Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/220

216 up before Congress, or the people, which could not have been better decided, by woven men, honest, intelligent, and just, who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative, a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vole. Ballots can make a president out of almost anything; the most ordinary material is not too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions, all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the "Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land, the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice, unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years' time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land. You can, if you will. I ask if you will? If your works say, "Yes," then you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a charity far nobler yet,—education, the greatest charity. You will help fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of that, noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the Christians still worship as their God. Yes, you will work with God himself; He will work with you, work for you, and bless you with everlasting life.