The Thursday lecture was an institution in Boston intermittently for two hundred years, being first inaugurated by Anne Hutchinson and the Reverend John Cotton. The affair was mostly for the benefit of clergymen, in order that they might hear one another and see themselves as others saw them. To be invited to give a Thursday lecture was a great honor. Theodore Parker was invited to give one; he gave the address and then was invited back, in order that his hearers might ascertain whether they had understood correctly. Parker had said that to try to prove the greatness of Jesus by his miracles was childish and absurd. Even God was no better or greater through diverting the orderly course of Nature and breaking His own laws by strange and exceptional acts. Parker did not try to disprove the matter of miracles. He only said that wise men would do well not to say anything about them, because goodness, faith, gentleness and love have nothing to do with the miraculous, neither does a faith in the miraculous tend to an increased harmony of life. A man might be a good neighbor, a model parent and a useful citizen, and yet have no particular views concerning the immaculate conception. This all sounds very trite to us: it is so true that we do not think to affirm it. But then it raised a storm of dissent, and a resolution was offered expressing regret that the Reverend Theodore Parker had been invited to address a Boston Christian assemblage. The resolution was tabled, but the matter had gotten into the papers, and was being discussed by the peripatetics. Parker had at his church in Roxbury substituted Marcus Aurelius for the Bible at one of his services; and everybody knew that Marcus Aurelius was a Pagan who had persecuted the Christians. Was it the desire of Theodore Parker to transform Christian Boston into a Pagan Rome? Parker replied with a sermon showing that Boston sent vast quantities of rum to the heathen; that many of her first citizens thrived on the manufacture, export and sale of strong drink; and that to call Boston a Christian city was to reveal a woeful lack of knowledge concerning the use of words. About this time there was a goodly stir in the congregation, some of whom were engaged in the shipping trade. After the sermon they said, "Is it I--Is it I?" And one asked, "Is it me?" The Unitarian Association of Boston notified Theodore Parker that in their opinion he was no better than Emerson, and it was well to remember that Pantheism and Unitarianism were quite different. That night Theodore Parker read the letter, and wrote in his journal as follows: