Other attractions, innocent in themselves, and conceivable to all, detain some of our valued fellow-citizens in perpetual exile. The quiet and beauty of English country-life, the literary and artistic resources of a foreign capital, the romances of ancient chateaux and cathedrals, some delicious touch of climate, some throbbing beauty of a southern sky. How delightful we have found these, it is as much a pain as a pleasure to remember! But let us also call to mind the lesson of a well-known fairy tale. While Beauty prolongs her absence, the faithful Beast languishes and comes nigh unto death. While we enjoy these choice delights, the society to which we belong is sowing its wheat and its tares. We are far from the field in which the life of our own generation is planted and tended. Every honest heart, every thinking mind, has its value in the community to which it belongs. Our value, such as it is, remains wanting to our community, and, when its crises of trial shall come, we shall not have been trained by watchful experience to understand either their cause or their remedy.
How delightful was Italy to Milton! His Allegro and Pensieroso show that he could fully appreciate both its mirth and its majesty. He returns not the less to live out a life of illustrious service in his own country, where his brave heart and philosophic mind were of more avail to his time than even his sacred song to ours.
No one has any reason to be surprised at any new manifestation of human folly. Yet I am sometimes surprised, to-day, by the disrespect which is often shown to the word "Protestant." This name dates, at farthest, from the time of Luther, but the fact for which it stands is as old as human history. Moses made a protest when he led his people out of the luxury and slavery of Egypt to find the free hills of Judæa, and to build on one of them a temple to the God of freedom. Christ made His protest against the hypocrisy and injustice of the old social and ecclesiastical order. England and France have made their protests against monarchical supremacy. Both went back from their daring determination, but the lesson was not forgotten. The Puritans made their protest when they faced the frowning sea and the savage wilderness, in order that they might train their children, and live themselves in the freedom which conscience asks. Mr. Garrison and his associates made their protest against American slavery. Mrs. Butler, of England, makes her protest to-day against the personal degradation of women. Lucy Stone makes hers against their political enslavement.
Does society inherit? Is man the heir of man? Whence come those creatures of the present day who smile, and shrug their shoulders, and feebly say, "We don't protest. Our fathers did something of the kind, upon what ground we cannot possibly imagine. But we are quite of another sort. We don't protest."
To those courageous souls which, alone and unaided, have been able to face the world's passion and inertia,—to those leaders of forlorn hopes who have seen glory in the depths of death and have sought it there,—to those voices proclaiming in the wilderness the triumphant progress of truth,—to those brave spirits whose strength the fires of hell have annealed, not consumed,—my soul shall ever render its glad and duteous homage. And if, in my later age, I might seek the crowning honor of my life, I should seek it with that small, faithful band who have no choice but to utter their deepest conviction, and abide its issues. Fruitful shall be their pains and privations. They who have sown in tears the seeds of unpopular virtue, shall reap its happy harvest in the good and gratitude of mankind.
Changes in American Society.
I have been invited to speak to you to-day concerning changes in American society. In preparing to consider this subject, I cannot but remember that the very question of social change is to some people an open one. The supposition of any real onward movement in society is as unwelcome and as untrue to these persons as was Galileo's theory concerning the revolution of the earth around the sun. They will assert, as indeed they may, that the same crimes are committed in all ages, with the same good deeds to counterbalance them and that the capital tendencies of human nature are always substantially the same. This also must be allowed. The error of these friends consists in overlooking the most characteristic and human of these tendencies, which is that of progressive desire. This trait, deeper and stronger than the mere love of change, pushes the whole heterogeneous mass of humanity onward in a way from which there is no return.
The laws of human motive and action, meanwhile, remain as steadfast and immovable as the laws by whose application Galileo made his discovery. To discern at once the steadfast truth and its metamorphic developments will be the task of the greatest wisdom.
When Theodore Parker invited the religious world to consider the transient and the permanent elements of Christianity, he made a popular application of a truth long known to philosophy. This truth is that life in all of its aspects exhibits these two opposite qualities or conditions. Much is transient in the individual, more is permanent in the race.