# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 02/Ten Sermons of Religion/Sermon 02

II.
OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.
BUY THE TRUTH, AND SELL IT NOT; ALSO WISDOM, AND INSTRUCTION, AND UNDERSTANDING.—Prov. xxiii. 23.
Temperance is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body. It is the harmony of all the members thereof; the true symmetry and right proportion of part with part, of each with all, and so the worship of God with every limb of the body. Wisdom is to the mind what temperance, in this sense, is to the body; it is intellectual piety; the presence of divine order in the mind; ​ the harmony of all the faculties thereof; the true symmetry and right proportion of faculty with faculty, of each with all. It is a general power of intellect, which may turn in any one or in all directions ; the poet is a wise man in what relates to poetry; the philosopher, the statesman, the man of business, each in what relates to his particular function. So it is a general power of mind. We say, "knowledge is power," but mean wisdom, which is general intellectual ability, the power of knowing and of using truth.
This wisdom implies two things: the love of truth as truth, which I spoke of the other day as the intellectual side of piety; and, secondly, the power to possess and use this truth, either in the specific form which is sought by the philosopher, poet, statesman, and man of business, or else in some more general form including all these; the power of getting truth either by the mode of reflection, as truth demonstrated, or by the mode of intuition, as truth seen and known at sight. For the acquisitive part of wisdom is the generic power which includes both the specific powers,—of intuition and of reflection.
Truth is the object which corresponds to the mind. As the eye has the power of sight, and as the special things we see are the object of the eye, so is truth, in its various forms, the object of the mind. If a man keep the law of his body, in the large sense of the word Temperance, he acquires three good things, health, strength, and beauty. As a general rule these three will come; there are, indeed, particular and personal exceptions, but such is the rule. Let any race of men, say the New Englanders, for a hundred years fulfil all the conditions of the body, and observe the laws thereof, they will become distinguished for these three things.
In like manner, if a man keep the law of his mind, and fulfil its natural conditions, he acquires wisdom,—acquires intellectual health, strength, and beauty. Here also there may be particular and personal exceptions, but such is the rule. Let any race of men, say the New Englanders, for a hundred years fulfil the natural condition of mind and keep the law thereof, we should have these three qualities to a greater degree than the ancient inhabitants of Athens, long regarded as the most intellectual race in the world; ​ we should have the quality of wisdom which they had, but with more intellectual health, strength, and loveliness, more truth and more power to use it, inasmuch as the human race has acquired a greater intellectual development in the two thousand years that have passed since the days of Aristotle and Alexander. The laws which regulate the development of mind, in the individual or the race, are as certain as the laws of matter. Observance thereof is sure to bring certain consequences to the individual, the nation, and mankind. The intellectual peculiarity of a nation is transmitted from age to age, and only disappears when the nation perishes or mingles with some other tribe inferior to itself; then it does not cease, but is spread more thinly over a wider field, and does not appear in its ancient form for years to come. Intellectual talent dies out of a particular family. There are seldom two men of genius of the same name. Stuarts and Tudors, Guelphs and Bourbons, there are in abundance, but only one Luther, Shakspeare, Milton, Cromwell, Burns; only a single Franklin or Washington. But the intellectual power which once rose up in such men does not perish from the race, only from the special family. It comes up in other names, for the fee of all the genius that is born, as well as the achievements won, vests perpetually in man- kind ; not in the special family which holds only its life- estate of talent under the race and of it. The wisdom which this generation shall develope, foster, and mature, will not perish with this age ; it will be added to the spiritual property of mankind, and go down, bequeathed as a rich legacy to such as come after us, all the more valuable because it is given in perpetual entail, a property which does not waste, but greatens in the use. Yet pro- bably no great man of this age will leave a child as great as himself. At death the father's greatness becomes public property to the next generation. The piety of Jesus of Nazareth did not die out of mankind when he gave up the ghost; the second century had more of Christ than the first; there has been a perpetual increase of Socratic excellence ever since the death of the Athenian sage.
