Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/205

 your attention to a "Sermon of the Consequences which come from an Immoral Principle and False Idea of Man's Duty and the Purpose of Human Life."

Man's moral, as his industrial progress, is by experiment. Many of the experiments fail; but by repeated trials we hit the mark. America's mercantile ability to-day—her power of agriculture, mining, manufactures, commerce—is the achievement of the human race in the long history from the creation till now. So America's spiritual ability—her power of wisdom, justice, philanthropy, and religion—is not the product of this one nation, nor of this age alone, but of all time and all men; it is a part of the net result of human activity thus far. Vice, ignorance, folly, injustice, bad institutions—they represent the imperfect development of man's faculties, and consequent experiments badly planned; and so which needs must fail. The most moral man in Boston did not attain his excellence all at once, but by repeated efforts, by continuous experiments; and a great many of his efforts turned out mistakes. As he builds up his fortune, so his character, by trial, by experiment; first failure, and then success. So out of this briar. Failure, we pluck the honeyed rose. Success.

In the best man's action, there is a percentage of