Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/168

Rh eloquence of Demosthenes could not rouse degenerate Athens from her idle sleep. She also fell—the fairest of all free States; corrupted first—forgetful of God's higher law. Shall America thus perish, all immature! So was it in the days of old: they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Koah entered into the ark, and the flood came and devoured them all! Well, is this to be the end? Was it for this the pilgrims came over the sea? Does Forefathers' Rock assent to it? Was it for this that the New England clergy prayed, and their prayers became the law of the land for a hundred years? Was it for this that Cotton planted in Boston a little branch of the Lord's vine, and Roger Williams and Higginson—he still lives in an undegenerate son—did the same in the city which they called of peace, Salem? Was it for this that Eliot carried the Gospel to the Indians? that Chauncey, and Edwards, and Hopkins, and Mayhew, and Channing, and Ware laboured and prayed? for this that our fathers fought—the Adamses, Washington, Hancock? for this that there was an eight years' war, and a thousand battle-fields? for this the little monument at Acton, Concord, Lexington, West Cambridge, Danvers, and the great one over there on the spot which our fathers' blood made so red? Shall America become Asia Minor? New England Italy? Boston such as Athens—dead and rotten? Yes I if we do not mend, and speedily mend. Ten years more, and the liberty of America is all gone. We shall fall, the laugh, the byword, the proverb, the scorn, the mock of the nations, who shall cry against us. Hell from beneath shall be moved to meet us at our coming, and in derision shall it welcome us:—

We shall lie down with the unrepentant prodigals of old time, damned to everlasting infamy and shame.

Would you have it so? Shall it be? To-day, America is a debauched young man, of good blood, fortune, and family, but the companion of gamesters and brawlers; reeking with wine; wasting his substance in riotous living; in the lap of harlots squandering the