



Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)







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 things to
Ronge and Wessenberg? Neither the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous
mother, avails aught against this untoward generation, charm they never
so wisely. The decline of piety goes on. By the new Constitution of
France, all forms of religion are equal; the Catholic and the
Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under the
broad shield of the law. Even Spain, the fortress walled and moated
about, whither the spirit of the middle ages retired and shut herself up
long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with
unfeminine queens and nuns--even Spain fails with the general failure.
British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into
woollen mills. Monks and nuns forget their beads in some new
handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy
with serving, careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not
cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long
unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas,
making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the
Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of
St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright,
Watt, and Fulton,--the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom.
It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on
the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs
which is Solomon's, that get printed there: but fiery novels of Eugene
Sue, and George Sand; and so extremes meet.

Protestant establishments share the same peril. A new sect of
Protestants rises up in Germany, who dissent as much from the letter and
spirit of Protestantism, as the Protestants from Catholicism; men that
will not believe the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of the
Trinity, the depravity of man, the eternity of future punishment, nor
justification by faith--a justification before God, for mere belief
before men. The new spirit gets possession of new men, who cannot be
written down, nor even howled down. Excommunication or abuse does no
good on such men as Bauer, Strauss, and Schwegler; and it answers none
of their questions. It seems pretty clear, that in all the north of
Germany, within twenty years, there will be entire freedom of worship,
for all sects, Protestant and Catholic.

In England, Protestantism has done its work less faithfully than in
Germany. The Protestant spirit of England came here two hundred years
ago, so that new and Protestant England is on the west of the ocean; in
England, an established church lies there still, an iceberg in the
national garden. But even there, the decline of the ecclesiastical form
of piety is apparent: the new bishops must not sit in the House of
Lords, till the old ones die out, for the number of lords spiritual must
not increase, though the temporal may; the new attempt, at Oxford and
elsewhere, to restore the Middle Ages, will not prosper. Bring back all
the old rites and forms into Leeds and Manchester; teach men the
theology of Thomas Aquinas, or of St. Bernard; bid them adore the
uplifted wafer, as the very God, men who toil all day with iron mills,
who ride in steam-drawn coaches, and talk by lightning in a whisper,
from the Irk to the Thames,--they will not consent to the philosophy or
the theology of the Middle Ages, nor be satisfied with the old forms of
piety, which, though too elevated for their fathers in the time of
Elizabeth, are yet too low for them, at least too antiquated. Dissenters
have got into the House of Commons; the test-act is repealed, and a man
can be a captain in the army, or a postmaster in a village, without
first taking the Lord's Supper, after the fashion of the Church of
England. Some men demand the abandonment of tithes, the entire
separation of Church and State, the return to "The voluntary principle"
in religion. "The battering ram which levelled old Sarum," and other
boroughs as corrupt, now beats on the church, and the "Church is in
danger." Men complain of the decline of piety in England. An intelligent
and very serious writer, not long ago, lamenting this decline, in proof
thereof, relates, that formerly men began their last wills, "In the name
of God, Amen;" and headed bills of lading with, "Shipped in good order,
by the grace of God;" that indictments for capital crimes charged the
culprit with committing felony, "At the instigation of the devil," and
now, he complains, these forms have gone out of use.

