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[479] were so proscribed and denounced by the scribes and pharisees and hypocrites in the Church, and by the time-servers and demagogues in the State, as those to whom he specifically gave in his will the tokens of his respect, confidence, and undying friendship. It was his last and most striking testimony of his interest in the most radical reformers. We were singled out for no other purpose. It was his ‘ruling passion strong in death.’

It is a great trust which has been committed to us—the expenditure of eight thousand dollars per annum for five years in the cause of anti-slavery, woman's rights, peace, temperance, etc.1 No doubt we shall be bored with all sorts of applications, from all sorts of persons; indeed, they already begin to pour in. But the estate is not yet settled.


Hovey,’ to quote Quincy again,“is the best Christian I know, though he is a professing Infidel. He cannot stand Theodore Parker, even,” Ms. Nov. 24, 1857, to R. D. Webb. adds the writer playfully, ‘and looks upon him as not much better than the common run of infidels.’ This great preacher had, on the morning of January 9, 1859, been attacked with bleeding from the2 lungs, which admonished him that his end was approaching. It was a Sunday morning, when his sermon would have been ‘On the Superiority of Good Will to Man over Belief in Theological Fancies.’

‘There is,’ said Mr. Garrison, who once more filled the place3 of the absent pastor, on January 23, with a discourse on ‘What is Infidelity? and who are the Infidels?’—

There is much pious exultation, I hear, in various quarters at the illness of Mr. Parker, as though it were a visitation of divine displeasure on account of his alleged “infidelity;” as though it were in direct answer to the stupid and superstitious, the ferocious and malignant prayers that were made in the Park-Street Vestry, during the late artificial revival, that the Lord would put a4 hook into his jaws, or paralyze his tongue, or in some way break him down, empty Music Hall, and scatter his congregation to the winds. . . . There is no such God in the universe. No—it is not for his “theological heresies,” or his “pernicious teachings,” that your beloved minister has been stricken down, but for his unwearied zeal and devotion in the cause of mental freedom, of religious liberty, of suffering

1 The one unnamed here was free trade.

2 Lib. 29.6.

3 Lib. 29.11, 14.

4 Ante, p. 465; Lib. 30.148.

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