Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/265

Rh opposed the natural human rights of the servant in the family, of the labourer in the community, of the people in the State, of the layman in the Church; it favoured the rule of the master, the lord, the king, the priest. This element was old, ancestral, stationary, if not retrogressive; it was also powerful. In this the Anglo-Saxon and the Spaniard were alike. The other element was the instinct for progressive development; the sentiments not idealized into conscious thoughts; the ideas not organized into institutions. There was a feeling of the equality of all men in the substance of their human nature, and consequently in all natural rights, howsoever diverse in natural powers, in transmitted distinction and riches, or in acquired culture, money, and station. Now and then this feeling had broken out in a "Jack Cadets insurrection," or a "Peasants’ war." But in the seventeenth century it found no distinct expression as a thought. Perhaps it was not an idea with any man a hundred and fifty years ago; it was the stuff ideas are made of. What other feelings are there, one day to become ideas, then acts, the world's victorious life! Lay down your ear to the great ocean of humanity, and as the Spirit of God moves on the face of this deep, listen to the low tone of the great ground swell, and interpret the ripple at the bottom of the sea, while, all above, the surface is calm as a maiden's dreamless sleep. In these days, what is it that we hear at the bottom of the world as the eternal tide of human history meets with the sand bars cast down in many an ancient storm! Thereof will I speak not now.

This feeling came slowly to an idea. With many stumblings and wanderings it went forth, blindfold as are all the instinctive feelings—whereunto only God not man is eye,—not knowing whither it went or intended to go. See what has been done, or at least commenced.

I. They protested against Theocracy in the church. "Let us have a church without an altar or a bishop; a service with no mass-book, no organ, no surplice, each congregation subject only to the Lord, not to man," said the Puritan—and he had it: "Yea," answered the Quaker, "and with no hireling minister, no outward sacrament, no