This is a remarkable law of Providence, but a law it is; and cheering is it to know that all the good qualities you give example of, not only have a personal immortality in ​ you beyond the grave, but a national, even a human, im- mortality on earth, and, while they bless you in heaven, are likewise safely invested in your brother man, and shall go down to the last posterity, blessing your nation and all mankind. So the great men of antiquity continue to help us,—Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato,—not to dwell upon the name dearest of all. These men and their fellows, known to all or long since forgotten of mankind,—the aristocracy of heaven, whose patent of nobility dates direct from God,—they added to the spiritual power of mankind. The wisdom they inherited or acquired was a personal fief, which at their death reverted to the human race. Not a poor boy in Christendom, not a man of genius, rejoicing in the plenitude of power, but is greater and nobler for these great men ; not barely through his knowledge of the ex- ample, but because, so to say, they raised the temperature of the human world. For, as there is a physical temperature of the interstellar spaces, betwixt sun and sun, which may be called the temperature of the universe, so is there a spiritual temperature of the interpersonal spaces, a certain common temperature of spirit, not barely personal, not national alone, but human and of the race, which may be called the temperature of mankind. On that in general we all depend, as on our family in special, or in particular upon our personal genius and our will. Those great men added wisdom to mankind, brought special truths to consciousness, which now have spread throughout the enlightened nations of the world, and penetrate progressively the human mass, giving mankind continual new power. So shall you see an iron bar become magnetic; first it was a single atom of the metal which caught the electric influence, spark by spark; that atom could not hold the subtle fire, whose nature was to spread, and so one atom gave the spark to the next, and soon it spread through the whole, till the cold iron, which before seemed dead as stone, is all magnetic, acquires new powers, and itself can hold its own, yet magnetize a thousand bars if rightly placed.
According to his nature man loves truth with a pure and disinterested love, the strongest intellectual affection. ​ The healthy eye does not more naturally turn to the light, than the honest mind turns towards the truth. See how we seek after it in nature. All the National Academies, Institutes, and Royal Societies are but so many companies organized for the pursuit of truth,—of truth chiefly in some outward form, materialized in the visible world. These societies propose no corporeal benefit to themselves, none to the human race. They love each truth of nature for its own fair sake. What is the pecuniary value of the satellites of Neptune to us? See how laborious naturalists ransack the globe to learn the truths writ in its elements. One goes to Florida to look after the bones of a mastodon, hid in a bog some thousands of years ago; another curiously collects chips of stone from all the ledges of the world, lives and moves and has his being in the infra-carboniferous sandstones and shales, a companion of fossil plants and fossil shells. This crosses land and ocean to study the herbage of the earth; that, careless of ease and homefelt joys, devotes his life to mosses and lichens, which grow unheeded on the rocks; he loves them as if they were his own children, yet they return no corresponding smile, nor can he eat and drink of them. How the astronomer loves to learn the truth of the stars, which will not light his fire nor fill his children's hungry mouths! No Inquisition can stop Galileo in his starry quest. I have known a miser who loved money above all things; for this, would sacrifice reason, conscience, and religion, and break affection's bond; but it was the use of money that was loved, with a mean and most ignoble selfish lust, vulgarizing and depraving the man. The true disciple of science loves truth far more, with a disinterested love; will endure toil, privation, and self-denial, and encounter suffering, for that. This love of truth will bless the lover all his days; yet when he brings her home, his fair-faced bride, she comes empty-handed to his door, herself her only dower.
How carefully men look after the facts of human history! how they study the tragic tale of Greece and Rome, and explore the remains of nations that long since have perished from the earth ! Of what material consequence is it to us who composed the Iliad, twenty-five hundred years ago, or whether Homer wrote, or only sung, his ​ never- dying song? Yet what a mass of literature has come into being within the last sixty years to settle these two questions! How the famous scholars light their lamps and dim their eyes over this work, and how the world rejoices in their books, which will not bake bread, nor make two blades of grass grow where only one rose up before; which will not build a railroad, nor elect a president, nor give a man an office in any custom-house of the wide world! There is a deep love of truth in men, even in these poor details. A natural king looks royal at the plough.
How men study yet higher modes of truth, writ in the facts of human consciousness! How the ablest men have worked at the severest forms of intellectual toil, yet proposing no gain to themselves, only the glorious godliness of truth! A corporeal gain to men does come from every such truth. There is such a solidarity betwixt the mind and body, that each spiritual truth works welfare in the material world, and the most abstract of ideas becomes concrete in the widest universe of welfare. But philosophers love the truth before they learn its material use. Aristotle, making an exhaustive analysis of the mind of man, did not design to build a commonwealth in New England, and set up public schools.
