Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/27

xxviii Slave Bill he openly announced he would resist by force, and in 1851 he sheltered in his house a man and wife who formed part of his congregation, and whose master sought to reclaim them. He wrote his sermon that week with his pistol in his desk before him! In the same year another negro, named Sims, was arrested in Boston, and Parker's efforts for his relief, his attendance on him to the vessel in which he was borne back to slavery, and his discourses afterwards, roused so much animosity, that a prosecution against him was commenced, and only relinquished when it was found that his imprisonment would be a triumph for his cause. It was on this occasion he prepared the elaborate “Defence” to be reprinted in the 10th volume of this series,—also the splendid sermons “on Conscience,” and on “the Laws of God and the Statutes of Man.”

His courage in the anti-slavery cause, and indeed in every cause he had at heart, was such as might be expected of the preacher of such a faith. Obnoxious beyond any other man in America, both on account of his religion and his politics, he never once failed to go wherever his voice or his presence could be of use, delivering lectures in all parts of the country, and entering meetings where he was an object of bitterest rancour. On one such an occasion we have been told by an eye-witness that he was standing in a gallery at a large pro-slavery meeting in New York, when one of the orators tauntingly remarked, “I should like to know what Theodore Parker would say to this!” Would you like to know?” cried he, starting forward into view,—“I'll tell you what Theodore Parker says to it!” Of course there instantly arose a tremendous clamour and threats of killing him and throwing him over. Parker simply squared his broad chest, and looking to the right and the left, said, undauntedly, “Kill me? Throw me over? you shall do no such thing. Now I'll tell you what I say to this matter.” His bravery quelled the riot at once.

Parker's intellectual endowments were of the highest class, and enabled him to defend his religious creed with the power of a clear head and an eloquent tongue. The peculiar characteristic of his mental faculties seemed to be a singular lucidity and clearness of arrangement of facts and ideas. These great natural gifts, combined with so much daring originality of thought, would have been perilous had he not laboured to supply himself with such a ballast of deep and solid learning