Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
Well, my brethren, these are only the beginning of sorrows. There will
be other victims yet; this will not settle the question. What shall we
do? I think I am a calm man and a cool man, and I have a word or two to
say as to what we shall do. Never obey the law. Keep the law of God.
Next I say, resist not evil with evil; resist not now with violence. Why
do I say this? Will you tell me that I am a coward? Perhaps I am; at
least I am not afraid to be called one. Why do I say, then, do not now
resist with violence? Because it is not time just yet; it would not
succeed. If I had the eloquence that I sometimes dream of, which goes
into a crowd of men, and gathers it in its mighty arm, and sways them as
the pendent boughs of yonder elm shall be shaken by the summer breeze
next June, I would not give that counsel. I would call on men, and lift
up my voice like a trumpet through the whole land, until I had gathered
millions out of the North and the South, and they should crush slavery
forever, as the ox crushes the spider underneath his feet. But such
eloquence is given to no man. It was not given to the ancient Greek who
"shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece." He that so often held the
nobles and the mob of Rome within his hand, had it not. He that spoke as
never man spake, and who has since gathered two hundred millions to his
name, had it not. No man has it. The ablest must wait for time! It is
idle to resist here and now. It is not the hour. If in 1765 they had
attempted to carry out the Revolution by force, they would have failed.
Had it failed, we had not been here to-day. There would have been no
little monument at Lexington "sacred to liberty and the rights of
mankind," honoring the men who "fell in the cause of God and their
country." No little monument at Concord; nor that tall pile of eloquent
stone at Bunker Hill, to proclaim that "Resistance to tyrants is
obedience to God." Success is due to the discretion, heroism, calmness,
and forbearance of our fathers: let us wait our time. It will
come--perhaps will need no sacrifice of blood.
Resist, then, by peaceful means; not with evil, but with good. Hold the
men infamous that execute this law; give them your pity, but never give
them your trust, not till they repent. Then swiftly forgive. Agitate,
discuss, petition, and elect to office men whom you can trust; not men
who never show their face in the day of darkness and of peril. Choose
men that are men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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