Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/66

50 up. Human nature is against it ; and so is the nature of God! "Justice has feet of wool," no man hears her step, "but her hands are of iron," and where she lays them down, only God can uplift and unclasp. It is vain to trust in wrong: As much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of human history.

I know men complain that sentence against an evil work is not presently executed. They see but half; it is executed, and with speed; every departure from justice is attended with loss to the unjust man, but the loss is not reported to the public. Sometimes a man is honoured as a brave, good man, but trial rings him and he gives an empty, hollow sound. All the ancient and honourable may bid the people trust that man,—they turn off their affections from him.

So have I seen an able man, witty and cunning, graceful, plausible, elegant, and rich; men honoured him for a time, tickled by his beauty to eye and ear. But gradually the mean soul of the man appeared in his conduct, selfish, grasping, inhuman, and fraudulently unjust. The public heart forgot him, and when he came to die, the town which once had honoured him so much gave him only earth to rest his coffin on. He had the official praises which he paid for, that was all. Silence is a figure of speech, unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe.

How differently do men honour such as stood up for truth and right, and never shrank! What monuments the world builds to its patriots! Four great statesmen, organizers of the right, embalmed in stone, look down upon the lawgivers of France as they pass to their hall of legislation, silent orators to tell how nations love the just. What a monument Washington has built in the heart of America and all the world! not by great genius,—he had none of that,—but by his effort to be just. The martyrs of Christendom, of Judaism, and of every form of heathen faith,—how men worship those firm souls who shook off their body sooner than be false to conscience.

Yet eminent justice is often misunderstood. Littleness has its compensation. A small man is seldom pinched for want of room. Greatness is its own torment. There was once a man on this earth whom the world could not understand. He was too high for them, too wide, was every