bay, divided by his skill, and conquered by his might.
+Surely he seems great, when measured merely by his deeds. But, in
+comparison, Frederick the Great seems Frederick the little: for Adams
+fought not for a kingdom, nor for fame, but for Justice and the Eternal
+Right; fought, too, with weapons tempered in a heavenly stream![39]
+
+He had his reward. Who ever missed it? From mythological Cain, who slew
+his brother, down to Judas Iscariot, and Aaron Burr; from Jesus of
+Nazareth, down to the least man that dies or lives--who ever lost his
+reward? None. No; not one. Within the wicked heart there dwells the
+avenger, with unseen hands, to adjust the cord, to poison the fatal
+bowl. In the impenetrable citadel of a good man's consciousness, unseen
+by mortal eyes, there stands the palladium of justice, radiant with
+celestial light; mortal hands may make and mar,--this they can mar not,
+no more than they can make. Things about the man can others build up or
+destroy; but no foe, no tyrant, no assassin, can ever steal the man out
+of the man. Who would not have the consciousness of being right, even of
+trying to be right, though affronted by a whole world, rather than
+conscious of being wrong, and hollow, and false, have all the honors of
+a nation on his head? Of late years, no party stood up for Mr. Adams,
+"The madman of Massachusetts," as they called him, on the floor of
+Congress; but he knew that he had, and in his old age, done one
+work,--he had contended for the unalienable rights of man, done it
+faithfully. The government of God is invisible, His justice the more
+certain,--and by that Mr. Adams had his abundant reward.
+
+But he had his poorer and outward rewards, negative and positive. For
+his zeal in behalf of freedom he was called "a monarchist in disguise,"
+"an alien to the true interests of his country," "a traitor." A
+slaveholder from Kentucky published to his constituents that he "was
+sincerely desirous to check that man, for if he could be removed from
+the councils of the nation, or silenced upon the exasperating subject to
+which he had devoted himself, none other, I believe, could be found
+hardy enough or bad enough to fill his place." It was worth something to
+have an enemy speak such praise as that: but the slaveholder was wrong
+in his conjecture; the North has yet other sons not less hardy, not more
+likely to be silenced. Still more praise of a similar sort:--at a fourth
+of July dinner at Walterborough, in South Carolina, this sentiment was
+proposed and responded to with nine cheers: "May we never want a
+democrat to trip up the heels of a federalist, or a hangman to prepare a
+halter for John Quincy Adams." Considering what he had done and whence
+those rewards proceeded, that was honor enough for a yet greater man.
+
+Let me turn to things more grateful. Mr. Adams, through lack of genial
+qualities, had few personal friends, yet from good men throughout the
+North there went up a hearty thanksgiving for his manly independence,
+and prayers for his success. Brave men forgot their old prejudices,
+forgot the "Embargo," forgot the "Hartford Convention," forgot all the
+hard things which he had ever said, forgot his words in the Senate,
+forgot their disappointments, and said--"For this our hearts shall honor
+thee, thou brave old man!" In 1843, when, for the first time, he visited
+the West, to assist at the foundation of a scientific institution, all
+the West rose up to do him reverence. He did not go out to seek honors,
+they came to seek him. 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 honor
+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!
+
+You all remember the last time he was at any public meeting in this
+city. A man had been kidnapped in Boston, kidnapped at noon-day, "on the
+high road between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy," and carried off to be a
+slave! New England hands had seized their brother, sold him into bondage
+for ever, and his children after him. In the presence of slavery, as of
+arms, the laws are silent,--not always men. Then it appears who are men,
+who not! A meeting was called to talk the matter over, in a plain way,
+and look in one another's faces. Who was fit to preside in such a case?
+That old man sat in the chair in Faneuil Hall; above him was the image
+of his father, and his own; around him were Hancock and the other
+Adams,--Washington, greatest of all; before him were the men and women
+of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave;
+the roof of the old Cradle of Liberty spanned over them all. Forty years
+before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting
+called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently
+impressed by the British from an American ship of war, the unlucky
+Chesapeake; some of you remember that event. Now, an old man, clothed
+with half a century of honors, he sits in the same hall, to preside over
+a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave; a greater
+outrage--alas, not done by a hostile, not by an alien hand! One was the
+first meeting of citizens he ever presided over, the other was the last;
+both for the same object--the defence of the Eternal Right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But I would not weary you. His death was noble; fit ending for such a
+life. He was an old man, the last that had held a diplomatic office
+under Washington. He had uttered his oracles; had done his work. The
+highest honors of the nation he had worthily worn; but, as his townsmen
+tell us,--caring little for the President, and much for the man,--that
+was very little in comparison with his character. The good and ill of
+the human cup he had tasted, and plentifully, too, as son, husband,
+father. He had borne his testimony for freedom and the rights of
+mankind; he had stood in Congress almost alone; with a few gallant men
+had gone down to the battlefield, and if victory escaped him, it was
+because night came on.
+
+He saw others enter the field in good heart, to stand in the imminent
+deadly breach; he lived long enough for his own welfare, for his own
+ambition; long enough to see the seal broken,--and then, this aged
+Simeon, joyful in the consolation, bowed his head and went home in
+peace. His feet were not hurt with fetters; he died with his armor on;
+died like a Senator in the capitol of the nation; died like an American,
+in the service of his country; died like a Christian, full of
+immortality; died like a man, fearless and free!
+
+You will ask, What was the secret of his strength? Whence did he gain
+such power to stand erect where others so often cringed and crouched low
+to the ground? It is plain to see: he looked beyond time, beyond men;
+looked to the eternal God, and fearing Him forgot all other fear. Some
+of his failings he knew to be such, and struggled with them though he
+did not overcome. A man, not over-modest, once asked him what he most of
+all lamented in his life, and he replied, "My impetuous temper and
+vituperative speech; that I have not always returned good for evil, but
+in the madness of my blood have said things that I am ashamed of before
+my God!" As the world goes, it needed some greatness to say that.
+
+When he was a boy, his mother, a still woman, and capable, deep-hearted,
+and pious, took great pains with his culture; most of all with his
+religious culture. When, at the age of ten, he was about to leave home
+for years of absence in another land, she took him aside to warn him of
+temptations which he could not then understand. She bade him remember
+religion and his God--his secret, silent prayer. Often in his day there
+came the earthquake of party strife; the fire, the storm, and the
+whirlwind of passion; he listened--and God was not there; but there
+came, too, the remembrance of his mother's whispered words; God came in
+that memory, and earthquake and storm, the fire and the whirlwind were
+powerless, at last, before that still small voice. Beautifully did she
+write to her boy of ten, "Great learning and superior abilities will be
+of little value ... unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are
+added to them. Remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all
+your words and your actions." "Dear as you are to me," says this more
+than Spartan, this Christian mother, "Dear as you are to me, I would
+much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have
+crossed, or that any untimely death cross you in your infant years,
+than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child. Let your
+observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of
+domination and power--the parents of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism.
+May you be led to an imitation of that disinterested patriotism and that
+noble love of your country, which will teach you to despise wealth,
+titles, pomp, and equipage, as mere external advantages, which cannot
+add to the internal excellence of your mind, or compensate for the want
+of integrity and virtue." She tells him in a letter, that her father, a
+plain New England clergyman, of Braintree, who had just died, "left you
+a legacy more valuable than gold or silver; he left you his blessing,
+and his prayers that you might become a useful citizen, a guardian of
+the laws, liberty, and religion of your country.... Lay this bequest up
+in your memory and practise upon it; believe me, you will find it a
+treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy."
+
+If a child have such a mother, there is no wonder why he stood fearless,
+and bore a charmed life which no opposition could tame down. I wonder
+more that one so born and by such a mother bred, could ever once bend a
+servile knee; could ever indulge that fierce and dreadful hate; could
+ever stoop to sully those hands which hers had joined in prayer. It ill
+accords with teachings like her own. I wonder that he could ever have
+refused to "deliberate." Religion is a quality that makes a man
+independent; disappointment will not render such an one sour, nor
+oppression drive him mad, nor elevation bewilder; power will not dazzle,
+nor gold corrupt; no threat can silence and no fear subdue.
+
+There are men enough born with greater abilities than Mr. Adams, men
+enough in New England, in all the walks of man. But how many are there
+in political life who use their gifts so diligently, with such
+conscience, such fearless deference to God?--nay, tell us one. I have
+not spared his faults; I am no eulogist, to paint a man with
+undiscriminating praise. Let his follies warn us, while his virtues
+guide. But look on all his faults, and then compare him with our famous
+men of the North or the South; with the great whigs or the great
+democrats. Ask which was the purest man, the most patriotic, the most
+honest; which did his nation the smallest harm and the greatest good;
+which for his country and his kind denied himself the most. Shall I
+examine their lives, public and private, strip them bare and lay them
+down beside his life, and ask which, after all, has the least of blemish
+and the most of beauty? Nay, that is not for me to do or to attempt.
+
+In one thing he surpassed most men,--he grew more liberal the more he
+grew old, ripening and mellowing, too, with age. After he was seventy
+years old, he welcomed new ideas, kept his mind vigorous, and never
+fell into that crabbed admiration of past times and buried institutions,
+which is the palsy of so many a man, and which makes old age nothing but
+a pity, and gray hairs provocative of tears. This is the more remarkable
+in a man of his habitual reverence for the past, in one who judged
+oftener by the history than by the nature of man.
+
+Times will come when men shall look to that vacant seat. But the thunder
+is silent, the lightning gone; other men must take his place and fill it
+as they can. Let us not mourn that he has gone from us; let us remember
+what was evil in him, but only to be warned of ambition, of party
+strife, to love more that large charity which forgives an enemy, and,
+through good and ill, contends for mankind. Let us be thankful for the
+good he has said and done, be guided by it and blessed. There is a
+certain affluence of intellectual power granted to some men, which
+provokes admiration for a time, let the man of myriad gifts use his
+talent as he may. Such merely cubic greatness of mind is matter of
+astonishment rather than a fit subject for esteem and praise. Of that,
+Mr. Adams had little, as so many of his contemporaries had more. In him
+what most commands respect is, his independence, his love of justice, of
+his country and his kind. No son of New England has been ever so
+distinguished in political life. But it is no great thing to be
+President of the United States; some men it only makes ridiculous. A
+worm on a steeple's top is nothing but a worm, no more able to fly than
+while creeping in congenial mud; a mountain needs no steeple to lift its
+head and show the world what is great and high. The world obeys its
+great men, stand where they may.
+
+After all, this must be the greatest praise of Mr. Adams: In private he
+corrupted no man nor woman; as a politician he never debauched the
+public morals of his country, nor used public power for any private end;
+in public and private he lived clean and above board; he taught a
+fearless love of truth and the right, both by word and deed. I wish I
+could add, that was a small praise. But as the times go, as our famous
+men are, it is a very great fame, and there are few competitors for such
+renown; I must leave him alone in that glory. Doubtless, as he looked
+back on his long career, his whole life, motives as well as actions,
+must have seemed covered with imperfections. I will seek no further to
+disclose his merits, or "draw his frailties from their dead abode."
+
+He has passed on, where superior gifts and opportunities avail not, nor
+his long life, nor his high station, nor his wide spread fame; where
+enemies cease from troubling, and the flattering tongue also is still.
+Wealth, honor, fame, forsake him at the grave's mouth. It is only the
+living soul, sullied or clean, which the last angel bears off in his
+arms to that world where many that seem first shall be last, and the
+last first; but where justice shall be lovingly done to the great man
+full of power and wisdom who rules the State, and the feeblest slave
+whom oppression chains down in ignorance and vice--done by the
+all-seeing Father of both President and slave, who loves both with equal
+love. The venerable man is gone home. He shall have his praise. But who
+shall speak it worthily? Mean men and little, who shrank from him in
+life, who never shared what was manliest in the man, but mocked at his
+living nobleness, shall they come forward and with mealy mouths, to sing
+his requiem, forgetting that his eulogy is their own ban? Some will
+rejoice at his death; there is one man the less to fear, and they who
+trembled at his life may well be glad when the earth has covered up the
+son she bore. Strange men will meet with mutual solace at his tomb,
+wondering that their common foe is dead, and they are met! The Herods
+and Pilates of contending parties may be made friends above his grave,
+and clasping hands may fancy that their union is safer than before; but
+there will come a day after to-day! Let us leave him to his rest.
