Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/126

Rh three years' time had doubled the productions of the town!

You have asked this young man to superintend your spiritual culture, not the farming of your fields, but of yourself. He must attend to the highest of all husbandry, and rear the noblest crops of use and beauty. Out of the soil of human nature he is to produce great harvests of human character. He is to teach the Science of Humanity—the Art of Life. You say to him, "Oh, young man, come and show us how to become the noblest men and women, achieving the greatest amount of human character of the highest human kind, with the least waste of effort, in the shortest time. Show us the ideal character, the end we ought to reach; the ideal life, the means thereto. We take you for helper, friend, counsellor, teacher; not our master to command, not the slave of our pride and prejudice to be commanded; not our vicar, to be, to do, and to suffer in our place, for we do not wish to live by attorney, but each of us on his own account. Be our teacher, helping in the highest work of life. As we commit to you this highest trust, we expect your highest efforts, your noblest thoughts, the manly prayers of your quickened and ever greatening life."

Man is a spirit, organized in matter. In our being is f one element, which connects us consciously with God, the Cause and Providence of the universe, imminent in all and yet transcending all. It is an essential faculty of human nature, belonging to the ontology of man, and gives indications of its presence in all men above the rank of the idiot; the rudiments appear even in him. It acts in all stages of human history; in the mere wild-man, where it appears in only its instinctive form; in the savage, who I has no conception of a God, only of the Divine in nature, a mighty force, differing in kind from matter and from man; in the barbarian, who makes concrete Deities out of plants, and animals, and elements, and men; and in the most enlightened philosophers who compose the Academies of Science at Paris or Berlin.

It is also the strongest faculty in man, overmastering all the rest; easily excited, not soon put down, and often