THEODORE PARKER. I. From the Proceedings of the New England Antislavery Convention at the Melodeon, Boston, May 31, 1860. The following resolutions were offered by Wendell Phillips: Resolved, That in the death of our beloved friend and fellowlaborer Theodore Parker, liberty, justice, and truth lose one of their ablest and foremost champions, -one whose tireless industry, whose learning, the broadest, most thorough, and profound New England knows, whose masterly intellect, melted into a brave and fervent heart, earned for him the widest and most abiding influence; in the service of truth and right, lavish of means, prodigal of labor, fearless of utterance; the most Christian minister at God's altar in all our Commonwealth; one of the few whose fidelity saves the name of the ministry from being justly a reproach and by-word with religious and thinking men; a kind, true heart, full of womanly tenderness; the object of the most unscrupulous even of bigot and priestly hate, yet on whose garments bitter and watchful malice found no stain; laying on the altar the fruits of the most unresting toil, yet ever ready as the idlest to man any post of daily and humble duty at any moment. In him we lose that strong sense, deep feeling, and love of right for whose eloquent voice millions waited in every hour of darkness and peril; whose last word came, fitly, across the water a salutation and a blessing to the kindred martyrs of Harper's Ferry; a storehouse of the lore of every language and age; the armory of a score of weapons sacred to right; the leader whose voice was the bond of a mighty host; the friend ever sincere, loyal, and vigilant ; a man whose fidelity was attested equally by the trust of those who loved him, and the hate of everything selfish, heartless, and base in the land. In time to come the slave will miss keenly that voice always heard in his behalf, and which a nation was learning to heed; and whoever anywhere lifts a hand for any victim of wrong and sin, will be lonelier and weaker for the death we mourn to-day. Resolved, That a copy of the above resolution be sent to Mrs. Parker, with fit expression of our most sincere and respectful sympathy in this hour of her bitter grief and sad bereavement. NOTHER friend is gone. A only standing one step Not gone! No, with us, higher than he did. To such spirits, there is no death. In the old times, when men fought with spears, the warrior hurled his weapon into the thickest of the opposite host, and struggled bravely on, until he stood over it and reclaimed it. In the bloom of his youth, Theodore Parker flung his heart forward at the feet of the Eternal; he has only struggled onward and reached it to-day. Only one step higher! "Wail ye may full well for Scotland, How shall we group his qualities? The first that occurs to me is the tireless industry of that unresting brain which never seemed to need leisure. When some engagement brought me home in the small hours of the morning, many and many a time have I looked out (my own window commands those of his study), and seen that unquenched light burning, - that unflagging student ever at work. Half curious, half ashamed, I lay down, saying with the Athenian, "The trophies of Miltiades will not let me sleep." He seemed to rebuke me even by the light that flashed from the window of his study. I have met him on the cars deep in some strange tongue, or hiving up knowledge to protect the weak and hated of his own city. Neither on the journey nor at home did his spirit need to rest. Why is he dead? Because he took up the burden of three men. A faithful pulpit is enough for one man. He filled it until the fulness of his ideas overflowed into other channels. It was not enough. His diocese extended to the prairies. On every night of the week, those brave lips smothered bigotry, conquered prejudice, and melted true hearts into his own on the banks of the Mississippi. This was enough for two men. But he said, "I will bring to this altar of Reform a costlier offering yet," and he gathered the sheaf of all literature into his bosom, and came with another man's work, — almost all the thoughts of all ages and all tongues, as the background of his influence in behalf of the slave. He said, "Let no superficial scholarship presume to arraign Reform as arrogant and empty fanaticism. I will overtop your candidates with language and law, and show you, in all tongues, by arguments hoar with antiquity, the rightfulness and inevitable necessity of justice and liberty." Enough work for three men to do; and he sank under the burden. Lord Bacon says, "Studies teach not their own use; that comes from a wisdom without them and above them." The fault of New England scholarship is that it knows not its own use; that, as Bacon says, "it settles in its fixed ways, and does not seek reformation." The praise of this scholar is, that, like the great master of English philosophy, he was content to light his torch at every man's candle. He was not ashamed to learn. When he started in the pulpit, he came a Unitarian, with the blessings of Cambridge. Men say he is a Unitarian no longer; but the manna, when it was kept two days, bred maggots, and the little worms that run about on the surface of corruption call themselves the children and representatives of Channing. They are only the worms. of the manna, and the pulpit of Federal Street found its child at Music Hall. God's lineage is not of blood. Brewster of Plymouth, if he stood here to-day, would not be in the Orthodox Church, counting on his anxious fin gers the five points of Calvin. No! he would be shouldering a Sharpe's rifle in Kansas, fighting against the libels of the Independent and Observer, preaching treason in Virginia, and hung on an American gibbet; for the child of Puritanism is not mere Calvinism, -it is the loyalty to justice which tramples under foot the wicked laws of its own epoch. So Unitarianism — so far as it has any worth is not standing in the same pulpit, or muttering the same shibboleth; it is, like Channing, looking into the face of a national sin and, with lips touched like Isaiah's, finding it impossible not to launch at it the thunderbolt of God's rebuke. Old Lyman Beecher said," If you want to find the successor of Saint Paul, seek him where you find the same objections made to a preacher that were made to Saint Paul." Who won the hatred of the merchant-princes of Boston? Whom did State Street call a madman? The fanatic of Federal Street in 1837. Whom, with unerring instinct, did that same herd of merchant-princes hate, with instinctive certainty that, in order that their craft should be safe, they ought to hate him? The Apostle of Music Hall. That is enough. When some Americans die when most Americans die their friends tire the public with excuses. They confess this spot, they explain that stain, they plead circumstances as the half justification of that mistake, and they beg of us to remember that nothing but good is to be spoken of the dead. We need no such mantle for that green grave under the sky of Florence, no excuses, no explanations, no spot. Priestly malice has scanned every inch of his garment,- it was seamless; it could find no stain. History, as in the case of every other of her beloved children, gathers into her bosom the arrows which malice had shot at him, and says to posterity, "Behold the title-deeds of your gratitude!" We ask no - moment to excuse, there is nothing to explain. What the snarling journal thought bold, what the selfish politician feared as his ruin, it was God's seal set upon his apostleship. The little libel glanced across him like a rocket when it goes over the vault; it is passed, and the royal sun shines out as beneficent as ever. When I returned from New York on the thirteenth day of this month, I was to have been honored by standing in his desk, but illness prevented my fulfilling the appointment. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. As he sank away the same week, under the fair sky of Italy, he said to the most loving of wives and of nurses, "Let me be buried where I fall;" and tenderly, thoughtfully, she selected four o'clock of the same Sunday to mingle his dust with the kindred dust of brave, classic Italy. Four o'clock ! The same sun that looked upon the half-dozen mourners that he permitted to follow him to the grave, that same moment of brightness lighted up the arches of his own Temple, as one whom he loved stepped into his own desk, and with remarkable coincidence, for the only time during his absence, opened one of his own sermons to supply my place; and as his friend read the Beatitudes over his grave on the banks of the Arno, his dearer friend here read from a manuscript the text, "Have faith in God." It is said that, in his last hours, in the wandering of that masterly brain, he murmured, "There are two Theodore Parkers, one rests here, dying, but the other lives, and is at work at home." How true! at that very instant, his own words were sinking down into the hearts of those that loved him best, and bidding them, in this, the loneliest hour of their bereavement," Have faith in God." He always came to this platform. He is an old occupant of it. He never made an apology for coming to it. I remember many years ago, going home from the very |