Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/169

156 life which his mother gave him. Shall he return? Shall he perish? One day may determine.

Shall America thus die? I look to the past,—Asia, Africa, Europe, and they answer, "Yes!" Where is the Hebrew Commonwealth; the Roman Republic; where is liberal Greece,—Athens, and many a far-famed Ionian town; where are the Commonwealths of Mediæval Italy; the Teutonic free cities—German, Dutch, or Swiss? They have all perished. Not one of them is left. Parian statues of liberty, sorely mutilated, still remain; but the Parian rock whence Liberty once hewed her sculptures out—it is all gone. Shall America thus perish? Greece and Italy both answer, "Yes!" I question the last fifty years of American history, and it says, "Yes." I look to the American pulpit, I ask the five miUion Sunday school scholars, and they say, "Yes." I ask the Federal court, the Democratic party, and the Whig, and the answer is still the same.

But I close my eyes on the eleven past missteps we have taken for Slavery; on that seven-fold clandestine corruption; I forget the Whig party; I forget the present administration; I forget the Judges of the Courts;—I remember the few noblest men that there are in society, Church and State; I remember the grave of my father, the lessons of my mother's life; I look to the spirit of this age—it is the nineteenth century, not the ninth;—I look to the history of the Anglo-Saxons in America, and the history of mankind; I remember the story and the song of Italian and German patriots; I recall the dear words of those great-minded Greeks—Ionian, Dorian, Ætolian; I remember the Romans who spoke, and sang, and fought for truth and right; I recollect those old Hebrew prophets, earth's nobler sons, poets and saints; I call to mind the greatest, noblest, purest soul that ever blossomed in this dusty world;—and I say, "No!" Truth shall triumph, justice shall be law! And, if America fail, though she is one fortieth of God's family, and it is a great loss, there are other nations behind us ; our truth shall not perish, even if we go down.

But we shall not fail! I look into your eyes—young men and women, thousands of you, and men and women far enough from young! I look into the eyes of fifty