In America, in New England, in Boston, when measured by that standard,
the same decline of piety is apparent. It is often said that our
material condition is better than our moral; that in advance of our
spiritual condition. There is a common clerical complaint of a certain
thinness in the churches; men do not give their bodily attendance, as
once they did; they are ready enough to attend lectures, two or three in
a week, no matter how scientific and abstract, or how little connected
with their daily work, yet they cannot come to the church without
teasing beforehand, nor keep awake while there. It is said the minister
is not respected as formerly. True, a man of power is respected, heard,
sought, and followed, but it is for his power, for his words of grace
and truth, not for his place in a pulpit; he may have more influence as
a man, but less as a clergyman. Ministers lament a prevalent disbelief
of their venerable doctrines; that there is a concealed skepticism in
regard to them, often not concealed. This, also, is a well-founded
complaint; the well-known dogmas of theology were never in worse repute;
there was never so large a portion of the community in New England who
were doubtful of the Trinity, of eternal damnation, of total depravity,
of the atonement, of the Godhead of Jesus, of the miracles of the New
Testament, and of the truth of every word of the Bible. A complaint is
made, that the rites and forms which are sometimes called "the
ordinances of religion," are neglected; that few men join the church,
and though the old hedge is broken down before the altar, yet the number
of communicants diminishes, and it is no longer able-headed men, the
leaders of society, who come; that the ordinances seem haggard and
ghastly to young men, who cannot feed their hungry souls on such a thin
pittance of spiritual aliment as these afford; that the children are not
baptized. These things are so; so in Europe, Catholic and Protestant; so
in America, so in Boston. Notwithstanding the well-founded complaint
that our modern churches are too costly for the times, we do not build
temples which bear so high a proportion to our wealth as the early
churches of Boston; the attendance at meeting does not increase as the
population; the ministers are not prominent, as in the days of Wilson,
of Cotton, and of Norton; their education is not now in the same
proportion to the general culture of the times. Harvard College,
dedicated to "Christ and the Church," designed at first chiefly for the
education of the clergy, graduates few ministers; theological literature
no longer overawes all other. The number of church members was never so
small in proportion to the voters as now; the number of Protestant
births never so much exceeded the number of Protestant baptisms. Young
men of superior ability and superior education have little affection for
the ministry; take little interest in the welfare of the church. Nay,
youths descended from a wealthy family seldom look that way. It is poor
men's sons, men of obscure family, who fill the pulpits; often,
likewise, men of slender ability, eked out with an education
proportionately scant. The most active members of the churches are
similar in position, ability, and culture. These are undeniable facts.
They are not peculiar to New England. You find them wherever the
voluntary principle is resorted to. In England, in Catholic countries,
you find the old historic names in the Established Church; there is no
lack of aristocratic blood in clerical veins; but there and everywhere
the church seems falling astern of all other craft which can keep the
sea.

Since these things are so, men who have only the conventional standard
wherewith to measure the amount of piety, only that test to prove its
existence by, think we are rapidly going to decay; that the tabernacle
is fallen down, and no man rises to set it up. They complain that Zion
is in distress; theological newspapers lament that there are no revivals
to report; that "The Lord has withheld His arm," and does not "pour out
His Spirit upon the churches." Ghastly meetings are held by men with
sincere and noble heart, but saddened face; speeches are made which seem
a groan of linked wailings long drawn out. Men mourn at the infidelity
of the times, at the coldness of some, at the deadness of others. All
the sects complain of this, yet each loves to attribute the deadness of
the rival sects to their special theology; it is Unitarianism which is
choking the Unitarians, say their foes, and the Unitarians know how to
retort after the same fashion. The less enlightened put the blame of
this misfortune on the good God who has somehow "withheld His hand," or
omitted to "pour out His Spirit,"--the people perishing for want of the
open vision. Others put the blame on mankind; some on "poor human
nature," which is not what might have been expected, not perceiving
that if the fault be there it is not for us to remedy, and if God made
man a bramble-bush, that no wailing will make him bear figs. Yet others
refer this condition to the use made of human nature, which certainly is
a more philosophical way of looking at the matter.