+
+The slave has lost a champion who gained new ardor and new strength the
+longer he fought; America has lost a man who loved her with his heart;
+Religion has lost a supporter; Freedom an unfailing friend, and Mankind
+a noble vindicator of our unalienable rights.
+
+It is not long since he was here in our own streets; three winter months
+have scantly flown: he set out for his toil--but went home to his rest.
+His labors are over. No man now threatens to assassinate; none to expel;
+none even to censure. The theatrical thunder of Congress, noisy but
+harmless, has ended as it ought, in honest tears. South Carolina need
+ask no more a halter for that one northern neck she could not bend nor
+break. The tears of his country are dropped upon his urn; the muse of
+history shall write thereon, in letters not to be effaced, THE ONE GREAT
+MAN SINCE WASHINGTON, WHOM AMERICA HAD NO CAUSE TO FEAR.
+
+To-day that venerable form lies in the Capitol,--the disenchanted dust.
+All is silent. But his undying soul, could we deem it still hovering
+o'er its native soil, bound to take leave yet lingering still, and loath
+to part, that would bid us love our country, love man, love justice,
+freedom, right, and above all, love God. To-morrow that venerable dust
+starts once more to join the dear presence of father and mother, to
+mingle his ashes with their ashes, as their lives once mingled, and
+their souls again. Let his native State communicate her last sad
+sacrament, and give him now, it is all she can, a little earth for
+charity.
+
+But what shall we say as the dust returns?
+
+    "Where slavery's minions cower
+    Before the servile power,
+      He bore their ban;
+    And like the aged oak,
+    That braved the lightning's stroke,
+    When thunders round it broke,
+      Stood up a man.
+
+    "Nay, when they stormed aloud,
+    And round him like a cloud,
+      Came thick and black,--
+    He single-handed strove,
+    And like Olympian Jove,
+    With his own thunder drove
+      The phalanx back.
+
+    "Not from the bloody field,
+    Borne on his battered shield,
+      By foes o'ercome;--
+    But from a sterner fight,
+    In the defence of Right,
+    Clothed with a conqueror's might,
+      We hail him home.
+
+    "His life in labors spent,
+    That 'Old man eloquent'
+      Now rests for aye;--
+    His dust the tomb may claim;--
+    His spirit's quenchless flame,
+    His 'venerable name,'[40]
+      Pass not away."[41]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] See _Social Compact_, etc. Providence, 1848, p. 31, _et al._
+
+[13] See _Address at Washington_, 4th of July, 1821. Second Edition,
+Cambridge, _passim_.
+
+[14] Reference is made to his _speech in the House of Representatives_,
+May 8th and 9th, 1840. (Boston, 1840.) It is a little remarkable, that
+the false principle of the common law, on which Mr. Adams was
+commenting, as laid down by Blackstone, is corrected by a writer, M.
+Pothier, who rests on the civil law for his authority. See pp. 6-8, and
+20, 21.
+
+[15] _Answer to Paine's Rights of Man_ (London, 1793), originally
+published in the Columbian Centinel. The London Edition bears the name
+of _John Adams_ on the title-page.
+
+[16] Mr. Atherton.
+
+[17] See _Oration at Quincy_, 1831, p. 12, _et seq._ (Boston, 1831.)
+
+[18] The _Social Compact_, etc., etc. (Providence, 1842). p. 24.
+
+[19] See Pickering's _Letter to Governor Sullivan, on the Embargo_.
+Boston, 1808. John Quincy Adams's _Letter to the Hon. H. G. Otis_, etc.
+Boston, 1808. Pickering's _Interesting Correspondence_, 1808. _Review of
+the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William
+Cunningham_, etc. 1824. But see, also, Mr. Adams's "Appendix" to the
+above letter, published _sixteen_ years after the vote on the embargo.
+Baltimore, 1824. Mr. Pickering's _Brief Remarks on the Appendix_.
+August, 1824.
+
+[20] Reference is here made to British "_Orders in Council_" of Nov.
+22d, 1807. They were not officially made known to the American Congress
+till Feb. 7th, 1808. They were, however, published in the National
+Intelligencer, the morning on which the Message was sent to the Senate,
+Dec. 18th, 1807, but were not mentioned in that document, nor in the
+debate.
+
+[21] I copy this from the first letter of Mr. Pickering. Mr. Adams wrote
+a letter (to H. G. Otis) in reply to this of Mr. Pickering, but said
+nothing respecting the words charged upon him; but in 1824, in an
+appendix to that letter, he denies that he expressed the "sentiment"
+which Mr. Pickering charged him with. But he _does not deny the words
+themselves_. They rest on the authority of Mr. Pickering, his colleague
+in the Senate, a strong party man, it is true, perhaps not much disposed
+to conciliation, but a man of most unquestionable veracity. The
+"sentiment" speaks for itself.
+
+[22] Adams's _Remarks in the House of Representatives_, Jan. 5, 1846.
+
+[23] _Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William
+Cunningham, Esq._ Boston, 1823, Letter xliii. p. 150.
+
+[24] March 15th, 1826.
+
+[25] See Mr. Adams's _Message_, Dec. 2, 1828. The exact sum was
+$1,197,422.18.
+
+[26] See Mr. Clay's Letter to Mr. A. H. Everett, April 27th, 1825; to
+Mr. Middleton, respecting the intervention of the Emperor of Russia, May
+10th, and Dec. 26th, 1825; to Mr. Gallatin, May 10th, and June 19th,
+1826, and Feb. 24th, 1827. _Executive Documents_, Second Session of the
+20th Congress, Vol. I.
+
+[27] Report of Mr. Adams's _Lecture on the Chinese War_, in the Boston
+Atlas, for Dec. 4th and 5th, 1841.
+
+[28] Genesis i. 26-28.
+
+[29] Psalms ii. 6-8.
+
+[30] See Mr. Adams's _Speech on Oregon_, Feb. 9th, 1846. Arguments
+somewhat akin to this, may be found also in the oration delivered at
+Newburyport, before cited.
+
+[31] _Address on breaking ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal._
+
+[32] _Jubilee of the Constitution_, p. 99.
+
+[33] _Lecture on China._
+
+[34] See his defence of this in his _Address to his Constituents at
+Braintree_, Sept. 17th, 1842. Boston, 1842, p. 56, _et seq._
+
+[35] In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known words of
+Tacitus (Annal VI. 39), _Par negotiis neque supra_,--applying them to a
+distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire whence they
+came. Mr. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be adequately
+translated in less than seven words in English. The lady replied that
+they might be well translated in five--_Equal to, not above, duty_, but
+better in three--JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
+
+[36] _Remarks_ of Mr. Cambreleng.
+
+[37] Mr. Van Buren.
+
+[38] See the _Debates of the House_, January 23d and following, 1837; or
+Mr. Adams's own account of the matter in his _Letters to his
+Constituents_, etc. (Boston, 1837.) See, too, his _Series of Speeches on
+the Right of Petition and the Annexation of Texas_, January 14th and
+following, 1838. (Printed in a pamphlet. Washington, 1838.)
+
+[39] "Acer et indomitus, quo spes, quoque ira vocasset, Ferre manum, et
+nunquam temerando parcere ferro; Successus urgere suos; instare favori
+Numinis; impellens quiequid sibi summa petenti Obstaret, gaudensque viam
+fecisse ruina."
+
+[40] _Clarum et venerabile nomen._
+
+[41] The above lines are from the pen of the Rev. John Pierpont.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE
+THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, APRIL 6, 1848.
+
+
+MR. CHAIRMAN,--The Gentleman before me[42] has made an allusion to Rome.
+Let me also turn to that same city. Underneath the Rome of the Emperors,
+there was another Rome; not seen by the sun, known only to a few men.
+Above, in the sunlight, stood Rome of the Caesars, with her markets and
+her armies, her theatres, her temples, and her palaces, glorious and of
+marble. A million men went through her brazen gates. The imperial city,
+she stood there, beautiful and admired, the queen of nations. But
+underneath all that, in caverns of the earth, in the tombs of dead men,
+in quarries whence the upper city had been slowly hewn, there was
+another population, another Rome, with other thoughts; yes, a devout
+body of men, who swore not by the public altars; men whose prayers were
+forbidden; their worship disallowed, their ideas prohibited, their very
+lives illegal. Time passed on; and gradually Rome of the Pagans
+disappeared, and Rome of the Christians sat there in her place, on the
+Seven Hills, and stretched out her sceptre over the nations.
+
+So underneath the laws and the institutions of each modern nation,
+underneath the monarchy and the republic, there is another and unseen
+State, with sentiments not yet become popular, and with ideas not yet
+confirmed in actions, not organized into institutions, ideas scarcely
+legal, certainly not respectable. Slowly from its depths comes up this
+ideal State, the State of the Future; and slowly to the eternal deep
+sinks down the actual State, the State of the Present. But sometimes an
+earthquake of the nations degrades of a sudden the actual; and speedily
+starts up the ideal Kingdom of the Future. Such a thing has just come to
+pass. In France, within five-and-forty days, a new State has arisen from
+underneath the old. Men, whose words were suppressed, and their ideas
+reckoned illegal but two months ago, now hold the sceptre of
+five-and-thirty millions of grateful citizens, hold it in clean and
+powerful hands. A great revolution has taken place; one which will
+produce effects that we cannot foresee. It is itself the greatest act of
+this century. God only knows what it will lead to. We are here to
+express the sympathy of republicans for a new republic. We are here to
+rejoice over the rising hopes of a new State, not to exult over the
+fallen fortunes of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe has done much which we
+may thank him for. He has kept mainly at peace the fiercest nation of
+the world; has kept the peace of Europe for seventeen years. Let us
+thank him for that. He has consolidated the French nation, helped to
+give them a new unity of thought and unity of action, which they had not
+before. Perhaps he did not intend all this. Since he has brought it
+about, let us thank him for it, even if his conduct transcended his
+intention. But, most of all, I would thank this "Citizen King" for
+another thing. His greatest lesson is his last. He has shown that
+five-and-thirty millions of Frenchmen, in this nineteenth century, are
+only to be ruled by Justice and the Eternal Law of Right. We have seen
+this crafty king, often wise and always cunning, driven from his throne.
+He was the richest man in Europe, and the embodiment of the idea of
+modern wealth. He had an army the best disciplined, probably, in the
+world, and, as he thought, completely in his power. He had a Chamber of
+Peers of his own appointment; a Chamber of Deputies almost of his own
+election. He ruled a nation that contained three hundred thousand
+office-holders, appointed by himself, and only two hundred and forty
+thousand voters! Who sat so safe as the citizen king on his throne,
+surrounded by republican institutions! So confident was he, as the
+journals tell, that he bade a friend stop a day or two, "and see how I
+will put down the people!" For once, this shrewd calculator reckoned
+without his host.
+
+Well, we have seen this man, this citizen monarch, who married his
+children only to kings, rush from his place; his peers and his deputies
+were unavailing; his office-holders could not sustain him; his army
+"fraternized with the people;" and he, forgetful of his own children,
+ignominiously is hustled out of the kingdom, in a street cab, with
+nothing but a five-franc piece in his pocket. For the lesson thus
+taught, let us thank him most of all.
+
+Men tell us it is too soon to rejoice: "Perhaps the Revolution will not
+hold;" "it will not last;" "the kings of Europe will put it down." When
+a sound, healthy child is born, the friends of the family congratulate
+the parents then; they do not wait till the child has grown up, and got
+a beard. Now this is a live child; it is well born in both senses, come
+of good parentage, and gives signs of a good constitution. Let us
+rejoice at its birth, and not wait to see if it will grow up. Let us now
+baptize it in the crystal fountain of our own Hope.
+
+In a great revolution, there are always two things to be looked at,
+namely, the actions, and the ideas which produce the actions. The
+actions I will say little of; you have all read of them in the
+newspapers. Some of the actions were bad. It is not true that all at
+once the French have become angels. There are low and base men, who
+swarm in the lanes and alleys of Paris; for that great city also is like
+all capitals, girt about with a belt of misery, of vice and of crime,
+eating into her painful loins. It was a bad thing to sack the Tuileries;
+to burn bridges, and chateaux, and railroad stations. Property is under
+the insurance of mankind, and the human race must pay in public for
+private depredations. It was a bad thing to kill men; the human race
+cannot make up that loss; only suffer and be penitent. I am sorry for
+these bad actions; but I am not surprised at them. You cannot burn down
+the poor dwelling of a widow in Boston, but some miserable man will
+steal pot or pan, in the confusion of the fire. How much more should we
+expect pillage and violence in the earthquake which throws down a king!
