Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/90

78 the people of the United States; you, a nation of free- men, who owe allegiance to none; you, a republic, one of the foremost nations of the earth; you with your theories of human, universal justice; you who earliest made national proclamation to mankind of human right, and those three political ideas whereon the great American commonwealth now stands and rests; you who profess to form a government not on force, but law, not on national traditions, but abstract justice—the nation’s constant and perpetual will to give to every one his constant and perpetual right; you who would found a state not on cannon balls, but universal laws, thoughts of God,—what plea can you put forth in, your defence? You call yourselves Christians. It is your boast. "Christianity," say the courts, "is the common law of the land." You have a religion which tells that God is the Father, equal, just, and loving to all mankind,—the red man, whom you murdered, and the black man, whom you have laid in iron, hurting his feet with fetters. It tells you, all are brothers, African, American, red man, and black, and white. It tells you, as your highest duty, to love God with all your heart; to love his justice, love his mercy, love his love; to love that brother as yourself—the more he needs, to love him still the more; that without such love for men there is no love for God. The sacred books of the nation—read in all pulpits, sworn over in all courts of justice, borne even in your warships, and sheltered by the battle-flag of your armies—the sacred books of the nation tell, that Jesus, the highest, dearest revelation of God to men, who loved them all, that He laid down his life for them, for all ; and bade you follow Him! What is a natural action in the savage, a mere mistake in the despot of Turkey or of Russia, with you becomes a conscious and fearful wrong. For you to hold your brothers in bondage, to keep them from all chance of culture, growth in mind, or heart, or soul; for you to breed them as swine, and beat them as oxen; to treat them as mere things, without soul, or rights,—why, what was a mistake in political economy, a wrong before your ideas of government, becomes a sin foul and heinous before your ideas of man, and Christ, and God.

When you remember the intelligence of this age, its ac-