Sunday, 1853.
My Dear Parker:
— I have been in to hear you, but did not like what you were saying well enough
to stay more than a quarter of an hour in a thorough draught, which I liked
still less than your wind.
Why do you hammer away at the heads of Boston merchants, none
of whose kith or kin come to hear you, when the rest of the population of the
city, and even many of the mechanics, were just as ready to back up the
authorities for kidnapping men as the merchants were?
Why do you say, and reiterate so often, that God uses the minimum
force to accomplish the maximum ends? Is it so? How do you know?
Does God know quantity or space or regard them? Is there more or less
with Him? How do you know that without this or that thing or man
this or that fact or deed would not have followed?
With the vast waste (or apparent waste) of animal life and
mineral resources which geology reveals — families, species, whole races, whole
worlds swept away — how do you, Theodore Parker, know that without salt to a
potato, or even without salt or potato either, this or that thing would not and
could not have been?
That was all very fine about God's great span, Centrifugal
and Centripetal, but suppose either one of them should break down or slip a
joint, has not the Governor a whole stud in the stable all ready for work? But,
coolly, is there not something of what the Turks call Bosh about this? I never
knew you to deal in the article before; but did you not go to the wrong barrel
this morning? How can you say that without our revolution France would not
have had hers — a little later perhaps, but still had it? Who told you that God
would have broken down in his purpose if Washington had had the quinsy at a
score, instead of three score years; and that New England would have now been
worse off than Canada?
I did not stay long enough to hear you say any more unparkerish
things, and so I will have done with my comment and close by saying that if
I loved you less I might admire you more.
Your incorrigible,
Old Samuel South Boston.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals
of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 394-5
No comments:
Post a Comment