emigrants, and engage in the slave-trade, or venture on fillibustering expeditions. This class of persons is common in all the South. One of the legitimate products of her "peculiar institution," they are familiar with violence, ready and able for murder. Public opinion sustains such men. Bully Brooks was but one of their representatives in Congress. Now-a-days they are fond of slavery, defend it, and seek to spread it. But the time must come one day -it may come any time-when the lovers of mischief will do a little fillibustering at home, and rouse up the slaves to rob, burn, and kill. Prudent carpenters sweep up all the shavings in their shops at night, and remove this food of conflagration to a safe place, lest the spark of a candle, the end of a cigar, or a friction-match should swiftly end their wealth, slowly gathered together. The South takes pains to strew her carpenter's shop with shavings, and fill it full thereof. She encourages men to walk abroad with naked candles in their hands and lighted cigars in their mouths; then they scatter friction-matches on the floor, and dance a fillibustering jig thereon. She cries, "Well done! Hurrah for Walker!" "Hurrah for Brooks!" "Hurrah for Brooks!" "Hurrah for the bark Wanderer and its cargo of slaves! Up with the bowie-knife! Down with justice and humanity!" The South must reap as she sows; where she scatters the wind, the whirlwind will come up. It will be a pretty crop for her to reap. Within a few years the South has BURNED ALIVE eight or ten negroes. Other black men looked on, and learned how to fasten the chain, how to pile the green wood, how to set this hell-fire of slavery agoing. The apprentice may be slow to learn, but he has had teaching enough by this time to know the art and mystery of torture; and, depend upon it, the negro will one day apply it to his old tormentors. The fire of vengeance may be waked up even in an African's heart, especially when it is fanned by the wickedness of a white man: then it runs from man to man, from town to town. What shall put it

out? The white man's blood!

Now, slavery is a wickedness so vast and so old, so rich and so respectable, supported by the State, the press, the market, and the Church, that all those agencies are needed to oppose it with-those, and many more which I cannot speak of now. You and I prefer the peaceful method; but

I, at least, shall welcome the violent, if no other accomplish the end. So will the great mass of thoughtful and good men at the North; else why do we honour the heroes of the Revolution, and build them monuments all over our blessed New-England? I think you gave money for that of Bunker Hill: I once thought it a folly; now I recognize it as a great sermon in stone, which is worth not only all the money it cost to build it, but all the blood it took to lay its corner-stones. Trust me, its lesson will not be in vain -at the North, I mean, for the LOGIC OF SLAVERY will keep the South on its lower course, and drive it on more swiftly than before. "Capt. Brown's expedition was a failure," I hear it said. I am not quite sure of that. True, it kills fifteen men by sword and shot, and four or five men by the gallows. But it shows the weakness of the greatest slave State in America, the worthlessness of her soldiery, and the utter fear which slavery genders in the bosoms of the masters. Think of the condition of the city of Washington while Brown was at work!

Brown will die, I think, like a martyr, and also like a saint. His noble demeanour, his unflinching bravery, his gentleness, his calm, religious trust in God, and his words of truth and soberness, cannot fail to make a profound impression on the hearts of Northern men; yes, and on Southern men. For "every human heart is human," &c. I do not think the money wasted, nor the lives thrown away. Many acorns must be sown to have one come up; even then, the plant grows slow; but it is an oak at last. None of the Christian martyrs died in vain; and from Stephen, who was stoned at Jerusalem, to Mary Dyer, whom our fathers hanged on a bough of " the great tree on Boston Common, I think there have been few spirits more pure and devoted than John Brown's, and none that gave up their breath in a nobler cause. Let the American State hang his body, and the American Church damn his soul; still, the blessing of such as are ready to perish will fall on him, and the universal justice of the Infinitely perfect God will take him welcome home. The road to heaven is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also, as easy.

I suppose you would like to know something about myself. Rome has treated me to bad weather, which tells its

story in my health, and certainly does not mend me. But I look for brighter days and happier nights. The sad tidings from America-my friends in peril, in exile, in jail, killed, or to be hung-have filled me with grief, and so I fall back a little, but hope to get forward again. God bless you and yours, and comfort you!

Ever affectionately yours,

THEODORE PARKER.

A LETTER TO THE BOSTON ASSOCIATION OF CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS, TOUCHING CERTAIN MATTERS OF THEIR THEOLOGY.

