Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/186

174 Pacific waits to bring gold to our shores of rock and sand,—even there the annual song of gladness bursts from New England lips.

So America honours the birth of the nation with a holiday for all the people. Then we look anew at the national idea, reading for the six and seventieth time the programme of our progress,—its first part a revolution; we study our history before and since, bringing back the day of small things, when our fathers went from one kingdom to another people; we rejoice at the wealthy harvest gathered from the unalienable rights of men, sown in new soil. On that day the American flag goes topmast high; and men in ships, far off in the silent wilderness of the ocean, celebrate the nation's joyous day. In all the great cities of the Eastern world, American hearts beat quicker then, and thank their God.

But a few days ago, the Hebrew nation commemorated its escape out of Egypt, celebrating its Passover. Though three and thirty hundred years have since passed by, yet the Israelite remembers that his fathers were slaves in the land of the stranger; that the Pyramids, even then a fact accomplished and representing an obsolete idea, were witnesses to the thraldom of his race; and the joy of Jacob triumphant over the gods of Egypt lights up the Hebrew countenance in the melancholy Ghetto of Rome, as the recollection of the hundred and one pilgrims deepens the joy of the Californian New Englanders delighting in the glory of their nation, and their own abundant gain. The pillar of fire still goes before the Hebrew, in the long night of Israelis wandering; and still the Passover is a day of joy and of proud remembrance.

Every ancient nation has thus its calendar filled with joyful days. The worshippers of Jesus delight in their Christmas and their Easter; the Mahometans, in the Hegira of the Prophet. The year-book of mankind is thus marked all the way through with the red-letter days of history. And most beautifully do those days illuminate the human year, commemorating the victories of the race, the days of triumph which have marked the course of man in his long and varied, but yet triumphant, march of many a thousand years. Thereby Hebrews, Buddhists, Christians, Mahometans, men of every form of religion; English, French, Americans, men of all nations,—are reminded of