+
+I have said enough of the actions; but there was one deed too symbolical
+to be passed by. In the garden of the Tuileries, before the great gate
+of the palace, there stands a statue of Spartacus, a colossal bronze,
+his broken chain in the left hand, his Roman sword in the right.
+Spartacus was a Roman gladiator. He broke his chains; gathered about him
+other gladiators, fugitive slaves, and assembled an army. He and his
+comrades fought for freedom; they cut off four consular armies sent
+against them; at last the hero fell amid a heap of men, slain by his own
+well-practised hand. When the people took the old and emblematic French
+throne, and burned it solemnly with emblematic fire, they stripped off
+some of the crimson trappings of the royal seat, made a tiara thereof,
+and bound it on the gladiator's brazen head! But red is the color of
+revolution, the color of blood; the unconscious gladiator was an image
+too savage for new France. So they hid the Roman sword in his hand, and
+wreathed it all over with a chaplet of flowers!
+
+Let us say a word of the ideas. Three ideas filled the mind of the
+nation: the idea of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Three noble words.
+Liberty meant liberty of all. So, at one word, they set free the slaves,
+and, if my friend's ciphers are correct, at once three hundred thousand
+souls rise up from the ground disenthralled, free men. That is a great
+act. A population as large as the whole family of our sober sister
+Connecticut, all at once find their chains drop off, and they are free:
+not beasts, but men. This may not hold. Our Declaration of Independence
+was not the Confederation of '78--still less was it the Constitution of
+'87. The French may be as false as the Americans to their idea of
+liberty. At any rate, it is a good beginning. Let us rejoice at that.
+
+Equality means that all are equal before the law; equal in rights,
+however unequal in mights. So all titles of nobility come at once to the
+ground. The royal family is like the family of our Presidents. The
+Chamber of Peers is abolished. Universal suffrage is decreed; all men
+over twenty-one are voters. Men here in America say, "The French are not
+ready for that." No doubt the king thought so. At any rate, he was not
+ready for it. But it is not a thing altogether unknown in France. It has
+been tried several times before. The French Constitution was accepted by
+the whole people in 1800; Napoleon was made Consul by the whole people;
+made Emperor by the whole people. Even in 1815, the "acte additionelle"
+to the "Charte" was accepted by the whole people. To decree universal
+suffrage was the most natural thing in the world. Those two ideas,
+liberty and equality, have long been American ideas; they were never
+American facts. America sought liberty only for the whites. Our fathers
+thought not of universal suffrage.
+
+But France has not only attempted to make our ideas into facts; she has
+advanced an idea not hinted at in the American Declaration; the idea of
+Fraternity. By this she means human brotherhood. This points not merely
+to a political, but to a social revolution. It is not easy for us to
+understand how a government can effect this. Here, all comes from the
+people, and the people have to take care of the government, meaning
+thereby the men in official power; have to furnish them with ideas, and
+tell them what application to make thereof. There all comes from the
+government. So the new provisional government of France must be one that
+can lead the nation; have ideas in advance of the nation. Accordingly,
+it proposes many plans which with us could never have come from any
+party in power. Here, the government is only the servant of the people.
+There, it aims to be the father and teacher thereof; a patriarchal
+government with Christian thoughts and feelings. But as an eloquent man
+is to come after me, whose special aim is to develop the idea of human
+brotherhood into social institutions, I will not dwell on this, save to
+mention an act of the provisional authorities. They have abolished the
+punishment of death for all political offences. You remember the
+guillotine, the massacres of September, the drowning in the Loire and
+the Seine, the dreadful butchery in the name of the law.
+
+Put this new decree side by side with the old, and you see why
+Spartacus, though crowned by a revolution, bears peaceful blossoms in
+his hand.
+
+But let us hasten on; time would fail me to speak of the cause or point
+out the effect of this movement of the people. Only a word concerning
+the objections made to it. Some say, "It is only an extempore affair.
+Men drunk with new power are telling their fancies, and trying in their
+heat to make laws thereof." It is not so. The ideas I have hinted at
+have been long known and deeply cherished by the best minds in France.
+Last autumn, M. Lamartine, in his own newspaper, for the deputy for
+Macon is an editor, published the "Programme and confession of his
+political faith."[43]
+
+Others say, "The whole thing seems rash." Well, so it does; so does any
+good thing seem rash to all except the man who does it, and such as
+would do it if he did not. What is rash to one is not to another. It is
+dangerous for an old man to run, fatal for him to leap, while his
+grandson jumps over wall and ditch without hurt. The American Revolution
+was a rash act; the English Revolution a rash act; the Protestant
+Reformation was a rash act. Was it safe to withstand the Revolution? Did
+the king of the French find it so? Yet others say, "The leaders are
+unknown," "Lamartine, you might as well put any man in the street at the
+head of the nation." But when the American Revolution begun, who, in
+England, had ever heard of John Hancock, President of the Congress? To
+the men who knew him, John Hancock was a country trader, the richest man
+in a town of ten thousand inhabitants: That did not sound very great at
+London. Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and all the
+other men, what did the world know of them? Only that they had been
+christened with Hebrew names. Why, George Washington was only, as Gen.
+Braddock called him, "A young Buckskin." But the world heard of these
+men afterwards. Let us leave the French statesmen to make to the future
+what report of themselves they can! Let me tell a story of Dupont de
+l'Eure, the head of the government at this moment. He was one of the
+movers of the Revolution of 1830. He dined with the citizen king, once,
+in some council. At the table, he and the king differed; the king
+affirmed, and Dupont denied. Said the king, "Do you tell me I lie?" Said
+Dupont, "When the king says yes, and Dupont de l'Eure replies no, France
+will know which to believe!" The king said, "Yes, we will put the people
+down;" Dupont said, "No, you shall not put the people down;" and now
+France knows which to believe.
+
+Again, say others yet, "War may come; royalty may come back, despotism
+may come back. Other kings will interpose, and put down a republic."
+Other kings interpose to put down the French! Perhaps they will. They
+tried it in 1793, but did not like the experiment very well. They will
+be well off if they do not find it necessary to put down a republic a
+little nearer at hand; their anti-revolutionary work may begin at home.
+War followed the American Revolution. It cost money, it cost men. But
+if we calculate the value of American ideas, they are worth what they
+cost. Even the French Revolution, with all its carnage, robbery and
+butchery, is worth what it cost. But it is possible that war will not
+come. From a foreign war, France has little to fear. There seems little
+danger that it will come at all. What monarchy will dare fight
+republican France? Internal trouble may indeed come. It is to be
+expected that the new republic will make many a misstep. But is it
+likely that all the old tragedies will be enacted again? Surely not; the
+burnt child dreads the fire. Besides, the France of '48 is not the
+France of '89. There is no triple despotism weighing on the nation's
+neck, a trinity of despotic powers--the throne, the nobility, the
+church. The king has fled; the nobles have ceased to be; the church
+seems republican. There is no hatred between class and class, as before.
+The men of '89 sought freedom for the middle class, not for all classes,
+neither for the high, nor for the low. Religion pervades the church and
+the people, as never before. Better ideas prevail. It is not the gospel
+of Jean Jaques, and the scoffing negations of Voltaire, that are now
+proclaimed to the people; but the broad maxims of Christian men; the
+words of human brotherhood. The men of terror knew no weapon but the
+sword; the provisional government casts the sword from its hands, and
+will not shed blood for political crimes.
+
+Still, troubles may come; war may come from without, and, worse still,
+from within; the republic may end. But if it lasts only a day, let us
+rejoice in that day. Suppose it is only the dream of the nation; it is
+worth while to dream of liberty, of equality, of fraternity; and to
+dream that we are awake, and trying to make them all into institutions
+and common life. What is only a dream now, will be a fact at last.
+
+Next Sunday is the election day of France; six millions of voters are to
+choose nine hundred representatives! Shall not the prayers of all
+Christian hearts go up with them on that day, a great deep prayer for
+their success? The other day, the birthday of Washington, the calm,
+noiseless spirit of death came to release the soul of the patriarch of
+American statesmen. While his sun was slowly sinking in the western sky,
+the life-star of a new nation was visibly rising there, far off in the
+east. A pagan might be pardoned for the thought, that the intrepid soul
+of that old man foresaw the peril, and, slowly quitting its hold of the
+worn-out body, went thither to kindle anew the flames of liberty he
+fanned so often here. That is but a pagan thought. This is a Christian
+thought: The same God who formed the world for man's abode, presides
+also in the movements of mankind, and directs their voluntary march.
+See how this earth has been brought to her present firm and settled
+state. By storm and earthquake, continent has been rent from continent;
+oceans have swept over the mountains, and the scars of ancient war still
+mark our parent's venerable face. So is it in the growth of human
+Society: it is the child of pain; revolutions have rocked its cradle,
+war and violence rudely nursed it into hardy life. Good institutions,
+how painfully, how slowly have they come!
+
+    "Slowly as spreads the green of earth
+      O'er the receding ocean's bed,
+    Dim as the distant stars come forth,
+      Uncertain as a vision slow,
+    Has been the old world's toiling pace,
+    Ere she can give fair freedom place."
+
+Let us welcome the green spot, when it begins to spread; let us shout as
+the sterile sea of barbarism goes back; let us rejoice in the vision of
+good things to come; let us welcome the distant and rising orb, for it
+is the Bethlehem star of a great nation, and they who behold it may well
+say--"Peace on earth, and good-will to men."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[42] Mr. Wendell Phillips.
+
+[43] See the _Courier des Etats Unis_, for Nov. 24, 1847, which contains
+passages from M. Lamartine's programme, which set forth all the schemes
+that the provisional government had afterwards tried to carry out.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION,
+MAY 31, 1848.
+
+
+The design of the Abolitionists is this,--to remove and destroy the
+institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed,
+ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions.
+
+What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this, That all men are
+created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those
+rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of
+human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another's
+rights; of course, no man may use me for his good, and not my own good
+also; of course, there can be no ownership of man by man; of course, no
+slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious
+doctrines that follow from it.
+
+Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into the minds of the
+people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.
+
+It seems a very easy matter to get it there. The idea is nothing new;
+all the world knows it. Talk with men, democrats and whigs, they will
+say they like freedom in the abstract, they hate slavery in the
+abstract. But you find that somehow they like slavery in the concrete,
+and dislike abolitionism when it tries to set free the slave. Slavery is
+the affair of the whole people; not Congress, but the nation, made
+slavery; made it national, constitutional. Not Congress, but the voters,
+must unmake slavery; make it un-constitutional, un-national. They say
+Congress cannot do it. Well, perhaps it is so; but they that make can
+break. If the people made slavery, they can unmake it.
+
+You talk with the people; the idea of freedom is there. They tell you
+they believe the Declaration of Independence--that all men are created
+equal. But somehow they contrive to believe that negroes now in bondage
+are an exception to the rule, and so they tell us that slavery must not
+be meddled with, that we must respect the compromises of the
+Constitution. So we see that respect for the Constitution overrides
+respect for the inalienable rights of three millions of negro men.
+
+Now, to move men, it is necessary to know two things--first, What they
+think, and next, Why they think it. Let us look a little at both.
+
+In New England, men over twenty-one years old may be divided into two
+classes. First, the men that vote, and secondly, the men that choose the
+Governor. The voters in Massachusetts are some hundred and twenty
+thousand; the men that choose the Governor, who tell the people how to
+vote, whom to vote for, what laws to make, what to forbid, what policy
+to pursue--they are not very numerous. You may take one hundred men out
+of Boston, and fifty men from the other large towns in the State--and if
+you could get them to be silent till next December, and give no counsel
+on political affairs, the people would not know what to do. The
+democrats would not know what to do, nor the whigs. We are a very
+democratic people, and suffrage is almost universal; but it is a very
+few men who tell us how to vote, who make all the most important laws.
+Do I err in estimating the number at one hundred and fifty? I do not
+like to exaggerate--suppose there are six hundred men, three hundred in
+each party; that six hundred manage the political action of the State,
+in ordinary times.
