Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/140

136 Now in America we have somewhat changed that state of things. The political and ecclesiastical functionary is the servant, the people master, now. Yet it is true that here and there in religious affairs some ecclesiastical man still claims Divine right to dictate to the people, setting his authority above their reason, and magisterially telling what they must take for piety, theology, and morality. But he does it with such self-distrust and painful fear, he is so afraid of disturbing any powerful wickedness, that it is plain he thinks the popular stream, fed by all the rains of heaven, is stronger than the ecclesiastical dam said to be built as miraculously as the Neptunian walls of Troy divine. Nay, he fears lest by some freshet of humanity, caused through the breaking up of winter, or the melting of distant and time-honoured snows, thought everlasting, it may be swept off, carried out to sea, and whelmed for ever in the ocean, nor ever heard of more. So the man hoists “the gate of the churl's dam, and lets the stream run free.” This sacerdotal vicariousness will not last long in America. The ecclesiastical Ezekiel stands in the Church valley of dry bones, and says, “Come from the four winds, O Spirit! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live!” But the angel of humanity answers, “Son of man, not so! Let the dead bury their dead! follow thou me: behold, I make all things new. Egyptian and ecclesiastical mummies, come not back again. Forward, O son of man! forward!”

In the State the political man counts himself servant, not master. Let President Votedin say in his proclamation to the people, “Gentlemen, I am your superior, and you are my servants; you are to do as I say;” if he should try to act thereon, there would be a state of things presently. The people alone are primitive and final, the magistrate derivative, provisional, and responsible. The American legislative, judiciary, or executive, is only an attorney of the manifold and thirty-million-headed people; a servant hired expressly to make, expound, and administer certain statute laws, which are amenable to the people and reversible thereby. Magistrates are “select men,” not the town which “selects” them. Mr. Banks is the hired man of Massachusetts, set to do the governing of the Commonwealth, responsible to his employers not less than if