Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/52

36 which made only a farthing in the wealth of man,—and form a part of the heritage which each generation receives, enlarges, holds in trust, and of necessity bequeaths to mankind, the personal estate of man entailed of nature to the end of time. As the men who discovered corn, tamed the ox, the horse, invented language and letters, who conquered fire and water, and yoked these two brute furious elements with an iron bond, as gentle now as any lamb,—as they who tamed the lightning, sending it of their errands, and as they who sculptured loveliness in stone two thousand years ago, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever,—as these and all such transmit their wealthy works to man, so he who sets forth a truth and developes wisdom, any human excellence of gift or growth, greatens the spiritual glory of his race. And a single man, who could not make one hair white or black, has added a cubit to the stature of mankind.

All the material riches inherited or actively acquired by this generation, our cultivated land, our houses, roads of earth, of wood, of iron, our factories and ships,—mechanical inventions which make New England more powerful than Russia to create, though she have forty-fold our men,—all these contrivances, the crown-jewels of the human race, the symbols of our kingly power over the earth, we leave to the next age ; your children's burden will be lighter, their existence larger, and their joy more delightful, for our additions to this heritage. But the spiritual truths we learn, the intellectual piety which we acquire, all the manly excellence that we slowly meditate and slowly sculpture into life, goes down in blessing to mankind, the cup of gold hid in the sack of those who only asked for corn, richer than all the grain they bought. Into our spiritual labours other men shall enter, climb by our ladder, then build anew, and so go higher up towards heaven than you or I had time and power to go. There is a spiritual solidarity of the human race, and the thought of the first man will help the wisdom of the last. A thousand generations live in you and me. It is an old world, mankind is no new creation, no up- start of to-day, but has lived through hard times and long. Yet what is the history of man to the nature that is in us all! The instinctive hunger for perfect knowledge will