Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/57



On Sunday, May 28, after the usual introductory services, Mr. Parker pronounced the following

by your faces, as well as by your number, what is expected of me to-day. A person has just sent me a request, asking me, " Cannot you extemporize a sermon for this day?" It is easier to do it than not. But I shall not extemporize a sermon for to-day—I shall extemporize the Scripture. I therefore pass over the Bible words, which I designed to read from the Old Testament and the New, and will take the Morning Lesson from the circumstances of the past week. The time has not come for me to preach a sermon on the great wrong now enacting in this city. The deed is not yet fully done: any counsel that I have to offer is better given elsewhere than here, at another time than now. Neither you nor I are quite calm enough today to look the matter fairly in the face and see entirely what it means. Before the events of the past week took place, I had proposed to preach this morning on the subject of war, taking my theme from the present commotions in Europe, which also will reach us, and have already.