+
+I need not stop to ask what the rest of the people think about freedom
+and slavery. What do the men who control our politics think thereof? I
+answer, They are not opposed to slavery; to the slavery of three
+millions of men. They may not like slavery in the abstract, or they may
+like it, I do not pretend to judge; but slavery in the concrete, at the
+South, they do like; opposition to that slavery, in the mildest form,
+or the sternest, they do hate.
+
+That is a serious charge to bring against the prominent rulers of the
+State. Let me call your attention to a few facts which prove it. Look at
+the men we send to Congress. There are thirty-one New England men in
+Congress. By the most liberal construction you can only make out five
+anti-slavery men in the whole number. Who ever heard of an anti-slavery
+Governor of Massachusetts in this century? Men know what they are about
+when they select candidates for election. Do the voters always know what
+they are about when they choose them?
+
+Then these men always are in favor of a pro-slavery President. The
+President must be a slaveholder. There have been fifteen presidential
+elections. Men from the free States have filled the chair twelve years,
+or three terms; men from the slave States forty-four years, or eleven
+terms. During one term, the chair was filled by an amphibious
+presidency, by General Harrison, who was nothing but a concrete
+availability, and John Tyler, who was--John Tyler. They called him an
+accident; but there are no accidents in politics. A slaveholder presides
+over the United States forty-eight years out of sixty! Do those men who
+control the politics of New England not like it? It is no such thing.
+They love to have it so. We have just seen the democratic party, or
+their leaders, nominate General Cass for their candidate--and General
+Cass is a northern man; but on that account is he any the less a
+pro-slavery man? He did oppose the South once, but it was in pressing a
+war with England. Everybody knows General Cass, and I need say no more
+about him. But the northern whigs have their leaders--are they
+anti-slavery men? Not a whit more. Next week you will see them nominate,
+not the great Eastern whig, though he is no opponent of slavery, only an
+Expounder and Defender of the Constitution; not the great Western whig,
+the Compromiser, though steeped to the lips in slavery; no, they will
+nominate General Taylor, a man who lives a little further south, and is
+at this moment dyed a little more scarlet with the sin of slavery.
+
+But go a step further as to the proof. Those men who control the
+politics of Massachusetts, or New England, or the whole North, they have
+never opposed the aggressive movements of the slave power. The
+annexation of Texas, did they oppose that? No, they were glad of it.
+True, some earnest men came up here in Faneuil Hall, and passed
+resolutions, which did no good whatever, because it was well known that
+the real controllers of our politics thought the other way. Then
+followed the Mexican war. It was a war for slavery, and they knew it;
+they like it now--that is, if a man's likings can be found out by his
+doings, not his occasional and exceptional deeds, but his regular and
+constant actions. They knew that there would be a war against the
+currency, a war against the tariff, or a war against Mexico. They chose
+the latter. They knew what they were about.
+
+The same thing is shown by the character of the Press. No "respectable"
+paper is opposed to slavery; no whig paper, no democratic paper. You
+would as soon expect a Catholic newspaper to oppose the Pope and his
+church, for the slave power is the Pope of America, though not exactly a
+pious Pope. The churches show the same thing; they also are in the main
+pro-slavery, at least not anti-slavery. There are some forty
+denominations or sects in New England. Mr. President, is one of these
+anti-slavery? Not one! The land is full of ministers, respectable men,
+educated men--are they opposed to slavery? I do not know a single man,
+eminent in any sect, who is also eminent in his opposition to slavery.
+There was one such man, Dr. Channing; but just as he became eminent in
+the cause of freedom, he lost power in his own church, lost caste in his
+own little sect; and though men are now glad to make sectarian capital
+out of his reputation after he is dead, when he lived, they cursed him
+by their gods! Then, too, all the most prominent men of New England
+fraternize with slavery. Massachusetts received such an insult from
+South Carolina as no State ever before received from another State in
+this Union; an affront which no nation would dare offer another, without
+grinding its sword first. And what does Massachusetts do? She
+does--nothing. But her foremost man goes off there, "The schoolmaster
+that gives no lessons,"[44] to accept the hospitality of the South, to
+take the chivalry of South Carolina by the hand; the Defender of the
+Constitution fraternizes with the State which violates the Constitution,
+and imprisons his own constituents on account of the color of their
+skin.
+
+Put all these things together, and they show that the men who control
+the politics of Massachusetts, of all New England, do not oppose or
+dislike slavery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So much for what they think; and now for the Why they think so.
+
+First, there is the general indifference to what is absolutely right.
+Men think little of it. The Anglo-Saxon race, on both sides of the
+water, have always felt the instinct of freedom, and often contended
+stoutly enough for their own rights. But they never cared much for the
+rights of other men. The slaves are at a distance from us, and so the
+wrong of this institution is not brought home to men's feelings as if it
+were our own wrong.
+
+Then the pecuniary interests of the North are supposed to be connected
+with slavery, so that the North would lose dollars if the South lost
+slaves. No doubt this is a mistake; still, it is an opinion currently
+held. The North wants a market for its fabrics, freight for its ships.
+The South affords it; and, as men think, better than if she had
+manufactures and ships of her own, both of which she could have, were
+there no slaves. All this seems to be a mistake. Freedom, I think, can
+be shown to be the interest of both North and South.
+
+Yet another reason is found in devotion to the interests of a party.
+Tell a whig he could make whig capital out of anti-slavery, he would
+turn abolitionist in a moment, if he believed you. Tell a democrat that
+he can make capital out of abolition, and he also will come over to your
+side. But the fact is, each party knows it would gain nothing for its
+political purposes by standing out for the rights of man. The time will
+come, and sooner too than some men think, when it will be for the
+interest of a party to favor abolition; but that time is not yet. It
+does seem strange, that while you can find men who will practise a good
+deal of self-denial for their sect or their party, lending, and hoping
+nothing in return, you so rarely find a man who will compromise even his
+popularity for the sake of mankind.
+
+Then again, there is the fear of change. Men who control our politics
+seem to have little confidence in man, little in truth, little in
+justice, and the eternal right. Therefore, while it is never out of
+season to do something for the tariff, for the moneyed interests of men,
+they think it is never in time to do much for the great work of
+elevating mankind itself. They have no confidence in the people, and
+take little pains to make the people worthy of confidence. So any change
+which gives a more liberal government to a people, which gives freedom
+to the slave, they look on with distrust, if not alarm. In 1830, when
+the French expelled the despotic king who encumbered their throne, what
+said Massachusetts, what said New England, in honor of the deed?
+Nothing. Your old men? Nothing. Your young men? Not a word. What did
+they care for the freedom of thirty millions of men? They were looking
+at their imports and exports. In 1838, when England set free eight
+hundred thousand men in a day, what did Massachusetts say about that?
+What had New England to say? Not a word in its favor from these
+political leaders of the land. Nay, they thought the experiment was
+dangerous, and ever since that it is with great reluctance you can get
+them to confess that the scheme works well. In 1848, when France again
+expels her king, and all the royalty in the kingdom is carted off in a
+one-horse cab--when the broadest principles of human government are laid
+down, and a great nation sets about the difficult task of moving out of
+her old political house, and into a new one, without tearing down the
+old, without butchering men in the process of removal,--why, what has
+Boston to say to that? What have the political leaders of Massachusetts,
+of New England, to say? They have nothing to say for liberty; they are
+sorry the experiment was made; they are afraid the French will not want
+so much cotton; they have no confidence in man, and fear every change.
+
+Such are their opinions, to judge by what they do; such the reasons
+thereof, judging by what they say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But now how can we change this, and get the idea of freedom into men's
+minds? Something can be done by the gradual elevation of men, by schools
+and churches, by the press. The churches and colleges of New England
+have not directly aided us in the work of abolishing slavery. No doubt
+by their direct action they have retarded that work, and that a good
+deal. But indirectly they have done much to hasten the work. They have
+helped educate men; helped make men moral, in a general way; and now
+this moral power can be turned to this special business, though the
+churches say, "No, you shall not." I see before me a good and an earnest
+man,[45] who, not opening his mouth in public against slavery, has yet
+done a great service in this way: he has educated the teachers of the
+Commonwealth, has taught them to love freedom, to love justice, to love
+man and God. That is what I call sowing the seeds of anti-slavery. The
+honored and excellent Secretary of Education,[46] who has just gone to
+stand in the place of a famous man, and I hope to fill it nobly, has
+done much in this way. I wish in his reports on education he had exposed
+the wrong which is done here in Boston, by putting all the colored
+children in one school, by shutting them out of the Latin School and the
+English High School. I wish he had done that duty, which plainly belongs
+to him to do. But without touching that, he has yet done, indirectly, a
+great work towards the abolition of slavery. He has sown the seeds of
+education wide spread over the State. One day these seeds will come up;
+come up men, men that will both vote and choose the Governor; men that
+will love right and justice; will see the iniquity of American slavery,
+and sweep it off the continent, cost what it may cost, spite of all
+compromises of the Constitution, and all compromisers. I look on that as
+certain. But that is slow work, this waiting for a general morality to
+do a special act. It is going without dinner till the wheat is grown for
+your bread.
+
+So we want direct and immediate action upon the people themselves. The
+idea must be set directly before them, with all its sanctions displayed,
+and its obligations made known. This can be done in part by the pulpit.
+Dr. Channing shows how much one man can do, standing on that eminence.
+You all know how much he did do. I am sorry that he came so late, sorry
+that he did not do more, but thankful for what he did do. However, you
+cannot rely on the pulpit to do much. The pulpit represents the average
+goodness and piety; not eminent goodness and piety. It is unfair to call
+ordinary men to do extraordinary works. I do not concur in all the hard
+things that are said about the clergy, perhaps it is because I am one of
+them; but I do not expect a great deal from them. It is hard to call a
+class of men all at once to rise above all other classes of men, and
+teach a degree of virtue which they do not understand. But you may call
+them to be true to their own consciences.
+
+So the pulpit is not to be relied on for much aid. If all the ministers
+of New England were abolitionists, with the same zeal that they are
+Protestants, Universalists, Methodists, Calvinists, or Unitarians, no
+doubt the whole State would soon be an anti-slavery State, and the day
+of emancipation would be wonderfully hastened. But that we are not to
+look for.
+
+Much can be done by lecturers, who shall go to the people and address
+them, not as whigs or democrats, not as sectarians, but as men, and in
+the name of man and God present the actual condition of the slaves, and
+show the duty of the North and the South, of the nation, in regard to
+this matter. For this business, we want money and men, the two sinews of
+war; money to pay the men, men to earn the money. They must appeal to
+the people in their primary capacity, simply as men.
+
+Much also may be done by the press. How much may be done by these two
+means, and that in a few years, these men[47] can tell; all the North
+and South can tell. Men of the most diverse modes of thought can work
+together in this cause. Here on my right is Mr. Phillips, an
+old-fashioned Calvinist, who believes all the five points of Calvinism.
+I am rather a new-fashioned Unitarian, and believe only one of the five
+points, the one Mr. Phillips has proved--the perseverance of the saints;
+but we get along without any quarrel by the way.
+
+Some men will try political action. The action of the people, of the
+nation, must be political action. It may be constitutional, it may be
+un-constitutional. I see not why men need quarrel about that. Let not
+him that voteth, condemn him that voteth not; nor let not him that
+voteth not, condemn him that voteth, but let every man be faithful to
+his own convictions.
+
+It is said, the abolitionists waste time and wind in denunciation. It is
+partly true. I make no doubt it inspires the slaveholder's heart to see
+division amongst his foes. I ought to say his friends, for such we are.
