Vicarious lives as instruments of social progress.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called the picture-gallery of heroes.  These patriots and martyrs who won our first battles for liberty and religion made nobleness epidemic.  Oft stoned and mobbed in the cities they founded and loved, they fled into exile, where they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and slept in the holes of the earth.  Falling at last in the wilderness, it may be said that no man knoweth their sepulcher and none their names.  But joyfully let us confess that the institutions most eminent and excellent in our day represent the very principles for which these martyrs died and, dying, conquered.  For those heroes were the first to dare earth’s despots.  They won the first victory over every form of vice and sin.  They wove the first threads of the flag of liberty and made it indeed the banner of the morning, for they dyed it crimson in their heart’s-blood.  In all the history of freedom there is no chapter comparable for a moment to the glorious achievements of these men of oak and rock.  Their deeds shine on the pages of history like stars blazing in the night and their achievements have long been celebrated in song and story.  “The angels of martyrdom and victory,” says Mazzini, “are brothers; both extend protecting wings over the cradle of the future life.”

Sometimes it has happened that the brave deed of a single patriot has rallied wavering hosts, flashed the lightning through the centuries, and kindled whole nations into a holy enthusiasm.  The opposing legions of soldiers and inquisitors went down before the heroism of the early church as darkness flees before the advancing sunshine.  Society admires the scholar, but man loves the hero.  Wisdom shines, but bravery inspires and lifts.  Though centuries have passed, these noble deeds still nourish man’s bravery and endurance.  It was not given to these leaders to enter into the fruits of their labors.  Vicariously they died.  With a few exceptions, their very names remain unknown.  But let us hasten to confess that their vicarious suffering stayed the onset of despotism and achieved our liberty.  They ransomed us from serfdom and bought our liberty with a great price.  Compared to those, our bravest deeds do seem but brambles to the oaks at whose feet they grow.

Having made much of the principles of the solidarity of society, science is now engaged in emphasizing the principle of vicarious service and suffering.  The consecrated blood of yesterday is seen to be the social and spiritual capital of to-day.  Indeed, the civil, intellectual and religious freedom and hope of our age are only the moral courage and suffering of past ages, reappearing under new and resplendent forms.  The social vines that shelter us, the civic bough whose clusters feed us, all spring out of ancient graves.  The red currents of sacrifice