Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/317

Rh cry of politicians, and that demands slavery: "The will of God" is the cry of the priests, and it demands the same thing. I am not speaking of ministers of Christianity; they are a very different sort of men, and preach a very different creed from that—only of the ministers in the churches of commerce. According to the popular theology of all Christendom, Jesus Christ came on earth to seek and to save that which is lost. The Good Physician does not go among the whole, but among the sick. If he were to come here to seek to relieve the slave, the leading men in the American denominations would tell him he came before he was called; he ran before he was sent; that it was no mission from God to break a single American fetter, nor to let the oppressed go free. Is not the "Constitution" above "Conscience," and the Fugitive Slave Bill more holy than the Bible; the commissioner of more authority than Christ?

Such is the aspect of America when the immigrant comes near and looks the nation in the face. What a spectacle that is to put along-side of the other! Europe repudiates bondage—Scandinavia, Holland, France, England. Since Britain emancipated her slaves, the present Emperor of Russia has set free over seven millions of slaves that belonged to his own private domain, and established more than four thousand schools, free for those seven millions of emancipated slaves; and did he not fear an outbreak in a country where "revolution is endemic," he would set free the other five and thirty millions that occupy his soil to-day. And when he enlarges his territory, he never extends the area of bondage, only the area of what in Russia is freedom.

What a spectacle! A country reaching from sea to sea, from the Gulf of tropic heat to Lake Superior's artic cold, and not an inch of free soil all the way ! Three millions of square miles, and not a foot where a fugitive from slavery can be safe! A Democracy, and every eighth man bought and sold!

It is the richest nation in the world, after England; yet, we are so poor that every eighth man is unable to say that