Now there is one sect which has done great service in former days, which
is, I think, still doing something to enlighten and liberalize the land,
and, I trust, will yet do more, more even than it consciously intends.
The name of Unitarian is deservedly dear to many of us, who yet will not
be shackled by any denominational fetters. This sect has always been
remarkable for a certain gentlemanly reserve about all that pertained to
the inward part of religion; other faults it might have, but it did not
incur the reproach of excessive enthusiasm, or a spirituality too
sublimated and transcendental for daily use. This sect has long been a
speckled bird among the denominations, each of which has pecked at her,
or at least cawed with most unmelodious croak against this new-fledged
sect. It was said the Unitarians had "denied the Lord that bought them;"
that theirs was the church of unbelief--not the church of Christ, but of
No-Christ; that they had a Bible of their own, and a thin, poor Bible,
too; that their ways were ways of destruction; "Touch not, taste not,
handle not," was to be written on their doctrines; that they had not
even the grace of lukewarmness, but were moral and stone-cold; that
they looked fair on the side turned towards man, but on the Godward side
it was a blank wall with no gate, nor window, nor loop-hole, nor eyelet
for the Holy Ghost to come through; that their prayers were only a show
of devotion to cover up the hard rock of the flinty heart, or the frozen
ground of morality. Their faith, it was said, was only a conviction
after the case was proven by unimpeachable evidence, and good for
nothing; while belief without evidence, or against proof, seems to be
the right ecclesiastical talisman.

For a long time the Unitarian sect did not grumble unduly, but set
itself to promote the cultivation of reason and apply that to religion;
to cultivate morality and apply it to life; and to demand the most
entire personal freedom for all men in all matters pertaining to
religion. Hence came its merits; they were very great merits, too, and
not at all the merits of the times, held in common with the other sects.
I need not dwell on this, and the good works of Unitarianism, in this
the most Unitarian city in the world; but as a general thing the
Unitarians, it seems to me, did neglect the culture of piety; and of
course their morality, while it lasted, would be unsatisfactory, and in
time would wither and dry up because it had no deepness of earth to grow
out of. The Unitarians, as a general thing, began outside, and sought to
work inward, proceeding from the special to the general, by what might
be called the inductive mode of religious culture; that was the form
adopted in pulpits, and in families so far as there was any religious
education attempted in private. That is not the method of nature, where
all growth is the development of a living germ, which by an inward power
appropriates the outward things it needs, and grows thereby. Hence came
the defects of Unitarianism, and they were certainly very great defects;
but they came almost unavoidably from the circumstances of the times.
The sensational philosophy was the only philosophy that prevailed; the
Orthodox sects had always rejected a part of that philosophy, not in the
name of science, but of piety, and they supplied its place not with a
better philosophy, but with tradition, speaking with an authority which
claimed to be above human nature. It was not in the name of reason that
they rejected a false philosophy, but in the name of religion often
denounced all philosophy and the reason which demanded it. The
Unitarians rejected that portion of Orthodoxy, became more consistent
sensationalists, and arrived at results which we know. Now it is easy to
see their error; not difficult to avoid it; but forty or fifty years ago
it was almost impossible not to fall into this mistake. Sometimes it
seems as if the Unitarians were half conscious of this defect, and so
dared not be original, but borrowed Orthodox weapons, or continued to
use Trinitarian phrases long after they had blunted those weapons of
their point, and emptied the phrases of their former sense. In the
controversy between the Orthodox and Unitarians, neither party was
wholly right: the Unitarians had reason to charge the Orthodox with
debasing man's nature, and representing God as not only unworthy, but
unjust, and somewhat odious; the Trinitarians were mainly right in
charging us with want of conscious piety, with beginning to work at the
wrong end; but at the same time it must be remembered, that, in
proportion to their numbers, the Unitarians have furnished far more
philanthropists and reformers than any of the other sects. It is time to
confess this on both sides.

For a long time the Unitarian sect did not complain much of the decline
of piety; it did not care to have an organization, loving personal
freedom too well for that, and it had not much denominational feeling;
indeed, its members were kept together, not so much by an agreement and
unity of opinion among themselves, as by a unity of opposition from
without; it was not the hooks on their shields that held the legion
together with even front, but the pressure of hostile shields crowded
upon them from all sides. They did not believe in spasmodic action; if a
body was dead, they gave it burial,