Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/258

254 craft and by the pen? It were a pity if they did. If a man work nobly, the office is as worthy, and the purse as blessed in its work. The pen is power; the office is power; the purse is power; and if the purse and office be nobly held, then in a high mode the cultivated man pays for his bringing up, and honours with wide sympathies the mass of men who give him chance to ride and rule. If not; if these be meanly held, for self and not for man, then the scholar is a debtor and a traitor too.

The scholar never had so fair a chance before: here is the noblest opportunity for one that wields the pen; it is mightier than the sword, the office, or the purse. All things concede at last to beauty, justice, truth and love, and those he is to represent. He has what freedom he will pay for and take. Let him talk never so heroic, he will find fit audience, nor will it long be few. Men will rise up and welcome his quickening words as vernal grass at the first rains of spring. A great nation which cannot live by bread alone, asks for the bread of life; while the State is young, a single groat and noble man can deeply influence the nation's mind. There are great wrongs which demand redress; the present men who represent the office and the purse will not end these wrongs. They linger for the pen, with magic touch, to abolish and destroy this ancient serpent-brood. Shall it be only rude men and unlettered who confront the dragons of our time which prowl about the folds by flay and night, while the scholar, the appointed guardian of mankind, but "sports with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?" The nation asks of her scholar better things than ancient letters ever brought; asks his wonders for the. million, not the few alone. Great sentiments burn now in half-unconscious hearts, and great ideas kindle their glories round the heads of men. Unconscious electricity, truth and right, flashes out of the earth, out of the air. It is for the scholar to attract this ground-lightning and this lightning of the sky, condense it into useful thunder to destroy the wrong, then spread it forth a beauteous and a cheering light, shedding sweet influence and kindling life anew. A few great men of other times tell us what may be now.

Nothing will be done without toil—talent is only power of work, and genius greater power for higher forms of