Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/114

110 burn. It is marvellous, that in Christian Boston, men of wealth, and be above the temptation which lurks behind a dollar, men of character otherwise thought to be elevated, can yet continue a traffic which leads to the ruin and slow butchery of such masses of men. I know not what can be done by means of the public law. J do know what can be done by private self-denial, by private diligence.

Something also may be done to promote religion amongst the poor, at least something to make it practicable for a poor man to come to church on Sunday, with his fellow-creatures who are not miserable—and to hear the beat things that the ablest men in the church have to offer. We are very democratic in our State, not at all so in oar church. In this matter tho Catholics put us quite to shame. If, as some men still believe, it be a manly calling and a noble to preach Christianity, then to preach it to men who stand in the worst and most dangerous positions in society; to take the highest truths of human consciousness, the loftiest philosophy, the noblest piety, and bring them down into tho daily life of poor men, rude men, men obscure, unfriended, ready to perish; surely this is the noblest part of that calling, and demands the noblest gifts, the fairest and the largest culture, the loftiest powers.

It is no hard thing to reason with reasoning men, and be intelligible to the intelligent; to talk acceptably and even movingly to scholars and men well read, is no hard thing, if you are yourself well read and a scholar. But to be intelligible to the ignorant, to reason with men who reason not, to speak acceptably and movingly with such men, to inspire them with wisdom, with goodness, and with piety,—that is the task only for some men of rare genius who can stride over the great gulf betwixt the thrones of creative power, and the humble positions of men ignorant, poor, and forgot! Yet such men there are, and here is their work.

Something can be done for the children of the poor—to promote their education, to find them employment, to snatch these little ones from underneath the feet of that grim poverty. It is not less than awful to think, while there are more children born in Boston of Catholic parents than of Protestant, that yet wore than three-fifths thereof