Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/59



THE THREE CHIEF SAFEGUARDS OF SOCIETY.—CONSIDERED IN A SERMON AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JULY 6, 1851.

is the first Sunday after the anniversary of the national birth-day. It seems proper, on this occasion, to go beyond matters merely personal, and affecting us only as individuals. I will speak of the duties of man in a wider sphere; of political affairs. So I ask your attention to “A Sermon of the Safeguards of Society.” I choose this subject because some men profess a fear that American society is in danger, and because some persons are busily teaching doctrines which seem hostile to the very design of society itself. I shall not speak of politics as economy, but as morality, and look at the affairs of State from a religious point of view.

We are often told, that human society is of Divine appointment; society meaning the mass of men living together in a certain fellowship. If this means that man is by nature a social being, and in their progressive development men must unite and form societies, then, it is true, society is of Divine appointment. But so is a farm; for man is by nature and position an agricultural being, and in their progressive development men make farms and practise agriculture. Agriculture is as necessary as society. But it does not follow from this, that the Egyptian, the Flemish, or the American mode of agriculture is of Divine appointment, and men bound by God to practise that, or to limit themselves thereto; and it no more follows that the