Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/295

Rh Well, my brethren, these are only the beginning of sorrows. There will be other victims yet; this will not settle the question. What shall we do? I think I am a calm man and a cool man, and I have a word or two to say as to what we shall do. Never obey the law. Keep the law of God. Next, I say, resist not evil with evil; resist not now with violence. Why do I say this? Will you tell me that I am a coward? Perhaps I am; at least I am not afraid to be called one. Why do I say, then, do not now resist with violence? Because it is not time just yet; it would not succeed. If I had the eloquence that I sometimes dream of, which goes into a crowd of men, and gathers it in its mighty arm, and sways them as the president boughs of yonder elm shall be shaken by the summer breeze next June, I world not give that counsel. I would call on men, and lift up my voice like a trumpet through the whole land, until I had gathered millions out of the North and the South, and they should crush Slavery for ever, as the ox crushes the spider underneath his feet. But such eloquence is given to no man. It was not given to the ancient Greek who "shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece." He that so often held the nobles and the mob of Rome within his hand, had it not. He that spoke as never man spake, and who has since gathered two hundred millions to his name, had it not. No man has it. The ablest muit wait for time ! It is idle to resist here and now. It is not the hour. If in 1765 they had attempted to carry out the Revolution, by force, they would have foiled. Had it failed, we had not been here to-day. There would have been no little monument at Lexington "sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind," armouring the men who "fell in the cause of God and their country. No little monument at Concord; nor that tall tale of eloquent stone at Bunker Hill, to proclaim that "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Success is due to the discretion, heroism, calmness, and forbearance of our fathers: let us wait our time. It will come—perhaps will need no sacrifice of blood.

Resist, then, by peaceful means ; not with evil, but with good. Hold the men infamous that execrate this law; give them your pity, but nover give them your trust, not till they repent, then swiftly forgive. Agitate, discuss,