This love of truth, instinctive and reflective both, is so powerful in human nature, that mankind will not rest till we have an idea corresponding to every fact of Nature and of human consciousness, and the contents of the universe are repeated in the cosmic mind of man, which grasps the whole of things. The philosophic work of observation, analysis, and synthesis, will not be over till the whole world of material nature is comprehended by the world of human nature. Such is our love, not only of special truths, but of total truth. Consider what an apparatus man has devised to aid the search for truth: not only visible tools to magnify the little and bring near us the remote, but the invisible weapons of the mind,—mathematics and the various sciences, the mining-tools with which we dig for truth,—logic, the Lydian stone to test the true,—rhetoric, the art to communicate,—language, speech itself, the most amazing ​ weapon of the human mind, an instrument half made on purpose, and half given without our thought.
This love of truth is the natural and instinctive piety of the mind. In studying the facts of nature, material or human, I study the thought of God; for in the world of real things a fact is the direct speech of the Father. Words make up the language of men; facts and ideas are the words of God, his universal language to the English- man and the Chinese, in which He speaks from all eternity to all time. Man made "in the image of God" loves his Father's thought, and is not contented till he hears that speech; then he is satisfied. All intellectual error is but the babble of the baby-man. Every truth which I know is one point common to my consciousness and the con- sciousness of God; in this we approach, and, so far as that goes, God's thought is my thought, and we are at one. Mankind will not be content till we also are conscious of the universe, and have mastered this Bible of God writ in the material world, a perpetual lesson for the day.
I cannot think we value wisdom high enough; not in proportion to other things for more vulgar use. We prize the material results of wisdom more than the cause which produces them. Let us not undervalue the use. What is it which gives Christendom its rank in the world? What gives Old England or New England her material delight,—our comfortable homes, our mills and ships and shops, these iron roads which so cover the land? It is not the soil, hard and ungrateful; not the sky, cold and stormy half the year; it is the educated mind, the practical wisdom of the people. The Italian has his sunnier sky, his laboured land, which teems with the cultured luxuriance of three thousand years. Our outfit was the wilderness and our head. God gave us these, and said, " Subdue the earth;" and we have toiled at the problem, not quite in vain. The mind is a universal tool, the abstract of all instruments; it concretizes itself in the past, present, and future weapons of mankind.
We value wisdom chiefly for its practical use, as the convenience of a weapon, not the function of a limb; and ​ truth as a servant, not a bride. The reason of this seem- ing falseness to the intellectual instinct is found partly in the low development of man,—the external precedes the spiritual in order of unfolding,—and partly in this, that the human race is still too poor to indulge in merely intellectual delights, while material wants are not yet satisfied. Mankind rejoices in rough aprons of camel's hair, and feeds on locusts and wild honey, before there is purple and fine linen for all, with sumptuous faring every day. Even now a fourth part of the human family is as good as naked. It is too soon to ask men to rejoice exclusively in the beauty of wisdom, when they need its convenience so much. Let us not be too severe in our demands of men. God "suffereth long, and is kind."
Then, sour theologies confront us, calling wisdom "Foolish," reason "carnal," scoffing at science with a priestly sneer, as if knowledge of God, of God's world, and of its laws, could disturb the natural service of God. We are warned against the "arrogance of the philosopher," but by the arrogance of the priest. We are told to shun " the pride of wisdom;" alas! it is sometimes the pride of folly which gives the caution.
