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Self- We want men and women who shall Reliance renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeper is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is installed in an office within one year

afterwards in the cities or suburbs

of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is Selfright in being disheartened and in Reliance complaining the rest of his life.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

Let a stoic arise who shall reveal the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but

can and must detach themselves;

that with the exercise of self-trust, Self- new powers shall appear; that a Reliance man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the window,—we pity him no more but thank and revere him, and that the teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all History. It is easier to see that a greater selfreliance,—a new respect for the divinity of man,-must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office, is not so much as brave Selfand manly. Prayer looks abroad and Reliance asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity—any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing His works good o

But prayer as a means to effect a private end, is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness As soon as the man is at one with God,

he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the Self- farmer kneeling in his field to weed Reliance it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,

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Our valors are our best gods." Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can therefore help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry

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