Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/227

Rh juster and greater do they fool their claim on him. A pirate in gaol may command the sendees of any Christian minister in the land. Most of the high achievements in science, letters, and art, have had no apparent pay. The pay came beforehand; in general and from God, in the greater ability, "the vision and the faculty divine," but m particular also and from men, in the opportunity afforded them by others for the use and culture thereof. Divinely and humanly they are Well paid. Men feel that they have this right to the services of the scholar, in part because they dimly know that hw superior education is purchased at the general cost. Hence, too, they are proud of the few able and accomplished men, feeling that all have ft certain properly therein, as having contributed their mite to the accumulation, by their divine nature related to the men of genius, by their human toil partners in the acquirements of the scholar. This feeling is not confined to men who intellectually can appreciate intellectual excellence. The little parish in the mountains, and the great parish in the city, are alike proud of the able-headed and accomplished scholar who ministers to them though neither the poor clowns of the village nor the wealthy clowns of the metropolis could enter into his consciousness and understand his favourite pursuits or loftiest thought. Both would think it insulting to pay such a man in full proportion to his work or their receipt. Nobody offers a salary to the House of Lords; their lordship is their pay, and they must give back, in the form of justice and sound government, an equivalent for all they take in high social rank. They must pay for their nobility by being noble lords.

How shall the scholar pay for his education? He is to give a service for the service received. Thus the miller and the farmer pay one anther each paying with service in his own kind. The scholar cannot give back bread for bread, and cloth for cloth. He must pay in the scholar’s kind, not the woodman's or the weaver’s. He is to represent the higher modes of human consciousness; his culture and opportunities of portion fit him for that. So he is not merely to go through the routine profession, as minister, doctor, lawyer, merchant, school-master, politician, or maker of almanacks, and for his