It seems to me, that the value of the intellect is a little underrated by some writers in the New Testament, and wisdom sometimes turned off rather rudely. Perhaps the reason was, that then, as now, men often cultivated the mind alone, and not the highest faculties of that; and, though ever learning, never hit the truth. Doubtless men •of accomplished mind and manners sneered at the rudeness of the Galilean, and with their demonstrations sought to parry the keen intuitions of great-souled men. It is not to be wondered at, that James attacked the rich, and Paul the learned, of their time. Fox and Bunyan did the same. Many a Christian Father has mocked at all generous culture of the mind. Even now, with us, amongst men desiring to be religious, there is an inherited fear of reason and of common sense. Science is thought a bad companion for religion. Men are cautioned against "free thinking" in religion, and, as all thinking must be free, against all thinking in that quarter. Even common sense is thought dangerous. Men in pews are a little afraid, when a strong man goes into the pulpit, lest he should ​ shake the ill-bottomed fabric to the ground ; men in pul- pits are still more fearful. It is a strange fear, that the mind should drive the soul out of us, and our knowledge of God annihilate our love of God. Yet some earnest men quake with this panic terror, and think it is not quite safe to follow the records writ in the great Bible of Nature, its world-wide leaves laid open before us, with their "millions of surprises."
Let me say a word in behalf of the largest culture of the intellect, of all faculties thereof,—understanding, imagination, reason. I admit there have been men of able mind and large intellectual development who have turned off from religion, their science driving them away from the doctrines taught in this name. But such men have been few. Did they oppose the truths of religion ? Oftener the follies taught in its name. All the attacks made on religion itself by men of science, from Celsus to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring religion into contempt as a single persecution for witchcraft, or a Bartholomew massacre, made in the name of God. At this day, in America, the greatest argument against the popular form of religion is offered by the churches of the land, a twofold argument: first, the follies taught as religious doctrine, the character assigned to God, the mode of government ascribed to him, both here and hereafter, the absurdities and impossibilities taught as the history of God's dealing with mankind; next, the actual character of these churches, as a body never rebuking a popular and profitable sin, but striking hands by turns with every popular form of wrong. Men of science, as a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness, and the piety that are taught as religion, only on the errors, the evil, the impiety, which bear its name. Science is the natural ally of religion. Shall we try and separate what God has joined? We injure both by the attempt. The philosophers of this age have a profound love of truth, and show great industry and boldness in search thereof. In the name of truth they pluck down the strong-holds of error, venerable and old. But what a cry has been raised against them! It was pretended that they would root out religion from the hearts of mankind! It seems to me it would be better for men who love religion to understand philosophy before they declaim against "the impiety of ​ modern science." The study of Nature, of human history, or of human nature might be a little more profitable than the habit of "hawking at geology and schism." A true philosophy is the only cure for a false philosophy. The sensational scheme of philosophy has done a world of harm, it seems to me, in its long history from Epicurus to Comte; but no-philosophy would be far worse. The abnegation of mind must be the abnegation of God. The systems built by priests, who deemed reason not fit to trust, are more dangerous than " infidel science." Those have been found sad periods of time, when the ablest men were forced to spend their strength in pulling down the monstrous pagodas built in the name of religion, full of idols and instruments of torture. Epicurus, Lucretius, Voltaire, even Hobbes and Hume, performed a work indispensable to the religious development of mankind. Yet destruction is a sad work;—set your old house afire, you do not know how much of it will burn down. It was the ignorance, the folly, the arrogance, and the tyranny of a priesthood which made necessary the scoff of Lucian and the haughty scorn of D'Hoibach. The science of philosophers cannot be met by the ignorance of the priests; the pride of wisdom is more than a match for the pride of folly; the philosophy of an unwelcome demonstration is ill answered by the preaching of foolishness. How can a needle's eye embrace a continent? In the name of religion, I would call for the spirit of wisdom without measure; have free thinking on the Bible, on the Church, on God and man,—the largest liberty of the intellect. I would sooner have an unreasonable form of agriculture than of religion. The state of religion is always dependent, in a good measure, on the mental culture of mankind. A foolish man cannot give you a wise form of piety. All men by nature love truth. Cultivate their mind, they will see it, know it, value it. Just now we need a large development of mind in the clergy, who fall behind the men of leading intellect in England, America, and France. Thinking men care little for the "opinions of the clergy," except on the mere formalities of a ritual and church-show. Depend upon it, the effect will be even more baneful for the future than at present.
