Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/324

Rh walk upright and joyous, a free man. But Mr Successful has a huge, deep, wide-mouthed pannier fastened to his back, and as ihe trudges through -this storm of money, it so rains gold thereinto that his burden greatens continually, and with bended back, and out-pressed eyes, knock-kneed, he staggers on his way, ere long to fall beneath his load, dead and buried under his pannier full of gold. On his gravestone let it be writ,. You sigh over the human ruins cast ashore on infamous places, stranded in jails, or caught upon the gallows, and so exposed to public shame; kind souls take interest in their cruel fate, however so well deserved; there breaks not a heart but leaves some to grieve." Beneficent lawyers sometimes try to defend these poor creatures, and save them from their fate, and gentle-hearted ministers would intercede. Nay, the State has forecasting care for such as are like to be whelmed under in that perilous sea of crime; builds her breakwaters, and artificial, harbours, calling them "Reform School," "Industrial School," and other Christian names. But men are ruined otherwise; how many an ambitious craft encounters total wreck while sailing for the presidency, for the. Governor's chair, or Some political port far less renowned! The shore of Congress is lined with the fragments of shipwrecked men, wherewith, also, the coast of every State is painfully deformed. What argosies yearly go under, all their virtuous wealth spilled out among the heedless waves!

The saddest human ruin now conspicuous in America is no wretch in the State prison, no lunatic at Worcester or Taunton; he will never be hung on any gibbet. It is a man uncommonly well gifted, well educated too; his praise is in all the newspapers. Pah! let us not look at him again; it is New-year's Sunday, turn we to more pleasant things.

Terrible are these vices of reflective calculation. I know of nothing which so enables a man to correct them, and to keep his hounds to hunt for him, not eat him up, as true religious ideas, true religious feelings. These put you in harmony with the universe around you, and with God who is everywhere. They set your little mill where