+He thinks the day of justice is deferred, while the ministers thereof
+contend. I do not believe a revolution is to be baptized with
+rose-water. I do not believe a great work is to be done without great
+passions. It is not to be supposed that the Leviathan of American
+Slavery will allow himself to be drawn out of the mire in which he has
+made his nest, and grown fat and strong, without some violence and
+floundering. When we have caught him fairly, he will put his feet into
+the mud to hold on by; he will reach out and catch hold of every thing
+that will hold him. He has caught hold of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. He
+will catch hold of General Cass and General Taylor. He will die, though
+slowly, and die hard. Still it is a pity that men who essay to pull him
+out, should waste their strength in bickerings with one another, or in
+needless denunciation of the leviathan's friends. Call slaveholding,
+slaveholding; let us tell all the evils which arise from it, if we can
+find language terrible enough; let us show up the duplicity of the
+nation, the folly of our wise men, the littleness of our great men, the
+baseness of our honorable men, if need be; but all that with no unkind
+feelings toward any one. Virtue never appears so lovely as when
+destroying sin, she loves the sinner, and seeks to save him. Absence of
+love is absence of the strongest power. See how much Mr. Adams lost of
+his influence, how much he wasted of his strength, by the violence with
+which he pursued persons. I am glad to acknowledge the great services he
+performed. He wished to have every man stand on the right side of the
+anti-slavery line; but I believe there were some men whom he would like
+to have put there with a pitch-fork. On the other hand, Dr. Channing
+never lost a moment by attacking a personal foe; and see what he gained
+by it! However, I must say this, that no great revolution of opinion and
+practice was ever brought about before with so little violence, waste of
+force, and denunciation. Consider the greatness of the work: it is to
+restore three millions to liberty; a work, in comparison with which the
+American Revolution was a little thing. Yet consider the violence, the
+denunciation, the persecution, and the long years of war, which that
+Revolution cost. I do not wonder that abolitionists are sometimes
+violent; I only deplore it. Remembering the provocation, I wonder they
+are not more so and more often. The prize is to be run for, "not without
+dust and heat."
+
+Working in this way, we are sure to succeed. The idea is an eternal
+truth. It will find its way into the public mind, for there is that
+sympathy between man and the truth, that he cannot live without it and
+be blessed. What allies we have on our side! True, the cupidity, the
+tyranny, the fear and the atheism of the land are against us. But all
+the nobleness, all the honor, all the morality, all the religion, are on
+our side. I was sorry to hear it said, that the religion of the land
+opposed us. It is not true. Religion never opposed any good work. I know
+what my friend meant, and I wish he had said it, calling things by their
+right names. It is the irreligion of the land that favors slavery; it is
+the idolatry of gold; it is our atheism. Of speculative atheism there is
+not much; you see how much of the practical!
+
+We are certain of success; the spirit of the age is on our side. See how
+the old nations shake their tyrants out of the land. See how every
+steamer brings us good tidings of good things; and do you believe
+America can keep her slaves? It is idle to think so. So all we want is
+time. On our side are Truth, Justice, and the Eternal Right. Yes, on our
+side is religion, the religion of Christ; on our side are the hopes of
+mankind, and the great power of God.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] This was a sentiment offered at a public dinner given by the
+citizens of Charleston, S. C., to Hon. Daniel Webster.
+
+[45] Rev. Cyrus Pierce, Teacher of the Normal School at Newton.
+
+[46] Hon. Horace Mann.
+
+[47] Messrs. Garrison, Phillips and Quincy.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY AND THE ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR.
+DECEMBER, 1848.
+
+
+The people of the United States have just chosen an officer, who, for
+the next four years, will have more power than any monarch of Europe;
+yet three years ago he was scarcely known out of the army in Florida,
+and even now has appeared only in the character of a successful general.
+His supporters at the North intend, by means of his election, to change
+the entire commercial policy of the country, and perhaps, also, its
+financial policy; they contemplate, or profess to contemplate, a great
+change. Yet the election has been effected without tumult or noise; not
+a soldier has drawn his bayonet; scarcely has a constable needed his
+official rod to keep order withal. In Europe, at the same time, the
+beginning of a change in the national dynasty or the national policy is
+only attempted by violence, by soldiers with arms ready for fight, by
+battle and murder. One day or another, men will be wise enough to see
+the cause of this difference, and insular statesmen in England, who now
+sneer at the new government in America, may learn that democracy has at
+least one quality--that of respecting law and order, and may live to see
+ours the oldest government in the whole Caucasian race.
+
+Since the election is now over, it is worth while to look a moment at
+the politics and political parties of the country, that we may gain
+wisdom for the future, and perhaps hope; at any rate, may see the actual
+condition of things. Each political party is based on an Idea, which
+corresponds to a Truth, or an Interest. It commonly happens that the
+idea is represented as an interest, and the interest as an idea, before
+either becomes the foundation of a large party. Now when a new idea is
+introduced to any party, or applied to any institution, if it be only
+auxiliary to the old doctrines incarnated therein, a regular growth and
+new development take place; but when the new idea is hostile to the old,
+the development takes place under the form of a revolution, and that
+will be greater or less in proportion to the difference between the new
+idea and the old doctrine; in proportion to their relative strength and
+value. As Aristotle said of seditions, a revolution comes on slight
+occasions, but not of slight causes;[48] the occasion may be obvious
+and obviously trivial, but the cause obscure and great. The occasion of
+the French Revolution of 1848 was afforded by the attempt of the king to
+prevent a certain public dinner: he had a legal right to prevent it. The
+cause of the Revolution was a little different; but some men in America
+and England, at first, scarcely looked beyond the occasion, and, taking
+that for the cause, thought the Frenchmen fools to make so much ado
+about a trifle, and that they had better eat their _soupe maigre_ at
+home, and let their victuals stop their mouths. The occasion of the
+American Revolution may be found in the Stamp-Act, or the Sugar-Act, the
+Writs of Assistance, or the Boston Port-Bill; some men, even now, see no
+further, and logically conclude the colonists made a mistake, because
+for a dozen years they were far worse off than before the "Rebellion,"
+and have never been so lightly taxed since. Such men do not see the
+cause of the Revolution, which was not an unwillingness to pay taxes,
+but a determination to govern themselves.
+
+At the present day it is plain that a revolution, neither slow nor
+silent, is taking place in the political parties of America. The
+occasion thereof is the nomination of a man for the presidency who has
+no political or civil experience, but who has three qualities that are
+important in the eyes of the leading men who have supported and pushed
+him forward: one is, that he is an eminent slaveholder, whose interests
+and accordingly whose ideas are identical with those of the
+slaveholders; the next, that he is not hostile to the doctrines of
+northern manufacturers respecting a protective tariff; and the third,
+that he is an eminent and very successful military commander. The last
+is an accidental quality, and it is not to be supposed that the
+intelligent and influential men at the North and South who have promoted
+his election, value him any more on that account, or think that mere
+military success fits him for his high office, and enables him to settle
+the complicated difficulties of a modern State. They must know better;
+but they must have known that many men of little intelligence are so
+taken with military glory that they will ask for no more in their hero;
+it was foreseen, also, that honest and intelligent men of all parties
+would give him their vote because he had never been mixed up with the
+intrigues of political life. Thus "far-sighted" politicians of the North
+and South saw that he might be fairly elected, and then might serve the
+purposes of the slaveholder, or the manufacturer of the North. The
+military success of General Taylor, an accidental merit, was only the
+occasion of his nomination by the whigs; his substantial merit was found
+in the fact, that he was supposed, or known, to be favorable to the
+"peculiar institution" of the South, and the protective policy of the
+manufacturers at the North: this was the cause of his formal nomination
+by the Whig Convention of Philadelphia, and his real nomination by
+members of the whig party at Washington. The men of property at the
+South wanted an extension of slavery; the men of property at the North,
+a high protective tariff; and it was thought General Taylor could serve
+both purposes, and promote the interests of the North and South.
+
+Such is the occasion of the revolution in political parties: the cause
+is the introduction of a new idea into these parties entirely hostile to
+some of their former doctrines. In the electioneering contest, the new
+idea was represented by the words "Free Soil." For present practice it
+takes a negative form: "No more Slave States, no more Slave Territory,"
+is the motto. But these words and this motto do not adequately represent
+the idea, only so much thereof as has been needful in the present
+crisis.
+
+Before now there has been much in the political history of America to
+provoke the resentment of the North. England has been ruled by various
+dynasties; the American chair has been chiefly occupied by the Southern
+House, the Dynasty of Slaveholders: now and then a member of the
+Northern House has sat on that seat, but commonly it has been a
+"Northern man with Southern principles," never a man with mind to see
+the great idea of America, and will to carry it out in action. Still the
+spirit of liberty has not died out of the North; the attempt to put an
+eighth slaveholder in the chair of "The model republic," gave occasion
+for that spirit to act again.
+
+The new idea is not hostile to the distinctive doctrine of either
+political party; neither to free trade, nor to protection; so it makes
+no revolution in respect to them: it is neutral, and leaves both as it
+found them. It is not hostile to the general theory of the American
+State, so it makes no revolution there; this idea is assumed as
+self-evident, in the Declaration of Independence. It is not inimical to
+the theory of the Constitution of the United States, as set forth in the
+preamble thereto, where the design of the Constitution is declared to be
+"To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
+tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
+welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
+posterity."
+
+There are clauses in the Constitution, which are exceptions to this
+theory, and hostile to the design mentioned above; to such, this idea
+will one day prove itself utterly at variance, as it is now plainly
+hostile to one part of the practice of the American government, and that
+of both the parties.
+
+We have had several political parties since the Revolution: the
+federalists, and anti-federalists,--the latter shading off into
+republicans, democrats, and loco focos; the former tapering into modern
+whigs, in which guise some of their fathers would scarcely recognize the
+family type. We have had a protective party and an anti-protective
+party; once there was a free-trade party, which no longer appears in
+politics. There has been a National Bank party, which seems to have gone
+to the realm of things lost on earth. In the rise and fall of these
+parties, several dramas, tragic and comic, have been performed on the
+American boards, where "One man in his time plays many parts," and stout
+representatives of the Hartford Convention find themselves on the same
+side with worshippers of the Gerrymander, and shouting the same cry. It
+is kindly ordered that memory should be so short, and brass so common.
+None of the old parties is likely to return; the living have buried the
+dead. "We are all federalists," said Mr. Jefferson, "we are all
+democrats," and truly, so far as old questions are concerned. It is well
+known that the present representatives of the old federal party, have
+abjured the commercial theory of their predecessors; and the men who
+were "Jacobins" at the beginning of the century, curse the new French
+Revolution by their gods. At the presidential election of 1840, there
+were but two parties in the field--democrats and whigs. As they both
+survive, it is well to see what interests or what ideas they represent.
+
+They differ accidentally in the possession and the desire of power; in
+the fact that the former took the initiative, in annexing Texas, and in
+making the Mexican war, while the latter only pretended to oppose
+either, but zealously and continually cooperated in both. Then, again,
+the democratic party sustains the sub-treasury system, insisting that
+the government shall not interfere with banking, shall keep its own
+deposits, and give and take only specie in its business with the people.
+The whig party, if we understand it, has not of late developed any
+distinctive doctrine, on the subject of money and financial operations,
+but only complained of the action of the sub-treasury; yet, as it
+sustained the late Bank of the United States, and appropriately followed
+as chief mourner at the funeral thereof, uttering dreadful lamentations
+and prophecies which time has not seen fit to accomplish, it still keeps
+up a show of differing from the democrats on this matter. These are only
+accidental or historical differences, which do not practically affect
+the politics of the nation to any great degree.
+
+The substantial difference between the two is this: The whigs desire a
+tariff of duties which shall directly and intentionally protect American
+industry, or, as we understand it, shall directly and intentionally
+protect manufacturing industry, while the commercial and agricultural
+interests are to be protected indirectly, not as if they were valuable
+in themselves, but were a collateral security to the manufacturing
+interest: a special protection is desired for the great manufactures,
+which are usually conducted by large capitalists--such as the
+manufacture of wool, iron, and cotton. On the other hand, the democrats
+disclaim all direct protection of any special interest, but, by raising
+the national revenue from the imports of the nation, actually afford a
+protection to the articles of domestic origin to the extent of the
+national revenue, and much more. That is the substantial difference
+between the two parties--one which has been much insisted on at the late
+election, especially at the North.
+
+Is this difference of any practical importance at the present moment?
+There are two methods of raising the revenue of a country: first, by
+direct taxation,--a direct tax on the person, a direct tax on the
+property; second, by indirect taxation. To a simple-minded man direct
+taxation seems the only just and equal mode of collecting the public
+revenue: thereby, the rich man pays in proportion to his much, the poor
+to his little. This is so just and obvious, that it is the only method
+resorted to, in towns of the North, for raising their revenue. But while
+it requires very little common sense and virtue to appreciate this plan
+in a town, it seems to require a good deal to endure it in a nation. The
+four direct taxes levied by the American government since 1787 have been
+imperfectly collected, and only with great difficulty and long delay. To
+avoid this difficulty, the government resorts to various indirect modes
+of taxation, and collects the greater part of its revenue from the
+imports which reach our shores. In this way a man's national tax is not
+directly in proportion to his wealth, but directly in proportion to his
+consumption of imported goods, or directly to that of domestic goods,
+whose price is enhanced by the duties laid on the foreign article. So it
+may happen that an Irish laborer, with a dozen children, pays a larger
+national tax than a millionnaire who sees fit to live in a miserly
+style. Besides, no one knows when he pays or what. At first it seems as
+if the indirect mode of taxation made the burden light, but in the end
+it does not always prove so. The remote effect thereof is sometimes
+remarkable. The tax of one per cent, levied in Massachusetts on articles
+sold by auction, has produced some results not at all anticipated.