I love to look on the wise mind as one means of holding ​ communion with the Infinite God ; for I believe that Ho inspires men, not only through the conscience, the affections, and the soul, but also through the intellect—through the reason, imagination, and understanding. But he does this, not arbitrarily, miraculously, against the nature of the mind, but by a mode of operation as constant as the gravitation of planets or the chemical attraction of atoms of metal. Yet I do not find that He inspires thoughtless men with truth, more than malicious men with love. Tell me God inspired the Hebrew saints with wisdom, filled the vast urns of Moses and of Jesus; I believe it, but not Hebrew saints alone. The Grecian saints, the saints of Rome, of Germany, of France, of either England, Old or New; all the sons of men hang on the breasts of Heaven, and draw inspiration from Him "in whom we live and move and have our being." Intellectual inspiration comes in the form of truth, but the income from God is proportionate to the wisdom which seeks and so receives. A mind small as a thimble may be filled full thereof, but will it receive as much as a mind whose ocean-bosom is thirsty for a whole heaven of truth? Bring larger intellect, and you have the more. A drop would overflow a hollow cherry-stone, while whole Mediterranean Seas fill but a fraction of the Atlantic's mighty deep. There still is truth in the sweet heaven, near and waiting for mankind. A man of little mind can only take in the contents of his primer; he should not censure his neighbour whose encyclopedic head dines on the science of mankind, and still wanders crying for lack of meat.
How mankind loves the truth! We will not let it go;
"One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost;"
so native is it to the mind of man. Look on the power of a special truth, a great idea; view it merely as a force in the world of men. At first, nothing seems so impotent. It has no hands nor feet; how can it go alone? It seems as if the censor of the press could blot it out for ever. It flatters no man, offers to serve no personal and private interest and then forbear its work, will be no man's slave. It seems ready to perish; surely it will give up the ghost ​ the next moment. There now, a priest has it in the dust and stamps it out! idle fear! stamp on the lightning of the sky! Of all things truth is the most lasting; invulnerable as God; "of the Eternal coeternal beam," shall we call it an accident of his being, or rather substance of the substance of God, inseparable from Him ? The pyramids may fall, in ages of time the granite be crumbled into dust and blown off by the sirocco of the wilderness; the very mountains, whence they first were hewn, may all vanish, evaporate to the sky and spread over the world; but truth shall still remain, immortal, unchanging, and not growing old. Heaven and earth may pass away, but a truth never. A true word cannot fail from amongst men; it is indorsed by the Almighty, and shall pass current with mankind for ever. Could the armies of the world alter the smallest truth of mathematics; make one and one greater or less than two ? As easily as they can alter any truth, or any falsehood, in morals, in politics, or in religion. A lie is still a lie, a truth a truth.
See the power of some special truth upon a single man. Take an example from a high mode of truth, a truth of religion. Saul of Tarsus sees that God loves the Gentile as well as the Jew. It seems a small thing to see that. Why did men ever think otherwise? Why should not God love the Gentile as well as the Jew? It was impossible that He should do otherwise. Yet this seemed a great truth at that time, the Christian Church dividing upon that matter. It burnt in the bosom of Paul of Tarsus, then a young man. What heroism it wakens in him! what self-denial he can endure! Want, hardships, persecution, the contempt and loathing of his companions and former friends, shipwreck, scourging, prison, death,—all these are nothing to him. A truth has inspired him ; he is eloquent with its new force, his letters powerful. Go where he will he finds foes, the world bristling with peril ; but go where he may he makes friends, makes them by this truth and the heroism it awoke in him. Men saw the new doctrine, and looked back on the old error,—that Jove loved Rome, Pallas Athens, Juno Samos and Carthage most of all, Jehovah Mount Zion, and Baal his Tyrian towns; that each several deity looked grim at all the rest of men, and so must have his own forms and ceremonies, unwelcome to ​ the rest. Men see this is an error now j they see the evil which came thereof,—the wars and ages full of strife, national jealousies, wrangling betwixt Babylonian or Theban priests, and the antagonism of the Gentile and the Jew. Now all are "one in Christ." They bless the lips which taught the doctrine and brought them freedom by the truth. Meantime the truth uplifts the Apostle ; his mind expands, his conscience works more freely than before, no longer burdened with a law of sin and death. His affections have a wider range, knowing no man after his national flesh. His soul has a better prospect of God, now the partition-wall between the Jew and Gentile is thrown down.
