Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/49

Rh institutions it has built, what men called into life ! By and by men saw its application to the despotic state which long had ruled over the bodies and souls of men. Revolutions followed thick and fast in Holland, England, America, and France, and one day all Europe and the world will be ablaze with that idea. Men opposed; one of the Stuarts said, " It shall not cross the four seas of England;" but it crossed the Stuart's neck, and drove his children from the faithful soil. It came to America, that idea so destructive at first, destined to be so creative and conservative. It brought our fathers here, grim and bearded men, full of the fear of God; they little knew what fruit would come of their planting. See the institutions which have sprung up on the soil then cumbered by a wilderness, and hideous with wild beasts and wilder men. See what new ideas blossomed out of the old truth: All men have natural, equal, and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;—that was a new flower from the old stem. See the one-and-thirty States which have sprung up under the shadow of this great idea.

That truth long since recognized as true, now proved expedient by experiment, goes back over the sea, follow- ing the track the Mayflower broke, and earnest nations welcome it to their bosom, that sovereign truth : Man is supreme over institutions, not they over him. How it has thundered and lightened over Europe in the last few years! It will beat to the dust many a godless throne, and the palm of peace shall occupy the ground once re- served for soldiers' feet; here and there a city ditch of defence has already become a garden for the town.

Here in America, men full of this truth rise up against ungodly customers, now become a law, and under this demand the freedom of the slave. See how it spreads! It cannot be written down, nor voted down, nor sneered and frowned down; it cannot be put down by all the armies of the world. This truth belongs to the nature of man, and can only perish when the race gives up the ghost. Yet it is nothing but an idea ; it has no hands, no feet. The man who first set it agoing on the earth,—see what he has done ! Yet I doubt not the villagers around him thought the ale-house keeper was the more useful man;