+
+Now since neither party ventures to suggest direct taxation, the actual
+question between the two is not between free trade and protection, but
+only between a protective and a revenue tariff. So the real and
+practical question between them is this: Shall there be a high tariff or
+a low one? At first sight a man not in favor of free trade might think
+the present tariff gave sufficient protection to those great
+manufactures of wool, cotton, and iron, and as much as was reasonable.
+But the present duty is perhaps scarcely adequate to meet the expenses
+of the nation, for with new territory new expenses must come; there is a
+large debt to be discharged, its interest to be paid; large sums will be
+demanded as pensions for the soldiers. Since these things are so, it is
+but reasonable to conclude that, under the administration of the whigs
+or democrats, a pretty high tariff of duties will continue for some
+years to come. So the great and substantial difference between the two
+parties ceases to be of any great and substantial importance.
+
+In the mean time another party rises up, representing neither of these
+interests; without developing any peculiar views relative to trade or
+finance, it proclaims the doctrine that there must be no more slave
+territory, and no more slave States. This doctrine is of great practical
+importance, and one in which the free soil party differs substantially
+from both the other parties. The idea on which the party rests is not
+new; it does not appear that the men who framed the Constitution, or the
+people who accepted it, ever contemplated the extension of slavery
+beyond the limits of the United States at that time; had such a
+proposition been then made, it would have been indignantly rejected by
+both. The principle of the Wilmot Proviso boasts the same origin as the
+Declaration of Independence. The state of feeling at the North
+occasioned by the Missouri Compromise is well known, but after that
+there was no political party opposed to slavery. No President has been
+hostile to it; no Cabinet; no Congress. In 1805, Mr. Pickering, a
+Senator from Massachusetts, brought forward his bill for amending the
+Constitution, so that slaves should not form part of the basis of
+representation; but it fell to the ground, not to be lifted up by his
+successors for years to come. The refusal of John Quincy Adams, while
+President, to recognize the independence of Hayti, and his efforts to
+favor the slave power, excited no remark. In 1844, for the first time
+the anti-slavery votes began seriously to affect the presidential
+election. At that time the whigs had nominated Mr. Clay as their
+candidate, a man of great powers, of popular manners, the friend of
+northern industry, but still more the friend of southern slavery, and
+more directly identified with that than any man in so high a latitude.
+The result of the anti-slavery votes is well known. The bitterest
+reproaches have been heaped on the men who voted against him as the
+incarnation of the slave power; the annexation of Texas, though
+accomplished by a whig senate, and the Mexican war, though only sixteen
+members of Congress voted against it, have both been laid to their
+charge; and some have even affected to wonder that men conscientiously
+opposed to slavery could not forget their principle for the sake of
+their party, and put a most decided slaveholder, who had treated not
+only them but their cause with scorn and contempt, in the highest place
+of power.
+
+The whig party renewed its attempt to place a slaveholder in the
+President's chair, at a time when all Europe was rising to end for ever
+the tyranny of man. General Taylor was particularly obnoxious to the
+anti-slavery men. He is a slaveholder, holding one or two hundred men in
+bondage, and enlarging that number by recent purchases; he employs them
+in the worst kind of slave labor, the manufacture of sugar; he leaves
+them to the mercy of overseers, the dregs and refuse of mankind; he has
+just returned from a war undertaken for the extension of slavery; he is
+a southern man with southern interests, and opinions favorable to
+slavery, and is uniformly represented by his supporters at the South, as
+decidedly opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, and in favor of the extension
+of slavery. We know this has been denied at the North; but the testimony
+of the South settles the question. The convention of democrats in South
+Carolina, when they also nominated him, said well, "His interests are
+our interests:... we know that on this great, paramount, and leading
+question of the rights of the South [to extend slavery over the new
+territory], he is for us and he is with us." Said a newspaper in his own
+State, "General Taylor is from birth, association, and conviction,
+identified with the South and her institutions, being one of the most
+extensive slaveholders in Louisiana, and supported by the slaveholding
+interest; is opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, and in favor of procuring
+the privilege to the owners of slaves to remove with them to newly
+acquired territory."
+
+The southerners evidently thought the crisis an important one. The
+following is from the distinguished whig senator, Mr. Berrien.
+
+     "I consider it the most important Presidential election,
+     especially to southern men, which has occurred since the
+     foundation of the government.
+
+     "We have great and important interests at stake. If we fail
+     to sustain them now, we may be forced too soon to decide
+     whether we will remain in the Union, at the mercy of a band
+     of fanatics or political jugglers, or reluctantly retire
+     from it for the preservation of our domestic institutions,
+     and all our rights as freemen. If we are united, we can
+     sustain them; if we divide on the old party issues, we must
+     be victims.
+
+     "With a heart devoted to their interests on this great
+     question, and without respect to party, I implore my
+     fellow-citizens of Georgia, whig and democratic, to forget
+     for the time their party divisions: to know each other only
+     as southern men: to act upon the truism uttered by Mr.
+     Calhoun, that on this vital question,--the preservation of
+     our domestic institutions,--the southern man who is furthest
+     from us, is nearer to us than any northern man can be; that
+     General Taylor is identified with us, in feeling and
+     interest, was born in a slaveholding State, educated in a
+     slaveholding State, is himself a slaveholder; that his slave
+     property constitutes the means of support to himself and
+     family; that he cannot desert us without sacrificing his
+     interest, his principle, the habits and feelings of his
+     life; and that with him, therefore, our institutions are
+     safe. I beseech them, therefore, from the love which they
+     bear to our noble State, to rally under the banner of
+     Zachary Taylor, and, with one united voice, to send him by
+     acclamation to the executive chair."
+
+All this has been carefully kept from the sight of the people at the
+North.
+
+There have always been men in America, who were opposed to the extension
+and the very existence of slavery. In 1787, the best and the most
+celebrated statesmen were publicly active on the side of freedom. Some
+thought slavery a sin, others a mistake, but nearly all in the
+Convention thought it an error. South Carolina and Georgia were the only
+States thoroughly devoted to slavery at that time. They threatened to
+withdraw from the Union, if it were not sufficiently respected in the
+new Constitution. If the other States had said, "You may go, soon as you
+like, for hitherto you have been only a curse to us, and done little but
+brag," it would have been better for us all. However, partly for the
+sake of keeping the peace, and still more for the purpose of making
+money by certain concessions of the South, the North granted the
+southern demands. After the adoption of the Constitution, the
+anti-slavery spirit cooled down; other matters occupied the public mind.
+The long disasters of Europe; the alarm of the English party, who feared
+their sons should be "conscripts in the armies of Napoleon," and the
+violence of the French party, who were ready to compromise the dignity
+of the nation, and add new elements to the confusion in Europe; the
+subsequent conflict with England, and then the efforts to restore the
+national character, and improve our material condition,--these occupied
+the thought of the nation, till the Missouri Compromise again disturbed
+the public mind. But that was soon forgotten; little was said about
+slavery. In the eighteenth century, it was discussed in the colleges and
+newspapers, even in the pulpits of the North; but, in the first quarter
+of the nineteenth, little was heard of it. Manufactures got established
+at the North, and protected by duties; at the South, cotton was
+cultivated with profit, and a heavy duty protected the slave-grown sugar
+of Louisiana. The pecuniary interests of North and South became closely
+connected, and both seemed dependent on the peaceable continuance of
+slavery. Little was said against it, little thought, and nothing done.
+Southern masters voluntarily brought their slaves to New England, and
+took them back, no one offering the African the conventional shelter of
+the law, not to speak of the natural shelter of justice. We well
+remember the complaint made somewhat later, when a Judge decided that a
+slave, brought here by his master's consent, became, from that moment,
+free!
+
+But where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. There rose up one
+man who would not compromise, nor be silent,--who would be heard.[49] He
+spoke of the evil, spoke of the sin--for all true reforms are bottomed
+on religion, and while they seem adverse to many interests, yet
+represent the idea of the Eternal. He found a few others, a very few,
+and began the anti-slavery movement. The "platform" of the new party was
+not an interest, but an idea--that "All men are created equal, and
+endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Every truth
+is also a fact; this was a fact of human consciousness, and a truth of
+necessity.
+
+The time has not come to write the history of the abolitionists,--other
+deeds must come before words; but we cannot forbear quoting the
+testimony of one witness, as to the state of anti-slavery feeling in New
+England in 1831. It is the late Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, a former mayor
+of Boston, who speaks in his recent letter.
+
+     "The first information received by me, of a disposition to
+     agitate this subject in our State, was from the Governors of
+     Virginia and Georgia, severally remonstrating against an
+     incendiary newspaper, published in Boston, and, as they
+     alleged, thrown broadcast among their plantations, inciting
+     to insurrection and its horrid results. It appeared, on
+     inquiry, that no member of the city government [of Boston]
+     had ever heard of the publication. Some time afterwards it
+     was reported to me by the city officers, that they had
+     ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was
+     an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and
+     his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all
+     colors. This information.... I communicated to the
+     above-named governors, with an assurance of my belief that
+     the new fanaticism had not made, nor was likely to make,
+     proselytes among the respectable classes of our people."
+
+Such was the state of things in 1831. Anti-slavery had "an obscure
+hole" for its head-quarters; the one agitator, who had filled the two
+doughty Governors of Virginia and Georgia with uncomfortable
+forebodings, had a "negro boy" "for his only visible auxiliary," and
+none of the respectable men of Boston had heard of the hole, of the
+agitator, of the negro boy, or even of the agitation. One thing must be
+true: either the man and the boy were pretty vigorous, or else there was
+a great truth in that obscure hole; for, in spite of the governors and
+the mayors, spite of the many able men in the South and the North,
+spite, also, of the wealth and respectability of the whole land, it is a
+plain case that the abolitionists have shaken the nation, and their idea
+is the idea of the time; and the party which shall warmly welcome that
+is destined before long to override all the other parties.
+
+One thing must be said of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement. They
+asked for nothing but justice; not justice for themselves--they were not
+Socratic enough to ask that,--but only justice for the slave; and to
+obtain that, they forsook all that human hearts most love. It is rather
+a cheap courage that fought at Monterey and Palo Alto, a bravery that
+can be bought for eight dollars a month; the patriotism which hurras for
+"our side," which makes speeches at Faneuil Hall, nay, which carries
+torch-lights in a procession, is not the very loftiest kind of
+patriotism; even the man who stands up at the stake, and in one brief
+hour of agony anticipates the long torment of disease, does not endure
+the hardest, but only the most obvious kind of martyrdom. But when a
+man, for conscience' sake, leaves a calling that would insure him bread
+and respectability; when he abjures the opinions which give him the
+esteem of honorable men; when, for the sake of truth and justice, he
+devotes himself to liberating the most abused and despised class of men,
+solely because they are men and brothers; when he thus steps forth in
+front of the world, and encounters poverty and neglect, the scorn, the
+loathing, and the contempt of mankind--why, there is something not very
+common in that. There was once a Man who had not where to lay his head,
+who was born in "an obscure hole," and had not even a negro boy for his
+"auxiliary;" who all his life lived with most obscure persons--eating
+and drinking with publicans and sinners; who found no favor with mayors
+or governors, and yet has had some influence on the history of the
+world. When intelligent men mock at small beginnings, it is surprising
+they cannot remember that the greatest institutions have had their times
+which tried men's souls, and that they who have done all the noblest and
+best work of mankind, sometimes forgot self-interest in looking at a
+great truth; and though they had not always even a negro boy to help
+them, or an obscure hole to lay their heads in, yet found the might of
+the universe was on the side of right, and themselves workers with God!
+
+The abolitionists did not aim to found a political party; they set forth
+an idea. If they had set up the interest of the whigs or the democrats,
+the manufacturers or the merchants, they might have formed a party and
+had a high place in it, with money, ease, social rank and a great name
+in the party--newspapers. Some of them had political talents, ideas more
+than enough, the power of organizing men, the skill to manage them, and
+a genius for eloquence. With such talents, it demands not a little
+manliness to keep out of politics and in the truth.
