The great man, who has proved himself, knows himself; unconsciousness
is the condition of ignorant genius. Toussaint had expressed in
deeds, in ACTIONS, the dumb aspirations of his race for freedom,
self-development and manhood; he had given them a chance to rise, and
they felt it in every throb of their susceptible hearts, and they
told him so in their love and loyalty to his person and commands. He
was a leader of men, and he accepted his position with its powers and
its cares.
He who retires from men, and dreams in the serene solitude of his
hermitage, may solace himself with great thoughts, and poetic ideas
and vague hopes—he may be a philosopher.
But such is not the fullest manifestation of God. It is when Thought
is crystallized into Action; for a good deed is greater than a good
word.
Nebulous, undefined, shadowy, matter floats in space till God speaks
his thought in Act—then the vague, misty mass comes into harmonious
order, and goes on its certain way through the boundless sky, a
brilliant, beautiful star—a guide to the uncertain mariner, and the
wandering fugitive, and the home for unknown life.
Creation is the speech—the Word of God.
Whoever, therefore, brings Order out of Chaos, Life and Action out of
Thought and Aspiration, approaches to God, and such are the men whom
the world (in the past) has deified: such were Hercules and Osiris,
Confucius and Budha, Mahomet and Thor: these were godlike men.
Such, also, were Oberlin, Cromwell, Winthrop, Penn, Oglethorpe, and
Washington.
Such, too, was Toussaint Louverture.