I will here add, that I have received letters from numerous Christians to thank me for my book on the “Soul,” in such terms as put the conduct of Mr. Rogers into the most painful contrast:  painful, as showing that there are other Christians who know, and he does not know, what is the true heart and strength of Christianity.  He trusts in logic and ridicules the Spirit of God.

That leads me to his defence of his suggestion that I might be possibly as much inspired as the inventor of lucifer matches.  He says, p. 154:—­

“Mr. Newman tells me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly insult it I answer... that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration, formally held by Mr. Parker, who is expressly referred to, “Eclipse,” p. 81.”  In 9th edition, p. 71.

The passage concerning Mr. Parker is in the preceding page:  I had read it, and I do not see how it at all relieves the disgust which every right-minded man must feel at this passage.  My disgust is not personal:  though I might surely ask,—­If Parker has made a mistake, how does that justify insulting me?  As I protested, I have made no peculiar claim to inspiration.  I have simply claimed “that which all[16] pious Jews and Christians since David have always claimed.”  Yet he pertinaciously defends this rude and wanton passage, adding, p. 155:  “As to the inventor of lucifer matches, I am thoroughly convinced that he has shed more light upon the world and been abundantly more useful to it, than many a cloudy expositor of modern spiritualism.”  Where to look for the “many” expositors of spiritualism, I do not know.  Would they were more numerous.

Mr. Parker differs from me as to the use of the phrase “Spirit of God.”  I see practical reasons, which I have not here space to insist on, for adhering to the Christian, as distinguished from the Jewish use of this phrase.  Theodore Parkes follows the phraseology of the Old Testament, according to which Bezaleel and others received the spirit of God to aid them in mere mechanical arts, building and tailoring.  To ridicule Theodore Parker for this, would seem to me neither witty nor decent in an unbeliever; but when one does so, who professes to believe the whole Old Testament to be sacred, and stoops to lucifer matches and the Eureka shirt, as if this were a refutation, I need a far severer epithet.  Mr. Rogers implies that the light of a lucifer match is comparable to the light of Theodore Parker; what will be the judgment of mankind a century hence, if the wide dissemination of the “Eclipse of Faith” lead to inscribing the name of Henry Rogers permanently in biographical dictionaries!  Something of this sort may appear:—­