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SPEECHES, ADDRESSES,

AND

OCCASIONAL SERMONS,

BY

THEODORE PARKER,

MINISTER OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN BOSTON.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

BOSTON:
HORACE B. FULLER,
(SUCCESSOR TO WALKER, FULLER, AND COMPANY,)
245, WASHINGTON STREET.

1867.


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
THEODORE PARKER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
of the District of Massachusetts.




CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.


I.

A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--Preached
at the Melodeon, on Sunday, February 18, 1849

                                                               PAGE 1

II.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE MOST CHRISTIAN USE OF THE
SUNDAY.--A Sermon preached at the Melodeon, on Sunday,
January 30, 1848                                                   56

III.

A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.--Preached at the Melodeon
on Sunday, September 20, 1846                                     105

IV.

THE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.--An Address
delivered before the Onondaga Teachers' Institute at Syracuse,
New York, October 4, 1849                                         139

V.

THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA, AND THE
SIGNS OF THE TIMES.--An Address delivered before
several literary Societies in 1848                                198

VI.

A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN
QUINCY ADAMS.--Delivered at the Melodeon, on Sunday,
March 5, 1848                                                     252

VII.

A SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY
SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE THE ABOLITION OF
SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, April 6, 1848                     331

VIII.

A SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND
ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, May 31, 1848                             344

IX.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY, AND THE
ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR, December, 1848                        360




A SERMON OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--PREACHED AT THE
MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1849.

MATTHEW VIII. 20.

    By their fruits ye shall know them.


Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I
ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I
use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition
of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of
piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all
manly excellence, and was the condition of all noble, manly development;
that love of truth, love of justice, love of love, were respectively the
condition of intellectual, moral, and affectional development, and that
they were also respectively the intellectual, moral, and affectional
forms of piety; that the love of God as the Infinite Father, the
totality of truth, justice, and love was the general condition of the
total development of man's spiritual powers. But I showed, that
sometimes this piety, intellectual, moral, affectional or total, did not
arrive at self-consciousness; the man only unconsciously loving the
Infinite in one or all these modes, and in such cases the man was a
loser by frustrating his piety, and allowing it to stop in the truncated
form of unconsciousness.

Now what is in you will appear out of you; if piety be there in any of
these forms, in either mode, it will come out; if not there, its fruits
cannot appear. You may reason forward or backward: if you know piety
exists, you may foretell its appearance; if you find fruits thereof, you
may reason back and be sure of its existence. Piety is love of God as
God, and as we only love what we are like, and in that degree, so it is
also a likeness to God. Now it is a general doctrine in Christendom that
divinity must manifest itself; and, in assuming the highest form of
manifestation known to us, divinity becomes humanity. However, that
doctrine is commonly taught in the specific and not generic form, and is
enforced by an historical and concrete example, but not by way of a
universal thesis. It appears thus: The Christ was God; as such He must
manifest himself; the form of manifestation was that of a complete and
perfect man. I reject the concrete example, but accept the universal
doctrine on which the special dogma of the Trinity is erected. From that
I deduce this as a general rule: If you follow the law of your nature,
and are simple and true to that, as much of godhead as there is in you,
so much of manhood will come out of you, and, as much of manhood comes
out of you, so much of godhead was there within you; as much subjective
divinity, so much objective humanity.

Such being the case, the demands you can make on a man for manliness
must depend for their answer on the amount of piety on deposit in his
character; so it becomes important to know the condition of this town in
respect of piety, for if this be not right in the above sense, nothing
else is right; or, to speak more clerically, "Unless the Lord keep the
city, the watchman waketh but in vain," and unless piety be developed or
a-developing in men, it is vain for the minister to sit up late of a
Saturday night to concoct his sermon, and to rise up early of a Sunday
morning to preach the same; he fights but as one that beateth the air,
and spends his strength for that which is nought. They are in the right,
therefore, who first of all things demand piety: so let us see what
signs or proof we have, and of what amount of piety in Boston.

