Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/257

Rh knows, sees, feels, not merely of what ho reads in others' song. Common things aro not thorefore inclean. In plain Now England life he finds his poetry, as magnets iron in the blacksmith's dust, and as tho bee finds dew-bright cups of honey in the common woods and common weeds. It is not for him to rave of Parnassus, while he knows it not, for the soul of song has a seat upon Monadnock, Wachusett, or Katahdin, quite as high. So Scottish Burns was overtaken by the muse of poetry, who met him on his own bleak hills, and showed him beauty in the daisy and the thistle, and the tiny mouse, till to his eye the hills ran o'er with loveliness, and Caledonia became a classic land.

Is it religion the author treats of? It is not worship by fear, but through absolute faith, a never-ending love; for it is not worship of a howling and imperfect God, grim, jealous, and revengeful, loving but a few, and them not well,—but of the Infinite Father of all mankind, whose universal providence will sure achieve the highest good of ail that are.

These men are few; in no land are they numerous, or were or will be. There were few Hebrew prophets, but a tribe of priests; there are but few mighty bards that hover o'er the world; but here and there a sage, looking deep and living high, who feels the heart of things, and utters oracles which pass for proverbs, psalms and prayers, and stimulate a world of men. They draw the nations, as conjoining moon and sun draw waters shore-ward from the ocean springs; and as electrifying heat they elevate the life of men. Under their influence you cannot be as before. They stimulate the sound, and intoxicate the silly; but in the heart of noble youths their idea becomes a fact, and their prayer a daily life. Scholars of such a stamp are few and rare, not without great faults. For every one of them there will be many imitators, as for each lion a hundred lion-flies, thinking their buzz as valiant as his roar, and wondering the forest does not quake thereat, and while they feed on him fancy they suck the breasts of heaven. Such is the scholars' position in America; such their duty, and such the way in which they pay the debt they owe. Will men of superior culture not all act by scholar-