Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/226

Rh politics!" said the "eminent citizens" of France. "Down with the rich!" "Off with their heads!" "Ours be their money!" That was the of the million to that atheistic litany of the "enlightened." Whoso falls on God's justice. shall be broken; "but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder!" Everywhere is God's law, boundless above me, boundless beneath, every way boundless. The universe is all Bible: matter is Old Testament, man New Testament—revelations from the infinite God. That law—it is man's wisdom to know it; his morality to keep it; his religion to love it and the dear God whose motherly blessing breathes through and in it all. You cannot segregate this Bible from the world of space: you cannot separate a particle of it from the laws of matter. The lesser attraction holds together the cohesive particles of leather, paper, metal, which compose this Bible under my hand; and the greater gravitation binds its attracted mass downwards to the weighty world. Just so is it impossible to separate man, or any one of his faculties, from the great all-encompassing laws of God, the eternal decalogue which He has writ. Break His law, put property above person, the accident before the substance of man, declare that religion has nothing to do with man's chief affairs, and that there is no law above the appetite of the politician and the pimp—and not a life is secure, not a dollar is safe! Subjective Atheism is chaos in you, objective Atheism chaos on the outside; the rich State will end in a ruffianhood of thieves; Democracy turn out a despotism; and its masters will be the "marshal's guard," or the men who make and control such things. The chain which Boston sought to put round the virtuous neck of Ellen Craft seemed short and light: but suddenly it undid its iron coil, and twisted all round the Court House; under it crawled the Judges of the State, and caught its hissing at God's law. Now it seeks to twist about Faneuil Hall and choke the eloquent speech of liberty in her own cradle. The cannon appointed to shoot down the manhood of poor Burns is levelled also at every pulpit where piety dares pray. The hundred festal cannons which Boston "gentlemen"—jubilant at the triumph of their own wickedness—fired to herald the Fugitive Slave Bill,