Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
So the pulpit is not to be relied on for much aid. If all the ministers
of New England were abolitionists, with the same zeal that they are
Protestants, Universalists, Methodists, Calvinists, or Unitarians, no
doubt the whole State would soon be an anti-slavery State, and the day
of emancipation would be wonderfully hastened. But that we are not to
look for.
Much can be done by lecturers, who shall go to the people and address
them, not as whigs or democrats, not as sectarians, but as men, and in
the name of man and God present the actual condition of the slaves, and
show the duty of the North and the South, of the nation, in regard to
this matter. For this business, we want money and men, the two sinews of
war; money to pay the men, men to earn the money. They must appeal to
the people in their primary capacity, simply as men.
Much also may be done by the press. How much may be done by these two
means, and that in a few years, these men[47] can tell; all the North
and South can tell. Men of the most diverse modes of thought can work
together in this cause. Here on my right is Mr. Phillips, an
old-fashioned Calvinist, who believes all the five points of Calvinism.
I am rather a new-fashioned Unitarian, and believe only one of the five
points, the one Mr. Phillips has proved--the perseverance of the saints;
but we get along without any quarrel by the way.
Some men will try political action. The action of the people, of the
nation, must be political action. It may be constitutional, it may be
un-constitutional. I see not why men need quarrel about that. Let not
him that voteth, condemn him that voteth not; nor let not him that
voteth not, condemn him that voteth, but let every man be faithful to
his own convictions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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