bury_, January 14, 1843.

DEAR SIR:--Your favor of the 11th instant came in my absence from
home, and I now hasten to reply to the invitation you offer me.
With the views I entertain of Mr. Paine's character in his later
years, I could not, consistently with my own sense of duty, join
with you in celebrating his birth-day. I feel grateful, truly so,
for the services rendered by his _political_ writings, and his
practical efforts in the cause of freedom; though with what I
understand to be the spirit of his writings on theology and
religion, I have not the smallest sympathy.

I am, respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
THEODORE PARKER.

This is one arch-heretic trampling on his brother in the holy name of
religion. Yet the great work which Thomas Paine performed before Mr.
Parker was conceived in the womb of Time, made a Theodore Parker
possible. Parker stood on the shoulders of Thomas Paine, and he uttered
scarcely a thought on religion and theology which Mr. Paine had not
written before him. Mr. Parker translated DeWette, but Mr. Paine's
second part of the Age of Reason, as an original investigation and
critical examination of the Bible, will be read when Parker's
translation of DeWette is forgotten. The latter is a scholar's effort,
dry, voluminous, costly, and soon to be laid away forever; the former, a
friend's offering to mankind, brought within the reach of their
understanding and their means. As an argument it has never been equaled;
as a theological work it is fair and candid; as a religious work it
breathes the spirit of forbearance, kindness, morality, and brotherly
love. I have searched in vain to find the authority for Mr. Parker's
religious hatred to Thomas Paine. They taught the same morality and
religion, the same theology, the same retributive justice, and denounced
boldly the same errors in politics and religion; and differed only in
this that Mr. Parker said his prayers in public, and Mr. Paine in
private. The hatred to Mr. Paine is perhaps inherited, and we stand in
awe of him as of the devil, without a reason and without knowing why.
The Egyptian children still startle at the name of "Bonaparte;" the
American children at the name of Thomas Paine; and Mr. Parker never
outgrew this superstition of his youth. But the historian may safely
record: _Without Thomas Paine, there would have bee