The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other SketchesJordan, David Starr
Philosophy
The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches
Jordan, David Starr
Essays
When this debt is paid, the slave becomes the man. Nature counts as
men only those who are free. Freedom springs from within. No outside
power can give it. Board and lodging on the earth once paid, a man's
resources are his own. These he can give or hold. By the fullness of
these is he measured. All acquisitions of man, Emerson tells us, "are
victories of the good brain and brave heart; the world belongs to the
energetic, belongs to the wise. It is in vain to make a paradise but
for good men."
In the ancient lore of the Jews, so Rabbi Voorsanger tells us, it is
written, "Serve the Lord, not as slaves hoping for reward, but as gods
who will take no reward." The meaning of the old saying is this: _Only
the gods can serve_.
Those who have nothing have nothing to give. He who serves as a slave
serves himself only. That he hopes for a reward shows that to himself
his service is really given. To serve the Lord, according to another
old saying, is to help one's fellow-men. The Eternal asks not of
mortals that they assist Him with His earth. The tough old world has
been His for centuries of centuries before it came to be ours, and we
can neither make it nor mar it. We were not consulted when its
foundations were laid in the deep. The waves and the storms, the
sunshine and the song of birds need not our aid. They will take care
of themselves. Life is the only material that is plastic in our hand.
Only man can be helped by man.
When they hung John Brown in Virginia, many said, you remember, that in
resisting the Government he had thrown away his life, and would gain
nothing for it. He could not, as Thoreau said at the time, get a vote
of thanks or a pair of boots for his life. He could not get
four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year around. But he
was not asking for a vote of thanks. It was not for the
four-and-sixpence a day that he stood between brute force and its
victims. It was to show men the nature of slavery. It was to help his
fellow-citizens to read the story of their institutions in the light of
history. "You can get more," Thoreau went on to say, "in your market
[at Concord] for a quart of milk than you can for a quart of blood; but
yours is not the market heroes carry their blood to." The blood of
heroes is not sold by the quart. The great, strong, noble, and pure of
this world, those who have made our race worthy to be called men, have
not been paid by the day or by the quart; not by riches, nor fame, nor
power, nor anything that man can give. Out of the fullness of their
lives have they served the Lord. Out of the wealth of their resources
have they helped their fellow-men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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