the posterity which they affect to scorn. What voice can
plead for them before their own children? The eye that
mocketh at the justice of its son, and scorneth to obey the
mercy of its daughter, the ravens of posterity shall pick it
out, and the young eagles eat it up!

"But there is yet another tribunal: 'After the death the
judgment!' When he maketh inquisition for the blood of the
innocent, what shall the stealers of men reply? Boston
merchants, where is your brother, Thomas Sims? Let Cain
reply to Christ."[217]

[Footnote 217: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, p. 50, 70, 88, 89, 92,
93, 100, 101.]

The Sunday after Mr. Webster's death, Oct. 31, 1852, I spoke of that
powerful man; listen to this:--

"Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into the
great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the
State and Church. Then what a caving in was there! The
firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with
gaping rents. 'Penn's sandy foundation' shook again, and
black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves,
with plaintive cry, flee from a farmer's barn when summer
lightning stabs the roof. There was a twist in Faneuil Hall,
and the doors could not open wide enough for Liberty to
regain her ancient Cradle; only soldiers, greedy to steal a
man, themselves stole out and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran
down the hole amain. Metropolitan churches toppled, and
pitched, and canted, and cracked, their bowing walls all out
of plumb. Colleges, broken from the chain which held them in
the stream of time, rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard
led the way, '_Christo et Ecclesiae_' in her hand. Down
plunged Andover, 'Conscience and the Constitution' clutched
in its ancient, failing arm. New Haven began to cave in.
Doctors of Divinity, orthodox, heterodox, with only a doxy
of doubt, 'no settled opinion,' had great alacrity in
sinking, and went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower
law,--one with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid
beneath his sinister arm, and an acknowledged brother
grasped by his remaining limb. Fossils of theology, dead as
Ezekiel's bones, took to their feet again, and stood up for
most arrant wrong. 'There is no higher law of God,' quoth