We often estimate the value of a nation by the truths it brings to light. To take the physical census, and know how many shall vote, we count the heads, and tell men off by millions,—so many square miles of Russians, Tartars, or Chinese. But to take the spiritual census, and see what will be voted, you count the thoughts, tell off the great men, enumerate the truths. The nations may perish, the barbarian sweep over Thebes, the lovely places of Jerusalem become a standing pool, and the favourite spot of Socrates and Aristotle be grown up to brambles,—yet Egypt, Judea, Athens, do not die; their truths live on, refusing death, and still these names are of a classic land. I do not think that God loves the men or the nations He visits with this lofty destiny better than He loves other ruder tribes or ruder men: but it is by this standard that we estimate the nations; a few truths make them immortal.
A great truth does not disdain to ride on so humble a beast as interest. Thus ideas go abroad in the ships of the desert, or the ships of the sea. Some nations, like the English and others, seem to like this equipage the best, and love to handle and taste a truth in the most concrete form; so great truths are seen and welcomed as political economy before they are thought of as part of political morality, human affection, and cosmic piety. All the great truths of political science seem to have been brought to the consciousness of men stimulated by fear, or by love of the results of the truth, not of itself. Nations have sometimes adopted their ideal children only for the prac​ tical value of the dress they wore; but the great Providence of the Father sent the truth as they were able to bear it. So earthly mothers sometimes teach the alphabet to their children in letters of sugar, eaten as soon as learned.
But even with us it is not always so. In our own day we have seen a man possessed with this great idea,—that every man has a right to his own body and soul, and consequently that it is wrong to hold an innocent man in bondage; that no custom, no law, no constitution, no private or national interest, can justify the deed; nothing on earth, nothing beneath it or above. He applies this to American slavery. Here is a conflict between an acknowledged truth and what is thought a national interest. What an influence did the idea have on the man! It enlarged him, and made him powerful, opened the eye of his conscience to the hundred-headed injustice in the Lernaean Marsh of modern society ; widened his affections, till his heart prayed, ay, and his hands, for the poor negro in the Southern swamps,—for all the oppressed. It touched and wakened up his soul, till he felt a manly piety in place of what might else have been a puny sentimentalism, mewling and whining in the Church's arms. The idea goes abroad, sure to conquer.
See how a great idea, a truth of morals or religion, lias an influence on masses of men. Some single man sees it first, dimly for a long time, without sight enough to make it clear, the quality of vision better than his quantity of sight. Then he sees it clearly and in distinct outline. The truth burns mightily within him, and he cannot be still; he tells it, now to one, then to another ; at each time of telling he gets his lesson better learned. Other men see the idea, dimly at first as he. It wakens a love for itself; first, perhaps, in the recipient heart of some woman, waiting for the consolation. Then a few minds prepared for the idea half welcome it ; thence it timidly flashes into other minds, as light reflected from the water. Soon the like-minded meet together to sun themselves in one another's prayers. They form a family of the faith, and grow strong in their companionship. The circle grows wider. Men oppose the new idea, with little skill or much, sometimes with violence, or only with intellect. Then comes a ​ little pause,—the ablest representatives of the truth must get fully conscious of their truth, and of their relation to the world; a process like that in the growing corn of summer, which in hot days spindles, as the farmers say, but in cool nights gets thick, and has a green and stocky growth. The interruptions to a great degree are of corresponding value to its development in a man, or a nation, or the world. Our men baptized with a new idea pause and reflect to be more sure,—perfecting the logic of their thought; pause and devise their mode to set it forth,—perfecting their rhetoric, and seek to organize it in an outward form, for every thought must be a thing. Then they tell their idea more perfectly; in the controversy that follows, errors connected with it get exposed; all that is merely accidental, national, or personal gets shaken off, and the pure truth goes forth to conquer. In this way all the great ideas of religion, of philanthropy, have gone their round. Yet every new truth of morals or religion which blesses the world conflicts with old notions, binds a new burden on the men who first accept it; demands of them to lay aside old comforts, accept a hard name, endure the coldness of their friends, and feel the iron of the world. What a rough wind winnowed the early Christians and the Quakers! They bear all that, and still the truth goes on. Soon it has philosophers to explain it, apologists to defend it, orators to set it forth, institutions to embody its sacred life. It is a new force in the world, and nothing can dislodge or withstand it. It was in this way that the ideas of Christianity got a footing in the world. Between the enthusiasm of Peter and James at the Pentecost, and the cool demonstrations of Clarke and Schleiermacher, what a world of experience there lay!
