Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/199

Rh us worship Him. The ecclesiastical worship of Jesus of Nazareth is, perhaps, tho best thing in the American church. It has the Sunday and the institution of preaching under its control. A body of disciplined men are its servants; they praise the ordinary virtues; oppose and condemn the unpopular forms of error and of sin. Petty vice, the vice of low men, in low places, is sure of their lush. They promote patriotism in its common form. Indirectly, they excite social and industrial rivalry, and favour the love of money by the honour they bestow upon, the rich and successful. But at the same time they temper it a little, sometimes tolling men, as business, or the State does not, that there is in man a conscience, affection for his brother-man, and a soul which cannot live by bread alone; no, not by wealth, office, fame, and social rank. They toll us, also, of eternity, where worldly distinctions, except of orthodox and heterodox, are forgotten, where wealth is of no avail; they bid us remember God.

Such are the good things of these great national forces; the good things which in this fourfold way we are teaching ourselves. The nation is a monitorial school, wonderfully contrived for the education of the people. I do not mean to say that it is by the forethought of men that the American democracy is at the same time a great practical school for the education of the human race. This result formed no part of our plan, and is not provided for by the Constitution of the United States ; it comes of the fore-thought of God, and is provided for in the Constitution of the Universe.

Now each of these educational forces has certain defects, negative evils, and certain vices, positive evils, which tend to misdirect the nation, and so hinder the general education of the people: of these, also, let me speak in detail.

The State appeals to force, not to justice; this is its last appeal; the force of muscles aided by force of mind, instructed by modern science in the art to kill. The nation appeals to force in the settlement, of affairs out of its borders. We have lately seen an example of this, when we commenced war against a feeble nation, who, in that special emergency, had right on her side, about as emphatically as the force was on our side. The immediate