Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/131

118 free speech, which tells every grievance at home or abroad; they hate her free soil, which offers a home to every exile, republican or despotic. England is in peril, for every tyrant hates her. Russia is in danger, for the two strongest powers of Christendom have just clasped hands, and sworn an oath to fight against that great marauding empire of the East. Their armies threaten her cities; her sovereign deserts his capital; her treasure is carried a thousand miles inward; the Western fleets blockade her ports and sweep her navies from the sea. But Russia has no peril like ours; England has no danger so great as that which threatens us this .day. In the darkest periods of the American Revolution, when Washington's army, without blankets, without coats, without shoes, fled through the Jerseys, when they marked the ice of the Delaware, and left revolutionary tracks in frozen blood, we were not in such peril as to-day. When General Gage had the throat of Boston in his hand, and perfidiously disarmed the people, we were not in such danger. Yea, when four hundred houses in yonder town went up in one great cloud of smoke towards heaven, the liberties of America were not in such peril as they are to-day. Then we were called to fight with swords—and when that work was to be done, was America ever found wanting? Then our adversary was the other side of the sea, and wicked statutes were enacted against us in Westminster Hall. Now our enemy is at home; and something far costlier than swords is to be called into service.

Look at some of these dangers. I shall pass by all that are trifling. I find four great perils. Here they are:— I. There comes the danger from our exclusive Devotion to Riches.

II. The danger from the Roman Catholic Church, established in the midst of us.

III. The danger from the idea that there is no Higher Law above the Statutes which men make.

IV. The danger from the Institution of Slavery, which is based on that atheistic idea last named.

I.