Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/115



A SERMON OF THE MORAL DANGERS INCIDENT TO PROSPERITY.—PREACHED AT THE MUSIC HALL, IN BOSTON, ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1854.

“Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.”— lv. 19.

morning I ask your attention to “A Sermon of the Moral Dangers which are Incident to a State of long-continued Prosperity.”

By prosperity, I mean the present success of schemes which we form for our material purposes. The ambitious man wants power; the acquisitive, money; the vain, admiration; the nation wants numbers, riches, wide territory, commercial and military power. When they succeed in these desires, they attain prosperity. It is the effect of this condition of success on the formation of a moral character which I ask you to consider.

The human race does not thrive very well under circumstances where Nature does too much for us: man becomes an animal, or a plant; not also to the same extent a spirit, with the power to do, to be, and to suffer what becomes a man. In physical geography, there are two extremes equally unfavourable for the higher development of man; namely, the equatorial region, where Nature does too much; and the polar region, where she does too little. No high civilization adorns the equatorial day; none such blooms in the polar night. And so there are two analogous extremes in the geography of human condition;—polar