Some four hundred years ago this truth began to be distinctly seen: Man has natural empire over all institutions; they are for him, accidents of his development, not he for them. That is a very simple statement, each of you assents to it. But once it was a great new truth. See what it has led to. Martin Luther dimly saw its application to the Catholic Church, the institution that long had ruled over the souls of men. The Church gave way and recoiled before the tide of truth. That helpless truth,—see what it has done, what millions it has inspired, what ​ institutions it has built, what men called into life ! By and by men saw its application to the despotic state which long had ruled over the bodies and souls of men. Revolutions followed thick and fast in Holland, England, America, and France, and one day all Europe and the world will be ablaze with that idea. Men opposed; one of the Stuarts said, " It shall not cross the four seas of England;" but it crossed the Stuart's neck, and drove his children from the faithful soil. It came to America, that idea so destructive at first, destined to be so creative and conservative. It brought our fathers here, grim and bearded men, full of the fear of God; they little knew what fruit would come of their planting. See the institutions which have sprung up on the soil then cumbered by a wilderness, and hideous with wild beasts and wilder men. See what new ideas blossomed out of the old truth: All men have natural, equal, and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;—that was a new flower from the old stem. See the one-and-thirty States which have sprung up under the shadow of this great idea.
That truth long since recognized as true, now proved expedient by experiment, goes back over the sea, follow- ing the track the Mayflower broke, and earnest nations welcome it to their bosom, that sovereign truth : Man is supreme over institutions, not they over him. How it has thundered and lightened over Europe in the last few years! It will beat to the dust many a godless throne, and the palm of peace shall occupy the ground once re- served for soldiers' feet; here and there a city ditch of defence has already become a garden for the town.
Here in America, men full of this truth rise up against ungodly customers, now become a law, and under this demand the freedom of the slave. See how it spreads! It cannot be written down, nor voted down, nor sneered and frowned down; it cannot be put down by all the armies of the world. This truth belongs to the nature of man, and can only perish when the race gives up the ghost. Yet it is nothing but an idea ; it has no hands, no feet. The man who first set it agoing on the earth,—see what he has done ! Yet I doubt not the villagers around him thought the ale-house keeper was the more useful man; ​ and when beer fell a penny in the pot, or the priest put on a new cassock, many a man thought it was a more important event than the first announcement of this truth to men. But is not the wise man stronger than all the foolish? Truth is a part of the celestial machinery of God; whoso puts that in gear for mankind has the Almighty to turn his wheel. When God turns the mill, who shall stop it ? There is a spark from the good God in us all.
"O, joy that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive."
Methinks I see some thoughtful man, studious of truth, his intellectual piety writ on his tall pale brow, coming from the street, the field, or shop, pause and turn inward all his strength; now he smiles as he gets glimpses of this bashful truth, which flies, yet wishes to be seen,—a daughter of the all-blessed God. It is at her beauty that he smiles, the thought of kindred loveliness she is to people earth withal. And then the smile departs, and a pale sadness settles down upon his radiant face, as he remembers that men water their gardens for each new plant with blood, and how much must be shed to set a truth like this! He shows his thought to other men; they keep it nestled in the family awhile. In due time the truth has come of age, and must take possession of the estate. Now she wrestles with the Roman Church; the contest is not over yet, but the deadly wound will never heal. Now she wrestles with the Northern kings; see how they fall, their sceptres broken, their thrones overturned; and the fair-faced daughter of the Eternal King leads forward happy tribes of men, and with pious vow inaugurates the chiefs of peace, of justice, and of love, and on the one great gospel of the human heart swears them to keep the constitution of the universe, written by God's own hand.
