Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/211

198 sure unity of action to millions, and yet destroy the personal freedom of no man. Look back a few hundred years,— what were all the six crusades to the American and French Revolutions—to the Year of Revolutions so recently passed by? What was the pretended discovery of the true cross, of the tomb of Jesus, of the lance which pierced his side, compared with the attempts to abolish slavery, war, pauperism, ignorance, drunkenness! One was the search for a piece of wood, or iron, or stone; the other an attempt to elevate man to the image of God. It was an act of piety to build the cathedrals of Europe. What is it to build up such communities of men as the new free States of America, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota? Are the mechanical inventions of this age to pass for nothing! Now the gospel of mind is preached to matter, material elements have heard the word with joy; and in this new pentecost, earth, air, fire, water, lightning, have received the Holy Ghost, and are baptized with thought; obedient to the heavenly vision, they become servants of the church of humanity, and are ministers to promote the true salvation of mankind—clothing the naked, giving bread to the poor, and education to the thoughtful and the heedless.

See what reform of laws goes on continually; what pains are taken to defend the most exposed classes of mankind. Down must fall the gallows—type of a malignant God; the Sun of Righteousness must shine into the dungeon; jails must no more be savage torture-chambers, but civil hospitals to heal the sickly man; crime must become amenable to correction which would bless, not subject only to vengeance which would but burn and kill. Drunkenness must end, and American democracy forges her sharpest, heaviest axe, grinds it to rough and dreadful edge, then smites it down upon that beast with seven ghastly heads, and seventy times as many ample-tined horns all red with murder;—drunkenness must die. Pauperism must lay off its rags—no longer sitting in the dirt of Dives' gate with no attendance save the dogs', unasked—but the science of the age shall heal the beggar of his poverty, which is tha destruction of the poor. The lame must walk, the public finding crutch; the blind must see with foreign eyes, germane not alien; the deaf must hear