an those who
content themselves with cutaneous palliatives and a stolid conservatism.
But I maintain now, that back of all these considerations stands this
truism,--that man is not a machine; that the being who toils in the
factory, the furnace, the dark mine underground, is one who needs and
hopes and suffers and dies, as sinews of iron and fabrics of brass
cannot. "The spirit of a living creature is in the wheels." A cry for
justice, for free action, for spiritual opportunity, comes not from the
roaring engine or the dizzy loom, but out from the midst of those who
are endowed with the sensitiveness and the moral possibilities that
belong to humanity, and humanity alone. Set in motion the grandest piece
of mechanism ever conceived by human genius, and still there is infinite
difference between it and the poorest drudge that bears God's
image,--between it and any human claim.

It must have been a noble spectacle, a few weeks since, to have seen
that great ship[A] sail out of port, stretching its proud beak over the
sea, and with thundering exultation trampling its sapphire floor. One
might have followed its wake with a glistening eye, and said to
himself--"There is the great symbol of human progress, there is the
consummation of man's triumph over nature! The long results of ages are
condensed in that fabric of strength and beauty. Man has compelled the
forest, and ravished the mine, and converted the stream, and chained the
fire; and now, with the eye of science and the hand of skill, he rides
in this triumphal chariot, making a swift, obedient pathway of the
deep!" But when that dark day burst upon them, and nature with one angry
sweep transformed that splendid palace into a floating death-chamber;
when ocean lifted up this triumph of man's skill, and shook it like a
toy; the interest which hung over that awful desolation--the interest to
which your hearts flow out with painful sympathy to-night--was in
nothing that man had achieved, but in humanity itself. All the
workmanship, all the material splendor, all the skill, were nothing
compared with one heart beating amidst that tempest; compared with one
groan that rose from that sea of agony, and then was silent for ever.

[Footnote A: This discourse was delivered just after the tidings
of the loss of the San Francisco, in December, 1853.]

And, again, when I consider the conduct of that gallant captain who, day
by day, rode by the side of the shuddering wreck