Page "religion" Paragraph 74

By reminding ourselves of these factors in the situation, we should, I am sure, come to a fresh realization, however painful it be, that the battle between Parker and his neighbors was fought in earnest.

He arraigned the citizens in language of so little courtesy that they had to respond with, at the least, resentment.

What otherwise could `` the lawyer, doctor, minister, the men of science and letters '' do when told that they had `` become the cherubim and seraphim and the three archangels who stood before the golden throne of the merchant, and continually cried, ' Holy, holy, holy is the Almighty Dollar ' ``??

Nor, when we recollect how sensitive were the emotions of the old Puritan stock in regard to the recent tides of immigration, should we be astonished that their thin lips were compressed into a white line of rage as Parker snarled at them thus: `` Talk about the Catholics voting as the bishop tells!!

Reproach the Catholics for it!!

You and I do the same thing.

There are a great many bishops who have never had a cross on their bosom, nor a mitre on their head, who appeal not to the authority of the Pope at Rome, but to the Almighty Dollar, a pope much nearer home.

Boston has been controlled by a few capitalists, lawyers and other managers, who told the editors what to say and the preachers what to think ''.

This was war.

Parker meant business.

And he took repeated care to let his colleagues know that he intended them: `` Even the Unitarian churches have caught the malaria, and are worse than those who deceived them '' -- which implied that they were very bad indeed.

It was `` Duty '' he said that his parents had given him as a rule -- beyond even the love that suffused his being and the sense of humor with which he was largely supplied -- and it was duty he would perform, though it cost him acute pain and exhausted him by the age of fifty.

Parker could weep -- and he wept astonishingly often and on the slightest provocation -- but the psychology of those tears was entirely compatible with a remorseless readiness to massacre his opponents.

`` If it gave me pleasure to say hard things '', he wrote, `` I would shut up forever ''.

We have to tell ourselves that when Parker spoke in this vein, he believed what he said, because he could continue, `` But the truth, which cost me bitter tears to say, I must speak, though it cost other tears hotter than fire ''.

Because he copiously shed his own tears, and yielded himself up as a living sacrifice to the impersonalized conscience of New England, he was not disturbed by the havoc he worked in other people's consciences.