+
+To found a political party there is no need of a great moral idea: the
+whig party has had none such this long time; the democratic party
+pretends to none and acts on none; each represents an interest which can
+be estimated in dollars; neither seems to see that behind questions of
+political economy there is a question of political morality, and the
+welfare of the nation depends on the answer we shall give! So long as
+the abolitionists had nothing but an idea, and but few men had that,
+there was no inducement for the common run of politicians to join them;
+they could make nothing by it, so nothing of it. The guardians of
+education, the trustees of the popular religion, did not like to invest
+in such funds. But still the idea went on, spite of the most entire,
+the most bitter, the most heartless and unrelenting opposition ever
+known in America. No men were ever hated as the abolitionists; political
+parties have joined to despise, and sectarian churches to curse them.
+Yet the idea has gone on, till now all that is most pious in the sects,
+most patriotic in the parties, all that is most Christian in modern
+philanthropy, is on its side. It has some representative in almost every
+family, save here and there one whose God is mammon alone, where the
+parents are antediluvian and the children born old and conservative,
+with no faculty but memory to bind them to mankind. It has its spokesmen
+in the House and the Senate. The tide rises and swells, and the compact
+wall of the whig party, the tall ramparts of the democrats, are
+beginning to "cave in."
+
+As the idea has gained ground, men have begun to see that an interest is
+connected with it, and begun to look after that. One thing the North
+knows well--the art of calculation, and of ciphering. So it begins to
+ask questions as to the positive and comparative influence of the slave
+power on the country. Who fought the Revolution? Why the North,
+furnishing the money and the men, Massachusetts alone sending fourteen
+thousand soldiers more than all the present slave States. Who pays the
+national taxes? The North, for the slaves pay but a trifle. Who owns the
+greater part of the property, the mills, the shops, the ships? The
+North. Who writes the books--the histories, poems, philosophies, works
+of science, even the sermons and commentaries on the Bible? Still the
+North. Who sends their children to school and college? The North. Who
+builds the churches, who founds the Bible societies, Education
+societies, Missionary societies, the thousand-and-one institutions for
+making men better and better off? Why the North. In a word, who is it
+that in seventy years has made the nation great, rich, and famous for
+her ideas and their success all over the world? The answer is, still the
+North, the North.
+
+Well, says the calculator, but who has the offices of the nation? The
+South. Who has filled the Presidential chair forty-eight years out of
+sixty? Nobody but slaveholders. Who has held the chief posts of honor?
+The South. Who occupy the chief offices in the army and navy? The South.
+Who increases the cost of the post-office and pays so little of its
+expense?[50] The South. Who is most blustering and disposed to quarrel?
+The South. Who made the Mexican war? The South. Who sets at nought the
+Constitution? The South. Who would bring the greatest peril in case of
+war with a strong enemy? Why the South, the South. But what is the South
+most noted for abroad? For her three million slaves; and the North? for
+her wealth, freedom, education, religion!
+
+Then the calculator begins to remember past times--opens the
+account-books and turns back to old charges: five slaves count the same
+as three freemen, and the three million slaves, which at home are
+nothing but property, entitle their owners to as many representatives in
+Congress as are now sent by all the one million eight hundred thousand
+freemen who make the entire population of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
+Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, and have created a vast amount of
+property worth more than all the slave States put together! Then the
+North must deliver up the fugitive slaves, and Ohio must play the
+traitor, the kidnapper, the bloodhound, for Kentucky! The South wanted
+to make two slave States out of Florida, and will out of Texas; she
+makes slavery perpetual in both; she is always bragging as if she made
+the Revolution, while she only laid the Embargo, and began the late war
+with England,--but that is going further back than is needful. The South
+imprisons our colored sailors in her ports, contrary to justice, and
+even contrary to the Constitution. She drove our commissioners out of
+South Carolina and Louisiana, when they were sent to look into the
+matter and legally seek for redress. She affronts the world with a most
+odious despotism, and tried to make the English return her runaway
+slaves, making the nation a reproach before the world; she insists on
+kidnapping men even in Boston; she declares that we shall not abolish
+slavery in the capital of the Union; that she will extend it in spite of
+us from sea to sea. She annexed Texas for a slave-pasture, and then made
+the Mexican war to enlarge that pasture, but the North must pay for it;
+she treads the Constitution under her feet, the North under her feet,
+justice and the unalienable rights of man under her feet.
+
+The North has charged all these items and many more; now they are
+brought up for settlement, and, if not cancelled, will not be forgot
+till the Muse of History gives up the ghost; some Northern men have the
+American sentiment, and the American idea, put the man before the
+dollar, counting man the substance, property the accident. The sentiment
+and idea of liberty are bottomed on Christianity, as that on human
+nature; they are quite sure to prevail; the spirit of the nation is on
+their side--the spirit of the age and the everlasting right.
+
+It is instructive to see how the political parties have hitherto kept
+clear of anti-slavery. It is "no part of the whig doctrine;" the
+democrats abhor it. Mr. Webster, it is true, once claimed the Wilmot
+Proviso as his thunder, but he cannot wield it, and so it slips out of
+his hands, and runs round to the chair of his brother senator from New
+Hampshire.[51] No leading politician in America has ever been a leader
+against slavery. Even Mr. Adams only went as he was pushed. True, among
+the whigs there are Giddings, Palfrey, Tuck, Mann, Root, and Julian;
+among the democrats there is Hale--and a few others; but what are they
+among so many? The members of the family of Truth are unpopular, they
+make excellent servants but hard masters, while the members of the
+family of Interest are all respectable, and are the best company in the
+world; their livery is attractive; their motto, "The almighty dollar,"
+is a passport everywhere. Now it happens that some of the more advanced
+members of the family of Truth fight their way into "good society," and
+make matrimonial alliances with some of the poor relations of the family
+of Interest. Straightway they become respectable; the church publishes
+the banns; the marriage is solemnized in the most Christian form; the
+attorney declares it legal. So the gospel and law are satisfied, Truth
+and Interest made one, and many persons after this alliance may be seen
+in the company of Truth who before knew not of her existence.
+
+The free soil party has grown out of the anti-slavery movement. It will
+have no more slave territory, but does not touch slavery in the States,
+or between them, and says nothing against the compromises of the
+Constitution; the time has not come for that. The party has been
+organized in haste, and is composed, as are all parties, of most
+discordant materials, some of its members seeming hardly familiar with
+the idea; some are not yet emancipated from old prejudices, old methods
+of action, and old interests; but the greater part seem hostile to
+slavery in all its forms. The immediate triumph of this new party is not
+to be looked for; not desirable. In Massachusetts they have gained large
+numbers in a very short period, and under every disadvantage. What their
+future history is to be, we will not now attempt to conjecture; but this
+is plain, that they cannot remain long in their present position; either
+they will go back, and, after due penance, receive political absolution
+from the church of the whigs, or the democrats,--and this seems
+impossible,--or else they must go forward where the idea of justice
+impels them. One day the motto "No more slave territory" will give place
+to this, "No slavery in America." The revolution in ideas is not over
+till that is done, nor the corresponding revolution in deeds while a
+single slave remains in America. A man who studies the great movements
+of mankind feels sure that that day is not far off; that no combination
+of northern and southern interest, no declamation, no violence, no love
+of money, no party zeal, no fraud and no lies, no compromise, can long
+put off the time. Bad passions will ere long league with the holiest
+love of right, and that wickedness may be put down with the strong hand
+which might easily be ended at little cost and without any violence,
+even of speech. One day the democratic party of the North will remember
+the grievances which they have suffered from the South, and, if they
+embrace the idea of freedom, no constitutional scruple will long hold
+them from destroying the "peculiar institution." What slavery is in the
+middle of the nineteenth century is quite plain; what it will be at the
+beginning of the twentieth it is not difficult to foresee. The slave
+power has gained a great victory: one more such will cost its life.
+South Carolina did not forget her usual craft in voting for a northern
+man that was devoted to slavery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us now speak briefly of the conduct of the election. It has been
+attended, at least in New England, with more intellectual action than
+any election that I remember, and with less violence, denunciation, and
+vulgar appeals to low passions and sordid interest. Massachusetts has
+shown herself worthy of her best days; the free soil vote may be looked
+on with pride, by men who conscientiously cast their ballot the other
+way. Men of ability and integrity have been active on both sides, and
+able speeches have been made, while the vulgarity that marked the
+"Harrison campaign" has not been repeated.
+
+In this contest the democratic party made a good confession, and "owned
+up" to the full extent of their conduct. They stated the question at
+issue, fairly, clearly, and entirely; the point could not be mistaken.
+The Baltimore Convention dealt honestly in declaring the political
+opinions of the party; the opinions of their candidate on the great
+party questions, and the subject of slavery, were made known with
+exemplary clearness and fidelity. The party did not fight in the dark;
+they had no dislike to holding slaves, and they pretended none. In all
+parts of the land they went before the people with the same doctrines
+and the same arguments; everywhere they "repudiated" the Wilmot Proviso.
+This gave them an advantage over a party with a different policy. They
+had a platform of doctrines; they knew what it was; the party stood on
+the platform; the candidate stood on it.
+
+The whig party have conducted differently; they did not publish their
+confession of faith. We know what was the whig platform in 1840 and in
+1844. But what is it in 1848? Particular men may publish their opinions,
+but the doctrines of the party are "not communicated to the public." For
+once in the history of America there was a whig convention which passed
+no "Resolutions;" it was the Convention at Philadelphia. But on one
+point, of the greatest importance too, it expressed the opinions of the
+whigs: it rejected the Wilmot Proviso, and Mr. Webster's thunder, which
+had fallen harmless and without lightning from his hands, was "kicked
+out of the meeting!" As the party had no platform, so their candidate
+had no political opinions. "What!" says one, "Choose a President who
+does not declare his opinions,--then it must be because they are
+perfectly well known!" Not at all: General Taylor is raw in politics,
+and has not taken his first "drill!" "Then he must be a man of such
+great political and moral ability, that his will may take the place of
+reason!" Not at all: he is known only as a successful soldier, and his
+reputation is scarcely three years old. Mr. Webster declared his
+nomination "not fit to be made," and nobody has any authentic statement
+of his political opinions; perhaps not even General Taylor himself.
+
+In the electioneering campaign there has been a certain duplicity in the
+supporters of General Taylor: at the North it was maintained that he was
+not opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, while at the South quite uniformly
+the opposite was maintained. This duplicity had the appearance of
+dishonesty. In New England the whigs did not meet the facts and
+arguments of the free soil party; in the beginning of the campaign the
+attempt was made, but was afterwards comparatively abandoned; the
+matter of slavery was left out of the case, and the old question of the
+sub-treasury and the tariff was brought up again, and a stranger would
+have thought, from some whig newspapers, that that was the only question
+of any importance. Few men were prepared to see a man of the ability and
+experience of Mr. Webster in his electioneering speeches pass wholly
+over the subject of slavery. The nation is presently to decide whether
+slavery is to extend over the new territory or not; even in a commercial
+and financial point of view, this is far more important than the
+question of banks and tariffs; but when its importance is estimated by
+its relation to freedom, right, human welfare in general,--we beg the
+pardon of American politicians for speaking of such things,--one is
+amazed to find the whig party of the opinion that it is more important
+to restore the tariff of 1842 than to prohibit slavery in a country as
+large as the thirteen States which fought the Revolution! It might have
+been expected of little, ephemeral men--minute politicians, who are the
+pest of the State,--but when at such a crisis a great man rises,[52]
+amid a sea of upturned faces, to instruct the lesser men, and forgets
+right, forgets freedom, forgets man, and forgets God, talking only of
+the tariff and of banks, why a stranger is amazed, till he remembers
+the peculiar relation of the great man to the moneyed men,--that he is
+their attorney, retained, paid, and pensioned to do the work of men
+whose interest it is to keep the question of slavery out of sight. If
+General Cavaignac had received a pension from the manufacturers of Lyons
+and of Lisle, to the amount of half a million of francs, should we be
+surprised if he forgot the needy millions of the land? Nay, only if he
+did not forget them!