GENTLEMEN:

The peculiar circumstances of the last few years have placed both you and me in new relations to the public, and to one another. Your recent actions constrain me to write you this public letter, that all may the more fully understand the matter at issue between us, and the course you design to pursue. You are a portion of the Unitarian body, and your opinions and conduct will no doubt have some influence upon that body. You have, I am told, at great length, and in several consecutive meetings, discussed the subject of my connection with your reverend body; you have debated the matter whether you should expel me for heresy, and by a circuitous movement, recently made, have actually excluded me from preaching the Thursday Lecture. I do not call in question your motives, for it is not my office to judge you, neither do I now complain of your conduct, public or private, towards me during the last three years. That has been various. Some members of your association have uniformly treated me with the courtesy common amongst gentlemen; some also with the civilities that are usual amongst ministers of the same denomination. Towards some of your number I entertain an affectionate gratitude for the good words I have heard from their lips in my youth. I feel a great regard for some of

VOL. XII.-Autob. and Miscell.

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you, on account of their noble and Christian characters, virtuous, self-denying, pious, and without bigotry. I cherish no unkind feelings towards the rest of you; towards none of you do I feel ill-will on account of what has past. I have treated my opponents with a forbearance which, I think, has not always been sufficiently appreciated by such as have had the chief benefit of that forbearance. However, I hope never to be driven either by abuse from an opponent, or by the treachery of a pretended friend, to depart from the course of forbearance which I have hitherto, and uniformly, pursued.

But since you have, practically, taken so decided a stand, and have so frequently discussed me and my affairs among yourselves, and have at last made your movement, I think it important that the public should have a distinct knowledge of your theological position. I am searching for truth, however humbly, and I suppose that you are as desirous of imparting to others as of receiving it from Heaven; therefore I shall proceed to ask you certain questions, a good deal talked of at the present day, to which I venture to ask a distinct and categorical reply. But, by way of preliminary, I will first refresh your memory with a few facts.

Until recently the Unitarians have been supposed to form the advance-guard, so to say, of the church militant; at least they have actually been the Movement party in Theology. It may hurt the feelings of some men, now, to confess it, but I think it is true. As such, the Unitarians have done a great work. As I understand the matter, this work was in part intellectual-for they really advanced theological science both negatively, by the exposure of errors, and positively, by the establishment of truths;-but in greater part moral, for they declared either directly, or by implication, the right of each man to investigate for himself in matters pertaining to religion, and his right also to the Christian name if he claimed it, and by his character seemed to deserve it. They called themselves "liberal" Christians, and seemed to consider that he was the best Christian who was most like Christ in character and life, thus making religion the essential of Christianity, and eaving each man to determine his own theology. They began their history by a denial of the Trinity, a doctrine very dear to the Christian Church, of very ancient standing

therein, common alike to Catholics and Protestants,-a doctrine for centuries regarded as essential to the Christian scheme, the fundamental dogma of Christianity. For this denial they encountered the usual fate of the movement party; they were denied Christian fellowship, and got a bad name, which they keep even now. I am told that they are still called "Infidels " by the Trinitarian leaders, and that, you know, gentlemen, is a term of great reproach in the theological world. It has been asserted, I think, in some orthodox journal, that the lamented Dr Channing, whose name is now perhaps praised by your association oftener than his example is followed, undoubtedly went to hell for his sin in denying that Jesus of Nazareth was the infinite God. Gentlemen, these things happened not a great many years ago. I do not wonder at the treatment the Unitarians have received, and still receive, where they are not numerous and powerful, for the Trinitarians maintain that no one can be saved without a belief in certain doctrines of their theology, which very doctrines the Unitarians stoutly denied, and in public too. The orthodox were consistent in what the Unitarians then regarded as persecution, and, I doubt not, would have used the old arguments, fagots and the axe-had not the laws of the land rendered it quite impossible to resort to this ultimate standard of theological appeal, which had been a favourite with many of the clergy for more than fourteen centuries. The Unitarians complained of that treatment as not altogether Christian.

But now, gentlemen, it seems to me that some of you are pursuing the same course you once complained of, and if I rightly apprehend the theology of your learned body -of which, however, I am not quite sure-without the same consistency, having no warrant therefor in your theological system. I say nothing of your motives in all this; nothing of the spirit in which some of you have acted. That matter is beyond my reach; to your own master you stand or fall. In 1841 I preached a sermon at South Boston, at an ordination. That was soon attacked by the Rev. Mr Fairchild, and numerous other clergymen, of several denominations, equally zealous for the Christian faith. Since that time most of you have refused me the ministerial courtesies commonly shown to the ministers of the same denomination.