Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
Well, we have seen this man, this citizen monarch, who married his
children only to kings, rush from his place; his peers and his deputies
were unavailing; his office-holders could not sustain him; his army
"fraternized with the people;" and he, forgetful of his own children,
ignominiously is hustled out of the kingdom, in a street cab, with
nothing but a five-franc piece in his pocket. For the lesson thus
taught, let us thank him most of all.
Men tell us it is too soon to rejoice: "Perhaps the Revolution will not
hold;" "it will not last;" "the kings of Europe will put it down." When
a sound, healthy child is born, the friends of the family congratulate
the parents then; they do not wait till the child has grown up, and got
a beard. Now this is a live child; it is well born in both senses, come
of good parentage, and gives signs of a good constitution. Let us
rejoice at its birth, and not wait to see if it will grow up. Let us now
baptize it in the crystal fountain of our own Hope.
In a great revolution, there are always two things to be looked at,
namely, the actions, and the ideas which produce the actions. The
actions I will say little of; you have all read of them in the
newspapers. Some of the actions were bad. It is not true that all at
once the French have become angels. There are low and base men, who
swarm in the lanes and alleys of Paris; for that great city also is like
all capitals, girt about with a belt of misery, of vice and of crime,
eating into her painful loins. It was a bad thing to sack the Tuileries;
to burn bridges, and chateaux, and railroad stations. Property is under
the insurance of mankind, and the human race must pay in public for
private depredations. It was a bad thing to kill men; the human race
cannot make up that loss; only suffer and be penitent. I am sorry for
these bad actions; but I am not surprised at them. You cannot burn down
the poor dwelling of a widow in Boston, but some miserable man will
steal pot or pan, in the confusion of the fire. How much more should we
expect pillage and violence in the earthquake which throws down a king!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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