To determine this, we must have some test by which to judge of the
quality, distinguishing piety from impiety, and some standard whereby to
measure the quantity thereof; for though you may know what piety is in
you, I what is in me, and God what is in both and in all the rest of us,
it is plain that we can only judge of the existence of piety in other
men, and measure its quantity by an outward manifestation thereof, in
some form which shall serve at once as a trial test and a standard
measure.

Now, then, as I mentioned in that former sermon, it is on various sides
alleged that there are two outward manifestations of piety, a good deal
unlike: each is claimed by some men as the exclusive trial test and
standard measure. Let me say a word of each.

I. Some contend for what I call the conventional standard; that is, the
manifestation of piety by means of certain prescribed forms. Of these
forms there are three modes or degrees: namely, first, the form of
bodily attendance on public worship; second, the belief in certain
doctrines, not barely because they are proven true, or known without
proof, but because they are taught with authority; and third, a passive
acquiescence in certain forms and ceremonies, or an active performance
thereof.

II. The other I call the natural standard; that is, the manifestation of
piety in the natural form of morality in its various degrees and modes
of action.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is plain, that the amount of piety in a man or a town, will appear
very different when tested by one or the other of these standards. It
may be that very little water runs through the wooden trough which feeds
the saw-mill at Niagara, and yet a good deal, blue and bounding, may
leap over the rock, adown its natural channel. In a matter of this
importance, when taking account of a stock so precious as piety, it is
but fair to try it by both standards.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us begin with the conventional standard, and examine piety by its
manifestation in the ecclesiastical forms. Here is a difficulty at the
outset, in determining upon the measure, for there is no one and general
ecclesiastical standard, common to all parties of Christians, from the
Catholic to the Quaker; each measures by its own standard, but denies
the correctness of all the others. It is as if a foot were declared the
unit of long measure, and then the actual foot of the chief justice of a
State, were taken as the rule by which to correct all measurements; then
the foot would vary as you went from North Carolina to South, and, in
any one State, would vary with the health of the judge. However, to do
what can be done with a measure thus uncertain, it is plain, that,
estimated by any ecclesiastical standard, the amount of piety is small.
There is, as men often say, "A general decline of piety;" that is a
common complaint, recorded and registered. But what makes the matter
worse to the ecclesiastical philosopher, and more appalling to the
complainers, is this: it is a decline of long standing. The disease
which is thus lamented is said to be acute, but is proved to be chronic
also; only it would seem, from the lamentations of some modern
Jeremiahs, that the decline went on with accelerated velocity, and, the
more chronic the disease was, the acuter it also became.

Tried by this standard, things seem discouraging. To get a clearer view,
let us look a little beyond our own borders, at first, and then come
nearer home. The Catholic church complains of a general defection. The
majority of the Christian church confesses that the Protestant
Reformation was not a revival of religion, not a "Great awakening," but
a great falling to sleep; the faith of Luther and Calvin was a great
decline of religion--a decline of piety in the ecclesiastical form; that
modern philosophy, the physics of Galileo and Newton, the metaphysics of
Descartes and of Kant, mark another decline of religion--a decline of
piety in the philosophical form; that all the modern democracy of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marks a yet further decline of
religion--a decline of piety in the political form; that all the modern
secular societies, for removing the evils of men and their sins, mark a
yet fourth decline of religion--a decline of piety in the philanthropic
form. Certainly, when measured by the mediaeval standard of Catholicism,
these mark four great declensions of piety, for, in all four, the old
principle of subordination to an external and personal authority is set
aside.

All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical
establishments are breaking down; other establishments are a-building
up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the
last of the Popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great
schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no
longer Roman. The old forms of piety, such as service in Latin, the
withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the
ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood--all these are protested
against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works
greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail
that the Virgin Mary appeared on the nineteenth of September, 1846, to
two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such