Lectures and Miscellanies

I do not want of course to insist against your will, against the habits of your intelligence, upon the application of this typicality of John the Baptist to the function of Democracy. But I will insist that they who regard John and his water "baptism, or doctrine of repentance from evil-doing, as a suitable forerunner to Jesus, and his baptism of the Holy Ghost, or doctrine of God's living pre- sence and power in every man saint and sinner alike, can not reasonably demur at my assigning to the purely disorganizing agencies of Democracy so beneficent an influence upon human destiny. As Jesus needed no other preparation for his reception than the repentance which John preached, or the ceasing to do evil, so the fullest evolution of human destiny, the utmost blessedness the heart of man can desire, needs for its realization nothing more than that very work which Democracy is now per- forming, namely, the undoing of old and restrictive legislation, the breaking up the foundations of an- cient privilege, the removing of every obstacle to the exact public equality of man with man.