Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/47

Rh tical value of the dress they wore; but the great Providence of the Father sent the truth as they were able to bear it. So earthly mothers sometimes teach the alphabet to their children in letters of sugar, eaten as soon as learned.

But even with us it is not always so. In our own day we have seen a man possessed with this great idea,—that every man has a right to his own body and soul, and consequently that it is wrong to hold an innocent man in bondage; that no custom, no law, no constitution, no private or national interest, can justify the deed; nothing on earth, nothing beneath it or above. He applies this to American slavery. Here is a conflict between an acknowledged truth and what is thought a national interest. What an influence did the idea have on the man! It enlarged him, and made him powerful, opened the eye of his conscience to the hundred-headed injustice in the Lernaean Marsh of modern society ; widened his affections, till his heart prayed, ay, and his hands, for the poor negro in the Southern swamps,—for all the oppressed. It touched and wakened up his soul, till he felt a manly piety in place of what might else have been a puny sentimentalism, mewling and whining in the Church's arms. The idea goes abroad, sure to conquer. See how a great idea, a truth of morals or religion, lias an influence on masses of men. Some single man sees it first, dimly for a long time, without sight enough to make it clear, the quality of vision better than his quantity of sight. Then he sees it clearly and in distinct outline. The truth burns mightily within him, and he cannot be still; he tells it, now to one, then to another ; at each time of telling he gets his lesson better learned. Other men see the idea, dimly at first as he. It wakens a love for itself; first, perhaps, in the recipient heart of some woman, waiting for the consolation. Then a few minds prepared for the idea half welcome it ; thence it timidly flashes into other minds, as light reflected from the water. Soon the like-minded meet together to sun themselves in one another's prayers. They form a family of the faith, and grow strong in their companionship. The circle grows wider. Men oppose the new idea, with little skill or much, sometimes with violence, or only with intellect. Then comes a