+
+It was a little hardy to ask the anti-slavery men to vote for General
+Taylor; it was like asking the members of a temperance society to choose
+an eminent distiller for president of their association. Still, we know
+that honest anti-slavery men did honestly vote for him. We know nothing
+to impeach the political integrity of General Taylor; the simple fact
+that he is a slaveholder, seems reason enough why he should not be
+President of a nation who believe that "All men are created equal, and
+endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Men will be
+astonished in the next century to learn that the "model republic," had
+such an affection for slaveholders. Here is a remarkable document, which
+we think should be preserved:
+
+     DEED OF SALE.
+
+     "JOHN HAGARD, SR. TO ZACHARIAH TAYLOR.
+
+     "_Received for Record, 18th Feb., 1843._
+
+     "_This Indenture_, made this twenty-first day of April,
+     eighteen hundred and forty-two, between John Hagard, Sr., of
+     the City of New Orleans, State of Louisiana, of one part,
+     and Zachariah Taylor, of the other part, _Witnesseth_, that
+     the said John Hagard, Sr., for and in consideration of the
+     sum of _Ninety-Five Thousand Dollars_ to him in hand paid,
+     and secured to be paid, as hereafter stated by the said
+     Zachariah Taylor, at and before the sealing and delivering
+     of these presents, has this day bargained, sold, and
+     delivered, conveyed, and confirmed, and by these Presents
+     does bargain, sell, deliver, and confirm unto the said
+     Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and assigns, forever, all that
+     plantation and tract of land:...
+
+     "ALSO, all the following Slaves--Nelson, Milley, Peldea,
+     Mason, Willis, Rachel, Caroline, Lucinda, Ramdall, Wirman,
+     Carson, Little Ann, Winna, Jane, Tom, Sally, Gracia, Big
+     Jane, Louisa, Maria, Charles, Barnard, Mira, Sally, Carson,
+     Paul, Sansford, Mansfield, Harry Oden, Harry Horley, Carter,
+     Henrietta, Ben, Charlotte, Wood, Dick, Harrietta, Clarissa,
+     Ben, Anthony, Jacob, Hamby, Jim, Gabriel, Emeline, Armstead,
+     George, Wilson, Cherry, Peggy, Walker, Jane, Wallace,
+     Bartlett, Martha, Letitia, Barbara, Matilda, Lucy, John,
+     Sarah, Bigg Ann, Allen, Tom, George, John, Dick, Fielding,
+     Nelson, or Isom, Winna, Shellod, Lidney, Little Cherry,
+     Puck, Sam, Hannah or Anna, Mary, Ellen, Henrietta, and two
+     small children:--Also, all the Horses, Mules, Cattle, Hogs,
+     Farming Utensils, and Tools, now on said
+     Plantation--together with all and singular, the
+     hereditaments, appurtenances, privileges, and advantages
+     unto the said Land and Slaves belonging or appertaining. _To
+     have and to hold_ the said Plantation and tract of Land and
+     Slaves, and other property above described, unto the said
+     Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and assigns, for ever, and to
+     his and to their only proper use, benefits, and behoof, for
+     ever. And the said John Hagard, Sr., for himself, his heirs,
+     executors, and administrators, does covenant, promise, and
+     agree to and with said Zachariah Taylor, his heirs and
+     assigns, that the aforesaid Plantation and tract of Land and
+     Slaves, and other property, with the appurtenances, unto the
+     said Zachariah Taylor, his heirs, and assigns against the
+     claim or claims of all persons whomsoever claiming or to
+     claim the same, or any part or parcel thereof, shall and
+     will warrant, and by these Presents for ever defend.
+
+     "_In Testimony Whereof_, the said John Hagard, Sr., has
+     hereunto set his hand and seal, the day and year first above
+     written."
+
+If this document had been discovered among some Egyptian papyri, with
+the date 1848 before Christ, it would have been remarkable as a sign of
+the times. In a republic, nearly four thousand years later, it has a
+meaning which some future historian will appreciate.
+
+The free soil party have been plain and explicit as the democrats; they
+published their creed in the celebrated Buffalo platform. The questions
+of sub-treasury and tariff are set aside; "No more slave territory" is
+the watchword. In part they represent an interest, for slavery is an
+injury to the North in many ways, and to a certain extent puts the North
+into the hands of the South; but chiefly an idea. Nobody thought they
+would elect their candidate, whosoever he might be; they could only
+arrest public attention and call men to the great questions at issue,
+and so, perhaps, prevent the evil which the South was bent on
+accomplishing. This they have done, and done well. The result has been
+highly gratifying. It was pleasant and encouraging to see men ready to
+sacrifice their old party attachments and their private interests,
+oftentimes, for the sake of a moral principle. I do not mean to say
+that there was no moral principle in the other parties--I know better.
+But it seems to me that the free soilers committed a great error in
+selecting Mr. Van Buren as their candidate. True, he is a man of
+ability, who has held the highest offices and acquitted himself
+honorably in all; but he had been the "Northern man, with Southern
+principles;" had shown a degree of subserviency to the South, which was
+remarkable, if not singular or strange: his promise, made and repeated
+in the most solemn manner, to veto any act of Congress, abolishing
+slavery in the capital, was an insult to the country, and a disgrace to
+himself. He had a general reputation for instability, and want of
+political firmness. It is true, he had opposed the annexation of Texas,
+and lost his nomination in 1844 by that act; but it is also true that he
+advised his party to vote for Mr. Polk, who was notoriously in favor of
+annexation. His nomination, I must confess, was unfortunate; the Buffalo
+Convention seems to have looked at his availability more than his
+fitness, and, in their contest for a principle, began by making a
+compromise of that very principle itself. It was thought he could
+"carry" the State of New York; and so a man who was not a fair
+representative of the idea, was set up. It was a bad beginning. It is
+better to be defeated a thousand times, rather than seem to succeed by a
+compromise of the principle contended for. Still, enough has been done,
+to show the nation that the dollar is not almighty; that the South is
+not always to insult the North, and rule the land, annexing, plundering,
+and making slaves when she will; that the North has men who will not
+abandon the great sentiment of freedom, which is the boast of the nation
+and the age.
+
+General Taylor is elected by a large popular vote; some voted for him on
+account of his splendid military success; some because he is a
+slaveholder, and true to the interests of the slave power; some because
+he is a "Good whig," and wants a high tariff of duties. But we think
+there are men who gave him their support, because he has never been
+concerned in the intrigues of a party, is indebted to none for past
+favors, is pledged to none, bribed by none, and intimidated by none;
+because he seems to be an honest man, with a certain rustic
+intelligence; a plain blunt man, that loves his country and mankind. We
+hope this was a large class. If he is such a man, he will enter upon his
+office under favorable auspices, and with the best wishes of all good
+men.
+
+But what shall the free soil party do next? they cannot go
+back,--conscience waves behind them her glittering wings and bids them
+on; they cannot stand still, for as yet their measures and their
+watchword do not fully represent their idea. They must go forward, as
+the early abolitionists went, with this for their motto: "No slavery in
+America." "He that would lead men, must walk but one step before them;"
+says somebody. Well, but he must think many steps before them, or they
+will presently tread him under their feet. The present success of the
+idea is doubtful; the interests of the South will demand the extension
+of slavery;[53] the interests of the party now coming into power, will
+demand their peculiar boon. So another compromise is to be feared, and
+the extension of slavery yet further West. But the ultimate triumph of
+the genius of freedom is certain. In Europe, it shakes the earth with
+mighty tread; thrones fall before its conquering feet. While in the
+eastern continent, kings, armies, emperors, are impotent before that
+power, shall a hundred thousand slaveholders stay it here with a bit of
+parchment?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] [Greek: Greek: Gignontai men oun hai staseis ou peri mikron all' ek
+mikron, stasiazousi de peri megalon.]--Aristotle's _Polit._, Lib. V.
+Chap. 4, Sec. 1.
+
+[49] William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+[50] The following table shows the facts of the case:--
+
+Cost of post-office in slave States for
+the year ending July 1st, 1847,              $1,318,541
+
+Receipts from post-office,                      624,380
+
+Cost of post-office in free States for the
+year ending July 1st, 1847,                  $1,038,219
+
+Receipts from post-office,                    1,459,631
+
+So the Southern post-office cost the nation $694,161, and the Northern
+post-office paid the nation $421,412, making a difference of $1,115,573
+against the South.
+
+[51] Mr. John P. Hale.
+
+[52] Hon. Daniel Webster.
+
+[53] The following extract, from the _Charleston Mercury_, shows the
+feeling of the South. "Pursuant to a call, a meeting of the citizens of
+Orangeburg District was held to-day, 6th November, in the court-house,
+which was well filled on the occasion.... Gen. D. F. Jamison then rose,
+and moved the appointment of a committee of twenty-five, to take into
+consideration the continued agitation by Congress of the question of
+slavery;... the committee, through their chairman, Gen. Jamison, made
+the following report:--
+
+"The time has arrived when the slaveholding States of the confederacy
+must take decided action upon the continued attacks of the North against
+their domestic institutions, or submit in silence to that humiliating
+position in the opinions of mankind, that longer acquiescence must
+inevitably reduce them to.... The agitation of the subject of slavery
+commenced in the fanatical murmurings of a few scattered abolitionists,
+to whom it was a long time confined; but now it has swelled into a
+torrent of popular opinion at the North; it has invaded the fireside and
+the church, the press and the halls of legislation; it has seized upon
+the deliberations of Congress, and at this moment is sapping the
+foundations, and about to overthrow the fairest political structure that
+the ingenuity of man has ever devised.
+
+"The overt efforts of abolitionism were confined for a long period to
+annoying applications to Congress, under color of the pretended right of
+petition; it has since directed the whole weight of its malign influence
+against the annexation of Texas, and had wellnigh cost to the country
+the loss of that important province; but emboldened by success and the
+inaction of the South, in an unjust and selfish spirit of national
+agrarianism it would now appropriate the whole public domain. It might
+well have been supposed that the undisturbed possession of the whole of
+Oregon Territory would have satisfied the non-slaveholding States. This
+they now hold, by the incorporation of the ordinance of 1787 into the
+bill of the last session for establishing a territorial government for
+Oregon. That provision, however, was not sustained by them from any
+apprehension that the territory could ever be settled from the States of
+the South, but it was intended as a gratuitous insult to the southern
+people, and a malignant and unjustifiable attack upon the institution of
+slavery.
+
+"We are called upon to give up the whole public domain to the fanatical
+cravings of abolitionism, and the unholy lust of political power. A
+territory, acquired by the whole country for the use of all, where
+treasure has been squandered like chaff, and southern blood poured out
+like water, is sought to be appropriated by one section, because the
+other chooses to adhere to an institution held not only under the
+guaranties that brought this confederacy into existence, but under the
+highest sanction of Heaven. Should we quietly fold our hands under this
+assumption on the part of the non-slaveholding States, the fate of the
+South is sealed, the institution of slavery is gone, and its existence
+is but a question of time.... Your committee are unwilling to anticipate
+what will be the result of the combined wisdom and joint action of the
+southern portion of the confederacy on this question; but as an
+initiatory step to a concert of action on the part of the people of
+South Carolina, they respectfully recommend, for the adoption of this
+meeting, the following resolutions:--
+
+"_Resolved_, That the continued agitation of the question of slavery, by
+the people of the non-slaveholding States, by their legislatures, and by
+their representatives in Congress, exhibits not only a want of national
+courtesy, which should always exist between kindred States, but is a
+palpable violation of good faith towards the slaveholding States, who
+adopted the present Constitution 'in order to form a more perfect
+union.'
+
+"_Resolved_, That while we acquiesce in adopting the boundary between
+the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States, known as the Missouri
+Compromise line, we will not submit to any further restriction upon the
+rights of any southern man to carry his property and his institutions
+into territory acquired by southern treasure and by southern blood.
+
+"_Resolved_, That should the Wilmot Proviso, or any other restriction,
+be applied by Congress to the territories of the United States, south of
+36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, we recommend to our representative in
+Congress, as the decided opinion of this portion of his district, to
+leave his seat in that body, and return home.
+
+"_Resolved_, That we respectfully suggest to both houses of the
+legislature of South Carolina, to adopt a similar recommendation as to
+our senators in Congress from this State.
+
+"_Resolved_, That upon the return home of our senators and
+representatives in Congress, the legislature of South Carolina should be
+forthwith assembled to adopt such measures as the exigency may demand.
+
+"The resolutions were then submitted, _seriatim_, and, together with the
+report, were unanimously adopted."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional
+Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3), by Theodore Parker
+
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