But this last is only prophecy; men say, "It cannot be; the slaves of America must be bondmen for ever; the nations of Europe can never be free." I laugh at such a word. Let me know a thing is true, I know it has the omnipotence of God on its side, and fear no more for ​ it than I fear for God. Politics is the science of exigencies. The eternal truth of things is the exigency which controls the science of men as the science of matter. Depend upon it, the Infinite God is one of the exigencies not likely to be disregarded in the ultimate events of human development. Truth shall fail out of geometry and politics at the same time; only we learn first the simpler forms of truth. Now folly, passion, and fancied interest pervert the eye, which cannot always fail to see. Truth is the object of the intellect ; by human wisdom we learn the thought of God, and are inspired by his mind,—not all of us with the same mode, or form, or quantity of truth; but each shall have his own, proportionate to his native powers and to the use he makes thereof. Love of truth is the intellectual part of piety. Wisdom is needful to complete and manly religion ; a thing to be valued for itself, not barely for its use. Love of the use will one day give place to love of truth itself.
To keep the body's law brings health and strength, and in long ages brings beauty too ; to keep the laws of mind brings in the higher intellectual health and strength and loveliness, as much nobler than all corporeal qualities as the mind is nobler than the muscles it controls. Truth will follow from the lawful labour of the mind, and serve the great interest of men. Many a thousand years hence, when we are forgotten, when both the Englands have perished out of time, and the Anglo-Saxon race is only known as the Cherethites and Pelethites,—nothing national left but the name,—the truths we have slowly learned will be added to the people that come after us; the great political truth of America will go round the world, and clothe the earth with greenness and with beauty. All the power of mind that we mature and give examples of shall also survive; in you and me it will be personally immortal,—a portion of our ever- widening consciousness, though all the earthly wisdom of Leibnitz or Aristotle must soon become a single drop in the heavenly ocean of the sages whom death has taught ; but it will be not less enduring on the earth, humanly immortal ; for the truths you bring to light are dropped into the world's wide treasury,—where Socrates and Kant have cast in but two mites, ​ which made only a farthing in the wealth of man,—and form a part of the heritage which each generation receives, enlarges, holds in trust, and of necessity bequeaths to mankind, the personal estate of man entailed of nature to the end of time. As the men who discovered corn, tamed the ox, the horse, invented language and letters, who conquered fire and water, and yoked these two brute furious elements with an iron bond, as gentle now as any lamb,—as they who tamed the lightning, sending it of their errands, and as they who sculptured loveliness in stone two thousand years ago, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever,—as these and all such transmit their wealthy works to man, so he who sets forth a truth and developes wisdom, any human excellence of gift or growth, greatens the spiritual glory of his race. And a single man, who could not make one hair white or black, has added a cubit to the stature of mankind.
All the material riches inherited or actively acquired by this generation, our cultivated land, our houses, roads of earth, of wood, of iron, our factories and ships,—mechanical inventions which make New England more powerful than Russia to create, though she have forty-fold our men,—all these contrivances, the crown-jewels of the human race, the symbols of our kingly power over the earth, we leave to the next age ; your children's burden will be lighter, their existence larger, and their joy more delightful, for our additions to this heritage. But the spiritual truths we learn, the intellectual piety which we acquire, all the manly excellence that we slowly meditate and slowly sculpture into life, goes down in blessing to mankind, the cup of gold hid in the sack of those who only asked for corn, richer than all the grain they bought. Into our spiritual labours other men shall enter, climb by our ladder, then build anew, and so go higher up towards heaven than you or I had time and power to go. There is a spiritual solidarity of the human race, and the thought of the first man will help the wisdom of the last. A thousand generations live in you and me.
It is an old world, mankind is no new creation, no up- start of to-day, but has lived through hard times and long. Yet what is the history of man to the nature that is in us all! The instinctive hunger for perfect knowledge will ​not be contented with repetitions of the remembered feast. There are new truths to come,—truths in science, morals, politics, religion; some have arrived not long ago upon this planet, — many a new thing underneath the sun. At first men gave them doubtful welcome. But if you know that they are truths, fear not ; be sure that they will stay, adding new treasures to the consciousness of men, new outward welfare to the blessedness of earth. No king nor conqueror does men so great a good as he who adds to human kind a great and universal truth ; he that aids its march, and makes the thought a thing, works in the same line with Moses, has intellectual sympathy with God, and is a fellow-labourer with Him. The best gift we can bestow upon man is manhood. Undervalue not material things; but remember that the generation which, finding Rome brick, left it marble and full of statues and temples too, as its best achievement bequeathed to us a few words from a young Carpenter of Galilee, and the remembrance of his manly life.